bubbleinfo.com

Hat tip to Chris for sending this along:

LINK TO ACTUAL CRAIGSLIST AD

I could see this in Palmdale, or maybe Victorville…….but could it happen here?

An update on Flint, MI:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/20/AR2009062000956.html

An excerpt:

Then he looks at what’s left of the neighborhood – blocks lined with bruised homes and broken windows. Two streets over, someone has nailed a plywood sign to a tree: “No Prostitution Zone.” On three blocks of Jane, the city is targeting 14 homes for demolition, four of which have already been scarred by fires.

“My dad, he can’t come down this street anymore. … It’s too hard to see,” Kildee says. “Because his whole life was here.”

What was once Buick City is largely a cement prairie now, and General Motors, which once employed more than 80,000 in the city of its founding, has cut its Flint work force to about 6,000. Flint’s population, which peaked at 197,000, dwindled to 115,000 in 2007, and falling.

To stabilize the city, Kildee started the Genesee County Land Bank, which has taken title to 9,000 properties since 2002, tearing down 1,000 and selling or rehabbing others.

The foreclosure crisis has made the job even tougher, leaving the Land Bank with at least 1,000 more abandoned homes to demolish.

All types of homeowners are thinking about walking away – in this case, the builders of the seven new homes on Newland Ct. in Carlsbad formed an LLC so they’ll probably dodge the ruining-of-credit problem. 

Too bad they didn’t sharpen their pencil a little sooner on their prices.  When they started selling these in the summer of 2006, they were looking for $1.4 to $1.5 million, and when the first set of listings expired at the end of 2007, they were down to $1.2 million.  But buyer expectations were either dropping faster, or close to non-existent for 3,500 sf homes that back to Carlsbad Village Drive.

The current listings on the Newland Seven are on the range $895,000 to $995,000, but too little, too late.

The lender, United Commercial Bank, is foreclosing on their $6.4 million loan, and had their trustee sale scheduled for today – but it postponed to next month.  The profit was too tight – so their business decision became obvious – they decided to walk too.

The walkaway option will occur to many, and there’s not much to stop people.  I think the LLC will be obligated to pay tax on the loss endured by the lender – wasn’t the tax relief offered only to those who owner-occupied?

Should the government reverse the decision on not taxing the money lost by the banks by owner-occupiers?  That decision really opened the floodgates, and it’s probably too late to turn back now.