May 14, 2007

HousingPANIC Stupid Question of the Day


For Desperate Homedebtors*: Do you regret not selling**?


* Hint 1: Sell while you still can. You'll never see the current price again in your lifetime after adjusting for inflation, or anywhere near it.

* Hint 2: Sell at any price. Any price. A piss-off-the-neighbors price. A "drama price". A sell-in-30-days price.

It's time to get liquid.

44 comments:

Unknown said...

A piss off the neighbors price

HA HA HA HA HA

Anonymous said...

Still not seeing this giant housing meltdown. I thought it would be in full swing by now. Houses are still selling in Norfolk Va. Just saw another sale pending this morning. Four new ones down the street are all sold with people living in there. Whats the story? I been sitting on the sidelines of the stock market waiting for the big decline, but it just keeps going up. What gives.

Anonymous said...

I did it last fall. My friends thought I was nuts, but I switched jobs and had to move out of town & did not want to be a super commuter. I did not want to carry the home for 6 months just to be stuck with it forever as I was very uncomfortable and feared a "silent spring". My agent thought I was a kook but was happy to take the commission for just slashing the price 10% to move the home. There were 7 other cookie cutter units up for sale last fall. There still are 5 up for sale, with modest price cuts, & the other two were pulled to be rentals, i.e. flop lords!! My friends are all now coming to me and asking how I knew the market would be a bust in the spring. I said, I didn't, I guessed based upon reported trends and TRUTH from sites like this one. My agent was an idiot, the buyer thought he was getting a great deal, but I was confident that in order to live my new life w/o the burden of being a long distance landlord I had to take a short term loss for a long term gain!!

I will be renting from a flop lord in my new town for less than the cost to purchase/carry the same home and have the disposable income to live my life & save for a nice home in 3-5 years once all this "Fluff" has come out of the market!!

Good luck to all the flip-tards, flop-lords, realtwhores & mortgage extortionists, who are peddling a dead mantra, killed by your own blind greed, and all the HDs/FBs/GFs who're still hanging onto it. You're all just a bunch of morally, and soon to be financially, bankrupt LOSERS. Life was meant to be lived and enjoyed and not to be enslaved to a house that could never be a home!!

Anonymous said...

Anon 7:22.

Read some Fleck!
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Commentary/ByAuthor/BillFleckenstein.aspx

Anonymous said...

"Anonymous said...
Still not seeing this giant housing meltdown. I thought it would be in full swing by now. Houses are still selling in Norfolk Va. Just saw another sale pending this morning. Four new ones down the street are all sold with people living in there. Whats the story? I been sitting on the sidelines of the stock market waiting for the big decline, but it just keeps going up. What gives.
"

Ok, so what are you waiting for chump ? Get off your fat ass and BUY BUY BUY then!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

But if the whole problem was that housing was being treated as a short term speculative investment, rather than either:

a) a place to live
or
b) a (very) long term investment in rental real estate,

Doesn't your suggestion just put you in the same camp as the flippers? Organising a fast sale to make profit (or minimize loss) by screwing others in the marketplace?

You don't sell out of your stocks at every downturn, do you?

Anonymous said...

I sold my house back in January (MidWest cap city), a year later than I had hoped. Anyway, my neighbor down the street had their exact same house listed for exactly 100K more than mine. They were smoking crack, I wasn't. I sold mine, and theirs isn't even on the market anymore - it never sold and they gave up. A friend of mine who still lives on the street said that seller would "...kill me if they could get away with it, for what I've done to their comps."

F'm - I took a loss, but chose to get the hell out anyway. They'd be lucky right now to get my final selling price - $30k right now. Dumb fucks...

Anonymous said...

anon 7:22:

what gives you ask...what gives is you have a distorted sense of reality. You read blogs like this and assume people here have a clue.Stop taking your directions in life from an internet site and your life will be much better.

Anonymous said...

Keith, or anyone,

I've never gone to a foreclosure auction, or any other type of auction for that matter. I've bought/sold on eBay though. Anyway...

Last night I was watching a local news segment about foreclosure auctions. There was a large group of people there, yelling out their bids - in essence, fighting for the right to purchase the foreclosed home. Hmm...

WTF is wrong with these people? There are SO many homes available, and there will be SO many MORE available in the coming years - why don't all these people get together for coffee or something before the auction, make a list of who's going to buy today, and only have THAT one person bid? Is there something illegal about doing that? Why the hell fight each other over an abundant resource?

Anonymous said...

Countrywide just announced a new 50 year sub-prime mortgage is in the pipeline. When will it stop? What's next, a 100 year (century) mortgage?

This debt ridden stimulated economey will one day go up in flames, its just a matter of when. Got gold? Got a chair when the music stops?

Anonymous said...

Man, I thought that was Alka Seltzer...

Chris said...

"why don't all these people get together for coffee or something before the auction, make a list of who's going to buy today, and only have THAT one person bid? Is there something illegal about doing that? Why the hell fight each other over an abundant resource?"

Yes, that is illegal. It's a little thing we call COLLUSION. However, it happens all the time at auctions, just not in the all-encompassing way you describe.

Usually there are at least 2 people working together to bid up the price of the property against a legitimate potential buyer. Usually, the people who are working together still have a legitimate interest in the property, usually because one of them holds a note against the property that is being foreclosed. Therefore it's in their best interests to try and bid up the property as much as possible, at least up to the point where they break even and get their money back out. It's the same reason why banks holding the 1st mortgage will bid at least the current face value of the outstanding principal on the 1st mortgage.

Anonymous said...

sssshhhhh..wait.....do you hear that?.......sssssshhhhhhhh...wait.....there..............................YUP, DOPES, STILL WAITING FOR NOTHING TO HAPPEN! PRICES ARE NOT COMING DOWN AND THERE IS NO BUBBLE! THE ECONOMY IS STILL GOING STRONG!

Anonymous said...

If I owned a house that I liked and had a fixed-interest rate mortgage whose payments were well within my means, why would I want to sell?

I have a computer that is rapidly depreciating. It will never be worth as much money as it is worth today. But I like it and I'm going to keep it. Why would I do anything else?

Anonymous said...

chris_g,

Anon here - thanks for edumacating me on the auction process. Sounds like the "collusion" thing is the eBay equivalent of "shill" bidding.

Anonymous said...

It's kind of like sex with an ugly fat chick. No I am not talking about Phoenix. What I mean is that if you did not sell your home last year, it is like you screwed a fat chick. Let's face it nobody wants to admit it.

Anonymous said...

"WTF is wrong with these people? There are SO many homes available, and there will be SO many MORE available in the coming years - why don't all these people get together for coffee or something before the auction, make a list of who's going to buy today, and only have THAT one person bid? Is there something illegal about doing that?"

Here in Taxsylvania, its called "bid rigging" and it is on the law books and a big no-no that will get you fines, jail terms, and if you are an auctioneer, your license revoked if caught and prosecuted.

That said, it goes on all the time, usually very skillfully, and if not, then no attempt to hide what’s going on.

Basically it works like this. The auctioneer, or seller, or both, have their reps (called shills) out in the audience. The shill’s jobs are to drive the bids up to a certain point, and drop out. Easy to spot, they are the ones who constantly bid, but never buy anything. Another favorite ploy is to have an absentee bidder on the phone (doesn't exist) or the auctioneer has a "reserve bid" list from an absentee bidder who couldn't make it there for some reason (he/she also doesn't exist) where you bid against a piece of paper in the auctioneers hand with the reserve bid totals (how high the "absentee" bidder is willing to go) on it.

The "bid rigging" law was put on the books to protect both buyers and seller, as it should.
Twice in my life that I can recall charges being brought, it was against buyers getting together in an attempt to keep bids artificially low, NEVER against sellers for doing the same thing to keep the prices high.

When you have been going to live auctions as long as I have, you learn when to raise your hand, and when to walk away, no matter how good a deal it seems. It’s easy to get caught up in the frenzy, kind of like the housing bubble!

The Thinker said...

And so we sit and ponder the pending housing crash as it happens before us in slow motion.

Why don't we just put this blog in mothballs and all reconvene in two-years time.

Anonymous said...

careful about being liquid - with the money supply numbers now a state secret, you may come to find your liquid is evaporating

Anonymous said...

I sold late last year. Not sure if I made the right call or not. After all fees, moving costs twice, even if prices fall 10% I'll break even. So far prices have been flat since I moved. I'm starting to think I made a mistake listening to the bears.

Anonymous said...

I got a "clue" today when I filled up my 4 cyl truck for $55.00, dropped another $80.00 at Wal-Mart for crap, and $25.00 at Vons for WATER AND VEGETABLES! My money is worth half what it was before the run up and my wage has not gone up. Regardless of what real estate does, I have taken a 50% pay cut against real consumer goods. Perhaps this blog should be wagepanic.com or
poorlittlerichguy.com

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
sssshhhhh..wait.....do you hear that?.......sssssshhhhhhhh...wait.....there..............................YUP, DOPES, STILL WAITING FOR NOTHING TO HAPPEN! PRICES ARE NOT COMING DOWN AND THERE IS NO BUBBLE! THE ECONOMY IS STILL GOING STRONG!

May 14, 2007 8:44 PM
-------
Call Wal-mart, Target, K-mart and all the other major retailers who just reported HISTORIC drops in YOY sales.

Call the 3 million + homedebtors who cannot sell theri homes.

Call all the corporations who are reviving home sale loss programs as a benefit/enticement for new hires to relocate.

Call all the FB/HDs who are now being forclosed upon.

Call all the thousands of laid off & fired REIC workers.

Call the department of commerce that just released a borderline recession Qtrly growth # of 1.3% (which is being projected to be revised downward to 0.7%)

Call all the economists predicting a 1-in-3 chance of recession this year.

Call them all and tell them they just need to be like you and stick their heads up their @$$es sideways to block out the reality of what is happening to them and to just keep saying to themselves the economy is just fine as they click their ruby red slipper together.


Happy Renter (Former HD/FB) that works for a fully fee funded federal agency with statutory employment protection (Read old school union type employment protection) who WALKS to work & has NO debt and plenty of assets & a high 700 FICO to purchase a home.

I'll see you in four years at YOUR foreclosure auction/short sale.

Bill said...

Funny I am getting Liquid right now in the form of a 12 pack....
Here in the
Peoples Republic of Massachusetts, houses are sitting and prices are down a good 10% to 15% easy...maybe more in certain bubble towns.

Anonymous said...

I just set a 'PISS OFF THE NEIGHBORS' price. 45k below what other similiar homes in my hood are going for. I want to close in 30. One guy came down with his agent to ask me why I would do that in a pissy way. I told them I dont need to answer to anyone, the neighbor got pissed and at that point I told them to GET OFF MY FUCKING PROPERTY, which they did.

Anonymous said...

It's the same reason why banks holding the 1st mortgage will bid at least the current face value of the outstanding principal on the 1st mortgage.
________________

And if the banks don't get a bid for the current face value of the outstanding principal on the first mortgage, do they have the right to remove the property from the auction and not sell at all?

Anonymous said...

This bubble is not crashing quickly because it has been uneven. People are still able to unload at "piss off your neighbors" prices and be able to buy an even nicer home in places that were unaffected by the bubble, like Austin, TX or Charlotte, NC, and where prices have continued to rise to this day. The housing bubble was pretty much confined to the West Coast, Arizona, Nevada, Florida, and the Northeast from DC to Boston. This is unlike the UK, where the bubble was everywhere.

Anonymous said...

"Good luck to all the flip-tards, flop-lords, realtwhores & mortgage extortionists, who are peddling a dead mantra, killed by your own blind greed, and all the HDs/FBs/GFs who're still hanging onto it. You're all just a bunch of morally, and soon to be financially, bankrupt LOSERS."

Wow! Are you off your meds?! Talk about bitter? Funny how the same people who sell their home and wait till prices drop to buy another are quick to call names when others buy and sell for profit. Hypocrite much? Damn, get some therapy. It's not immoral for me to buy a home and sell anymore than it is for you to. Those who do it right are not morally or financially bankrupt. Maybe that's why people like you are so angry at them. To be jealous of those who do well is extremely petty and childish. Do you work for free? Do you refuse to buy or sell anything for fear someone might profit? Do you know anything about how the economy works? You even call landlords names. Yet you rent. You call mortgage brokers names, yet you owned a home and hope to own again in the future.

You really should work on those issues of yours. You sound seriously unbalance.

Anonymous said...

Countrywide should introduce a loan where you can pass the debt onto your children and grandchildren. Works great for India.

Anonymous said...

Yes, that is illegal. It's a little thing we call COLLUSION.


Ummm, I don't think antitrust laws don't apply to individuals.

Anonymous said...

Here in the development that I rent in outside of Alexandria, Va none of the townhouses that went up this Spring have moved in the 2 months that thy've been up. Some have been up since last fall. I checked the the realtor websites and they still want way too much money. Yeah, so prices are staying the same, but nothing is moving. I am so sick of this town, 500-600K for a POS townhouse.

Anonymous said...

Why don't, as Keith has suggested many times, anon posters come up with some creative names for yourselves (or any name actually).

Click other, post name, no web page required.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 7:35, I thought it was called 'Froth', not 'Fluff'.

Froth seems kinda foamy, fluff seems kinda cushy. Please, let's try to avoid these kinds of serious errors.

Anonymous said...

I found this in this week's Barrons and thought it was pretty funny (and right)

>>>The consumer shows signs at long last of being tapped out. April, as exclusively forecast by T.S. Eliot (he didn't work in a bank for nothing) turned out to have been the cruelest month: Retail sales overall declined 0.2.%, and that truly abysmal performance would have been even more abysmal had not surging gasoline prices exaggerated the total. Last month's same-store sales at the big retail peddlers, reports the keen-eyed Michael Niemira, top economist for the International Council of Shopping Centers, were the weakest in the over three decades he has been keeping track.

No doubt the culprit was the weather. April was: a) too cold and rainy, which kept inveterate consumers from venturing out of their comfy abodes; b) too nice, which enticed them to play outside instead of hitting the stores; or c) a combination of a) and b), which rendered them too indecisive to attend to the serious business of shopping. Choose one, it doesn't matter which: Weather of any kind is murder on sales. Don't take our word for it; just ask any of the apologists -- scratch that, we meant analysts -- who cover the group and can't spell sell.<<<

Very, very true.

Anonymous said...

Dam you fliptards and your unacounted inflations................

Anonymous said...

Daimler crysler bought 3 years back for 36 billion, sold today for eight billion, yet manhattan real estate housings went up, I could use both, but those cryslers looked hot, hot over the last bunch of years, like some sort of turnaround??????//// is something wrong??????????

Anonymous said...

memo in relation to liguidity fears>>>>>>>>>>>>>>see daimler chrysler

Frank R said...

To the anon who says houses are selling -

Yep, they're selling here too. On my street in Newport Beach, houses are selling. The catch is that houses that sold for $1.2 million at the peak in 2005-2006 are now selling for around $700-800k.

So yep, they're selling buddy, just for a LOT less than they sold for last year!!!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

"Good luck to all the flip-tards, flop-lords, realtwhores & mortgage extortionists, who are peddling a dead mantra, killed by your own blind greed, and all the HDs/FBs/GFs who're still hanging onto it. You're all just a bunch of morally, and soon to be financially, bankrupt LOSERS."

Wow! Are you off your meds?! Talk about bitter? Funny how the same people who sell their home and wait till prices drop to buy another are quick to call names when others buy and sell for profit. Hypocrite much? Damn, get some therapy. It's not immoral for me to buy a home and sell anymore than it is for you to. Those who do it right are not morally or financially bankrupt. Maybe that's why people like you are so angry at them. To be jealous of those who do well is extremely petty and childish. Do you work for free? Do you refuse to buy or sell anything for fear someone might profit? Do you know anything about how the economy works? You even call landlords names. Yet you rent. You call mortgage brokers names, yet you owned a home and hope to own again in the future.

You really should work on those issues of yours. You sound seriously unbalance.

May 15, 2007 12:50 AM
-----------
Your obviously part of the REIC. This person is 100% on target, They've obviously figured out how they've paid thousand more than they should and were worked/duped by the REIC. But even if you're not duped and your savvy you're looking at dealing with alot of parasites that do nothing to enhance the transaction, merely prevent it from occurring unless they get paid, i.e. trolls.

Once the rest of America realizes how much we pay middlemen for an RE transaction the entire REIC of America will come down. How do agents in other countries get by with just a 1% commission? No one has anything against anyone making a honest living, the poster's point is that these professions in America are not making an honest living, but they are exploiting and manipulating.

You can always see a REIC poster from a mile off. They call someone whose been exploited and angry mentally ill and needs meds and hey parasites need to make a living too, why so harsh? Mr. & Miss Honest hardworking American? The bitterness is because their hard earned cash has been taken by some fast talking, lazy parasites who've never worked.

Original Anon post is excellent and evident that s/he has learned alot and is much more sophisticated after being burned by the REIC. They are renting now in a declining market (like many savvy & wealthy investors) and they indicate they will own again but on their terms and not on REIC terms. GOOD LUCK & don't be swayed by the REICs who try to play you off as a kook just because you've pulled the curtain back to see that the wizard is just a man wanting you to drink the kool-aid, you and everyone else have a perfectly legitimate reason for being so upset.

Anonymous said...

>No doubt the culprit was the weather. April was: a) too cold and rainy, which kept inveterate consumers from venturing out of their comfy abodes; b) too nice, which enticed them to play outside instead of hitting the stores; or c) a combination of a) and b), which rendered them too indecisive to attend to the serious business of shopping.

lol!

Anonymous said...

May 14, 2007 7:35 PM

You sound like a smart person, and may I say, well spoken!!

Anonymous said...

Sell at a price to piss off the neighbors?? which ones?, the ones that created the neighborhood and planned to live there long term, would be a price that lowered taxes, as then way below todays askings!, or higher and higher for fliptards profits and commissioned agents gains,that rapes the communities of people, yet helps the govt pickpockets

Anonymous said...

people, people...

if you bought high - ride it out.
if you are waiting for the big fall - keep waiting.

but one thing is for sure, speculative investing in RE - or speculative selling in RE because of the bubble : still means one thing .... 6% commisions for the agents, some fees for the title company, some fees for the loan brokers, and so on down the line.

when you add up what you will pay to get out and back in - or in and back out. you are challenged to make money or save money.

think long-term, finance long-term. and then sit back and watch the flippers claim greatness in 2003-2005, and the bears claim superior intellects in 2005-2007.

Anonymous said...

Frank said...
To the anon who says houses are selling -

Yep, they're selling here too. On my street in Newport Beach, houses are selling. The catch is that houses that sold for $1.2 million at the peak in 2005-2006 are now selling for around $700-800k.

So yep, they're selling buddy, just for a LOT less than they sold for last year!!!
-----------------------------------

Prove it. Any addresses? Didn't think so.

Anonymous said...

My neighbor listed his house in February 2007 and it sold for 10k under asking price. And this is in RIVERSIDE CALIFORNIA. You see even homes in undesirable areas are still selling and not for 50k under asking. Not yet that is ;-)