[pertinazzio]

Wrangler wrote: “Should one only use UMB?” This was a new term to me so I spent a little time on at “Professor Mortgage’s” website. How does one get the best deal on a mortgage? Professor Mortgage seems to think that a UMB is a good idea if you get a good one. And what about the pros’ and cons of paying points for lower rates? How does that work out economically?

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

[pertinazzio]

Wrangler wrote: “Should one only use UMB?” This was a new term to me so I spent a little time on at “Professor Mortgage’s” website. How does one get the best deal on a mortgage? Professor Mortgage seems to think that a UMB is a good idea if you get a good one. And what about the pros’ and cons of paying points for lower rates? How does that work out economically?

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

[pertinazzio]

waterboy wrote

The banks don’t own all those homes….It is just a list of all homes listed in Santa Luz.

Then why, o water boy, does it tell you that they are all bank owned when you go to the site and register and everything? It certainly seems like the site sponsors are some kind of REO specialists?

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

[pertinazzio]

waterboy wrote

The banks don’t own all those homes….It is just a list of all homes listed in Santa Luz.

Then why, o water boy, does it tell you that they are all bank owned when you go to the site and register and everything? It certainly seems like the site sponsors are some kind of REO specialists?

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

[pertinazzio]

Alex wrote:

http://beautifulcaliforniahomes.com/bank-owned-homes.html

Thanks that is the kind of site and information that I was looking for when I first wandered into Professor Piggington’s amazing Econo-Almanac ….. just for fun I am checking out Spring Valley where my sister the San Diego message therapist (typical, huh?) and I can see right away that she is in a highy dangerous elevated “REO zone.” Is there any way to figure out what the previous selling price was for these gems? Once again, thanks. I am definitely in the right place!

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

[pertinazzio]

Alex wrote:

http://beautifulcaliforniahomes.com/bank-owned-homes.html

Thanks that is the kind of site and information that I was looking for when I first wandered into Professor Piggington’s amazing Econo-Almanac ….. just for fun I am checking out Spring Valley where my sister the San Diego message therapist (typical, huh?) and I can see right away that she is in a highy dangerous elevated “REO zone.” Is there any way to figure out what the previous selling price was for these gems? Once again, thanks. I am definitely in the right place!

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

[pertinazzio]

Thanks FSD! I looked at that thread and even commented on something (that was kind of stupid for me to do since the thread was so old… sorry everybody). My own thought is that if housing suddenly began to collapse the markets would of course react but if they go into a long slow meltdown the markets will be more resilent especially in those sectors more focused on “global growth”. GE for instance is doing like 40% of its business overseas. And Jim Cramer has been recommending stocks that he says are recession proof because they are getting business from the build out in China. CAT and TER and CRVD come to mind. Which leaves me thinking that I can have the best of both worlds: ie out of real estate waiting for the deals while continuing to accumulate in the market. Wall Street is different than it used to be. The U.S. isn’t everything now like it was. Of course, as they say “man proposes, god disposes” …..

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

[pertinazzio]

Thanks FSD! I looked at that thread and even commented on something (that was kind of stupid for me to do since the thread was so old… sorry everybody). My own thought is that if housing suddenly began to collapse the markets would of course react but if they go into a long slow meltdown the markets will be more resilent especially in those sectors more focused on “global growth”. GE for instance is doing like 40% of its business overseas. And Jim Cramer has been recommending stocks that he says are recession proof because they are getting business from the build out in China. CAT and TER and CRVD come to mind. Which leaves me thinking that I can have the best of both worlds: ie out of real estate waiting for the deals while continuing to accumulate in the market. Wall Street is different than it used to be. The U.S. isn’t everything now like it was. Of course, as they say “man proposes, god disposes” …..

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

[pertinazzio]

powayseller wrote on aug 28:

“I liquidated all my index and mutual funds, and went 95% cash in March 06, because I did not want to lose my money.”

That was not a good move; you forewent the very substantial returns that we have had since then. In general, according to Kipplingers magazine you should be 100% equities if your time frame is longer than 10 years and Kipplingers is pretty conservative.

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

[pertinazzio]

powayseller wrote on aug 28:

“I liquidated all my index and mutual funds, and went 95% cash in March 06, because I did not want to lose my money.”

That was not a good move; you forewent the very substantial returns that we have had since then. In general, according to Kipplingers magazine you should be 100% equities if your time frame is longer than 10 years and Kipplingers is pretty conservative.

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

[pertinazzio]

Wowza! Go to lunch and find lots of responses when I get back. Cool………thanks, patientlywaiting, vishon, PSD, HLS, CBad, SD realtor etc. You gave me a lot to think about. There seemed to be some consensus that 250-300 would be about what we could get funded for. It was particularly good to receive this snippet:

“at todays BEST rates FULL DOC you are looking [a] payment of about $600 per $100K [per mo.] for a fully amortized 30 yr fixed….[plus] at least $100 monthly for property taxes per $100K of Purchase price … ”

A couple of more thoughts: I don’t know what our credit score is but I assume its high: we have both been at the same jobs for over 25 years; my wife pays the bills so we are never late (if it were up to inebriated ol’ me to pay them it would be a different story)….I drive beaters and we have just paid off our credit card debts but are keeping the accounts open.

In general I agree that renting may be the best option under today’s conditions. My question however assumed that we would be looking down the road once we are fully in the predicted “trough” when renting might not be such a no-brainer.

Right now I am a pre-geezer. When I actually am “old old” don’t want to have any debt (“solutus omni fenore” means free of all/any debt) but I do want to have big piles of green greasy investments so as to be able leave some security for the one “lost boy” (the other two turned out okay) among the scions of my noble loins and so, god forbid, I might be able to have a couple of swell GFs down in Baja (suena bonito, verdad?) with whom to while away the hours of my disolute senectitude. Just joking ! (or am I?)

I am 56 (or 57, I forget); the rules that apply for 403bs are different or so I am told. Anyhoos supposedly no penalties apply after 55 for me if I want to pull out funds which I don’t want to do but it is nice to know you can. Renting sounds great specially now that we are in a bubble but my nice lady (she’s a hard-working gem, she is) thinks otherwise. If we get 30% declines by 2010 in the preferred zips, we’ll buy and still get to hold onto the nest egg. Thanks to everyone who took the time to respond.

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

[pertinazzio]

Wowza! Go to lunch and find lots of responses when I get back. Cool………thanks, patientlywaiting, vishon, PSD, HLS, CBad, SD realtor etc. You gave me a lot to think about. There seemed to be some consensus that 250-300 would be about what we could get funded for. It was particularly good to receive this snippet:

“at todays BEST rates FULL DOC you are looking [a] payment of about $600 per $100K [per mo.] for a fully amortized 30 yr fixed….[plus] at least $100 monthly for property taxes per $100K of Purchase price … ”

A couple of more thoughts: I don’t know what our credit score is but I assume its high: we have both been at the same jobs for over 25 years; my wife pays the bills so we are never late (if it were up to inebriated ol’ me to pay them it would be a different story)….I drive beaters and we have just paid off our credit card debts but are keeping the accounts open.

In general I agree that renting may be the best option under today’s conditions. My question however assumed that we would be looking down the road once we are fully in the predicted “trough” when renting might not be such a no-brainer.

Right now I am a pre-geezer. When I actually am “old old” don’t want to have any debt (“solutus omni fenore” means free of all/any debt) but I do want to have big piles of green greasy investments so as to be able leave some security for the one “lost boy” (the other two turned out okay) among the scions of my noble loins and so, god forbid, I might be able to have a couple of swell GFs down in Baja (suena bonito, verdad?) with whom to while away the hours of my disolute senectitude. Just joking ! (or am I?)

I am 56 (or 57, I forget); the rules that apply for 403bs are different or so I am told. Anyhoos supposedly no penalties apply after 55 for me if I want to pull out funds which I don’t want to do but it is nice to know you can. Renting sounds great specially now that we are in a bubble but my nice lady (she’s a hard-working gem, she is) thinks otherwise. If we get 30% declines by 2010 in the preferred zips, we’ll buy and still get to hold onto the nest egg. Thanks to everyone who took the time to respond.

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

[pertinazzio]

I work for a major national environmental outfit in Washington (we have a very good brand as they say) but I doubt that there is any policy measure or scheme that we are advocating that is likely to help with this lamentable situation. Emissions capping, international protocols, legislative initiatives, etc are all doomed to failure because we are too far along in the process. We should be concentrating our efforts on not how to stop global warming but how to deal with it. One possible solution would be to equip the earth with umbrellas (no joke!) or to otherwise change the reflectivity of the earth’s surface. There is an active scientific literature devoted to these technological fixes. What we need is effective ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSING!

I will tell you something else. At a personal level I have never seen people who consume more energy than international environmentalists. I am not kidding. Their “carbon foot-prints” are atrocious. Believe me, I know whereof I speak; If the average American consumes far more energy than say the average developing world person, in the same way the average DC or London-based environmentalist consumes far more energy than the average american because they are always flying to some high-level conference in South Africa or wherever.

Although I believe that organizations such as my own are less than effective on this front, I am nevertheless personally very concerned and will tell you what I am doing to avert the coming disaster: I INVEST IN GENERAL ELECTRIC. GE is one of the greenest companies in the world and is currently the world’s leading manufacturer of Wind Turbines! GE is leading the way to america’s green future. So whenever one of my bosses boards a flight to another confab I just “offset” the damage he is doing by buying a few more shares of General Electric. It helps me with the guilt.

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

[pertinazzio]

I work for a major national environmental outfit in Washington (we have a very good brand as they say) but I doubt that there is any policy measure or scheme that we are advocating that is likely to help with this lamentable situation. Emissions capping, international protocols, legislative initiatives, etc are all doomed to failure because we are too far along in the process. We should be concentrating our efforts on not how to stop global warming but how to deal with it. One possible solution would be to equip the earth with umbrellas (no joke!) or to otherwise change the reflectivity of the earth’s surface. There is an active scientific literature devoted to these technological fixes. What we need is effective ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSING!

I will tell you something else. At a personal level I have never seen people who consume more energy than international environmentalists. I am not kidding. Their “carbon foot-prints” are atrocious. Believe me, I know whereof I speak; If the average American consumes far more energy than say the average developing world person, in the same way the average DC or London-based environmentalist consumes far more energy than the average american because they are always flying to some high-level conference in South Africa or wherever.

Although I believe that organizations such as my own are less than effective on this front, I am nevertheless personally very concerned and will tell you what I am doing to avert the coming disaster: I INVEST IN GENERAL ELECTRIC. GE is one of the greenest companies in the world and is currently the world’s leading manufacturer of Wind Turbines! GE is leading the way to america’s green future. So whenever one of my bosses boards a flight to another confab I just “offset” the damage he is doing by buying a few more shares of General Electric. It helps me with the guilt.

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

[pertinazzio]

“If San Diego’s market does what I expect it to do, there will be distressed units in Liberty Station for $600K’ish in 2011-2012”

Whewshish! I really really hope you are right! In the meantime I hope the equitities market remains strong while RE tanks but I suppose that should be a new topic

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis … paterna rura bobus exercet suis, solutus omni fenore….. Horace

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