The printed version: http://www.cnbc.com/id/41182255
Jim the Realtor
Jim is a long-time local realtor who comments daily here on his blog, bubbleinfo.com which began in September, 2005. Stick around!
Jim Klinge
Klinge Realty Group
Broker-Associate, Compass
Are you looking for an experienced agent to help you buy or sell a home?
Contact Jim the Realtor!
- 682 S. Coast Hwy 101, Suite #110
Encinitas, CA 92024 - (858) 997-3801 call or text
- klingerealty@gmail.com
CA DRE #01527365, CA DRE #00873197
Things in real estate:
1. Appraisal game is rigged. The appraisers are given the sales price, and their job is to use formulas to justify it, subjectively. A lot of gray area there.
2. At least half the time you are being asked to buy someone else’s disaster (physical or financial) with not nearly enough discount to feel comfortable.
3. Listing agents are prone to cheating, and playing games during negotiations. Some are inadvertent – they don’t even know how they are screwing people, many times it’s their own clients.
4. There always seems to be multiple offers for all the good deals.
5. By the time you move in, you’ll just be happy it’s over.
Sounds like you need a day off, Jim.
And yes, it’s too darn early. Esp. for a Saturday.
Cramer, right?
Not me, I’m good.
It is a grueling pace though for most buyers. Having to keep researching on-line, and then trying to fit in times to see properties in person isn’t easy – and people get tired of it.
When you do find a house of interest, you find that trying to buy them at a good price is tough too – see items 1-4.
But if you know it’s coming and learn to cope, you can take it in stride.
Well seems to me that NC got smacked hard 4Q last year on the home price front, but I do see Job recovery in the High Tech happening in a big way right now, don’t know about any other sector but in the end it’s all about Job’s.
As employment improves so will housing IMO .
Cramer – the modern day PT Barnum of finance. His schtick reminds me of the betting services with their “guaranteed locks” – just say enough crap, some of which is contradictory, and then highlight the times you were correct. I remember this clip and his “housing has stabilized” call, and thought that while he might be correct for the heartland, the bubble areas still have a long way to go.
Counterpoint view:
blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2011/01/14/housing-hobbles-into-2011-heres-why-its-not-getting-better/?partner=yahootix
Listening to “experts” or reporters is always at one’s own risk. Last May, a friend sent me Richard Russell’s Dow Theory which said, “sell all stocks, the mother of all market crashes is coming.” Well. . .I have been in the market since 1975, and thought he was out to lunch, because I saw the Corporate Economy recovering nicely. . .I bought, and just had the best year since 1998!! As for Cramer? His batting average isn’t that great, but I do agree that the lack of new homes, the continued increase in population, and the improving job market will cause a “shortage” in a year or so.
Robo-signing comes to the non-judicial states:
Walter Hackett, a lawyer with Inland Counties Legal Services, in San Bernardino, Calif., and a former banker with Bank of America Corp. and Union Bank, has filed several cases contesting notices of default, on the grounds that the employees signing such notices were working for companies that are not the noteholders — or even their appointed agents.
“A huge percentage of notices of default and notices of trustee sales are legally questionable and probably void,” Hackett said. “Nobody with the authority to trigger the nonjudicial foreclosure process is triggering it — only third parties who claim they have the right to do so are triggering it.”
After a notice of default is sent to the borrower and filed at the county recorder’s office, a notice of sale is typically published in the local newspaper and the sale of the property often takes place without the borrower even knowing the home has been sold to another party.
O. Max Gardner 3rd, a consumer bankruptcy attorney at Gardner & Gardner PLLC in Shelby, N.C., said the default notice is “the key legal document that is sent to the borrower” before a notice of sale.
http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/176_14/new-pt-of-foreclosure-contention-1031585-1.html
That link from MDS should be removed. It’s nothing more than an ad for buying gold — not housing market analysis.
Agreed, I disabled it.
The alternative arguments:
1. There aren’t enough ready, willing, and able buyers to soak up the 12 million in default.
2. There aren’t enough buyers willing to pay these prices.
3. Without Fannie/Freddie/FHA, there are no mortgages.
4. Rates have to go up sooner or later, and when they do prices must come down.
Jim, you are a class act for putting your “Things in real estate…” comments out there. It is rare to find such candor among REALTORS.
Keep up the good work.
Apparently the Realtor we were working with decided it wasn’t worth it for him to stick around for more than a month with us. “Not on the same page” he said….whatever the frak that means.
The beauty of the internet is I’m now free to make reviews of people and Realtors…so I did…on Zillow.
I caught him later begging to know how he can remove the 1 star rating he received.
Oh well.
Jim you summed it up. I’ll go further and say the entire game of RE is rigged…from the State’s tax collecting scam to the NAR’s mafia fees.
The quality of homes out there is absurd given the conditions they are in…absolutely, positively absurd. We’re in a big quagmire.
I love seeing Cramer of all people say he’s disgusted about accountability, when his perma bull mentality drove people off a cliff with recommendations to stay with companies like Bear Stearns all the way to zero… did he ever take accountability for any of that?
I usually think Cramer is a contrarian indicator, but if he’s right, I guess I bought right at the bottom. But our area’s listing on redfin has a bunch of red dots, so I’m guessing things are just flat-lined.
Nick, to be fair to Cramer, he said that you can keep your money in the Bear Stearns accounts, not to stick with the Bear Stearns stock holdings, as is commonly said on blogs.
That said, I believe he’s wrong with the bottom of the housing market. Things will just drip, drip, drip down a percent or two a year for 3-4 years…a repeat of the early 1990s.