January 06, 2008

Be sure to vote in the HP REIC Death Pool (upper right). Countrywide Toxic Mortgage is running away with it today (big shock)


What other corrupt and incompetent REIC companies will be closing down in 2008?

I know, I know, there's so many, but give me your top three

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

WaMu, CountryWide, and IndyMac

Anonymous said...

Keith,

I really enjoy this blog, but I apologize that I don't know what REIC stands for exactly. I know it's Real Estate Industry?
Please help.

Clueless in Tucson

Anonymous said...

Fresh from the street:
Just visited a D.R. Horton sales office in my area today. Agent said she hadn't sold anything for 4months. Says people can't sell their homes to buy new ones.

Paul E. Math said...

I voted for KB homes. I feel like homebuilders will be caught in a squeeze between what it costs them to build (due to rising commodities prices) and what homebuyers are able to pay (due to heightened mortgage qualification standards). So few people will actually qualify for the 3 or 400k it costs to build a McMansion.

In Countrywide's favour, as long as they downsize radically (which they are doing) and only originate mortgages that they can pass on to fannie and freddie then they can still survivie.

If this was a question as to who you want to fail first then my vote is definitely for Countrywide.

Anonymous said...

CIT Group
First Fed Financial
Countrywide

Bill said...

OT:

Sitting here watching the New Hampshire Debates...and well, I think that.........Eh!! forget it.

Anonymous said...

non @1:35am, look 4 posts down...

Anonymous said...

"Fresh from the street:
Just visited a D.R. Horton sales office in my area today. Agent said she hadn't sold anything for 4months. Says people can't sell their homes to buy new ones."

What area are you in?????

Anonymous said...

Might be out on a limb here, but I think the builders are in bigger trouble than the banks.

Banks can find other kinds of loans to write, and they can get the FDIC/the Fed to buy them some time until they diversify. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before they really get into student loans. Those private student loans many times have terms that are pure evil....worse than even an option ARM, and they can't be discharged in bankruptcy.

Hell, some of them are probably structured that you can't even get out from under them when you die....they'll get paid before the funeral home, no doubt, and with the way the laws are going, I'm sure they'll be allowed to go after the survivors for the balance.

As for the builders, well, what else are they gonna do? They can't really make anything else except new homes.

Anonymous said...

It doesn't work dude. Government is inherently inefficient and corrupt because it doesn't have the profit incentive like a private company has. A private company HAS to provide good and affordable services unless it is a monopoly or it will fail in the marketplace.
----

Right.....like Enron??

That is all nonsense. Government and business are both corrupt nearly on the same level. The only difference is that (our style of) Government is more transparent.

I used to work for a VERY large law firm. The group I was in was auditing / accountant liability. Our clients were all Blue Chips. And guess what? They cheat too!

Besides, the CEO does not go and wrangle a popular vote from the secretary and the rubberband man.

Both the G and Buisness are cooking their books. One you are not allowed to see, the other they scare you away.

Anonymous said...

well at least these companies will be filing fewer applications with the patent office business methods
.. Credit (risk) processing or loan processing (e.g., mortgage)

some creative patents there

Anonymous said...


Both the G and Buisness are cooking their books. One you are not allowed to see, the other they scare you away.


The businesses have to answer to the government. Who does the government answer to? Certainly not the citizens. Fannie/Freddie haven't filed their financial statements from 2004 and they are still trading on the NYSE because they are quasi-governmental businesses.

Enron was not able to compete, therefore they collapsed. That is how the markets work.

Anonymous said...

Top REIC companies?

I dont know about that. Here are some REIC cheerleaders:

Los Angeles Times
Daily News
Boston Globe
New York Times
USA Today
Time Magazine (yes, we're going gaga over real estate)
New York Post
NBC
CBS
ABC
Flip this House
Trading Spaces
Illegal Aliens
90 plus % of property owners in California and Florida

May they all go to Hell

Anonymous said...

1 Countrywide
2 Lennar
3 Shea Homes

Anonymous said...

Beazer Homes. A lot of bad press in the recent months, same with Countryslide.

KB = Kracked and Broken


I am reading "Crash Proof" by Schiff.
WoW, he could have written this book yesterday instead of 2006-07.

Anonymous said...

1. Lennar
2. WaMu
3. GuaranteedRate ( a f__cking mortgage broker in Shitcago area I used to rent my condo from)

Anonymous said...

I think all of those (with the exception of Wells Fargo and Fannie Mae) will go down the tubes -- probably within the next six to nine months.

The big hit, and what will qualify as the surprise failure that leads to the final unwinding, will be the banks with consumer credit card exposure (and some mortgage exposure). I think Schiff is right that this is the next shoe to drop.

My guesses are Citibank and Capital One.

Miss Goldbug said...

USBANK up until recently had many advertisments in their branches telling folks to "tap into equity"...customers can even withdraw cash "equity" via their ATM. How troubling is that?

I can't imagine they'll (USBANK) escape the credit problem.

Also, Mechanics Bank - one of the most conserative banks here in the bay area,have over the last six years been pushing equity loans like candy...

Frankly, I see all the instutions have problems. We just may have to resort to the mattress...

Anonymous said...

The businesses have to answer to the government.
---

Puh-lease. Enron, for example, was allowed BY THE GOVT to change their accounting practices. That is what lead to their crash, not lack of competitiveness.

The SEC is the part of the G you think bus has to answer too. Let me tell you they (the SEC) is a rubber stamp.

Anonymous said...

I disagree. CW will survive this. Mozillo knows a lot of people and has a lot of friends in the right places...see the BofA injection of funds last year.

I think a home builder will be more likely to die than a mortgage lender. My vote is KB. Shit ass, poorly built homes targeted to the sub prime consumer for the last 5 years.

debtisslavery.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

1. KB
2. Countrywide
3. WaMu

consultant said...

Keith,

I'm hoping ALL of these property management companies go belly up.

Anonymous said...

If I had to predict who would fail, here are my picks:
1. Beazer Homes USA, (BZH) has accounting as well as home building problems.
2. WCI Communities, Inc. (WCI) missed being taken over.
3. Standard Pacific (SPF) another troubled homebuilder.
4. NovaStar Financial (NFI). Chart this stock and is a mortgage reit.
There are others but these picks seem to be good candidates not to be around much longer. Homebuilders are likely to have higher failure rates than financial institutions.

Anonymous said...

One major builder in SE Indiana has one house under construction. They are restructuring to concentrate on remodeling vs. new construction.
Another builder who got into it late in the game in 2006 bought a whole street of lots and built spec homes on every one. One has sold. The poor Realtor has been holding OpenHouses every Sat. & Sun for a year.

Anonymous said...

Anyone seen a Countrywide wristband on ebay lately?

Frank R said...

I love driving past the big and mostly vacant WaMu campus in Irvine.

Anonymous said...

Won't anyone vote for Beazer Homes (BZH)?

My put options are counting on you!

Anonymous said...

Puh-lease. Enron, for example, was allowed BY THE GOVT to change their accounting practices. That is what lead to their crash, not lack of competitiveness.

If that's the case, they why did they go bankrupt? Bad accounting does not lead to bankruptcy. Bad business does. As long as a company has positive cash flow and is solvent, accounting would not shut it down. The fact is that Enron was losing money hand over fist on their energy trades and were hiding those losses with bad accounting. Puh-lease learn something about business before you make a jackass out of yourself.

Anonymous said...

"It's "Bank Day" in Judge Henry J. Nowak's housing courtroom, more typically a venue where landlords and tenants duke it out over evictions and back rent. Instead, Cooper is asking lawyers for CitiFinancial, JPMorgan Chase, and Countrywide Financial to fix problems like peeling paint, broken masonry, and overgrown or trash-filled yards at houses the city says the banks are responsible for maintaining. It may be surprising to find these financial-services giants hauled before this obscure local tribunal.

In fact, Cooper and Nowak are at the forefront of a pioneering effort to deal with a vexing problem: The surging number of vacant and abandoned homes resulting from the mortgage market meltdown."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22506609/

Anonymous said...

just changed my vote to coutrywide. dunno why, just looked at their stock price and its going down pretty fast.