Real Estate Crash thread

[rideit]

Just a little note for comparison, in terms of sales in the region. (JH)
One of the top agents at the firm I worked for this year did $96,899,000 in sales last year...alone.

I don't know what this means in regards to the downturn, but it is telling of something. I guess with ten listings over $10,000,000, that's not so hard to do!

[iceman]

Jackson doesn't have a lot to do with Tulsa, but whatever.

[Benny Profane]

I keep on telling him that. It's a beautiful place, but it's not real.

[timvwcom]

Just a little note for comparison, in terms of sales in the region. (JH)
One of the top agents at the firm I worked for this year did $96,899,000 in sales last year...alone.

I don't know what this means in regards to the downturn, but it is telling of something. I guess with ten listings over $10,000,000, that's not so hard to do!

Yea, real estate is a business where (assuming you can make it) the more expensive the homes are the better. Usually would be better for most people for them to be more affordable. I thought about moving out to San Diego about 5 or 6 years ago, but would have been professional suicide. Hard to start over in new area and with no client base.

I can't compete on volume with the crazy $10 million dollar markets... when I started here in 1985 not a lot was selling for over $350K or so. Average joes were paying $100K for a plain 3 br 1.5 ba brick ranch in a very good school district. Many of those early years, and being in my early 20's building my business, I was lucky to hit $2 million for the year. These days I plod along with 20 to 25 transaction sides and volume $7 to $8 million and up per year.

Most agent here to do more end up using assistants, paying printing and mail firms big bucks (>$40K/yr), and are either sleeze bags, or have little personal life left. I get to keep and spend most my commission income... I've still 3 of my 4 kids at home, and although need to keep income rolling to pay for their colleges (all smart kids and will be spendy educations), am looking forward to the day I can pull stakes and spend a few seasons as a ski bum lifty... Then I'll reevaluate life and see where to go what to do.

Hey, didn't mean to hijack the RE crash thread, sorry.

[Tourette Dude]

What percentage of deals have you seen fall through secondary to brokerage issues since mid August?

[timvwcom]

What percentage of deals have you seen fall through secondary to brokerage issues since mid August?

Me? None... in fact in nearly 23 years I've had only a couple transactions that fell thru regards anything with financing. And only had a handful that went kaput due to inspections. BUT, have had to work hard on some to keep deal together when inspection problems show up.

However you couldn't accuse WI of being full of risk takers. Fantastic work ethic and very frugal thruout. There are some agents that may have done a bigger percentage of low/zero down loans... But I had maybe a couple a year over the last few years, so just a handful or two of 80/20s or whatever.

[pow314]

Look a bit south. I have some great property in the Kenai peninsula on an airpark overlooking the caribou hills. I need to sell a lot so I can ski and play hockey all winter..lol

Great lot with view, land is all gravel, on a 2500 ft strip, priced below borough appraisal.

[Spats]

WOW!
The warped mentality is still there.
We NEED a serious ass-kicking correction if for no other reason than to teach these idiots a lesson.
Then we can resume a normal, sensilble real estate market, driven by either homeowner-occupant demand or investor cash flow return.

People need to remember that, in the end, it's all about rate of return on investment. Price growth above that is unsustainable and eventually results in a collapse.

I'm not buying until properties flow on a 20 year fixed...including property tax, 1.5-2%/year repair budget, insurance, and any HOA fees. Otherwise I can get a better rate of return with other investments.

[Core Shot]

not sure about the acuracy here, but its a neato graph:

[4matic]

not sure about the acuracy here, but its a neato graph:

US Population (unfortunately) has increased at almost the same rate. The last couple of years spike notwithstanding..

[Core Shot]

US Population (unfortunately) has increased at almost the same rate. The last couple of years spike notwithstanding..

you are right about the overall graph increased # of homes and also probably more of a statement of the 2nd and 3rd home "vacancy" phenomenon than "vacant homes waiting to be sold" - the latter phenom is the very recent spike

[Core Shot]

Q3 foreclosures up 100% !!!

-----------
Foreclosure Filings Soar in 3rd Quarter
Thursday November 1, 5:34 am ET
By Alex Veiga, AP Business Writer
Number of US Homes Facing Foreclosure Doubles in Third Quarter


LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A soaring number of U.S. homeowners struggled to make mortgage payments in the third quarter, with properties in some stage of foreclosure more than doubling from the same time last year, a mortgage data company said Thursday.
A total of 446,726 homes nationwide were targeted by some sort of foreclosure activity from July to September, up 100.1 percent from 223,233 properties in the year-ago period, according to Irvine-based RealtyTrac Inc.

The current figure was 33.9 percent higher than the 333,731 properties in foreclosure in the second quarter of this year.

There was one foreclosure filing for every 196 households in the nation during the most recent quarter, RealtyTrac said.

All but five states reported a year-over-year increase in foreclosure filings, which include notices of default, auction sale notices or bank repossessions, the company said.

A single property can sometimes receive more than one notice in a three-month period.

In all, 635,159 filings were reported in the third quarter, up 99.5 percent from the year-ago quarter and up 30 percent from the second quarter of this year.

RealtyTrac CEO James J. Saccacio said in a statement that August and September accounted for the highest monthly totals since the company began issuing foreclosure filing reports in January 2005.

"Given the number of loans due to reset through the middle of 2008, and the continuing weakness in home sales, we would expect foreclosure activity to remain high and even increase over the next year in many markets," he said.

Mortgage lenders are bracing for a flood of defaults as many adjustable-rate mortgages originated in 2005 and 2006 during the height of the housing market frenzy reset to higher interest rates.

The loans were initially attractive options for buyers because of their cheaper "teaser" interest rates that kept monthly payments low, but even a small percentage increase can translate into a far higher payment.

With home sales in decline and prices down or flat in many regions, more homeowners are landing in foreclosure because they can't afford to sell their homes after falling behind on payments.

The three states with the highest foreclosure rates during the third quarter were Nevada, California and Florida, RealtyTrac said.

Nevada reported one foreclosure filing for every 61 households, with 16,817 filings on 12,982 properties.

That marked a 22.8 percent increase in filings from the previous quarter and a tripling from the year-ago quarter.

California led the nation in total foreclosure filings and reported one filing for every 88 households.

The state had 148,147 filings on 94,772 properties, an increase in filings of 36 percent from the previous quarter and nearly four times more than the year-ago period.

In Florida, there were 86,465 foreclosure filings on 60,992 properties during the third quarter, RealtyTrac said. Foreclosure filings rose 51.5 percent from the previous quarter and more than doubled from the same quarter last year.

Florida's foreclosure rate amounted to one filing for every 95 households, RealtyTrac said.

Rounding out the top 10 states in foreclosure rates were Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana and Texas.

RealtyTrac Inc.: http://www.realtytrac.com

[Benny Profane]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/us/09speculate.html

"Mr. Haupt is one of thousands of Americans who jumped into the raging housing market of the last decade, which was heralded in stories of neighbors’ windfalls and reality television shows like “Flip That House,” “Flip This House” and “Flipping Out.”"

[Benny Profane]

And here ya go. I like the Times, but some socialist was allowed to write this. After watching the stupidity and greed on all sides for some time, and the spending like in the post above, we, and I mean all of us, should spend our tax dollars to save these "poor people" who were "preyed upon" by lenders?
Fortunatly, the Dems won't be in office until '09, and the market will be somewhat cleaned up by then.



http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/opinion/19mon1.html

[markb]

Bailing out stupid homeowners seems insane and I don't buy any argument to do so, but it seems to fit the same overall market/currency stability justification for the savings and loan bailout. I'm no expert but I'm under the impression that the overall cost to the country of the S&L was way more than the actual bailout cost. Weren't plenty of repubs in favor of that?

It seems to be at least in part a constituency/representative issue. The homeowners facing forclosure are pretty likely to be dems, while the sleazeball S&L bankers (neil bush) were repubs. Or were the mortgage-holding homeowners bearing most of the brunt? S&L is before my time so it'd be nice to hear someone who knows it tie them together.

Either way it seems to call for more market oversight/preventative constraints in the first place, which is far from a repub platform.

[Tin Woodsman]

A big test may be the NYC market over the next year. It's been immune to a lot of the downturn because of all the financial money grabbing up real estate like Homer buys donuts. But now that whole world is in turmoil, because the credit ponzi scheme died, and should see layoffs and bonus reductions. Like you said, this will hurt the non quality stuff that people were buying for half a million, because, shit, it was a friggin house. New Canaan will probably breeze through nicely, but New Jersey will show some damage.

I think there are two distinct NYC markets. There's the Manhattan market (perhaps including BK Heights and environs), which is characterized by a high % of Co-op buildings, and is the destination for most aspirants to the "NYC way of life" (i.e. it's generally in high demand). Then there is the majority of the outer boroughs, where condos prevail and people generally have lower incomes and longer commutes (i.e. demand is more fickle). The Co-op issue is important, as Co-op boards act as an extra layer of review for the financial capability of its prospective owners. As such, they weed out buyers who would be predisposed to using riskier loan products or have shaky financials.

This market is last to feel the pain of housing recessions and generally first to start heading back up. The recession of the late 80s and early 90s was mostly a function of relatively lax (compared to today) review standards at Co-ops (many buildings went Co-op in the late 70 and early 80s and their review processes weren't as tight as today) along with a Dinkins-induced diminution in the attractiveness of living in NYC.

The outer boroughs have a lot of condos and SFH, and the buyers tend to be more speculative. Those areas are already feeling the impact of the housing recession. The question is the degree to which it crosses the East River into Manhattan.

[Duffman]

And here ya go. I like the Times, but some socialist was allowed to write this. After watching the stupidity and greed on all sides for some time, and the spending like in the post above, we, and I mean all of us, should spend our tax dollars to save these "poor people" who were "preyed upon" by lenders?

Shit like this op/ed piece piss me off. I lived in NYC and now in philly and have rented instead of bought, one reason being I didn't have enough saved up to responsibly get the mortgage for the type of place that I would want to buy. I didn't overextend myself or get into some stupid exotic mortgage, blindly believing that "housing would go up forever", just like the late to the party tech stock boom assholes. So why should these assholes be protected by the government for their bad decisions? Should they give me a house now for nothing since I missed the opportunity to be stupid and get bailed out the first time? God I hate the current repubs in power, but it is stupid shit like this that keeps me from being a Dem either.

[St. Jerry]

I think there are two distinct NYC markets. There's the Manhattan market (perhaps including BK Heights and environs), which is characterized by a high % of Co-op buildings, and is the destination for most aspirants to the "NYC way of life" (i.e. it's generally in high demand). Then there is the majority of the outer boroughs, where condos prevail and people generally have lower incomes and longer commutes (i.e. demand is more fickle). The Co-op issue is important, as Co-op boards act as an extra layer of review for the financial capability of its prospective owners. As such, they weed out buyers who would be predisposed to using riskier loan products or have shaky financials.

This market is last to feel the pain of housing recessions and generally first to start heading back up. The recession of the late 80s and early 90s was mostly a function of relatively lax (compared to today) review standards at Co-ops (many buildings went Co-op in the late 70 and early 80s and their review processes weren't as tight as today) along with a Dinkins-induced diminution in the attractiveness of living in NYC.

The outer boroughs have a lot of condos and SFH, and the buyers tend to be more speculative. Those areas are already feeling the impact of the housing recession. The question is the degree to which it crosses the East River into Manhattan.

Yup, in Manhattan prices are actually increasing (low single digit levels) due to the influx of foreign buyers.

[Core Shot]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=as_1Syu9JPcA

this is funny shit

Housing Market's Stench Means Cut Price to Sell: John F. Wasik

By John F. Wasik


Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Raffles, festive balloons, open houses, car giveaways. Will any of these incentives sell houses? Not at the moment.

You don't have to be particularly creative in a market glutted with homes for sale. The painful reality is that homes are commodities. There are more than 4 million of them sitting out there unsold and more coming on the market every day due to foreclosures. If you really need to sell a house, price is the one lever that will move a property.

Almost everywhere your competition is abundant while buyers are waiting for prices to fall even more. U.S. existing-home prices are expected to drop almost 2 percent this year nationally, according to the National Association of Realtors, and are likely to fall further in areas oversaturated with homes for sale.

``Buyers just want price,'' says Mike Morgan, a Stuart, Florida-based lawyer, real-estate broker and consultant who researches property markets for hedge funds and financial institutions. ``Buyers have become educated and they can easily cut through the fluffy incentives.''

Morgan doesn't see any national rebound until at least 2010; maybe longer if builders keep constructing homes, and if banks continue dumping foreclosed properties on the market.

Morgan's Perspective

There's no way of telling how many homes are truly on the market since the picture is so dynamic.

About 2 million properties may be foreclosed upon in the coming year alone, resulting in an estimated loss of $223 billion in U.S. home equity, particularly in California, New York, Florida and Illinois, according to the Center for Responsible Lending, a North Carolina-based non-profit group.

Living near a foreclosed home may even trim as much as $5,000 from your own home's market value, the center says. Some 44 million households will be affected, or about a third of all U.S. housing units.

Selling has become a trying proposition in this dour market. Morgan has found that traditional deal-sweeteners such as paying broker bonuses and giving cash back on closing to the buyer aren't working as well as price cuts.

``On one $429,000 home a client wanted me to sell, the seller wanted to give the broker a $30,000 bonus on top of the commission. I told him it wouldn't help. I told him to just drop the price.''

[Tourette Dude]

Quote from above article

"Morgan doesn't see any national rebound until at least 2010; maybe longer if builders keep constructing homes, and if banks continue dumping foreclosed properties on the market."

Even this seems optimistic. Took Japan 15 yrs to stabilize its realestate market and that was with long periods of interest rates at 0%.

[mcsquared]

Shit like this op/ed piece piss me off. I lived in NYC and now in philly and have rented instead of bought, one reason being I didn't have enough saved up to responsibly get the mortgage for the type of place that I would want to buy. I didn't overextend myself or get into some stupid exotic mortgage, blindly believing that "housing would go up forever", just like the late to the party tech stock boom assholes. So why should <these assholes be protected by the government for their bad decisions? Should they give me a house now for nothing since I missed the opportunity to be stupid and get bailed out the first time? God I hate the current repubs in power, but it is stupid shit like this that keeps me from being a Dem either.

I don't quite understand the anger. People just want to live in nice places and provide for their families. I just can't get too angry about that. Yes, some made mistakes along the way. Borrowed too much, didn't anticipate the costs of home ownership, got divorced, lost their job, had a medical problem, or did something stupid. You didn't. Congratulations. But that doesn't mean you are some kind of genius. It is easy to sit on the sidelines and never take a risk and then fault others for doing so. But don't expect a pat on the back.

To me this is an exciting time. Properties are becoming available that were out of reach 3 years ago. I am looking at 10-20 properties a week. There is this really cool 100 year old mission revival home in my neighborhood that, with a lot of TLC, would be a gorgeous home. And I looked at this warehouse this weekend that should be converted to a bunch of artists studios. Call me greedy or stupid but if I had the money (or could borrow it, which I am trying to do) I would buy them both. I might go broke. I might make a fortune (unlikely), or maybe only a meager sum for my time and effort. But it would be fun to try.

[Tourette Dude]

I don't quite understand the anger. People just want to live in nice places and provide for their families. I just can't get too angry about that. Yes, some made mistakes along the way. Borrowed too much, didn't anticipate the costs of home ownership, got divorced, lost their job, had a medical problem, or did something stupid. You didn't. Congratulations. But that doesn't mean you are some kind of genius. It is easy to sit on the sidelines and never take a risk and then fault others for doing so. But don't expect a pat on the back.

To me this is an exciting time. Properties are becoming available that were out of reach 3 years ago. I am looking at 10-20 properties a week. There is this really cool 100 year old mission revival home in my neighborhood that, with a lot of TLC, would be a gorgeous home. And I looked at this warehouse this weekend that should be converted to a bunch of artists studios. Call me greedy or stupid but if I had the money (or could borrow it, which I am trying to do) I would buy them both. I might go broke. I might make a fortune (unlikely), or maybe only a meager sum for my time and effort. But it would be fun to try.

I think people get annoyed when the government penalizes people by using tax money/further government debt/inflation to bailout the major banks/brokerage houses/Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac......etc-- they turn there back on bubbles and corruption until the big boys start actually losing money then WE pay to bail out the system-- MORAL HAZARD.

[4matic]

REUTERS
By Tom Brown
Tue Nov 13, 2007

MIAMI (Reuters) - At first glance, the 43-story building in Miami's international banking district seems little different from other high-rise condominiums overlooking the turquoise waters of Biscayne Bay.

But the 643-unit condo known as the Club at Brickell is a leader in mortgage foreclosures and it appears also to stand at ground zero in a blizzard of fraud that may lie behind many of the failed loans threatening to bury the U.S. property market.

America's subprime mortgage crisis is partly due to predatory, or aggressive, lenders, hard-sell tactics by mortgage brokers and an easing of underwriting standards in the $10 trillion home-loan industry.

But fraud accounts for a sizable share of the bad bets on mortgages, according to many industry experts, and lenders may have been victimized as much as anyone else.

"The lenders are holding the bag now, that's what we're finding out," said Glenn Theobald, head of a mortgage fraud task force formed in south Florida's Miami-Dade County in September.

Mortgage scams involve a cartel of inside players -- colluding property appraisers, real-estate brokers and accountants willing to draw up fake income statements and tax returns -- who recruit people with good credit histories to serve as a decoy or "straw buyer" in a real-estate deal.

The conspirators inflate the price of the property, to get the biggest loan possible, pay the sellers the original price and then pocket the excess loan money as "cash back" at the closing of the deal.

The decoy buyer is paid off -- often with just $5,000 -- and the property is quickly abandoned to foreclosure, said Theobald, a senior official with the Miami-Dade Police Department.

'EPIDEMIC'

"It's an epidemic," said Nancy Hogan, a veteran realtor and former head of the Florida Real Estate Commission.

"The cash back, the fraud for profit, is what has been so rampant," she said.
The Club at Brickell has the highest current number of foreclosure proceedings involving any single south Florida property.

There may be other properties in the United States that hold the distinction of being riddled with more cases of apparent mortgage fraud than the Club.

But Doug Dewitt, a real estate broker contracted to work with several lenders on the valuation and disposal of foreclosed properties, said nearly 70 percent of the sales or closings at the Club over the last 18 months were questionable.

That works out to more than 200 possibly shady deals in a single building, he said.

The dubious transactions all fit a pattern that Theobald said should trigger "bells and whistles" for law enforcement anywhere -- time and time again properties that failed to sell for months when listed at around $450,000 were pulled from the market and then suddenly sold for more than $800,000.

Florida leads the nation when it comes to mortgage fraud, according to the Virginia-based Mortgage Asset Research Institute, a group that works closely with the U.S. Mortgage Bankers Association.

Many apartments could wind up being sold at auctions like one held last month for bank-owned properties in Fort Lauderdale, further depressing prices in a market suffering its biggest condo glut in decades.

"You've seen some of it already. They are actually having auctions to try and sell units," said Theobald, when asked about discount sales involving recently foreclosed properties.

"I don't know where it's going to end up," Theobald said. "I don't know when the bottom is going to be."

Ken Thomas, a Miami-based banking expert and lecturer at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said there was little surprise Florida led the country in mortgage fraud.

It stems, at least in part, in the way lenders plowed "easy money" into the local condo market before Florida's recent housing boom turned to bust, Thomas told Reuters.

"We're going to see a lot more of this fraud being exposed, especially as these units go into foreclosure," Thomas said.

"We were the poster child of the housing bubble ... maybe we should have expected more of this."

(Editing by Michael Christie and Eddie Evans)

&#169; Reuters 2007All rights reserved

[meatdrink9]

I think I've seen a few cases of this first hand (on a much smaller scale). I bid on a property that sat on the market for numerous months at 60k. They dropped to the price to 50k for a 10-day close. I met their terms with an offer. But no one ever gets back to me. Then I see the price jumps up to 80K then it closes a few weeks later for 80K. The place was a shit hole.

[timvwcom]

Well as a real estate broker and a 44 year old (current) "Midwesterner"... I read the above article on Florida condo fraud with two minds; The broker in me thinks "how can they get away with this shit..." The 44 year old, who could imagine the bounty of silver lady foxes there for the mining someday, maybe when I'm 64 or 74 or 84?, thinks "thank god!!!" The way it was looking 2 years ago, no one of average means was ever going to be able to afford to buy in Florida in a half-way decent location near/on the water... carry on.