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Housing Hijinks
Last week I wrote about my pops and the decision to put the family homestead on the market. Over the weekend the house received two offers.
Buyer A
This buyer was willing to pay the full asking price (yes in a market like this, read on). However, the contract was contingent on the sale of the potential buyers (overpriced) home and my agreement to engage in a seller assist (see below) where I would pay for a percentage of the buyers closing costs.
Buyer B
Was willing to pay half of the asking price. No stipulations, just a straight up bid from a potential buyer who doesn’t need to work any fuzzy stuff to purchase the home. +1
According to brokeroutpost.com:
A “seller assist” is a feature of many loan programs that is used to help a buyer pay for a portion of their closing costs. In our current economy with housing markets slowing down, one could see home prices falling. A great incentive to sellers as well as buyers is having these seller’s incentives in place. This allows for home prices to remain steady which helps everyone over the long term.
I love it, “This allows for home prices to remain steady which helps everyone over the long term“.
Translation: This allows home prices to remain overinflated, sets it all up for even greater decline, and produces yet another underwater borrower.
I am ready to sell, and am prepared to do so at a price less than the asking, 50% was just a little more of a discount than I’d like to agree to right now. I hope I don’t regret it. Yup, declined both offers and walked away with economic confirmation about a problem that still exists in housing and in the greater economy as a whole. There is no fear of debt.
A bit too low in their offer, Buyer B didn’t need to sell before they could buy, and instead was set to bring cash to the table. Buyer B has a better prospective of where this market is headed. +2
It's wild that folks like Buyer A are still out there, trying to figure out a way to borrow even more. Buyer A is likely already underwater on one home, and before he or she even sells it, is prepared to enter into an agreement to do it all over again, if they can just get the help of the seller to extend their credit line.
Keep on rockin in the free world.
~MV
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LOL
"Family homestead" link removed after we saw it and called it for what it was.
Fed: Average home equity plunged from more than 61% at the start of 2001 to 38% in the January-March quarter this year
http://investmentwatchblog.com/fed-average-home-equity-plunged-from-more...
and the theory that there can't be another leg down equal or greater than 2008 is simply whistling past the graveyard. This is HOUSING and nothing is more predictable in American life or history than that "there is a bubble in it." I find equity analysis very effective in real estate because the variables are much fewer: how much credit is available again? this "mere" issue of ownership of the property in the first place hasn't been resolved. Market's always overshoot ON THE DOWNSIDE TOO. 2nd leg's down are basically an axiom when it comes to a bubble bursting--and as we all now know the bubble was in Real Estate and commodities and not in the equity markets or the dollar at all. I think Robert Schiller is vastly understating "come what will" both in timing and effect because simply put "we've never ramped up a war effort like this before." I'm sorry but i think not thinking in terms of various states in our Union actually having some dramatic funding crisis going into "tax season" this fall...let alone going bankrupt-- with the ability to be bailed out by the Federal Government being taken away buy this Administration's reckless profligacy is simply not being realistic. Certainly the legal term "lacking due dilegence" comes to my mind. I have found the anaylsis overtly political since day one "and only through the back door of Greece, Ireland and Portugal" is the MSM even allowing this issued to be discussed both publicly and with the extraordinary seriousness that it deserves. The fact that "tax revenues are coming in better than expected" is meaningless if the consumer has determined he/she is done consuming and will now save...which is precisely what is going on. This is what the treasury complex is telling us by rallying furiously JUST AS MUCH AS THE BANK STOCKS GOING NOWHERE. from "Sudden Debt" OF COURSE we get SUDDEN SAVINGS. Paying no interest on it makes people even more fearful causing them to save even more since "it shows not one bit of confidence in the policies used to correct the imbalances."
I am a fan of business transactions where each person looks after their own needs and liabilities.
You want me to kick in to your expenses? NO Buy the property or bye.
It must be my Libertarian streak.
Thank you
I just sold a home. 6% commissions, closing fees, escrow, selling expenses, fix-ups to suit the agent etc. etc. I received 10% less than the final price owing to all fees. These are never mentioned in the comps. I had a number of buyers who wanted to take commissions off the books to get lower property tax values. Yep. Real estate is still a shady business for cut-throats and scoundrels.
BTW an agent told that 2/3s of all real estate deals fall through here because of failure to finance or failure to contingency failures.
Unless you can't take the loss, take the loss.
Cash.
Buy productive equipment; fuck the Chinese.
When fuel goes to 7.00 deisel, you'll get domestic production
the maquiladora "special economic zone" comes to YOU now, as amrka cheapens.
More and more people I know are so pissed that others are not paying that guess whta....they then stop paying their mortgage also.
I guess they are making the right decision since millions are not paying and dumping the problem on everyone else. So why should anyopne pay and be The Fool?
Until there are "consequences" of not paying your mortgage....."conseqqunces" of bankers getting massive Bonuses....."consequences" of running the economy down I see more people "walking away" from their bills. Why not?
I sold my home last October by putting (1) it on the market at a reasonable price and (2) accepting the highest quality offer. For (1), I listed it below breakeven (my cost from 2002, plus all my improvements, I listed about 10% below), based on what I thought would make it move. Probably could have gotten a bit more, but have always been mystified how greedy and emotional people get about their home sales. On (2), I had several offers within 2 days (courtesy of strategy 1), and I took an offer that involved only 50% financing over a higher offer that was only 10% down (and the would-be buyer would have to liquidate assets to come up with the 10%).
This market was troubled, but you could still get transactions done. I had the luxury of having had lived well within my means, so I didn't need to get greedy. Now, I see 10 houses for every buyer, so I'm sure it is harder still.
Good luck to everyone.
"If the government would back everyone getting a 700 FICO score...."
How about the government not backing anyone and suggest people take personal responsibility for their own life?
You're right. The obvious choice was to give the Treasury away to Goldman and whatever was left we all could have been given our own copy of My Pet Goat.
goldman clearly owns the treasury but i never got my copy of my pet goat. i feel cheated.
Your deep discount buyer could be had if you re-posted your ad with a firm sale price at 75% of your present offer or it won't be sold. If he really wants it he'll meet you in the middle. Home prices are going to continue to slide and cash buyers of rental properties (smart $) is the only market.
If the government would back everyone getting a 700 FICO score you'd see a recovery within 6 months. Lotta people still have dough and would love their sacred credit score back but nothing happens unless Fair Isaac says so. The program is for 5 years and if anyone blows it they go back to their score of 119.
Banks dont need a FICO score...just a jar of vaseline for the Federal Reserve.
I'm really glad I'm not a man with nothing. I'm for me. I don't give a crap about, "mortal hazard". I am worst than "Cain"! Some asshole on this blog laid this crap on me! The ? is this. Where do I put my $? The Perth Mint is interesting. Diversity is everything....
The cure to ALL our housing (oversupply, excess financing & marketing friction, etc) problems: take a leaf from the automobile market's playbook, i.e. the wholesale auto auction.
If you own more than 4-10 cars, depending upon specific state statutes, you get classified as an "automobile dealer" (i.e. they can track the titles, etc)
So, if you want to be a 'dealer' you then get state licensed, pay the costs, etc. and you're then entitled to go 'bid' at the various (& numerous) state auto auctions, in your state or wherever you've qualified (as the 'dealer').
The function of the auto auction is to 'make the market' locally, i.e. absorb the excesses (program car returns, repos, used dealer liquidations, etc, etc) with a streamlined valuation process, a streamlined reallocation process, a streamlined ownership/financing process.
The auto-auction is essentially the floor specialist (NYSE) in cars for that market demographic, catering almost exclusively to the retail dealer.
Why can't this be done for residential real estate in a specific area? it can...but first there must arise the "real estate dealer", who needs some kind of investment tax, and/or regulatory help (away from those assholes at NAR) to jumpstart this market adaptation.
Tell me, if you bought a new Beemer, Benz, Lexus, Jag, or Maz...something costing as much as a house (in some locales)...DO YOU THINK THE CAR SALESMAN (WHO, UNLIKE A REAL ESTATE BROKER WITH ZERO INVENTORY RISK) MADE 6-8% ON THE DEAL????? answer: not a fucking chance
Why can't this be done for residential real estate in a specific area?
This is one of those posts which demonstrates a major and very common ignorance of the scope of the problem. I'd think it's a good point to jump off and clarify the issue a bit. The answers are always simple if you don't understand the questions. (This is in layman's terms because I'm self-taught on this issue.)
First: who would sell the house?
We can all agree the market has to clear, we need price discovery, etc etc, but there's this legal hurdle of "ownership" to get over, unless you want to grant some kind of simple property confiscation routine. (Yanno, like the King of the USA seizes all the houses and conducts public auctions.)
The current owner of the house (like it or not) is the asshole who lives there and doesn't pay the mortgage. He's not motivated to sell the house because he lives there and the proceeds won't pay off his debts. If he doesn't pay his mortgage, the bank can take him to court and demonstrate he's not paying and foreclose on the house--then they take ownership and can auction it. So step one has to be for the bank to foreclose on the house. The problem is that banks DON'T WANT TO FORECLOSE.
Say the bank currently has a mortgage on their books worth $500,000 because the "value" is calculated as a performing 30-year mortgage. That $500,000 is pretty important to the bank, because if they didn't have it, they wouldn't have sufficient assets to remain in business--if someone ever audited them and actually marked-to-market the value of the loan-book, the bank would (legally) have to be closed down by the government.
In this theoretical example, let's say the local government is granting "free" foreclosure decisions. The bank can basically just show up with some robosigned documents and a lawyer, and the non-payor of the mortgage has no opportunity for a defense. So eliminate all the legal costs typically involved with the foreclosure process...the bank can overnight take ownership of the $350,000 (at time of sale) house and write off the non-performing mortgage. So far so good.
So the bank loses its $500,000 loan, and gains a house which sold at the peak of the real-estate market for $350,000. Even if they could auction the house for that same peak price tomorrow, they're "out" $150,000 of money on one side of the balance sheet.
Who's going to pay for that loss? If we force the banks to go through the foreclosure/auction process, they collapse and have to be bailed out and sold off.
If you follow this, it's pretty obvious why this just doesn't work. The banks can continue to operate as long as they maintain fallacious values on their books, and if you start clearing the non-performing loans, those fallacious values are exposed.
The government could just dictate that Fannie/Freddie buy up every single bad loan out there and take the hit for us. Nationalization of the mortgage market isn't what people usually have in mind when they suggest their simple and common-sense solution, though.
A guy here in town purchased a beautiful 3 year old Mercedes at a wholesale auction by U.S. Customs. It was a good deal. He took it over the border to spend a few days at a spa and on the way back he was nailed at customs inspection by a dog. There was 30 pounds of heroine in the passenger's door. It took nearly a year and $150K of legal fees and about 90 days in the slammer before a judge heard him a dropped charges. U.S. Customs had taken the car in a border bust but never really cleaned it out properly. Ooops.
Great story. Wonder how many Meth labs have gone into the REO depts. of the banksters?
"Over here was the cooking room, the chemicals were stored in the large walk in closet ...."
"...great ventilation...these hooks can be used to store your gasmasks..."
A man with nothing, is a man with nothing to lose.
One of ours was sold cash outright some time ago.
I saw the same thing when I sold my home in April 2010. The Realtor(registered trademark goes here) strongly advised this was the more accepted means of attracting buyers vs. a straight discount.
There are no tax advantages. The only things that benefit are a) the realtors commission and b) housing prices stay elevated.
I regret discounting the house this way, but darn, you don't become a successful realtor on intelligent thinking. You become successful by suckering people like me. Next time...
I ran into the same thing when I sold my condo last year, Chuck. I got one offer right away from someone putting a ridiculous 3% down and who made an offer for XXX thousand dollars but specifiying that I was supposed to give them $5,000 toward their closing costs.
I hated this but, though there were other folks who looked, this was the only offer right away and I did not want to trust that the economy would not tank while I waited months more for a better offer.
This served the realtor and the risibly under capitalized buyer (three freaking percent down! I had thought that crap wasn't going to happen any more. Silly me.) but it didn't do anything for me.
I just sold my house of 8 years in Austin in January. Made a decent pile, nothing to retire on. Put every penny of it into physical gold and silver, and am renting a house. Couldn't be happier. The young couple that bought our house put down 3% too! I couldn't believe it was even still possible. I told my wife the other day that these folks have already lost their small bit of equity in that house, with a loooong way to go. Jesus, I'm glad I wised up and got out of the mortgage racket relatively unscathed.
It doesn't affect you as the seller. You have your tax free gains from the sale. The buyer has to make a down payment with post tax dollars and pay for closing costs with post tax dollars. Plus, most buyers don't have any money saved up beyond the down payment and are itching to pull the trigger and buy the money pit otherwise known as a house. The system is designed to get people to spend too much on houses. Still. Period. That's why I'm trying to keep my next purchase under 500,000 monopoly dollars.
Just tell Buyer A why they are making a bad decision, then let them go ahead and do it again if they haven't learned their lesson the first time.
In the end, playing this housing market is all about your 30 year macro view for the dollar.
If you are from the deflationist camp, debt burden will come back to haunt you. If this is the case, cash in the house and rent or better yet live at lower cost with relatives. This is otherwise known as strong dollar policy.
If you are from the inflationist camp, 4% interest may be less than the expected inflation over the next 30 years. So why not max out credit? Oh yeah, strong dollar policy in effect...
People who play your game make the false assumption that with inflation, your income also goes up. We got plenty inflation now, is your income going up? For most, it is not. So how you gonna pay that mortage?
That's the big dilemma... No guarantees in life. You have to make your predictions, put your money where your mouth is and deal with the consequences. Unless of course you have a good PAC.
We should all borrow as much as we can, buy PMs, and then default. The banksters are so upside down that the slightest push will cripple them. There is no more stomach for TARP II or anything thay want to call it. PHUKK THEM ALL.
duplicate..
There may be no need to default: if and when hyperinflation kicks in then repayment in fixed (2011) dollars will be a trivial matter. I knew a fews guys in Russia (1992?) who knew the rouble was going to crash and had connections for large loans. They were able to buy small enterprises and ended up with the capital assets at no real cost.
This is most likely the best time to take out loans and purshase necessary, revenue producing assets.
It seems impossible to time a hyperinflation based on current USA conditions. How can you time loans on capital equipment and assets and be assured you are not the patsy/bagholder. If you default, the asset goes back to the lender and you are out the down payment or equity contribution.
The best advice I ever heard: "In this environment, debt is death to a new business". Invest accordingly!
maybe it 's time to do it again
i did that in aargentina 2001,paid back 25 cents on the dollar.nice deal
folks,wake up,it's all a joke,DEBT WILL NOT BE REPAID,your currency is already useless.If you sell something,make sure you buy something else WHILE there's someone dumb enough to hold this hot potato.Your government is preparing a surprise for you.
Buyer B has got the right idea. Your homestead looks like shite.
The sagging ridgeline is not the problem. It's the fact that there's no driveway--you have to drive right through the lawn to park your car. Whose idea was that?
Down boys. It's a cartoon house. And a crappy one as well -- not even a white picket fence.
Built just as well as the current crop of "homes".
True story: About 8 years ago I was winding down (selling) a remodeling business. We were called in by a selling realtor to fix some defects on a brand new home (been on the market for 6 months and finally sold). The inspector writes up the top row of bricks on this 2-story house was loose and pushing out the bargeboards. We found that the builder has run full rafters right on top of the plates with no collar beams. This was a very nice, high priced house. The house was collapsing -- builder bankrupted. No recovery for the homeowner. About a year later we were called by the homeowner to do an insurance job: The wood framed chimney had blown off into the front yard. It had only been nailed directly to the roof decking thru the plates with 6 10d common nails. Ah, the construction industry!
Yeah, but were the nails galvanized? Besides I was always taught gravity is our friend. I would sue Mother Nature for not respecting Father Gravity.
What I find interesting is that tax assesments of homes are way over the current market price. In my local juristiction, my house is assessed at $85k, but would probably only fetch $60k. My wife's great aunt's house has been on the market for over 6 months, assessed at 80K last offer was around 59K. The local government is the last to throw in the towel and start assessing lower.
This topic has been covered ad nauseum. Property taxes have been going up to fund the local political leviathan. They used the money from peak prices to expand local government and then failed to lower taxes following the housing crunch. You should contest the assessment and get involved with local politics to keep your taxes low and services shut down.
Exactly! And when they threaten to cut back on police and fire tell them to go ahead, you just bought a new .45 ACP and 3000 count of 230 gr. FMJ rounds of ammo.
Question them: which would you prefer, me to enforce the law or you?
Stop being such dependent, servile pussies.
~D'jean Splicer
so yer gun puts out fires? damn dude, link???
Question is, how many houses actually burn down?
I have sometimes wondered whether we (society) mightn't be better served by simply dispensing with all fire fighting stuff (paid, anyway), letting stuff burn to the ground, and then rebuilding it. For this to really pay, you'd also have to do away with all the mandated fire sprinkler crap, the mandated reserve water tank crap, the mandated minimum driveway crap, etc. Make it so people can build a house for $40k or less, and, if one burns down, we can rebuild. Bet it'd cost a lot less than all this one-adam-12 crap going on now.
I admit there is a human element implicated somewhere in my idea, but man ... if I'm too stupid to get out of a burning house, well, do any of you give a crap? I should hope not. Well, actually, I'd like to think that at least one of you would say, tut-tut, what a shame. We'll miss him.
But I'd die much happier knowing that my lack of a proper survival instinct did not add 40 or 50% to the price of your house, and/or another ? $500 a year ? $1,000 a year? in taxes to pay for all of the grotesquely overpaid, underworked, and redundant firefighters on the dole.
The paid firefighters' union management keeps trying to eliminate volunteer firefighting companies all across the country. SO FUCK THEM.
The odds of a fire are really low (.08% in the US according to one source). Fire insurance is a real racket and so are fire depts. The exception is in tightly built areas where the fire can spread one building to the next very easily.
An armed society is a civil society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm1PEY8F4xE
So....if these guys were prepared for the SWAT team...what makes you think they give a flying rat's ass about your pea-shooter as a deterrent?
I'm pretty sure the guys that knocked over both gas stations within three blocks of my place were armed, but the fact that they killed the attendant in each instance seems less than civil, perhaps they said something about their mommas...or the NRA.
LAPD has an average IQ that should preclude them from being granted human rights, much less guns and badges. With an entire gun store at their disposal, the professionals reached for varmint guns. They failed to do in over six hundred rounds what any redneck could have been with two. That incident is testament to the utter waste of public funds on law enforcement or crime response.