GolfHos

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=auB36HQoB6Uw&refer=home

*fiddlesticks*youiquit.

i'll take it off your hands for $1.09

 [sm_laughing]  A buck o nine.

If it is I'm sure you'll let us know.  [sm_devil] ;)

I wonder if we'll see the same number of screaming headlines when foreclosure rates "drop 60% over a year ago"? I truly don't mean to downplay the housing mess because it isn't good and I do feel for some people who are in big financial trouble but....


0.18%?

They way it's been reported you would think that every other homeowner was losing their house.*


*opinion subject to change pending future job prospects.  :) :-\

true,  .18% isn't  even 1%,  but it's a growing problem, with at least for now, no end in sight (see next point).

far MORE troubling is for the 1st time since the 1950 postwar suburban boom started , america as collective now has more home debt than equity.  the 'walkaways' are just getting started.
 [sm_hide]

Perhaps. I'm just glad I'm still well on the good side of the debt-equity ledger. What is concerning to me is that I'll be paying for other idiots poor decisions (both lenders and homeowners) in getting into loans they had no business getting into.

Totally agree.  That was my point.  I can see many people looking at what they owe vs. what it is now worth and simply saying "Screw it, you can have.  I'll suffer for a few years of bad credit, and pick it up down the line. At least I'm not dumping thousands each month into something that's worth half of what I'm obligated for."

perhaps the chaos of this will actually edumakate  joe moran and the rest of the merkans to actuallyabandon this vapid korpashun-god complex and think a bit about demanding some accountability and reform.  you would have thought enron would have done it, but i guess not enough people really took it in the pocketbook.  combining the negatives that this whole housing/(credit) deabacle will cause for the next 5-10 years with the fact that korprayshun-style-konomee facilitates high job turnover and i can see a big uptick in rental properties ahead and a gradual paradigm shift away from viewing the home as an investment (for the individual owner)
 

hate to burst your bubble, but it's just a bubble burst--a market correction

its a bubble burst coinciding with a general GDP correction and the peak in conventional oil production..  I don't see an easy turn around.

How much of this real estate/mortgage disaster should be blamed on home flippers and all the middlemen that get involved in every real estate transaction? Think about this. In every single real estate transaction, there are several parties (i.e. real estate agent, mortgage broker, title insurance company, appraiser, etc.) making thousands of dollars. Where is the money coming from to pay all these people?

That's not even counting the home flipper who might have locked in a huge profit through the transaction for doing nothing more than artificially decreasing supply in the short period of time while he/she held the title to the house.

Now all the people that purchased these homes at an artificially high price AND were stupid enough to go for an ARM loan are *fudge*ed. Lenders aren't going to refinance loans with an LTV of 125+.

Maybe I'm missing something, but ... isn't this more likely just a byproduct of the new employer-employee relationship, where people jump ship every handful of years instead of staying at one job for a long time?  Odds are, every job switch means a relocation, which means a new mortgage.  Since it takes a while to get rightside-up on a mortgage (unless you put down serious money) ...

If you're in a hot real estate market, I can see how you'd make some cash on the sale of the old residence and not be as upside-down on the next house.  But not for folks selling houses in normal and sub-normal markets.

of course a good chunk of it is at the hands of flippers/speculators,  and a good chunk of it is on banks/subprime buyers.   and some other chunk in between- people with bad luck: downsized,  health disasters, etc.  , and finally a dumb chunk that took out a HELOC to buy a new car or tv.

that said, the cumulative actions combined with a few other macro-factors have completely crushed  the economy. you are left with a glut of unsold (largely suburban and mcmansion) properties in a stagflation cycle and lenders looking to RAISE rates and buying qualifications while buyers want to be closer to their job/city/etc at lower costs thanks to the FED devaluing the dollar by almost 10% in a year?

sure. some of it is.  and some of the 'positive equity side' is the growing chunk of boomers who are now completely in the clear in their properties. --  would be interesting to see the exact ratio these components factor in at.

It could also be a reflection of the sheer number of new, first-time home owners. In some ways, this could be a positive indicator that so many people have the financial wherewithal to purchase a home. The reality is that there were way too many people buying homes above their means.

and thanks to the idiotic greedy short-sighted cheating merka hating korprit lenders aiding them in doing so, 1st time buyers in the 2008 era are now 'priced out' (25+% down and 30 year 6% rate WITH A GREAT!!! credit rating?)  in almost all locations even though houses are on the market 'cheap' (relative to 2 years ago, though still vastly over-priced) .

"Above their means" is a subjective measure.  Obviously, if the monthly mortgage payment is greater than the monthly net income, you're above your means.  But below that ... ?  How large a percentage of your net monthly income can your mortgage payment (including taxes) be before you'd call it "above your means"?  What if I have law-school loan debt -- shouldn't my percentage be lower than the other lawyer making the same income but whose parents paid for his schooling?

Well, IIRC conventional time-proven wisdom (and lending practices too) basically said don't go over 1/3 of your paycheck on your mortgage. Though that thinking was generally effective for 40 years or so, it was pre 2000 (healthcare)  and certainly pre-2006 (oil)  and pre-2008 (food). At this time, I would say the value should be dropped to 18-22% at most- and good luck making that happen when the median household income is 44k/year.

I'm sure 25% down is vastly exaggerated, but I haven't been paying that close attention to what's up now.

My advice to anyone is to make sure they have pristine credit, so they too can play the best leverage game ever invented. 

And MY point is that who really followed that?  Borrowers?  No -- they decided how much house they thought they could afford and went from there.  Lenders?  No -- they looked at each potential borrower's total income and total debt load, then decided how much house they were willing to lend money for.

There is no magical number that fits everyone.  Bill Gates can afford a house with a monthly payment of 75% of his monthly net; Guy In A Cardboard Box In The Alley can't afford *feces*; what Average Middle-Class Family Guy can "afford" depends on his specific debts, the limits on his credit cards, and, to a lesser extent, the lender he talks to.

i took the rate off bloomberg and % down from a variety of news reports i've read the last few weeks on what lenders are asking for.    it certainly could be not wholly accurate.    since I'm in no position to buy a home, I'm not going to go find out in person.

touche (and agreed, EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT SITUATION), but i would argue that for the sake of the 'general' argument we should focus mostly* on the "Average Middle-Class Family Guy".  discussing the outliers on the far extremes either way doesn't tell us that much. 

so on that topic, for example... with a lot of ARM's jumping a few points, people (we'll leave the discussion of whether they were dumb to go into the ARM for another time) are now seeing $300+ spikes to their mortgage. which for "Average Middle-Class Family Guy" on the "median" income, that's 10%+ of his paycheck down the drain that he's not used to!  [sm_shock] [sm_disgust]

I consider "above your means" to be mortgage P&I + property taxes + living expenses + any other revolving debt that is greater than your take-home pay. People that couldn't afford the expenses of a fixed-rate loan should not have been going with an ARM loan to make it affordable. It was foolish to think that the rates would stay so low forever, and I believe mortgage brokers are partly (or maybe mostly) to blame for convincing high-risk borrowers that the rates wouldn't go up or for failing to warn them about the possibility of a "perfect storm" of a interest rate hike + home depreciation.

We were lucky enough to put a large down payment on our house.  And our mortgage payment is 30% of my take home salary.  Of course we had two salary's when we bought the house and will soon have two again.  So that number was much lower then and will soon be lower.  We bought our house in 2005 during the height of the bubble, but luckily inner city okc hasn't been hit too hard.  The lender approved us for a house over twice what we ended up getting.  Had we gone with as much house as we could of then we would be totally screwed and unable to allow my wife to return to school.  We had good credit then and still do, but the amount available was completely ridiculous and irresponsible.  Thank god we still got a starter house instead of going all out. My McMansion may well be in foreclosure too.  I think the lenders should hold more than their current share of the blame.  

People should realize the only way their current home is an asset is if they move somewhere else and rent it out.  It doesn't bring them cash flow living in it.  It is all expenses.  Sure it can be a great vehicle for a long-term investment but in the short-term it is our biggest liability.  

btw, thanks to whatever *bunghole* started this thread  :punchballs: :asshat: [sm_mob] :drama:



 :watchingyou:

You seem to be doing a lot of ARM-waving.

 [sm_wave]

Many people do think that their income will be greater in five years' time, that they can/will refinance when the rate adjusts, or that they won't be in the house for more than five years.  When I got out of school, I KNEW I wouldn't be in our first house for five years.  If I switched jobs, I'd almost definitely move out of Portland.  If I loved it there and wanted to make that firm a permanent thing, I'd be making so much more money five years later than we'd upsize anyway (to make room for kids, more animals, and a chaps exhibition hall).

My BIL, on the other hand, was an idiot for taking his last house on a 5-year ARM.  He's in a job and field where raises/promotions aren't rapid or substantial, and they already had one kid with plans for more.  The rate adjustment time hit, they saw the size of the new payment, and they had to sell (quickly) and buy elsewhere.  Who couldn't see that one coming?

Does anyone here know anyone who was "victimized" by a rapacious mortgage broker?

"think of how dumb the average 'merkan is.  now remember 1/2 of them are dumber than that."
 [sm_devil]

Well, I know my BIL, and he's not stupid as hell.  After all, he married almost as well as I did.

Is he your wife's brother or your sister's (or your brother's ;D) husband?

You can't totally blame the lenders. The *feces* smears all over the sector, as far as I'm concerned.

Someone's been buying the loans they've been selling.  And, like someone mentioned, lots of people have their hands in and profit from every single real estate transaction. 

He's my wife's sister's husband.

If that makes us not brothers-in-law, then screw you.

If you've assisted him on a testicular self-examination, no matter the jurisdiction, that makes you family in my book.

Define "assist".

assist-by using a nice warming lubricant. ;D ;D

Does he call you Ceaser Clivius Testeclese?