The blog of Brian Kirsten

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 out their frustrations on their properties before leaving. Roughly half of all foreclosed properties are returned to the bank with substantial damage, according to a national survey of 1,500 real estate agents by Campbell Communications, a marketing and research firm in Washington, D.C.

Facing foreclosure, residents are trashing homes

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 aging of the population? Or was it an expression of what President George W. Bush calls the "ownership society"? Neither. Surprising new research published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta concludes that the bulk of the increase was caused by innovations in the mortgage market, in particular the explosion of "piggyback" or "combo" loans that made it possible for people to make small or zero down payments. Young families with little savings flocked to those loans to buy first homes.

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 the curvature of the Earth."

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 live. It's almost like living rurally, with next to nothing of real interest closer than a 20 minute car ride. I get a feeling from the trailer of "New Urban Cowboy" that artist Michael E. Arth dislikes the suburban lifestyle as well, he decides to revitalize an urban area instead of building into the wilderness like so many of the builders in Florida like to do. The film is showing at the Global Peace Festival this Saturday, sadly I'll be out of town but it's something I'll definitely pick up when it hits DVD (preferably Blu-Ray).

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 foolish."

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. But some economists warned that the situation will worsen in coming months as an estimated 2 million more adjustable-rate mortgages, taken out with low introductory interest rates, begin resetting to much higher rates.

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.

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 by middle class families but they had put their modest homes up for sale and traded up when the loose lending standards allowed the low income to buy homes in formerly working class middle income neighborhoods. I imagine these middle income families then invaded a higher priced neighborhood, again with the help of loose lending standards, and then displaced the upper middle class to even more expensive neighborhoods and so on and so forth. When the market fully collapses, everyone will fall back into the neighborhoods they really belong based on income and class. That may leave lots of homes heavily discounted due to the excessive construction caused by the housing boom.