July 30, 2006

It's all falling apart now: Anger, frustration, violence against realtors and neighbors turning against neighbor as real estate melts down


More excellent reporting from Gren Credo of the Arizona Republic. I sure wish "rolodex of realtors" Catherine Reagor would read his stuff and learn. Reporting the new reality from the street-view is so much better than dialing up your realtor buddies to ask for spin.

Here's highlights of his excellent report today on the housing disaster unfolding in bubble-ground-zero Phoenix:

As Valley home market cools, emotions heat up

Real estate agent Neil Brooks was getting the feeling that his client was about to completely lose it. He'd seen it before. He had just broken some bad news about her house deal, and she wasn't taking it well. She was pacing, yelling and swearing at him, tossing a cellphone from hand to hand. "I was thinking, 'OK, here we go,' " said Brooks, who's with Century 21 Arizona Foothills. "Something's going to happen. Something's going to blow."

He was right. The client whirled suddenly and whipped the phone at him. But he was ready. He ducked, and the phone shattered against the wall behind him. The client stormed out of the house.Brooks wasn't mad, and he wasn't offended. The business of buying and selling houses provokes extreme emotional outbursts.

The stress, the financial worries, the personal feelings people have about their homes - sometimes it's too much to take. People yell, they lose sleep, they cry, they're stricken with buyer's and seller's remorse.

That's especially true these days in metropolitan Phoenix's post-boom housing market, where nearly everything has reversed since last year's frenzy.

Home prices have become a touchy subject. Builders are discounting speculative homes, and resale prices are flat, or down, in a lot of neighborhoods. Buyers are submitting lowball offers. Even some sellers and their agents are having trouble agreeing how much similar homes in the same neighborhood are worth.

Two houses on the same north Valley street, similar in size and age, are for sale. One lists for $749,000 and the other for $775,000. A third house came on the market on the same street a few doors from the other two. The new listing was similar to the others in size and age but priced at $659,000.

Reaction: outrage."The neighbors were really mad," said Thomas Stornelli, principal of Global Network of Homes in Scottsdale. "They knocked on the door and asked, 'What are you thinking?'

Suddenly, angry neighbors were confronting them. One night, someone tore down their for-sale sign.

There was a lot of talk about how investors cashed in on the Phoenix market when home values were soaring. That euphoria convinced less-experienced people to try the investment game. Some were hurt.

A woman walked into Barry's Realty Executives office about nine weeks ago, sat down and began crying. She said she bought two houses last year, fixed them up and quickly sold them, making a $50,000 profit on each.

She was a novice investor, but it all looked easy. She took her profits, threw in some extra money and bought five more houses. She spent money fixing them up, but when she put the houses on the market, she realized she had bought at the peak, Barry said."Her eyes just started to well up, and she just started bawling," Barry said. "She said she couldn't sell them for what she bought them for. She said her monthly payments were about $20,000."

41 comments:

Anonymous said...

no remorse from the flippers about what they might have done to the people they screwed when they dumped their previous houses for the big $$,they only worry about the current situation they have got themselves into.Realtors are the first to blame in the whole game for obvious reasons

Anonymous said...

any potential buyer reading stuff like this in the phoenix market has to be very wary of buying a house today. if they are thinking they're thinking of seriously lowballing

anyone reading it who owns a home is likely thinking of getting out now

anyone reading this who is actively trying to sell a home will be calling their realtor to lower their price (again)

the ponzi scheme is over. O.V.E.R.

Anonymous said...

sure is funny to read this reality in the arizona republic among all the real estate and new home ads

the marketing department must be at war right now with the editorial department of that paper

'DON'T YOU F*CKING DARE PRINT ANOTHER BUBBLE HAS BURST STORY YOU FRIGGING COMMUNIST JACK*SS!'

'F YOU SALES BOY - WE'LL WRITE WHATEVER WE DAMN WELL WANT TO WRITE - NOW GO FIND SOME NEW ADVERTISERS WHO CAN PAY THEIR BILLS"

:^)

Anonymous said...

damn that was a great article

Anonymous said...

This is great timing. I hope bloodhound realty is reading that article.

Anonymous said...

Well, add another name to the list of Bubble Bitch's that the bankers get to cornhole for the next 30 years or so!

Anonymous said...

love it love it love it. i seriously have to laugh at these idiots who thought they were going to make a fortune. the woman with 5 houses for sale is toast. the idiots that bought in minnesota without selling first in phoenix are toast. the 3 sellers on one street in scottsdale are all toast. the meltdown is well underway.

Osman said...

Thanks for the article. I posted it on my blog as well because I think my clients should see what happens when a bubble implodes. A useful comparison to Boulder. I gave you a hattip.

Anonymous said...

When she was making $50,000 a pop it was "all so easy". This kind of garbage makes it impossible to feel bad for these people.

There are only 3 ways to make big money: Have a lot of skill that most others don't have; Work harder than others will; or leverage to the hilt. Sorry sweetie, but when you pick number three, you have to understand the downside of leverage...

Anonymous said...

Five stages of grief - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. . .We are now at ANGER. . .moving into bargaining - "hey, I'll throw in a Plasma TV". . .when that doesn't do it - then depression sets in . . .then Finally they will sell the house for what it is REALLY worth!

Anonymous said...

From the same story:

"Pressure is wearing
Holly and Aaron Mueller have gotten a taste of both sides of the market, along with some extreme swings of emotion. They went from the elation of a big windfall profit and financial security to the non-stop stress of a house in another state that won't sell, two mortgages and forced changes in their lifestyle and employment.

The couple paid $218,000 for their northeast Valley home in 2002 and sold it for $399,000 - $10,000 over asking price - last year. That was a profit of $181,000.

They moved to a $373,000 house on an acre in the north Valley. The Minnesota natives spent $60,000 for things like a block wall surrounding the property, shutters and landscaping, mistakenly figuring the rising housing market would more than reward them when they sold. "We thought we were doing pretty well," said Aaron, a Honeywell electrical engineer. "We wanted to move back to Minnesota. My wife was pregnant. We wanted to be near family."

His job transfer came this spring. With the help of a credit line on the Phoenix house, they bought a $495,000 house in a Minneapolis suburb. They put the Phoenix house on the market for $760,000 in March. Three price reductions later, it still hasn't sold at $650,000, which is $60,000 below its appraised value. The couple pays about $5,000 a month for their four mortgages - a first and second on each house. Holly, a nutritionist, wanted to stay home after having the baby but is looking for a job. Money is tight, and stress is high.

Asked what he was going to do, Aaron said, "Pray.""

It looks to me that it is still a pretty good market if you invested $433,000 in a property and just lowered your price to $650,000. That is still record profit.

I do not see the problem here, other that it is lower than the absurd appraisal. But they will still be making lots of money, even if they lower the price to $500,000.

blogger said...

last couple asking $500,000 for a house they have $423,000 into. Still got a long way to go before they're losing money - but I think they'll get there and beyond

Greed kills 'em every time

They don't deserve a certain price and it makes no difference what they paid. They only can get a price the market believes is fair

Anonymous said...

Remember the movie Mad Max by Mel Gibson? I hope Phoenix will not turn into that.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how many sellers will ride the slide all the way to the bottom. You read about people making all this money flipping, and then they buy more houses!
Then they won't sell at an OBVIOUS profit because it's not the price that they were used to getting or "deserve." When all this is over (until the next time) I would love to know the actual percentage of smart/lucky people who simply walked away with money in their pockets and didn't jump back in?

P.S. I'm one, not smart, just lucky.

Anonymous said...

Fear and greed. These classic market driving emotions are going to be very much at work in the coming years in real estate.

The smart flippers who cashed out last year may heve also been smart traders selling tech late 1999 at the O2K frenzy. Herd mentality - now the herd is rushing for the same gate.

I love watching it at this stage but I worry how far the anger will go. And I worry about what those 12 illegal mexicans will do. No work, trapped inside the USA by the border patrol, maybe a family here.

Anonymous said...

I beat up my realtor today.Found out she's been lieing and cheating on me.I was supposed to be a millionaire by now but find out that if I sell my dump now I will take a $70,000 loss.I do not deserve this,I have never felt this humiliated or used in my life.

Jip said...

Here's another one I found from the Washington Post Real Estate Live section online (you have to scroll down a bit:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/06/16/DI2006061601323.html

>>Ashburn, Va.: I'm so mad at my neighbor. I bought my new home here in Ashburn last summer and plan to sell it next year (after holding two years to avoid taxes) to make a nice return on my investment. The problem is my neighbor is trying to sell his house (very similar to mine) right now and he keeps lowering his asking price. Each time he lowers his price, I see my potential profits next year getting squashed. Doesn't he realize he's hurting the comps for all of his neighbors by doing this? I don't think he is acting very "neighborly" by doing this. I want to say something to him and tell him he should stop putting his interests ahead of his neighbors. Its people like him who are ruining the market for the rest of us. If he would just refuse to lower his price, we could maintain our comps and everyone would benefit. What can I do to stop him?

Kirstin Downey: Wow. Interesting question. There's nothing you can do. It's his house, of course. It's frustrating, to be sure. One word of advice: Don't resort to violence.

Seriously, he may just be desperate to sell. Perhaps he has an adjustable rate mortgage that is rising, or maybe an option ARM that is resetting to a much higher monthly payment. Maybe he's getting a divorce or has lost his job and doesn't want to talk about it. Or maybe he wants to move to Tahiti. (I do sometimes, don't you?)

I hear from many, many buyers and sellers each month, and many sellers are finding the only way to sell a home amid this growing inventory is to cut the price. Perhaps last year's prices were just illusory after all.<<

Anonymous said...

I don't see what their problem is:

Paid $373,000 + 60,000 (they say) in "improvements" (a wall?, are they a fortress?) = $433,000 total cost. They have "lowered" their asking price to $650,000. Hey, they could dump today for $499,000 and still be ahead almost $70k.

I believe the real problem is they built in the expectation of a $300,000 profit to pay down their new mortgage before the ARM adjusts in order to live on their actual pay, esp. with the wife wanting to stay home with the kids. (Ok with that, my wife did the same and I used stock money to pay down mine to do the same)

So their plans have been messed up. They are not as bad as the flippers, but appear to be normal people who got messed up by the timing, and a little bit of optimism.

foxwoodlief said...

So true boomerbust. I do feel bad for novices that got sucked in and now will pay for their mistake for years but what is the difference between them and some one who say over extends their credit debt for toys and then files bankfuptcy? The flippers would be the first to say, "How irresponsible and if they can't live within their means they deserve to loose everything and ruin their credit." But then when it comes to them jumping in "because flipping looked so easy" consider themselves shrewd?

Greed is one thing I have never liked with Real Estate. Every house I've bought I've improved and when I've sold got my improvement costs back plus inflation and was happy that I had a home I loved and gave back to the community better than it was before. I've always despised those who come in and either candy coat the house and flip it to make a lot of money with no regard to the harm they cause to the neighborhood by sucking out bubble money with an illusion of improvements but then the people find the house is still a dump and now can't afford to put that extra $50,000 into really improving the house or the neighborhood. Or the other's who just buy and then dumb appraisers come in and say x sold for y so your house deserves the same even though their house hasn't been maintained or improved. Where are the morals even before bubble markets? Appraisers should be held into account. They need to really appraise based on true comps and not oh that house sold for $100,000 more even though it has a pool, landscaping, granite counters, updated plumbing and electrical systems, new A/C etc and so your 40 years old dump that needs $100,000 in repairs is now worth the same?

So the lady got greedy and bought five houses? What was she thinking? Now if she paid cash, one thing. Sounds like that lady Keith posted in Vegas who bought a lot of Pulte homes and then got screwed. Oh, and where are the criminal charges for the mortgage brokers? What ever happened to income and debt verification? What ever happened to the days when buyiing one house to live in was a paper and documentation nightmare and you sweated wondering if you'd be approved for a loan even when the mortgage was only 24% of your gross income?

blogger said...

wasn't there something called debt to income ratio?

did I miss a memo, and that no longer applies when going for a loan?

Anonymous said...

Look, we can all accelerate the coming real estate crash, and we all know the sooner the better because it's already gotten so out of hand already, and here's how:

Despite our amazement about it, there are still prospective homebuyers out there still looking to buy a home, who are unaware that they are being led to financial slaughter, and it's these people who are postponing the inevitable, so here's what we do:

Post links to this housing bubble site and a dozen others "ONLY" where prospective homebuyers are looking because that's the only way they'll find out. Post all over Craigslist and every other real estate listing site you can get into and use tinyurl.com links so they won't know where they are being referred to. Explanations to those links should be preceded by caveat emptor warnings like "Don't buy any real estate until you've read what's happening to the real estate market" or "Here's why you'll be able to buy real estate for 25% to 60% less in the next 12-36 months".

The few idiot buyers still out there (I know they deserve it, but let's get this over with already) will disappear and then we'll have a pricing freefall, initiated by lender REOs.

I've been told lately by many people how surprised they are at how many REOs they are seeing or how many neighbors they now know are in trouble for having bought in the last 3 years and who HELOC'd on top of an exotic or no down payment loan.

People, this giant boulder of a coming crash is just teetering on the edge of a cliff. If we all join together and give it a big push, we can make it happen sooner and get our economy back on track - What do you say? Heave Hoooooo!

Anonymous said...

the ass-pounding has begun, and we're fresh out of K-Y.

Anonymous said...

Personal story update. . .

I have been posting here since late April, when I had my condo in Walnut Creek, CA on the market. . .I reduced the price from 510K to 490K and it finally sold after two months. . .I was lucky. Two other condos in the same complex are still on the market, and one person has lowered to 465K and another (who bought a new place and is desperate to sell) is reducing to 450K. As you can see, prices even in a pretty stable SF suburb are coming down fast. These were not flipper units (built in 1985), but places where people bought to live. Most people there are still in an equity positive situation, but at least two or three had appriasals at 500K and took HELOCS and are now underwater.

Meanwhile, I moved to San Diego and rent at a nice Little Italy condo with a view of the bay for $1500 a month. . pool, gym, etc. . .La Vita. I will buy when prices are at bottom. Places I looked at 6 months ago are all still on the market, all price reduced, and none have sold. I did lowball one unit - not an official offer, but just suggested my price range. Silence - then out of the blue a call from the realtor about my offer. . .I will lower again of course. . .In the two months I have lived here, EVERY for sale sign is still up on my daily walk around. . .and more have gone up. In addition, more for-rent signs are up everywhere.

I feel as if I have a front row seat for the housing crash.

Anonymous said...

Interesting developments in Arizona. But when can we expect similar frustration and neighborly violence to commence in Orange County, CA? Home prices are going down, but only slightly.

Anonymous said...

Mark in SD,

I am your neighbor at Billboard lofts at the corner of Ash and Union. My wife and I moved here almost a year ago and I absolutely knew that buying here would be a disaster. I still have friends that are moving to the area and are contemplating buying. I tell them all that they need to wait a couple of years but they all react with emotion when I voice my concern. Its like I am personally stealing their San Diego goldmine dream. Oh well, I would feel personally responsible if a friend of mine bought here without someone telling them that this is not easy money and that a 20% return is not guarunteed.

$1500 in la vita? One or two bedroom? If you got a 2 bedroom for that, color me jealous.

Anonymous said...

He had just broken some bad news about her house deal, and she wasn't taking it well. She was pacing, yelling and swearing at him, ....

The Honeymoon MUST be over ! Waaaaaaaaah

Anonymous said...

LOVE hearing these stories. In Scottsdale, I've been pushed from one apt. to the next because of conversions and rent increases. If I had my way, I'd hang all of the flipuvestors

Anonymous said...

Are you kidding me?
You buy at the top of the market?
You cry now because of compitition. You wouldn't have a problem if people were bidding your asking price up.
You are probably the same Idiot that turned doen offers that you felt were not profitable enough.
Your mad because you thought you would make $250,000 in a year on one deal. You turned down an offer 6 months ago where you would have made $80,000, and now you hope to make $20,000.
Moron!
You think you can find someone clueless to over pay for your bad investments.
I'll bid at the foreclosure auction.

Anonymous said...

I did not realise there were so many idiots out ther.
Are you trying to tell me 6.80% interest on a home loan is high?
Do you realy think that you can all join hands around the camp-fire and sing songs to change to world.
Maybe the tooth-fairy will fly over you tonight and blast your -hole wide open.

Anonymous said...

debtiswealth said:"People don't understand that we're entering a new economic era. Financing will not be so easy anymore. Interest rates have risen. Questionable lending has been cracked-down on."

That's not entirely true. Fixed mortgage interest rates are declining, and banks are still handing out money like drunken sailors. Just last week I receved an unsolicited, pre-approved, SBA guaranteed $100K loan offer from Wells Fargo. In our town houses on the same street are selling at prices/SF 50%-75% higher than just two years ago. Somebody is signing off on these crazy appraisals.

They are talking tough for public consumption, but under the surface they're trying desperately to keep the housing ship afloat.

Osman said...

Debt is Wealth wrote, "The bubble will play out the same everywhere. ".

Actually, no. It won't.

Yes, there are secular factors like rising interest rates, and equally important, the debt markets appetite for CMOs. But, when flippers are hung out to dry in Miami or Phoenix, what does that have to do with housing in Bangor or in upstate New York?

The dynamics of these markets are night and day, evidenced by amount of speculation, appreciation rates, and even type of housing (no condotels in upstate New York).

Here in Colorado, foreclosures are epidemic and some areas are seeing a flood of inventory hit the market.

But not all areas.

It's clearly evident in the absorption rates, which I've been publishing as part of my market updates every month.

Anonymous said...

IMO it's the lender and to a bigger extent the mortgage broker's fault. They had the power to rein this in at any time, but "it'll be different this time..."

The FED dropped the rates after the tech bubble burst. Now rather then make 10 on a loan, they only make 1 so they need to do 10 more loans. What's the easiest way to increase loans? Drop standards...

Have a pulse? Here's a loan...

New people bought starter homes, those people moved up and so-on...

As prices rose, so did equity and the HELOC ATM was created.

Real estate moves in cycles and this is no different in that sense, but what is different is the amount of debt that has been rolled up in this last boom.

There are alot of "pay option" type loans that are out there that roll the un-paid amount into the principal and they are sound loans in a quickly rising market. In a slack or declining market they are killers.

I've been watching this unfold for a couple years now and I've been praying that it would "burst" for a while. The longer it bubbles the harder it will come down. This economy is in a very bad position right now and it's going to hurt alot of people. It's also going to make a lot of people rich too...

Good luck... We'll all need it.

Anonymous said...

gotta chain a pit bull to your for sale signs in Phoenix, otherwise they will get torn down.

Anonymous said...

HP is a site for Nazi Hitler Youth and economic Taliban

Anonymous said...

If you want to get close to a realistic price of a home, divide the asking price by 4. In california, divide by 6. And I am being generous.

Anonymous said...

Just got out of my last flip. I told myself August 15 2005 was the top. I wrote it on the wall and sold everything. I went for one last round and almost got caught. I am now liquid and am buying puts.

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