Rhythmism.com

anyone own any property? Im thinking of buying property in jersey, partly to build up credit, partly to make some gravy by selling it off in few years. any tips for buying? im currently doing some research on ownership basics and all the financial terms and laws. a friend of mine made $20k last year by simply buying an apt in jersey, living in it for a year and then selling it (property value went up a few %), 20k for doing nothing but living in it.

i wouldn't buy anything anywhere right now, but maybe that's just me.

everything is working against real estate right now and for the foreseable future...

1. political climate = democrats = higher real estate taxes and potentially higher capital gains taxes

2. economy = due for recession and potential stagflation.

3. interest rate picture = probably stagnate for a while, but certainly not going down

4. price trends = down (real estate trends traditionally last 7 years).

Only 20K? Man, some of my clients have flipped properties for a lot more than that.

Unfortunately, that's about done, the market is SUUUUUUUUUUCKING and appraisals aren't coming in anymore. I've seen appreciable value declines in recent history.

You may want to wait until that bottoms out or else you'll LOSE 20K for doing nothing but living in it.

how will i know when its 'bottomed' out? any trend indications that i should be looking for? ps - democrats suck.

when banks allow you to start assuming other peoples mortgages with no down payment...

seriously.

and this will happen... foreclosure rates in NJ have gone though the roof...

seriously though...i'm waiting for all the bank forclosures and then i plan to prey on those to get some good deals....

its sad, but smart.

flipping real estate is not as easy as you may think... and against popular belief maxing out with a mortgage actually hurts your credit history in many ways, more then it helps it...

flipping real estate in the tri-state area is passed it's prime, you need to look more toward the south-west at places like austin, santa fe and arizona to make any serious investment work for you today...

i hear North Carolina is a decent market now.

even in places like phoenix its not looking as good these days...
the reality is, you can make money anywhere if you are smart about what you purchase and where...even here in the northeast...if you purchase something desirable in a desirable location, you'll be able to turn a profit.

i recall mentioning this during the summer after my trip to charlotte.

friend of mine's parents just got a sick house outside of Raleigh for like 180k.

fuckin' stole it.

not unless your willing to sit on it for at least 5 years... housing market isn't what is was in 2003 thru late 2005, too many homes on the market today, not enough buyers and too many banks sold houses for more then their market worth with interest only loans to families who are behind in payments, now banks are taking back houses and being forced to sell many below their original contracted mortgage loans... I've seen a 30% decrease in some of the best communities in the tri-state area just in the past 4 months, gonna be sometime before it hits bottom with another 10-15% decrease likely... gonna be at least 2009 or above before home prices and equity start to increase in the northeast...

ps: NC is a hot market right now, from what I hear as well

yeah, there is alot of really nice homes for mad cheap down there...lake front property...real nice stuff. one of the guys that worked at teh charlotte office did tons of real estate shit down there and was bankin nice. he got involved with the retail real estate of some new buildings in downtown charlotte as well as buying land right outside the main area of the city based on the rate of expansion...that land with be work a ton in only a few years when some huge company wants to build a skyscrapper on it...

he had a lakefront home outside charlotte with a hot boat as well as a new luxury condo in downtown in some new high rise...real nice stuff they were building too...and the women down there are fuckin smokin!

the nightlife was ok too...im not a nascar guy...and its certainly no new york...but the people go out and party...lots of out door events downtown...the only thing that sucks is that everything is chain stores...

so then 2008 and 2009 is when i will buy some property....

but yeah...i think its fucked up how easy it was for people to over extend themselves...that shouldn't have been legal.

that and everything closes at 2am and they being to kick you out at 1:30.

thats at pretty much every other city in the states other than miami, new york, and vegas...

tru.

i've grossed ~200k for living in mine over the past 2 years.

oh well.

p.s. can't win if you don't play.

and just remember another thing....rich muthafuckers want to live in this hellhole/paradise. period.

Don't buy any property until about mid to late 08...

yeah cause by then the market with certainly bottom out, cause we'll all be dead.

Real estate is a fucking pain in my ass, I will never buy property again, untill im sure its in a area i will spend the rest of my life in..

You in loans too?

It's unreal, some of those high-growth areas of Long Island are the hardest hit now. We saw a couple appraisals drop by a third in 11 months, several of our clients are underwater now, one had more than a million on paper erased.

March 4, 2007
Gretchen Morgenson
Mortgages May Be Messier Than You Think

WHAT investors don’t know about why the home mortgage securities market is in distress could fill volumes. As is often the case, only after fiery markets burn out do we see the risks that buyers ignore and sellers play down.

Because so many players in this world have an interest in keeping risks under wraps, a complete understanding of the mortgage market’s ills may take time. Unlike recent corporate disasters that have occurred at hyperspeed — think Enron and WorldCom — the mortgage securities boom seems to be unwinding in slow motion.

But trains wrecks are train wrecks, even when they occur at a crawl.

Wall Street, of course, prefers a more upbeat approach. And by the end of last week, many there were celebrating the fact that the indexes on mortgage securities, which had been in free fall, had stabilized. Big brokerage firms have also tried to persuade investors that mortgage woes would be limited to subprime loans — those given to people with weak credit histories.

But last Thursday, the annual report from Countrywide Financial, a major lender, told a different story. While it confirmed fears about subprime loans — 19 percent of those in its portfolio were more than 30 days delinquent at the end of last year, up from 15 percent in 2005 — Countrywide also indicated that the percentage of prime borrowers encountering difficulties is rising. Delinquencies in the company’s prime home equity loan portfolio totaled 2.93 percent, almost double last year’s 1.57 percent.

And consider the disclosure last Thursday of American Home Mortgage Investment, a home mortgage originator and investor that specializes in loans to those with middle-tier, not weak, credit histories. As of year-end, the company said, 8.13 percent of its loans held for sale (not investment) were non-accruing. During the same period in 2005, that figure was just 0.43 percent.

“The problems are far broader than subprime,” said Josh Rosner, a managing director at Graham-Fisher in New York and an expert on mortgage securities. Mr. Rosner says he believes that, absent a huge jump in home prices, investors will soon recognize that credit quality problems have also begun to seep into “the upper tranches” of the loan market.

Credit risk, of course, shows up over months and years, while market risk plays out in seconds and minutes. As such, it is easy for some to say that a big decline in the mortgage securities index is an overreaction.

Perhaps it is. But the fact that loan losses have not yet shown up in mortgage holdings should calm no one. The way Wall Street packages home loans and sells them to investors adds to their complexity and makes them far tougher to value than other securities.

Moreover, a lag in reported defaults is almost certainly attributable to the increasingly aggressive practice of loss mitigation among lenders, in which they try to keep stretched borrowers from defaulting. But investors get little to no information about how lenders work with troubled borrowers and whether those efforts actually cure the problem — or simply postpone the inevitable. As a result, investors do not know whether the default figures they are seeing reflect reality.

In 2002, the Office of Inspector General in the Department of Housing and Urban Development reviewed the department’s loss-mitigation program and found some disturbing practices. Financial institutions that were surveyed from May 1999 to April 2001 in many cases chose to delay foreclosures even when it was obvious that loan workouts would probably not succeed, the study said. The audit reviewed practices from 1999 to 2001, but the practices remain very much in place today.

Mortgage servicers “are approving borrowers for loss mitigation when, based on the servicers’ expertise and past experience with delinquent borrowers, the workout is unlikely to succeed,” the report said. “These actions are delaying the foreclosure process, increasing the cost of foreclosure, and subsidizing borrowers who do not pay their mortgage for extended periods of time.”

The report noted several examples of borrowers who received workouts under truly kooky circumstances. One borrower explained that he could not pay his mortgage because of gambling losses; he received a workout and later filed for bankruptcy protection. In another case, a delinquent borrower got a loss-mitigation deal even though he was continuing to make monthly payments on his Mercedes-Benz that exceeded those on his mortgage.

Loss-mitigation practices grew out of the significant losses incurred by big lenders in the real estate collapse of the late 1980s. Because lenders were experiencing losses of 30 percent to 60 percent of the outstanding home loans in foreclosures, they started identifying ways to keep borrowers in their homes.

Some plans allow a delinquent borrower to add missed payments to the mortgage and pay them over time. Others extend the life of the loan, or allow the suspension of payments temporarily, bringing the mortgage current by using an interest-free loan from the Federal Housing Administration.

While it is a splendid idea to do whatever is necessary to try to cure a sick borrower, it is worth remembering that the rollover of nonperforming loans was central to what made the savings and loan mess of the early 1990s so disastrous. And it is well worth asking: are loss-mitigation practices predatory since they give lenders an opportunity to squeeze the last ounce of blood out of a terminally ill patient?

Aggressive approaches to loss mitigation, Mr. Rosner said, mean that less than half of mortgages that in prior years would have been foreclosed no longer are. Unfortunately, how many of these workouts actually succeed is a question for which investors and even regulators have no answer.

Academic studies suggest that within the first two years of a workout, re-defaults can approach 25 percent. But there are no publicly available data to analyze the success rates of loss mitigation. And this is something investors sorely need.

“There is nothing particularly wrong with loss mitigation,” Mr. Rosner said. “What is wrong is a lack of transparency in whether it is effective or predatory. How can we be surprised when volatility rises? The buyer is recognizing that he does not have appropriate information.”

No one likes to face ugly realities like financially ailing borrowers who are so strapped that nothing can save them. Not the lenders, not the Wall Street firms that sell the securities, not even the holders. But experienced investors know that a reliance on fantasy will only prolong the pain that is racking the huge and important mortgage market.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

new condo developments in NYC are still offering "Only 5% down required!!! OMGLOLZ!!!!" deals. some companies still have not woken up.

I think I need to find a new job...

25G's down on a half million dollar shoebox. The gods must be crazy.

step 1) find yourself an estates attorney in nyc.

step 2) hunt for buildings which have been neglected, but are currently being disputed over, with commercial spaces on the first floor, in a growing (ie gentrifying) neighborhood.

step 3) bid a reasonable amount below market value.

step 4) happy time investor!

stop trolling goupie.

wait a second...let me get this straight...


buy low, sell high.


oh...word.