Real Estate Crash thread

[Benny Profane]

better watch out, the sky is falling


the originator of this thread seems interested in saying "fuck the rich" more than anything about real estate.

Well, I'm actually quite interested in buying something in a year or two when things bottom, but, I guess what I'm really trying to say is "fuck the ex wife" and the property she got.


And, yeah, fuck the rich, too, if they don't invite me to the party.

[Bastard Bob]

montanaskier- Got some pics? What town are you in?

[Core Shot]

All I know is that my home in MT is taking a while to sell. It is a 3100sq ft home...2 years old. 1 acre lot. 5br, 3.5 bath. Selling for 289,900. Laurel, MT....15 min from Billings, 40 min to the Beartooth Mtns. Anyone interested?

Hey I just mailed a package to the "Woods Power Grip" company in Laurel MT.

[4matic]

Article and links about this subject:

http://www.realestatejournal.com/buy...ejpartner=mktw

[Benny Profane]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/bu...agewanted=2&hp


"In a conference call with analysts that lasted a lengthy three hours, Countrywide’s chairman and chief executive, Angelo Mozilo, said home prices were falling “almost like never before, with the exception of the Great Depression.” He added that because of a large number of homes on the market, the housing sector would continue to shrink until sometime in 2008 and not begin growing until 2009.Shares of Countrywide fell nearly 11 percent, or $3.56, to $30.50, the lowest the stock has been in nearly two years.

What caught investors by the greatest surprise was a stunning rise in delinquencies on home equity loans, lines of credit and second mortgages to homeowners with good, or prime, credit. Until recently, most mortgage industry officials had been saying the problems with defaults would largely be contained to borrowers with weak, or subprime, credit."

[P_McPoser]

Where are these prices falling? I'd like to move there.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/bu...d-lend.html?hp


"In a conference call with analysts that lasted a lengthy three hours, Countrywide’s chairman and chief executive, Angelo Mozilo, said home prices were falling “almost like never before, with the exception of the Great Depression.” He added that because of a large number of homes on the market, the housing sector would continue to shrink until sometime in 2008 and not begin growing until 2009.Shares of Countrywide fell nearly 11 percent, or $3.56, to $30.50, the lowest the stock has been in nearly two years.

What caught investors by the greatest surprise was a stunning rise in delinquencies on home equity loans, lines of credit and second mortgages to homeowners with good, or prime, credit. Until recently, most mortgage industry officials had been saying the problems with defaults would largely be contained to borrowers with weak, or subprime, credit."

[cj001f]

Where are these prices falling? I'd like to move there.

Who wants to live in Florida or Michigan?

[f2f]

Where are these prices falling? I'd like to move there.

san diego foreclosures up 551%.

close to the beach, but a yuppie shithole nonetheless i'll come visit whenever i interview for google.

[4matic]

Entry level anywhere in California <$600k is weak. Down 15&#37; easily. Houses in my neighborhood have been marked down $60k with no movement. I've easily lost $50k in equity on mine. One can buy a house in the central valley (Diablo Grande) on two world class golf courses for around $400k. It opened at absolutely the worst time. It's a stunning golf resort.

http://www.diablogrande.com

It's all good though.. Inflation next year will be nil and rates are going back down. Ten year notes could test 4% next year.

[rideit]

Shit is still gangbusters here under $600K...above $1.5 million is getting soft, but to the tune of 5&#37; or so...

[cj001f]

One can buy a house in the central valley (Diablo Grande) on two world class golf courses for around $400k. It opened at absolutely the worst time. It's a stunning golf resort.

It opened in the absolutely worst place.

It takes you 20 minutes to get from your home to I-5. Then it's another 1+ hour to the bay area, unless you've got employment to fund a $400k home in Stockton.

[f2f]

It's all good though..

my problem is not with the housing market. after all i don't plan to own. i'm having real trouble with the fact that your pesky currency devalues faster than i can blink against real-world moneys.

even if you start rebuilding your currency's value now (which you won't) it'll still take a decade to go back to pre-somethingsomething levels.

[skier666]

Thank you 100&#37; financing! Wow, I can't believe this is happening Our government is so rad!

[Benny Profane]

Thank you 100&#37; financing! Wow, I can't believe this is happening Our government is so rad!

Well, it really isn't the government's fault. After all, we live in a very free market economy. But this:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/ny...l?ref=nyregion is clearly the government's fault, and why, if you can get out of Jersey and some other states, do it ASAP. It will be the next boomer boondoggle.


"It turns out that New Jersey will need about $58 billion, in today’s dollars, to provide all the care it has promised its current and future retirees. That’s nearly twice the state budget and nearly twice the amount of its outstanding debt. And because of the step it took in 1994, the state has virtually no money in reserve to cover those costs.

In addition, New Jersey’s towns and other local governments owe about $10 billion for health care for their own retirees."


Now, that is not a free market economy. Thank you cops and teachers.

[skier666]

Yeah, but the government is the one that gave the go ahead to do so....

[Cono Este]

Well, I'm actually quite interested in buying something in a year or two when things bottom, but, I guess what I'm really trying to say is "fuck the ex wife" and the property she got.


And, yeah, fuck the rich, too, if they don't invite me to the party.

PLus we dont have to mow the lawn anymore.

5% T-Bills are warm and cudly right now.

[The AD]

A friend of my wife's just sold his house for $1.7 million. He bought the house in 2003 for $850K. The real estate crash really scuttled him, I'll tell ya!

[4matic]

my problem is not with the housing market. after all i don't plan to own. i'm having real trouble with the fact that your pesky currency devalues faster than i can blink against real-world moneys.

even if you start rebuilding your currency's value now (which you won't) it'll still take a decade to go back to pre-somethingsomething levels.

A $2.00 pound is not that unusual. It was higher in 1980 and not four years later, 1984, they were calling it the ounce when it went to $1.00.

What needs to happen is for Old Europe to cut taxes, lower rates, and promote economic growth which would cause currency flow to ebb back. It will at some point. It always does. There is no currency crisis. In fact, the dollar is doing well vs. the Yen and a higher Yuan will also help dollar denominated assets.

Also, a low dollar promotes European tourism too. I can't believe how many Euro's are coming over hear to ski.

"The Fed has left its benchmark rate unchanged at 5.25 percent for a year after two years of steady increases.

That contrasts with the course of the European Central Bank, which has raised rates steadily and is expected to do so again to 4.25 percent in September. The Bank of England last week increased its benchmark rate to 5.75 percent, a six-year high.
Higher interest rates, a weapon against inflation, can bolster a currency by giving better returns on fixed-income investments

[Stone-Free]

I'm seeing this crash right now. I'm living it every day.

"The current rate equals one foreclosure for every 152 occupied residential units, among the highest density rates in the state. The state average is one foreclosure for every 385 occupied units." (CO State Division of Housing)

These are the forclosure stats for my county-

Year Foreclosures % change
1998 267 +53%
1999 376 +41%
2000 433 +15%
2001 557 +29%
2002 749 +34%
2003 935 +25%
2004 1,025 +10%
2005 1,032 +1%
2006 1,174 +14%

[jbach]

Prices in SLC are finally starting to trend down after the crazy gains in the past two years. I might be able to actually afford a house in 2008.

http://www.housingtracker.net/asking.../SaltLakeCity/

[SquawMan]

insanity continues worldwide.....





Home Craze Gazumps London With Record Prices, $500,000 Parking
================================================== =================================

By Simon Clark


The Blairs new home July 25 (Bloomberg) -- One late-June morning in London, a real estate broker named Becky Fatemi eases into her black Porsche Cayenne and heads for Connaught Square, just north of Hyde Park.

As her sport utility vehicle turns into the square, Fatemi -- who, by her own account, handled about 55 million pounds ($113 million) of home sales in 2006 -- nods toward one of the Georgian town houses.

``This is where Tony Blair bought,'' says Fatemi, the top producer at Foxtons Ltd., the biggest residential property brokerage in London.

Through Foxtons and another broker, Blair purchased the five-story house for 3.65 million pounds in 2004, when, as prime minister, he was still living on Downing Street. Fatemi, 31, says Blair's place is worth as much as 4.7 million pounds now -- a 29 percent increase.

Blair is no real estate savant. A confluence of powerful forces from low mortgage rates to Russian petro-riches to the teeming wealth of the City of London, Europe's largest and most dynamic center of finance, has supercharged home prices across the British capital.

The average price of prime London homes, the ones brokers consider the most desirable, has soared 254 percent since 1997, when Blair's Labour Party came to power, according to London- based real estate broker Knight Frank LLP.

Up, Up, Up

Defying predictions that the market would sputter, that average rose 28.7 percent in 2006, the steepest increase since 1979, and then jumped 18 percent during the first half of this year.

These days, buyers who dillydally risk getting gazumped. That's British slang for what happens when someone arrives on the scene at the last minute and offers a higher price.

The decade-long leap in prices has made London the most expensive city in the world for high-end homes -- costlier per square foot than Monaco, New York, Hong Kong or Tokyo, according to Knight Frank, which says prime London houses cost about 5 million pounds and prime flats run about 2.5 million pounds. The most-sought-after property in areas such as Kensington and Chelsea, the priciest of London's 32 boroughs, sells for an average of 2,300 pounds a square foot, according to Knight Frank.

Comparable living space in Monaco, the world's second-most- expensive locale, costs 2,190 pounds a square foot. Similar digs in No. 3 New York fetch 1,600 pounds a square foot, according to Knight Frank.

Risks

The unprecedented surge has brought with it unprecedented risks. Blair's successor, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, must now contend with a host of dangers -- from accelerating inflation to rising interest rates, to mounting mortgage debt -- that could puncture the housing market and threaten the nation's longest period of economic growth in 200 years.

The housing market hasn't been this heady since the 1980s, when prices almost tripled. That boom, touched off by falling interest rates and rising stock prices, ended when a subsequent increase in inflation drove interest rates as high as 15 percent.

London home prices sank 27 percent from December 1988 to December 1992.

Now, the thunderheads are gathering once again. As the U.S. Federal Reserve battles a subprime mortgage crisis, the Bank of England is tightening credit to combat inflation. The U.K. central bank has raised its benchmark lending rate five times since August 2006, pushing that rate to a six-year high of 5.75 percent.

Squeezing Borrowers

Tightening credit will squeeze people who've gone deeper than ever into debt in order to buy homes. Since May 1997, the amount of U.K. mortgage debt outstanding has ballooned, soaring 168 percent to a record 1.12 trillion pounds as of May 30, according to the Bank of England.

British homeowners have never been so stretched. A decade ago, first-time buyers typically took out mortgages equal to 2.4 times their annual salaries. Today, that figure has climbed to 3.2 times. About 120 billion pounds of short-term fixed-rate mortgages may have to be refinanced this year at new, higher rates.

London, long attuned to old money and social class, is increasingly a city divided by new wealth. The capital is being split between the rich, who can afford homes, and a growing number of ordinary folks who can't. Laying out his agenda on July 11, Brown told Parliament that many people in Britain have been priced out of the home market. He vowed to build more low- cost housing.

``Putting affordable housing within reach, not of the few, but of the many, is vital,'' Brown told Parliament.

Foxtons Frenzy

No broker has fed the frenzy like London-based Foxtons, which has helped drive up prices and, in the process, its own commissions, by inflating home valuations, wooing buyers and sellers -- and pushing agents to close, close, close.

This year, Foxtons itself, along with another British property broker, Countrywide Plc, was gobbled up. The buyer in both cases was the new power in global finance: private equity. London-based buyout firm BC Partners Ltd. bought Foxtons from its founder, Jonathan Hunt, in May for about 390 million pounds. New York-based Apollo Management LP bought Countrywide in May for 1.07 billion pounds.

Hunt's exit is a bad sign, says Peter Nicholls, who sold his own London real estate firm, Royston Estate Agents Ltd., to rival Douglas & Gordon Ltd. in May for an undisclosed price. ``When Jon Hunt sells, you know the market's going to be in trouble,'' Nicholls, 44, says.

Kensington Mansion

Hunt declined to be interviewed for this story, as did Foxtons Chief Executive Officer Michael Brown, former chief operating officer of bankrupt energy trading company Enron Corp.'s European unit.

``I am happy to hand over the reins, knowing that what we have started has a very long way still to go,'' Hunt said in a May 21 statement. London's real estate mania has been good to Hunt: In 2005, he spent 14 million pounds to buy a mansion in Kensington, opposite the home of steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal.

Hunt, 54, electrified the real estate scene by creating a snazzy company with a gladiatorial sales culture. From the moment Hunt founded Foxtons, in 1981, he never tolerated excuses from his brokers, former Managing Director Peter Rollings says.

In the early days, Foxtons' attitude toward its brokers was simple: ``There's your desk, there's a phone, there's your car -- now bugger off and sell some property,'' says Rollings, who left Foxtons in 2005 and now runs rival broker Marsh & Parsons Ltd.

Mini Coopers

Today, the firm Hunt founded in a former pasta restaurant in Notting Hill employs 1,300 people, most of them fresh out of university and willing to work weekends. Foxtons' 780 brokers race through London in a fleet of 635 Mini Coopers. The cars are painted British racing green and emblazoned with names like `Park Lane Prince' and `Fulham Flyer.' Top producers are rewarded with BMWs.

Inside Foxtons' glass-and-steel headquarters in Chiswick Park, in west London, hundreds of telebrokers with headsets work the phones as dance music thumps. The young crowd cheers, claps and exchanges high-fives as brokers reel in new clients. Foxtons offers more places to buy or rent than any other London broker. Employees staff the phones 8 a.m.-8 p.m., seven days a week, and typically process 1,000 applications a day from people looking to buy or rent.

Suddenly, one broker leaps to his feet. ``I got a val!'' he shouts, to huzzahs from his colleagues. Val is Foxtons-speak for a request to value a property.

Big Brother

Photos of employees, ranked by valuations, are projected onto one of the walls. On Friday nights, the team gathers for a meeting during which brokers shout out their weekly sales numbers. Newbies who cut their first deals are rewarded with bottles of champagne.

From his perch in Chiswick Park, manager Jean Jameson, a 37-year-old from South Africa in a gray suit and pink tie, plays a Foxtons version of Big Brother. He can peer into Foxtons offices across London via video camera to check up on brokers and see who's available for assignments.

Foxtons lets its brokers choose how they get to be paid. Some collect 22,000-pound annual salaries and no commissions. Others opt for 10,000-pound salaries and 10 percent of the fees they generate. Still others choose to take 20 percent of their commissions and no salary at all. Fatemi brought in 1.5 million pounds in fees for Foxtons in 2006 and says she pulled down six figures.

``You can write your own check if you work hard enough at it,'' Jameson says.

[SquawMan]

Dinner at Nobu

Inside the Green Street apartment, Fatemi surveys the mock- croc tables and blue-grey velvet sofa draped with a faux-fur throw. Martha Lane Fox, co-founder of travel Web site Lastminute.com Plc, and members of the Saudi royal family live opposite, she says.

People who can afford a home like this won't be put off by a 1 or 2 percentage point rise in rates, Fatemi says. ``That's one or two less dinners at Nobu, do you know what I mean,'' she says.

All the same, Fatemi knows firsthand how frustrating it can be to find a home in London these days. She bought a flat near Regent's Park last December for 452,000 pounds. It's now worth 550,000 pounds, she says.

``It was the most horrific thing I've ever been through,'' Fatemi says of the purchase. She says she had to fend off seven rival bidders.

`Unprecedented Market'

Des Forges, the Knight Frank broker, has played the market too. He bought a home for 490,000 pounds in 2001 and sold it in June for 1.05 million pounds. He's moved up to a larger, 1.4 million-pound house in Hammersmith. ``We're in an unprecedented market,'' he says.

Des Forges, the son of a Herefordshire farmer, is an architecture aficionado who favors Hackett suits with a traditional English flavor. He attended Ampleforth College, a North Yorkshire boarding school run by Benedictine monks, and went to work in real estate at the age of 19 as, he puts it, a ``tea boy.''

By his own account, he sold 135 million pounds of property from April 2006 to April 2007. On this late-June day, des Forges is padding across walnut floors in his socks inside a redbrick town house in Sloane Gardens, off Sloane Square. The Victorian interior has been gutted and given a sleek modern look that includes a laser-cut steel staircase, exposed brickwork and a seamless glass elevator shaft.

London's Future

The ground-floor maisonette -- with a sweeping, cantilevered walnut staircase, storage for 1,200 bottles of wine and a 42-inch (1-meter) plasma TV hidden behind a walnut panel in the master bedroom -- is on the market for 3.95 million pounds. Des Forges says an Italian banker and his wife have bought one of the places upstairs for 5.75 million pounds. An Israeli couple has purchased another for 4.7 million pounds.

When des Forges looks at buyers such as these, he sees the future of London and its housing market. London, a global nexus of finance, law and media, is luring the best and brightest from around the world, he says. ``I think it's just the beginning,'' des Forges says of London's ascent. ``Where else is going to compete with it, really?''

Good times don't last forever. As the price -- and risk -- of buying London real estate climbs, many people are asking when this boom will end.

One June afternoon at Frankie's, a bar and grill in Knightsbridge, Savills broker Brian D'Arcy Clark is nursing a beer while a colleague sips champagne. Up walks the restaurant's French manager, Jean-Christophe Slowik.

``Les agents immobiliers!'' Slowik exclaims. ``It's crazy, your market, huh? Is it going to collapse one day?''

``Tomorrow,'' D'Arcy Clark quips.

``Good!'' Slowik says. He's hunting for an apartment.

To contact the reporter on this story: Simon Clark in London at sclark4@bloomberg.net

[runethechamp]

Thank you 100% financing! Wow, I can't believe this is happening Our government is so rad!

What's wrong with 100% financing

[Stone-Free]

What's wrong with 100% financing

Nothing, other than you wont have a lick of equity for minimum 5 years, especially if you financed your closing costs.

[P_McPoser]

Nothing, other than you wont have a lick of equity for minimum 5 years, especially if you financed your closing costs.

Unless you make smary buys instead of stupid ones.