Here is your open thread for Monday June 8th, 2009. You may post random links and off-topic discussions here. Also, if you have an idea or a topic you’d like to see covered in an article, please make it known.
Be sure to also check out the forums, and get your word in the user-driven discussions there!
David Losh » Jun 8, 2009 at 8:06 am
Good Morning!
The discussion about how best to value property got me thinking about all the macro economic discussions that have gone on in the open threads. There are the government collapse theories, the monetary fund theories, and global credit crisis theories, along with deflation, inflation discussions.
Let’s pretend that mortgage backed securities had something to do with the economy today. Let’s just pretend because it is sooo ridiculous.
A property is worth what it will rent for.
You may not know that but the bank does. You may be a home owner buying a white picket fence, but the lender and investor buying your Note knows that a property is only worth what it will rent for.
So, if an investor is buying a Note or security backed by a Note how did they miss the fact the asset was so over priced?
You as the home owner, or buyer of a home can claim that a property is worth whatever the market will bear, but investors know better.
I know exactly what all of this is about. This is about money. Wealth doesn’t need dollars. Wealth right now is claiming poor little me, we are losing all of this money, give us your tax dollars, help me, please.
We are in a contrived credit crisis based on over valued assets. How could the global economic community of very smart hedge fund managers miss that?
I don’t think they did.
searayman » Jun 8, 2009 at 9:16 am
Interesting article in the Atlanta Journal….we down here in the south take our foreclosed properties seriously. :-)
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2009/06/07/atlanta_vacant_properties.html?cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab
TJ_98370 » Jun 8, 2009 at 9:38 am
.
Woohoo! Go buy a house in Bremerton / Silverdale and enjoy a guaranteed 5.2% annual appreciation for the next 10 years!
The Top 10 Housing Markets for the Next 10 Years
Kary L. Krismer » Jun 8, 2009 at 9:53 am
RE: TJ_98370 @ 3 – A good part of what drove up Kitsap County was our prices over here. So I don’t think they’re nearly as isolated as what the article would suggest.
Scotsman » Jun 8, 2009 at 10:28 am
Happy news from a local blogger:
http://economicedge.blogspot.com/2009/06/tale-of-two-depressions.html
TJ_98370 » Jun 8, 2009 at 10:38 am
RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 4 –
I’m shocked that you would suggest that US News would publish exaggerations.
Kary L. Krismer » Jun 8, 2009 at 10:44 am
By TJ_98370 @ 6:
I’m not sure if I detect sarcasm there, but their underlying source is Economy.com, which I attack with some frequency.
TJ_98370 » Jun 8, 2009 at 10:54 am
RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 7 –
My lame attempt at humor.
The Tim » Jun 8, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Real estate’s perfect storm?
For reals this time guys. Seriously. C’mon, buy something! Please?
Scotsman » Jun 8, 2009 at 4:38 pm
RE: The Tim @ 9 –
Wow. I hope she goes “all in” and loads up on rentals. With hyper-inflation just around the corner, they should cash flow within a year. She’s gonna be RICH! You go, girl!
Angie » Jun 8, 2009 at 4:39 pm
I just got a big laugh out of this (been a Lounge Lizards fan for years) and thought you all might like it too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnE5zvosplc
Scotsman » Jun 8, 2009 at 6:54 pm
By David Wilson
June 8 (Bloomberg) — U.S. housing prices are in the midst
of a decline that may last for years, according to Robert J.
Shiller, a finance professor at Yale University.
Shiller, who helped create home-price indexes bearing his
name, wrote in a New York Times story yesterday that declines in
real estate tend to be relatively long-lasting. As an example,
he mentioned land prices in Japan’s major cities, which fell for
15 straight years after a 1980s housing bubble burst.
The CHART OF THE DAY shows what happened in Japan, based on
data compiled by the country’s Real Estate Institute. Prices in
the Tokyo area and in five other cities — Kobe, Kyoto, Nagoya,
Osaka and Yokohama — sank 76 percent from 1990 through 2005.
Less than three years have passed since the Standard &
Poor’s/Case-Shiller indexes of U.S. home prices peaked. The S&P/
Case-Shiller national index has fallen 32 percent from a high in
the second quarter of 2006, as depicted in the chart.
Herman » Jun 8, 2009 at 8:01 pm
This is the MLS photo for a home that just listed today. Come on people, let’s put some effort into this. http://media.cdn-redfin.com/photo/1/bigphoto/074/29082074_5_0.jpg
Scotsman » Jun 8, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Four Million Jobs Saved?
http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/10/news/obama_jobs.reut/
I don’t think we’re getting our money’s worth.
Hugh Dominic » Jun 9, 2009 at 5:45 am
RE: Scotsman @ 14 –
True we could get more people employeed if we went for dittch digging – but in theory these jobs will lead to new industries with a future….
Hugh Dominic » Jun 9, 2009 at 5:48 am
A few questions on the recent spike in interest rates:
Does anyone have a prediction on where they will peak or will we see them continue to rise?
And if they dont come back down quickly, how long will it take to see the impact on house prices – right away, weeks, months?
One Eyed Man » Jun 9, 2009 at 5:51 am
Who regulates best, market forces or the FDIC. Would the common man have stopped the bubble by moving funds out of financial institutions with lax lending policies if they weren’t protected by FDIC insurance? Is it better to stop runs on banks and leave oversight to the FDIC or to promote regulation through market forces and personal financial responsibility?
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/ContrarianChronicles/blame-reagan-for-our-financial-mess.aspx?page=1
David Losh » Jun 9, 2009 at 7:59 am
RE: The Tim @ 9 –
Inman is an interesting news source or it was at one time. Your blog may one day be the same sort of source for news.
Back in the day Real Estate professionals used to look for news in projecting trends. Now all anybody looks for is a daily affirmation to get out and sell, sell, sell.
In my time reading this blog and comparing the content to other sources of Real Estate information there is a consistent quality to the information along with the message.
How to broaden your appeal is a tough nut to crack. Nobody wants to hear negativity. We can see or people should be able to see that the statistics can show anything.
So what can you bring that will pin point the future trends of the Real Estate market place?
David Losh » Jun 9, 2009 at 8:18 am
RE: One Eyed Man @ 17 –
Ronald Reagan brought business to the forefront of the economy. It sounds strange to say, but we were seriously headed to becoming a welfare state until Reagan.
Deregulation gets blamed for a lot of things. Greenspan and FDIC are old arguments that have nothing to do with oversight.
Banks have always been corrupt. We can go back to the Old West, Great Depression, S&L scandal, and know banks, bankers, or financial institutions are crooks. These are the lowest form of business endeavor and yet we freely give them money.
Sniglet » Jun 9, 2009 at 8:35 am
But everyone knows that Japan’s experience with deflation is just the exception, and that their strange cultural values of saving and conformity just aren’t present in the US. We could never experience deflation in the US. No, not here…
softwarengineer » Jun 9, 2009 at 8:55 am
RE: Sniglet @ 20 –
HI SNIGLET:
There’s similarities between Japan’s old RE bubble and our’s today, but the differences between our countries savings rate is just part of it. The big difference between the old Japanese Bubble and our’s today is they had a strong industrial base and exported their own financial stabilitity.
We have Chinese IOUs.
This will contract our wages even worse [even the possible new "pie in the sky" green jobs only pay like $12/hr] with a concurrent stimulus debt that’s apparently causing mortgage interest rates to go up daily lately, check BECU, the current 30 year fixed is now 6.02% and rising….but the savers can get a 1.4% 12 month CD [LOL]
Inflation? perhaps in oil and food….but housing is clearly on a “nonstop” roller coaster crash deflation with lower American wages and higher mortgage interest rates making for a “witches brew” we’ve never seen before in American history.
patient » Jun 9, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Bernanke and co. are beeing subpoened for information regarding the BoA – Merril shotgun marriage. I would really like to see them being able to prove in court that Bernanke and Paulson illegally pressured Lewis to make the deal behind the back of investors in the sense that Lewis was told to not inform the investors about the state of affairs at Merril and the risk and downside of a merger to BoA . I have no doubt investors in BoA was robbed by Bernanke and Paulson by more or less forcing the marriage.
Scotsman » Jun 9, 2009 at 1:44 pm
RE: patient @ 22 –
Yup. Lots of questions now about DOJ and their involvement in the Chyrsler/Fiat deal too. Fun times ahead.
softwarengineer » Jun 9, 2009 at 3:00 pm
RE: Scotsman @ 23 –
HI SCOTSMAN:
I hear Obama is now demanding Pelosi and Reid go on a “pay as we go” budget diet; meaning no new budget without new budget axed [or new taxes, but believe me, that ain't going anywhere right now].
Doesn’t sound like the Congress and Senate we’ve seen the last 10 years does it? Its change alright, but moving toward the right type change. Check this blog I just posted on Dr. Roubini’s site out Scotsman….the economic manure in Europe has really hit the fan recently and it sure does remind me exactly of America too [thank God for UK news sources]:
I THINK EUROPE IS ABOUT 6-12 MONTHS AHEAD OF AMERICA IN THIS RECESSION/DEPRESSION/STAGFLATION OR WHATEVER THE HADES WE CALL OUR CURRENT ECONOMIC MESS
Note this UK news article calls it a “depression”….won’t see that name for it on American mainstream media. Also the blog above refernces a 16% unemployment rate, I believe it was a 16.7% unemployment rate calculated with severely underemployed added in. But……America’s workforce is haunted by a mass new labor class like it never has in past recessions, called contract workers. When contractors are fired, they get no unemployment and the unemployment rate doesn’t count them either….they remind me of unemployed college students and the masses of give-ups, as they aren’t counted either.
Check out the UK article on the current economic destruction of Europe, if you’re like me, it will make your hairs stand up on your neck [it sounds too much like present America]:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/ambrose_evans-pritchard/blog/2009/06/08/europe_swings_right_as_depression_deepens
David Losh » Jun 9, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Unfortunately, or fortunately the European landscape is far different than is was in 1930. 16% unemployment is pretty standard. immigration is from Africa.
The French and English were colonial powers. World War II finished off the monarchies. Today you have socialist states.
The big difference will be the banking sector snots who no longer have jobs.
Scotsman » Jun 9, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Hmmm. Five months into the recovery plan, it looks like we need another plan…
http://michaelscomments.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/stimulus-vs-unemployment-may-corrected.gif?w=460&h=280
Scotsman » Jun 9, 2009 at 7:35 pm
State by state unemployment- in pictures- check out Washington! To infinity… and beyond!
http://applicant.com/from-4-129-the-state-of-unemployment-across-us/