Housing Market

And about the greatness that is Michael Vick.

On a serious note, I'm glad I was able to sell my house weeks before Thanksgiving. I moved from one place to another, leaving a vacant $52,000 house behind. Brought what I could with me, sold furniture to co-workers and people and town; the rest is stored in my parents' basement somewhere or was simply donated the rest to Goodwill, which helped come tax time.

My old house sat for seven-plus months before my mom suggested I bury St. Joseph's statue in my yard for good luck. She got one to my old priest, who blessed it and buried it in the front yard. A little more than a month later, someone put in an offer for full price if I picked up the closing costs. Given the market, I sure wasn't about to risk him walking away over that.

I can't even imagine how I would be financially if I still had that house.

 

Ask this guy about the housing market ...

... "THEY KNOW NOTHING!"

 

That shit's funny right there.

 

That name sounds like one of those Budweiser "Real Men of Genius" commercials.
And yes, the housing market sucks.

 

I was approved for a mortgage at 7 times my annual income. 7 times! The whole process took about 15 minutes and all that I gave my mortgage broker was a letter which any idiot could have forged. I used a heck of a lot less, but if banks were giving away money like that, it isn't a big surprise what has happened.

 

I don't know how close you guys follow this stuff, but Cramer referenced the Bear Stearns conference call (this is a couple weeks old).

The CEO of Bear, Jimmy Cayne, was on the call for the first few minutes, and was mysteriously absent for the rest of the call. Several money managers I talked to were pretty sure it was b/c he leaves early on Fridays during the summer to take his helicopter for his weekly golf game.

The utter gall. CEOs get paid literally 10s of millions of dollars. At a minimum, they are expected to be the face of a company at the time of a crisis (and Bear Stearns is facing a crisis). And he skips out b/c he couldn't miss his golf (or at least thats how the speculation goes).

 

It is not just the lenders who were exposed in the sub-prime market. With Wall Street balking at buying jumbo loans and government not raising the conforming limit there is no place to dump the large loans. Lenders who used A-paper loans as collateral to borrow against now have collateral that is worth less than it was two weeks ago forcing liquidity issues.

 

I feel bad for the dupes who fell hook, line and sinker for the fantasy of a huge house on a small check, but I have no sympathy for the barracudas who go under for making these ridiculous loans. They can starve as far as I am concerned.

 

Still strong here, clipping along at a robust, but not obscene, 7 percent growth per year.

The wife and I just signed a contract on a brand-new condo. Literally the next day, the developer raised the price on the remaining units $20K to $25K. If he can get that, that's a pretty good equity return for us in a single day.

 

In the land of sunshine and swamp gas, you don't have a choice. Home prices are double what they are in Central Illinois, but salaries don't reflect it. My wife makes about $2,000 less annually here than she'd make teaching at my old high school in Illinois.

For $108,000, you'd be lucky to find something that wasn't in seriously bad shape. Even then, it'd be smack in the middle of the ghetto part of town, with drug dealers circling the neighborhood on foot. A few empty acres would run you $108,000. It's the price of living in paradise at the same time that everyone else has made the same decision.

We're planning to spend a little less than 30 percent of our annual income on a mortgage. But that's with taxes and insurance figured in. Before those monsters are added, it will be more like 20 percent of our annual income. Yes, those two expenses will eat up an additional 10 percent.

This is why Florida is leading the country in foreclosures, or at least that's what I've heard. You just can't pay that much for housing, particularly if you're employed in a shaky industry. You might have a nest egg when you start out, but you certainly can't be adding much to it if you're giving a third of your income to the mortgage company.