April 18, 2008

HousingPANIC Stupid Question of the Day






What's the ONE memorable highlight so far of the Great Housing Bubble and Crash?

The one moment or story that sticks in your craw, when you knew there was a massive problem, or that was just too ludicrous or corrupt or stupid to forget, that twenty years from now, when you're swapping stories about this time, you'll do a


"boy, I remember this one ........."

(note - there's a thousand pics I could have put up - just threw up a few at random)

58 comments:

Mark in San Diego said...

For me it was a sign in a realtor's window in San Diego that said, "bubbles are for bathtubs" That was two years ago. . .the realtor's office is now closed. . .BUT - that Youtube video yesterday of the woman in Florida going to take a HELOC to fix her boat dock, kitchen and buy a boat that "was too big for the canal". . .THAT video should be forced upon Senator Dodd and Barney Frank!! . . .BTW - in Strasbourg yesterday . . .the restaurant we had lunch in said we were the only Americans they had seen in a week. . .guess the Euro has made it too expensive to travel to Europe.

Anonymous said...

Casey Serin high tailing it to Australia was pretty hilarious

Anonymous said...

When my ex-gf paid $450k for a 1200 sqft house in garbage West L.A. and thought it was a steal - this was in 2002. She ended up selling in late 2007 for $700k, $100k off of asking.

Damn it took a long time for things to play out. In another 6 years things will look very, VERY different.

Metroplexual said...

You forgot the bench in DC covered with keys.

Paul E. Math said...

The Nicolas Retsinas article about 'chicken littles' and the Kendra Todd 'bubbles are for bathtubs' article stick in my mind. Them and Swannies '30 reasons why real estate will never go down in Phoenix'. I would like to print those articles and nail them to their author's foreheads with a 6 inch spike. Or tattoo them across their faces so that noone would ever take them seriously ever again.

Damn, I woke up angry this morning!

Anonymous said...

Crash is over kids. Bailout is a done deal. Oh i know you all have examples of houses being sold for $15K in San Jose. Reality says otherwise.

So the best pic right now would be one of you renters in your shithole 1 bed 1 bath crying yourselves to sleep every night that you missed out yet again.

Anonymous said...

This one sticks to me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXGOq-ys9Js

Anonymous said...

SUZANNE!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubsd-tWYmZw

Anonymous said...

DAVID LEREAH MOVING TO MOVE.COM TO SPEND MORE TIME WITH HIS FAMILY...

DOPES!!!

Anonymous said...

The Suzanne ad represents everything that's wrong with the sheeple! Look at the chubby fastfood addicted guy, who is brainwashed by his slightly neurotic Prozac(R) medicated wife. Oh, but I love the schools, when the kids grow up the schools would probably be just as good! Let's start paying the exorbitant school taxes right now instead of renting.

Long Island is full of the likes of them. They drive around in SUVs, and look at me as an alien when I walk nonchalantly around in their neighborhoods and try to cross the road.

You guys can do this! With a toxic ARM, everyone can do it...

Anonymous said...

When I saw the house down the street sell for 150,000 more in 2 yr's Then found out no money was put down .That woke me up real fast. I put my house on the market the next week.Today I am a happy renter.

Anonymous said...

Just sold my house and deal was done with a 40 year mortgage.

Nope, things are different up here in Canada. With global warming everybody will leave California and want to buy a home up here as our weather beats the tropics.

Anonymous said...

Crash is over kids. Bailout is a done deal. Oh i know you all have examples of houses being sold for $15K in San Jose. Reality says otherwise.

So the best pic right now would be one of you renters in your shithole 1 bed 1 bath crying yourselves to sleep every night that you missed out yet again.


Really? How did you come to the conclusion that a "bailout is in the bag"? How did you come to the conclusion that the market has hit a bottom? I'm just trying to follow your logic here.

Let's assume the best case scenario for you : a massive bailout that keeps every homedebtor in their overpriced home for the next 10 years.

How does that solve the problem of houses simply being too expensive and a collapsed mortgage lender industry? Doesn't that put a damper on demand?

Am I just imagining all of the for sale signs on every street? And the economy is as strong as W and Paulson say it is? And George Bush is the greatest military strategist in history? Wow man, if you're right I must be really out of touch with reality.

Anonymous said...

Driving past development after development of $600,000-$1,000,000 houses and wondering who could afford them. And where they worked. And how could I get that kind of job.

Both my wife and I are well paid professionals - and we could no where near afford these houses.

Now I know - they were ALL bought with fraud...

Anonymous said...

Hands down:

http://tinyurl.com/4kktxn

Anonymous said...

Anon the Ignorant wrote:

"Crash is over kids. Bailout is a done deal. Oh i know you all have examples of houses being sold for $15K in San Jose. Reality says otherwise."
===================================
You got us...I am not a renter but I am a home-debtor (own 75% of my $200K home) and you hit it on the head. America is so corrupt that the crooks that guard the hen house (Congress) always "bail-out" the ponzi scheme players. This time will be no different. The few who stay with-in their means & are honest will pay for the sins of others. Such is life in the times we live.

Anonymous said...

The most ridiculous line was when Nicholas Retsinas said that employers needed to give people a raise so they could afford to pay their ARM resets

Anonymous said...

"THEY KNOW NOTHING!!!!"

Mammoth said...

I remember in early 2006, before finding this blog, I read in the newspaper that 25% of all homes sold in 2005 were bought by investors and speculators.

The thought which came into my mind at that crystallizing moment was:

“Houston, we’ve got a Problem.”

Anonymous said...

How can you forget people lining up outside a new housing development, crossing their fingers, praying, for the "opportunity" to buy one of these boxes builders were slapping togther at the lowest cost possible. Or how can I ever forget the gentleman in East LA who didn't speak a word of English selling his "estate" for $550k? I will never forget how he told me in Spansih with a straight face even! Then there was HP, and dopes, and Calculated Risk, and the myriad other bubble blogs that sprang to life and told me no, i wasn't crazy, it was the rest of the world that was F'kin nuts, and THEY WERE RIGHT...
-JDF

Anonymous said...

this segment from the Daily Show on subprime loans and how they are not getting paid back probably caused an epiphany for many mainstreamers...

http://tinyurl.com/6dzqje

many bankers probably also shat their drawers from its truthiness.

Anonymous said...


many bankers probably also shat their drawers from its truthiness.


I don't think Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke and the Wall Street bankers are watching the Daily Show

Anonymous said...

For me it was the morning in Nov 04 that my realtor and his assistant carried in an almost three foot stack of offers, none under $100,000, for an inherited vacant, vandalized p.o.s. in Baltimore City that I couldn't give away for $20,000 back on 2001. Hell, when I sold the family homestead in 2000, a nice, well-kept older home, larger, in a good development, in a desirable area of Baltimore County, it didn't bring as much!

A MOUNTAIN of absurdity is pretty hard to miss. I will always remember these words going thru my mind like an automated Time's Square advertisement:

"What's Wrong With This Picture?"

Anonymous said...

Is that casey's new lover in the pic? Did he ever find a real job?I heard he was pimping himself out in sacramento.

Anonymous said...

http://consumerist.com/380959/wamu-sorry-we-dont-have-your-4200-in-cash-want-a-check

Mike @ Farmstay El Porton Verde said...

I knew that this was going to be a bad situation when I worked as a consultant at Fremont Investment & Loan and the FDIC shut them down.

I realized at that time that the Wall Street boyz, who created the subprime monster, could shut it down in a heartbeat. Create a rapidly metastasizing cancerous form of bizness, make $$$$, and then the music finally stopped, leaving the larger economy and homedebtors left holding the bag.

I met a friend in an Irish pub that same night and told him, "this is much larger than what they are saying" in a couple of years we are going to have huge problems. And here we are . . .

Anonymous said...

The case/schiller "History of Home Values" graph, OF COURSE!!

http://mbcon.blogspot.com/2007/08/hockey-sticks.html

Anonymous said...

It has to be the queues outside the Northern Rock offices.

Anonymous said...

For me, it'll be the $100K in free money (+ or -) that the federal government will give me for my house so that I can giggle at paying $500K for a house with $0 down and suddenly owing less than $400K when it's worth about 450ish. ;) (We bought on the way down - got a fleshwound, didn't lose any digits). What's even better is it won't come out of anyone's taxes, and if you go to try and buy the same house, it'll still cost you $450K and you'll have to conjure $90K just to get in the door.

So you'll owe $360K on a $450K house, I'll owe $385K...but I didn't put a dime down, so I'm up $75K.

Yep, you've definitely "won" Keith! :D This bill will pass, the only question is the scope - which will include anyone upside down so as not to encourage a wave of defaults to qualify. The House - both sides, the President, and almost the Senate, are on board.

Hope you made an extra $75K+ hording that gold. ;)

Anonymous said...

Two words: Strawberry picker.

Anonymous said...

you nailed it happy homedebtor

plus you forgot to add that you lived in your house for an extra year or two while Keith and Co. lived in a decrepit apartment waiting for the crash that never came.

and now the same end of the world is coming mentality is inspiring Keith and Co. to stay out of the stock market as it soars every day. I made more money today owning an index fund that they will make all year with their CDs. And no wise asses I didn't lose anything. I sold off last summer. But unlike you I have been buying back into stocks ever since mid-February. And days like today while you bitch and whine about the PPT and whatever other conspiracy theories you can conjure up I log into my fidelity account and smile.

DOPES
DOLTS
TOOLS

Anonymous said...

I live in Oklahoma. I have friends and family in CA. Whenever I spoke to them on the phone, I would get "How's the Real Estate market out there?" within the first minute of conversation. Every time.

Now that was Mania.

RiperDurian said...

A minor episode but one that irked me was the Blanche Evans piece in the Realty Times in which she accused Newspapers and other forms of media of conspiring against Realtors.

HAHAHAHAHA

The combination of stupidity, arrogance, and utter disrespect for the intelligence of human kind required to pen such a steaming load has earned her a seat in the real estate hall of shame for eternity.

Anonymous said...

Keyser to Realtor: I'm looking in the $500,000 range.

Realtor to Keyser: So, you want a trailer.

Sedona, May 2005

Anonymous said...

The story about organized crime gangs in California buying houses using no-down, no-doc, negative amortization option ARMs and then gutting the interior and turning them into marijuana grow houses. They pay the minimum until the loan resets or the cops find the grow-op, then they just stop making payments, leaving the bank with an upside down mortgage on a gutted house. Priceless!

http://www.creditbubblestocks.com/2007/05/marijuana-grow-ops-gutted-houses-are.html

Anonymous said...

Happy Homedebtor said...
For me, it'll be the $100K in free money (+ or -) that the federal government will give me for my house so that I can giggle at paying $500K for a house with $0 down and suddenly owing less than $400K when it's worth about 450ish. ;) (We bought on the way down - got a fleshwound, didn't lose any digits). What's even better is it won't come out of anyone's taxes, and if you go to try and buy the same house, it'll still cost you $450K and you'll have to conjure $90K just to get in the door.

So you'll owe $360K on a $450K house, I'll owe $385K...but I didn't put a dime down, so I'm up $75K.

Yep, you've definitely "won" Keith! :D This bill will pass, the only question is the scope - which will include anyone upside down so as not to encourage a wave of defaults to qualify. The House - both sides, the President, and almost the Senate, are on board.

Hope you made an extra $75K+ hording that gold. ;)

April 18, 2008 5:39 PM



...and your so full of shit I can smell you through my monitor. The impending crisis with the global dollar devaluation and the increase in food and energy - as well as continuing food coupe's against many governments means that Amerika CANNOT continue to print its way out of problems as this will further exacerbate the problems at hand.

Wait until after the summer olympics when the Chinese dump the T-bills and a tsunami of dollars come flooding back into Amerika. You, and everyone else is FUCKED - there is no way out...

Anonymous said...

Even after the bailout, housing prices will continue to fall to their pre-bubble levels.

G Spot1 said...

For me it was the jumbo loan market melting down in August last year. I sold my home in So Cal closed the first week of August, and breathed a big sigh of relief that my buyers didn't get hit with the credit crunch. Then I watched the market fall apart in California. This was the moment when it was obvious for me that this was not just about subprime, and that the housing market was headed for a big crash. Also, incidentally, this was when I discovered HP...

Devestment said...

The next sucker president who gets the bill!

Anonymous said...

It was when homeowner Linda Gao made a condition of selecting the lucky buyer of her house that they would promise to feed the squirrels. The article:

http://tinyurl.com/5txxka

Anonymous said...

Your "Boomtown Mirage" blog was a great way to summarize this mess...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/realestate/keymagazine/406ariz-t.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Timeye

Anonymous said...

The goobermint is giving everyone $100K for owing money on a house? That comes out to roughly 7,000,000,000,000 or $7 TRILLION according to happyhomedebtor. Where is this magical money going to come form? Talk about being delusional. homedebtor is more delusional than that fat cow in the video who thought her house was worth $1.3 million.

Anonymous said...

When that Adkins (the guy married to the newsgirl (news reader) said that housing is taking a hit do to high gas prices.

Priceless!

Anonymous said...

It was not one moment but sometime in November 2005 when I saw the historic housing charts and thought: It cannot go up infinitely, and when it comes down from this high, it will come down hard. Anecdotes like Casey Serin merely offered entertainment.

Anonymous said...

Was it when my brokerage had 10 loans in the pipeline and all of a sudden banks were calling and cancelling loans - doesnt matter if the borrowers had signed docs or were packing the U-Haul

Or was it when banks started getting rid of wholesale

Or was it when we got the call- should I answer the phone when my lender calls or just ignore them. Their home was adjusting and it was time to walk away.

Or was it that the stress of it all that made you hate your job that you once loved..

Anonymous said...

The recent story that the Mortgage Brokers Association in D.C. is facing foreclosure has gotta rank up there.

Another mystery - how could Keith possibly fail to make that a front page item, passing it over to flog his favorite, repeated stories? It was mentioned in the open thread twice.

Anonymous said...

When Casey took a vacation in Hawaii, right after stiffing the American taxpayer with $2.4 mil. Sweeeeeet!

Anonymous said...

And no wise asses I didn't lose anything. I sold off last summer. But unlike you I have been buying back into stocks ever since mid-February.

Sure you did. Oh and one more thing, if you've been buying since Feb you're screwed:

Dow YTD: -3.13
Nasdaq YTD: -9.40
S&P YTD: -5.31

Add to that rampant inflation.

That phony rally you just saw was the sheeple doing last minute IRA contributions before tax day. Enjoy the HUGE nosedive coming up in the next few days. Watch the mediocre earnings everywhere as American consumers can't even put food in the table or get a job, and there's no credit or ponzi schemes for financials to make a buck. It's just the beginning.

Anonymous said...

Yep, you've definitely "won" Keith! :D This bill will pass, the only question is the scope - which will include anyone upside down so as not to encourage a wave of defaults to qualify. The House - both sides, the President, and almost the Senate, are on board.

You sure look desperate, praying for this bill. You must be leveraged up the wazoo, eh? I think you're going to lose your job pretty soon because you sound too stupid for companies to keep you.

Anonymous said...

What's the ONE memorable highlight so far of the Great Housing Bubble and Crash?
It was when we realized we had to sell our house, even though we didn't want to. And we did sell it. Now we wait, and wish we had bought gold at $600 and oil at $45.
Right now I'm looking at Everbank, but I need to see what the tax will be on a savings deposit in a US bank, based in Euros (or whatever).

Anonymous said...

"Sure you did. Oh and one more thing, if you've been buying since Feb you're screwed:"

We're so blessed to be in the presence of people that can time markets perfectly.

Anonymous said...

When Katrina hit and you had such a visual of homes under-water ,I thought about how the Nations homes would soon be underwater financially ,just like Katrina .

Chris said...

I think I knew we had a problem for years, but on the way up it was hard to quantify what it would look like on the way down. In September 2005, I remember a Washington Post article where people were starting to complain that their houses were taking 3 weeks to sell instead of a couple days. I thought "This is where we start heading down if the Washington Post thinks something like this is actually newsworthy -- people whining that it takes a whopping 3 weeks to sell their houses." But all of the easy underwriting held up the housing market longer than I thought it would.

Anonymous said...

Buzzsaw--That strawberry picker was the one that sent me looking for answers. April '07--not bad for the MSM, esp. a rag like the SF Chronicle.

Anonymous said...

Since I saw Caveman Adkins and Douchebag DeGroot compete to see who could shout the loudest and make a larger constricted anus of themselves on national TV.

Those two should be locked together like Siamese Twins and forced to mate, over and over again until they hatch something presumably human with strong chimp-like overtones (NOT to be confused with Bushco, that is Waaay to cruel) ...

We DO need more freaks for the carnival, but better yet, forget the procreation, we could just call it the Connie and Tom show and run an endless loop of their REIC cheerleading episodes...

Call it uglier and ugliest...

Unknown said...

If I were to pick one thing, it would've been the article where the lady demanded that the buyers feed the squirrels.

In general, though, I've always liked the stuff that focused on the mass delusions about home ownership. The idea that a building could actually generate wealth is profoundly stupid. On its own a building is capable of little more than rotting. All true wealth springs from human activity.

Anonymous said...

What is the point

of all this recrimination? :)

Paul E. Math said...

I can't believe I almost forgot this one:
hhttp://tinyurl.com/57fld3

The national NAR ad campaign 'Now is a great time to buy or sell a home'. They show their true colours with that little bit of prevarication.

The campaign commenced in early November of 2006 and stated, unequivocally:

- Prices have stabilized and are starting to rise
- The future of the housing market and the economy is positive

Do you see, Realtors?? Do you see why we hate you now?