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bearishgurl
ParticipantI wanted to clarify that in Happs’ second WSJ video, the loudspeaker on the steps appeared to indicate that opening bids on foreclosing houses there were $50K-$80K each.
The low prices (and the fact that there is a likely a lot of shadow inventory now being foreclosed on) could explain the extreme interest by out-of-state REITs.
IOW, I’m fairly certain the rental parity looks pretty good there for SFRs.
Of course, GA has a much different RE market than SD County, CA, and the two regions cannot really be compared.
ParticipantI agree with SDR that the buyer pool is large for this price range but are they buyers who intend to occupy the properties themselves? And if so, are they actually making offers? And if so, are any of them successfully closing a SFR property in this price range using a mortgage for most of the purchase money?
What is your experience, SDR? Do you have any recent buyer clients who have been successful in closing a SFR property under $400K using a mortgage?
I’m referring to SFR, not PUD or condo.
ParticipantOh, and Happs, regarding the local gov’t workers with “lavish pensions” (as you call them), these pension formulas apply mostly to the worker bee with over 15 years seniority (who is probably not yet in a position to invest in rental/flipper property), the “soon-to-be-retired,” and the “already retired.”
The young gubment-worker-bees in family raising mode who would be shopping in the $300-$400K range for a principal residence often aren’t eligible for those pension formulas. In addition, it takes 8-11 years now to reach the top step in pay in a particular job classification instead of the 4.5 years it used to.
This was done to keep pay levels down (in the absence of a promotion) and thus have these ~newer hires’ eventual retirement formulas based upon lower annual earnings.
ParticipantHapps, I’ve been asking the same thing myself here for several months now. The only individual investors (not local flipper teams or REITS) I see buying these mostly former rental-homes are the semi-retired or retired VERY local people buying properties in their home turf (that’s right, where they “grew up” over 40-50 years ago) or within a 15-mile radius of that area. These are individuals that know these areas intimately and would have no problems with being a landlord in them. In addition, ALL of them possess tools and DIY know-how and thus don’t spend a lot of money on contractors.
The flipper teams and REITS are a different animal. I could not read your article because I am not a subscriber but I watched the two WSJ videos. The second one, out of GA, showed auctions on the courthouse steps with representatives from Blackstone and CA’s Colony Capital (both very large REITS) attempting to buy as much SFR property as they could, either fully toured and previously “underwritten” by their reps or even sight unseen (inside the dwelling, due to being occupied). It was intriguing listening to the Colony Capital rep out in GA saying that they are on a mission to buy as much (SFR inventory) as they can. The REITS are evidently outbidding Joe and Jane Q. Local Investor in “trustee sales” (or whatever they are called in GA) for foreclosing properties at auction on the steps.
The truth is, these large REITS have the resources in place to hire local law firms and contractor teams to properly evict as well as clean up and rehab these properties to get back on the rental market (for a buy/hold investment for its investors) in as short a time frame as possible.
To be frank, I don’t think the typical Joe 6p Wanna-be Buyer in San Diego County who is in the $300K to $400K price range and looking for a personal residence to buy with a mortgage would be interested in making an offer on any of these properties. They would rather continue to rent. I have noticed that some SFR listings in a handful of zip codes I monitor south of I-8 have been on the market more than two months with no takers, due primarily to deferred maintenance or needing updating. Perhaps they DID get investor offers early on but since these recent sellers were not in distress, they would not lower their price sufficiently for the investor/flipper to make any (or enough) profit on a rehab so the listings are still sitting. 80-90% of these listings are in perfectly decent family areas but buyers in that price range are shunning them … even those who have families and REALLY NEED a house.
It’s astounding to me.
I don’t think the “buying pool” of “non-investors” is slim in this price range, Happs. I think the real problem here is that the (local) residence-buyer pool expects much, much more for $300-$400K, due to seeing their peers buy what they perceive are “better” homes for this price range in the last 3+ years so now think these properties are priced too high so they don’t place any offers, even if they wouldn’t be competing with any investors. They’re forgetting that those low-priced transactions of their peers were short sales and REOs which were plentiful 3 years ago. And the vast majority of THEM weren’t in great shape (even stripped) when they were purchased in ’09, ’10 or ’11, either. They probably don’t realize how much money their peers had to put into them to fix them up enough to move into. Most buyers in this price range can barely scrape together the downpayment and closing costs and don’t have the funds to fix the place like they want to before moving in. And they can’t stomach living in it like it is until they can afford to do the work, little by little.
The reality is that most of these properties have asking prices equivalent to their 2003 values and it’s not going to get any easier to buy a house in SD County.
Participant[quote=Arraya]The big criminals will never get investigated because they happen to be the most powerful and politically influential people in the country. Politicians don’t investigate who gets them elected.
I would assume by this point most of the evidence has been covered up.[/quote]
IIRC, Arraya was usually quite prescient, even though he may have not been discussing the City of Bell here. This poor jury could obviously only consider the evidence before them. They (and we) don’t know what never came out at trial due to it being “suppressed” in-limine (before they were seated).
ParticipantThis just in …
Saying she feared “all hell” had broken loose among jurors, a judge declared a mistrial Thursday on dozens of remaining counts against five former elected officials who had been convicted the day before of looting a working-class Los Angeles suburb.
Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy took the action after the 12-member panel struggled to decide 42 counts against the former mayor and four former members of the Bell City Council.
On Wednesday, the panel convicted the five of a total of 21 counts of misappropriating public funds and acquitted them on 21 other counts. A sixth former official was acquitted of all charges….
http://news.yahoo.com/mistrial-declared-california-corruption-case-230630380.html
It doesn’t sound too much like the judge or the prosecutors will wish to retry the (criminal) case. And this doesn’t bode too well for getting any kind of justice in a potential civil case against any of these former city “officials.”
This case illustrates a typical “jury of your peers” in the County of Los Angeles, IMHO…. brought to you by the Clara Shortridge Foltz “Hall of Results.”
http://www.lasuperiorcourt.org/judicialofficers/ui/index.aspx
March 21, 2013 at 12:20 PM in reply to: OT: No Surprise. . .A Retirement Crisis is Coming to a Country Near You. . . #760803Participant[quote=SK in CV]Those damn kids. With their loud music. The boys with their long hair. The girls not wearing bras. Get off my f’ing lawn![/quote]
Funny you should bring this up, SK. When I was in Jr High, I actually mowed lawns USING a grass-catcher in my daisy dukes and halter top for $5 for a quarter-acre lot. Well …. it was HOT outside. I also had a regular window washing job of a 2-story house … also for $5 and in the same outfit. It was the (female) working uniform of the day 🙂
In the warmer months, I could usually make plenty of spending money without leaving my hood.
March 21, 2013 at 12:10 PM in reply to: OT: No Surprise. . .A Retirement Crisis is Coming to a Country Near You. . . #760801Participant[quote=FormerSanDiegan]Other historical views on Boomers …
“Frankly and unapologetically materialistic”
[/quote] . . .Except uhhh, those “yuppies” (aka “boomers”) were paying an 8-11% interest rate on their home mortgages …. that is, if they purchased/refinanced AFTER 1983.
But FIRST, they had to live through 11-15.5% fixed mortgage interest rates. Try buying your first home under those economic conditions :=0
BEFORE that, they had to wait in 1.5 to 2 hr gas lines to buy that “cheap” gas and fight in Vietnam and return to the US (if you were lucky) where no one seemed to care what you went through over there.
Does anyone actually think the VA offered treatment for PTSS to returning servicemen at that time? If you think so, you ought to visit Father Joe’s today and see and hear for yourself who they have “rescued” from the street over the last 20 years.
Yes, “yuppies” had every right to seek a better life for themselves when economic conditions finally warranted it. I did so and I am very thankful today that I was given that opportunity back then … yes, even at 7-10.5% mortgage interest rates!
I have no apologies, whatsoever.
March 21, 2013 at 11:54 AM in reply to: OT: No Surprise. . .A Retirement Crisis is Coming to a Country Near You. . . #760798Participant[quote=FormerSanDiegan]Article on Gen Y
“So is this the Laziest Generation? There are signs that its members benefit from lower standards. Technology has certainly made life easier. But there may also be a generation gap; the way young adults work is simply different.
It’s worth remembering that to some extent, these accusations of laziness and narcissism in “kids these days” are nothing new — they’ve been levied against Generation X, Baby Boomers and many generations before them. Even Aristotle and Plato were said to have expressed similar feelings about the slacker youth of their times.”
[/quote]It’s funny you should bring this up. I’m in touch periodically with former coworkers who are still working for local gubment. As supervisors and mgrs, they interview a lot of Gen Y who come to the interview with visible tatoos and piercings and their phones texting them constantly. Since many entry-level gubment positions’ duties are primarily assisting the public, the gubment has strict dress and appearance codes for these employees who serve all generations of the public. The Gen Y group seems to think its okay to come to work in jeans with bullet holes and a skin-tight tank top or micro miniskirt and I am hearing that even after hire and being given a strict dress code that they have to sign, some of these workers still have to be sent home periodically to re-dress and remove their facial earring(s). Of course, having to send an employee home to come back later is disruptive to the work schedule of the department or section they work in.
To me, this is a downright lack of respect on the part of these young workers who should be ecstatic to have a steady job in this economy. Employers seem to be giving them a lot more rope than they did previous generations (especially on probation) because they apparently don’t have too much else to pick from for these jobs :=0
I’ve also heard that Gen Y balks at getting written performance evaluations but that is how the gubment covers its a$$, since it can only discipline or terminate an employee for cause (after probation is served).
By the time all the boomers have left the workplace, perhaps (the younger) Gen Y will have matured enough to understand the “lay of the land” and follow it, unpoliced.
March 21, 2013 at 11:34 AM in reply to: OT: No Surprise. . .A Retirement Crisis is Coming to a Country Near You. . . #760797Participant[quote=The-Shoveler]I had one heck of a good time in the 70’s BTW,
always bough a new surf board once a year at least, and never drank domestic beer.[/quote]
Yeah, yeah. Corona and Dos Equis weren’t considered “Domestic Beer” back then :=D
March 21, 2013 at 11:30 AM in reply to: OT: No Surprise. . .A Retirement Crisis is Coming to a Country Near You. . . #760796Participant[quote=FormerSanDiegan]
[/quote]Interesting story … but lets put the blame where the blame lies …
The first (of 450) comments on this story reflect my sentiments exactly:
Nice story about my generation. I would add that in my working, tax-paying life, I paid social security and medicare taxes that supported both my grandparents (and other blood relatives of the their generation, born in the last years of the 19th century) and both my parents. They all received benefits far in excess of their contributions to Social Security and Medicare. Also, it was their generations that passed/adopted/voted for the Presidents, Senators, and Representatives who created the entitlements that exist today. I was 15 in 1965 and obviously not yet born in the 1930s. As a nation we can no longer afford to provide the benefits my grandparents and patents received, financed by my labor and taxes on my wages, but your tale is short-sighted when you describe mine as the entitlement generation.
(emphasis mine)
What the writer doesn’t say is that the vast majority (if not all) his female elder relatives often didn’t contribute to the “system” at all, yet collected SS until the day they died.
He’s absolutely right. We supported the gens before us because that is what the SS (OASDI) “system” was in place for. Now it is our turn to be on the “receiving end,” except for one caveat. We boomers (male AND female) DID (involuntarily for decades) put substantial portions of our pay into it. A good portion of us actually maxed out our SS contributions to the maximum allowable by law. It is now our turn to collect (hopefully most or all of the “corpus” or principal) of our “contributions” back out … forget any potential “interest” we could have made on the money.
Suck it up and deal with it. We boomers did so why are Gen X/Y whining about this now?
March 21, 2013 at 10:49 AM in reply to: OT: No Surprise. . .A Retirement Crisis is Coming to a Country Near You. . . #760793Participant[quote=FormerSanDiegan][quote=bearishgurl]
FSD, that “me” generation of the ’70’s wore the same 2-3 pairs of levis for 8-10 years (with the worn places patched up and even fabric bottoms sewn on). They didn’t have access to a plethora of “designer jeans”[/quote]
What about Jordache Jeans ?
The designer jean craze was powered by boomer consumers in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
I think you hold a very narrow view of history, heavily influenced by your personal experiences. I don’t think your personal experience reflects the entire generation, and in some ways is counter to the mainstream boomers.
The Car comparison is interesting..
What do you think previous generations thought about the boomers all driving around in their fancy automobiles, as teenagers, no less. Those greatest generation people had to walk to school uphill in the snow both ways. They didn’t have a car at all.And as for electronics… Those spoiled boomers have color TV for chrissakes. If you are going to make these comparisons between Gen Y and boomers, you should consider the same comparison between boomers and and the generation or two before them.
I am pretty sure if there were such thing as a blog site like this one 30 years ago, there would be some person from the Greatest Generation claiming how the kid’s of the 60s and 70s are rotten, self-absorbed narcissistic spoiled brats, with their cars, color TVs, disco pants, Jordache Jeans, blah blah blah[/quote]
blah, blah, blah, FSD. I think you have your time frames mixed up, among other facts. Having NOT been there, I’m sure you came by this mistake honestly.
Jordache, and a year or so later, Britannia Jeans, both came out in women’s sizes. This was 1978-1980, when the bulk of boomers were already adults. No, I didn’t wear either, but wore “Dittos,” which were available during the same time period. The “disco era” was also in this same period of time.
Those “spoiled boomers” I knew all had used (hand-me-down) cars … and some were VERY used. I got my first used car for free (a “Mopar-type” sans transmission) at the age of 18. It cost me $250 just to get it running and over $700 annually for my insurance (since I was under the age of 25). That was a LOT of money back then.
My parents bought a console Zenith color TV in the early 60’s at a cost of over $500, a small fortune at the time! At that time, they had only been out for a few years. It was very similar to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIefAOli1QY
IIRC, portable color TV’s weren’t available until MUCH later. As an adult, on my own, I personally didn’t own a color TV until 1988 and did not have cable TV until 1986. Prior to that, we used a rabbit ear antenna, which got 3-5 channels in most areas of metro SD.
My Greatest Gen/Depression-era parents never complained about having to “walk to school uphill in the snow both ways.” They complained about having to get up in the morning to slop pigs before school and about having to flee their homes to their underground shelters during “tornado season” and having to huddle there with six or more people for the duration of the storm. My dad shared a car with his brothers but drove a tractor whenever he wanted … and didn’t want to. My parents could actually be considered to be latent “dust bowl refugees” from the nation’s flat-as-a-pool-table heartland :=]
I don’t think you know who an American “mainstream boomer” is, FSD. Believe it or not, they came from all regions and demographics.
Wow, just wow . . .
March 20, 2013 at 2:01 PM in reply to: OT: No Surprise. . .A Retirement Crisis is Coming to a Country Near You. . . #760770Participant[quote=SK in CV]Agree with all of this BG, except this part:
It’s hard to bring up a kid these days with your “frugal” values when “reality TV” and their “peers” are everywhere.
I don’t think I worked any harder than any other parent. My daughter just called me, and her exciting news was that she got two shirts before a bachelorette party in Vegas, and they only cost $9. Total. My son shops at 2nd hand stores.
I still wear my 501’s regularly. Though I like the fit of the 5-0-something else better. And flip-flops. Sad they don’t cost $1.05 anymore. Don’t seem to last as long either. My 15 year old car is slightly older than the one I drove in high school.[/quote]
LOL, SK. I have a kid living in SF who has shopped in “consignment shops” there for nearly a decade. They’ve found some incredible (even “vintage”) designer stuff for under $10. And up until a few months ago, they drove one of their dad’s (now 32 year-old) cars.
However, I think some of this “frugality” is just a function of them being a 5+ year college student and then trying to launch from the starter blocks of life, which they have … impressively, I might add.
The kid I still have at home has been watching far too much of the “Kardashians,” IMHO. Do you realize these “bad actors” often change clothes up to seven times in one episode?? :=0
My own vehicle will turn “20” in June. Having put several repairs into it in the past year, I’m planning on getting the oil changed and the tires rotated and taking it back on the road in the coming months.
This year, I’ll refrain from buying any “bad gas” in that infamous “Camp Verde” off I-17 in Aridzona. I later found out it to be the culprit that set off my “Check” light with the little picture of an alternator, which didn’t go off until the next morning (when I refilled the tank with a fuel additive). It was kind of scary when still climbing in that altitude and heat level :=0
Participant[quote=The-Shoveler]In California, the new homes are generally built to much high standards than the tract homes built from the 60’s to the 90’s.
Also there is generally much better work done on the lot preps then there were in the 60’s and 70’s.
Some old custom built and such are still a find however.[/quote]
Perhaps, Shoveler, but bear in mind that the tracts built in the 00’s often have 12 or more SFR units to an AC as opposed to the ’60’s to ’90’s tracts of 3-10 SFR units to an AC.
The time spent “precision grading” a group of subdivided parcels is proportional to how many separate pads and thus “elevations” (for homes) will be built on it. In the ’00’s, this was frequently “zero lot lines” or six feet apart for a new home costing the same as their ’60’s to ’90’s counterpart (with a 7500 sf lot).
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