Real Estate
More foreclosure madness…
These folks should never been allowed to buy houses…
Some South Floridians who lose their houses to foreclosure try to get even. They’ll strip the plumbing, ruin the carpets and rip out doors.
Exasperated lenders are getting wise to the ruse and offering “cash for keys” deals, essentially paying homeowners as much as $2,000 not to take [...]
A change in the homeownership rate
After three decades of stability, the national rate of homeownership suddenly began rising around 1995. The rush to buy homes fueled an enormous surge in housing construction and home prices. Experts differed on the cause of the increase in homeownership, from 64.2% of households in early 1995 to 69.1% in early 2005. Was it the [...]
James Howard Kunstler: The tragedy of suburbia
From the Ted talks series, James Howard Kunstler talks about suburban sprawl and the loss of urban design. It’s a longish video (21+ minutes) but still worth watching.
My favorite quote:
“If you stand at the apron of the Walmart over here and try to look at the Target over here, you can’t see it because of [...]
New Urban Cowboy Trailer
After visiting Chicago for a week, I’ve learned to appreciate the urban lifestyle. Having the ability to walk, grab a cab or take a train to anything you desire allows you to experience everything about a city instead of zipping through it in a car. I’ve quickly learned to hate the suburbs, where I currently [...]
Robert Kiyosaki and the housing market
“Do you think the Federal Reserve should intervene to save the economy by dropping interest rates?” My reply then as well as now: “No. This is a capitalist system, not a communist one. Anyone who expects the government to bail them out every time their greed and stupidity causes them to lose money is being [...]
RottenNeighbor.com
RottenNeighbor.com - I don’t know, there’s something about this that screams bad idea.
More Mortgage bad news
Nation’s mortgage troubles worsen
Homeowners with adjustable-rate mortgages, struggling to deal with sharp increases in their loan payments, pushed the nationwide foreclosure rate to a record 0.65 percent this spring as the crisis in subprime lending intensified.
The problem was largely limited to the industrial Midwest and to four housing-boom states — California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona. [...]
It just keeps getting worse…
Home resales still on the skids in July [Orlando Sentinel]
Subprime mortgages affect our brains
FMRI research shows that long-term decision-making takes place in a different part of the brain from short-term decisions — so when you offer someone a cheap two-year mortgage followed by 28 years of scorchingly high interest rates, the short-term side jumps in and overrides the sober long-term mind.
Read the whole article.
(Link courtesy of BoingBoing)
The scariness that is mortgage lending…
Taken from the Prosper.com forums:
(The full post)
One of the things I’ve observe walking the neighborhoods in my neck of the woods is the push effect caused by loose lending standards.
There was a neighborhood of $150K to $200k homes I walked that had become populated by what appeared to be ghetto people. It was once populated [...]
