Oct '07: "Honey, we got the notice that out homeloan is going to reset next month. Can you call Ditech next week and have them put us into that lower rate re-fi they promised us back in Aug '05?"Nov '07: "Wow, I knew it would go up but I didn't think... No matter. It's only for a month. Did the new guy at Ditech or the others you called at Countrywide or IndyMac call back yet?
Dec '07: "I'm sure glad we didn't go overboard on Black Thursday. These gas prices don't help either and are you sure there's no more overtime at the shop?"
Jan '08: "Honeybear. I've been looking at the bills coming in. Did you know that our decision to start making just the minimums like we've been doing while we get the mortgage mess straightened out allows them to bump our interest rate?"
"Okay. I think I've got it. We'll pay off this one card that went to 18.49% and shuffle these two with that transfer offer. Then we'll just ignore the mortgage because that Angelo guy working the phones at Countrywide said we can wrap up the whole re-fi thing next month anyway."
Feb '08: "What? What do you mean nobody is bringing their BMWs for airdams, Recarros and metallic paint anymore? They can't lay you off, you are one of their highest paid employees! Bad timing too as the loan against 401k program at my office was suspended under some silly reserve requirement rule. We'll just make due with the cashout re-fi until this all blows over next month."
Mar '08: "I don't care what your records indicate! We paid that last month."
Apr '08: "Hon. Sweetie. Do you think with all the time you have you could fix up the place? Between all the work we've put into it and having owned it for almost three years we could sell for enough to cover everything, get a fresh start and maybe even have a little left over for a vacation... Honey? Have you been drinking your breakfast again?"
May '08: "The realtor tells me we can't get what we paid nevermind the 30% appreciation that's happened since we bought. What should we do? Ask 25% over purchase and forget the vacation or go to Help-U-Sell?"
39 comments:
first
it's easy now that the IAFF crowd has exited the building. granted i was drawn here b/c of that.
Darn, read it murst.
Anyways, so true.
Also, funny thing. I got a picture of a green hot tub yesterday. I'm seeing a lot of items going on Craigslist. Supposedly, people are saying if you have been foreclosed on, you can sell everything BUT the structure. So I'm seeing people selling all of the doors, cabinets, tiles, appliances, heaters, in wall whole house speaker systems, sinks, etc.
One place was a really a really high end home in my area with custom cabinets, granite, and very expensive appliances and electronics. It was crazy!!! He sold the vanities, sinks, I mean everything!!!!
I'm used to the 'old' way when you 'sell' your house. Everything fixed to the house/structure stays unless in the disclosure.
I had better get a ROTFL or at least a LoL or I'm gonna go back to photshopping flipper butts n'Clipboards.
Oh, in case you were wondering, when I saw green hot tub, I mean like Casey Serin Modesto pool green. Pond scum and all!
Jake,
So right. If you need a tool to take it then it is part of the house. What you are seeing is theft and spite. and boy are we gonna see some spite. I'm already hearing stories of concrete into the waste lines and such.
Dawg,
About the concrete. I had a scumbag a few houses down from me who was foreclosed on this past spring. He bragged that he was moving and the bank paid him $2,000. He didn't point out that he was foreclosed on and the bank wanted him out before he got the bright idea to strip the copper or do something spiteful like you mentioned.
Wonder how much the public at large know about folks stripping these houses out of whatever they can before returning the keys. Sure as hell the few pro-bail out people would have second thoughts.
Anybody pro-bailout is already wearing blinders. There's nothing that won't become a sympathy play to them. Don't get me wrong. I wish there was something to be done. I even pushed for those things to be done 2-3 years ago. It is just plain old too late to fix the airplane. It is going to crash and putting more people in the accident zone (shering the pain) won't change that.
Bumped up the CFC stop twice today, baking in a very nice gain.
GS ran past my interest zone today. If it comes back to 185 I may enter as a buy-and-hold in lieu of a trade, but in my tax advantaged account just in case.
Credit cards bump your rate WAY more than 18%.
I was late with a BOFA credit card payment and they raised the rate for both my bofa cards to 35%!!
I was pissed. The letter said they would lower it if i paid on time for 6 months. I always always pay 100% of the balance, just forgot. And i have perfect credit, perfect hair, and a billion dollars in the bank. I dont even care since i alway pay it off so actually i pay no interest ever (unless i forget a payment, then its now 35%, ouch!)
I can imagine they use any and every excuse to bump rates on people.
35%!?! I must live in the right part of town. I've got revolving credit on some cards at 0%, 0.9% and a small amount at the usurious rate of 2.99%.
Yeah, Downey, BofA and several others are notorious with their process delays and missing comma schemes.
Great timeline. Creative. Where's the entry for when the family has to take in their degenerate prodigal son-brother-sister-niece because they got burned flipping houses?
Another entry with the wife saying "I get paid more if I swallow" would have been gritty. Is that pushing it too far?
@ROb
LOL!!!! ROTFLMAO!! I laffed so hard hersheyd my pants..
Anyways, congrats FCB, way to go. Luckily I took Rob's advice and got out before the up swing. Would have cost me 24K, sweeeet, instead I made 9K
That is just pathetic, but then again, look at the low life scumbags (like Casey) who were buying these houses in the first place. so not only did the borrowers just walk away losing nothing except their credit which sucked in the first place, but then they decide to grab everything not nailed down, which isn't theirs in the first place. Does that mean I can go into a foreclosure and grab what I want?
But So not only did they cost the lenders money, but then they are stealing even more so that the lenders take an even bigger hit. Who the hell is going to pay full price for a house with no cabinets, pipes, bathtubs, toilets, lights, or windows? Don't forget the granite countertops and travertine tiles.
do a CL search in a foreclosure zone for 'household' with the keyword 'stainless' and you will find the failed flippers gutting the home out!
http://inlandempire.craigslist.org/search/hsh?query=stainless&minAsk=min&maxAsk=max
hilarious.
I wish I was remodeling now!(not)
oh man so much fun on CL
http://sacramento.craigslist.org/hsh/421385342.html
"My husband and I purchased this range hood a year and a half ago for $400.00 for a cabinet we recently removed"
A year and a half ago was when the last of the fools were buying flips. Casey's entry point into the market EXACTLY. He really was the last passenger to board the titanic , ("whew I almost missed the boat!")
LOL. I was looking at the IE Craiglist household ads a few hours ago and started wondering if that's what was going on.
A few months ago you never saw that many nearly new appliances, sinks, etc on there.
The IE is still swirling the bowl. This is going to get much worse.
So not only did they cost the lenders money, but then they are stealing even more so that the lenders take an even bigger hit. Who the hell is going to pay full price for a house with no cabinets, pipes, bathtubs, toilets, lights, or windows? Don't forget the granite countertops and travertine tiles.
This is where the bank "buyout" offer comes in. The deal's even SWEETER for the FB. They can quit paying the mortgage, live for free for a few months in a nice house, then the bank pays them thousands to leave without destroying anything. America is the greatest country ever! Where else can the average Joe get a deal like this?
The equity locusts have never descended upon Houston. I can prove it. Here's a nice little house. It has a decent-sized lot with an actual back yard in a good neighborhood. It's less than a mile from HP's Houston campus. $99k.
Now it IS in Houston, but I am not so sure that living in Houston is any worse than living in, say, Riverside.
That Houston house doesn't look too bad at first glance. But the seller used the word "sweet". That in itself would steer me away.
Re: BofA fees:
I recently received one of those multi-page forms listing the changes in my credit card account. Blah, blah, blah, eh -- what's this? Buried deep inside was a change to the "Default rate" of the card to 35%... guess that's the REAL rate of the card, and if you're sweet, they'll give you a lower rate until you forget a comma.
It's not legal, I guess, to change the deal THAT much without permission, so they gave complicated, opt-out instructions if you wanted to keep your current deal.
Pissed me off to waste a good stamp on them, but I bet it costs them a lot more than 41 cents to tabulate letters such as mine.
"Default" rate... grrrr... reminds me of CS and his 99% default rate with one loan company. Heck, I remember when anything over 19% in New York was "ursury"... what ever happened to that?
DCRogers
Dec '07: "I'm sure glad we didn't go overboard on Black Thursday. These gas prices don't help either and are you sure there's no more overtime at the shop?"
Sad but true. Due to the difficulty of hiring in the south bay, we have quite a bit of overtime available. Naturally, we have a few "overtime whores."
5 years ago: They would overtime for 3 months and they go blow 1/2 the money one weekend (the rest was already gone).
3 years ago: they were taking longer weekends. Fancier hotels, absolutely the best drinks.
1 year ago: overtime was cut off for a few months.
Now: They are working every hour of overtime they can get. Limit raised to 20 hours/week. I'm not hearing any stories of recent wild weekends except from the 'prudent ones' who spent 20 cents on the dollar compared to their over-debted buddies. Funny, the ones still having fun are renters too...
Got popcorn?
Neil
Rob-
Thanks for setting the story straight with Mike Hart.
I was away from the PC and came back to find that surprise. LOL.
@Neil:
Got popcorn?
It's a circus, Neil. At a minimum, you need peanuts and cotton candy added to your list.
Sac RE Agent said...
Legion, I appreciate the words. I wish that business was better but it's tough right now.
From what I can remember, you don't just take any listing. My fiancee used to do real estate, and she told me about all the other costs;advertising is the biggie (buying space every month takes dough, and if the house is overpriced, you get to watch your profit dwindle to nothing over a year, commisions are 1.5% to the owner of the office, 1.5% to you, and the other 3% to the sellers agent, so I know you don't make at ton with each sale like everybody thinks. So weed out the people with their heads in the sand.
Keep picking the right sellers, keep giving the truth about what their house SHOULD sell for, and get a streak of sold houses. You'll soon have a reputation as THE guy to go to if you are serious about getting your house sold.
@Neil Got popcorn
Hey I read your stuff on the Housing bubble blog all the time, you're hilarious!
Anyone care to take a stab at how much of yesterday's gains on CFC get given back today?
HAHA.
New Realtor™ commercial proclaiming now to be a "great time to buy" because we have so many "Choices" now.
I'm not joking, one of the FBs on the commercial says "when you have a family it's ALWAYS a great time to buy".
If they really want some credibility, they should have a commercial where the wife is saying to her husband
"Why do we have to sell, I love this house..I..love..this ..house. What? What? Besides suzanne said..."
Husband "Fuck Suzanne! She's the reason we're in this mess, and the 4 houses she bought as investment properties? They're in foreclosure! Wanna know why she hasn't called us back? Cause she is in hiding from all the people she fucked over with her bullshit research! We have to sell before we go into foreclosure ourselves!"
"but what about the garage you like so much?"
"remind me again why I married you?"
At the end of that retarded commercial, this guy says "We'd have missed the opportunity to buy this house if we hadn't bought right now!"
GIMME A BREAK!
BTW type "realtor" into you tube's search bar and you end up with slow-day MLM wannabe RE gurus like this guy.
Re: Bank of America
I'm not sure why Bank of America is still in business; their rates and fees, and particularly the games they play with credit card rates, are the worst in the industry. The only thing they have going for them is location, but unless you're moving across the country every year, you're better off going with a regional bank.
Re: Craigslist
Craigslist does in fact tell quite the story. I've been looking for housing in the D.C. area, and while it's not easy to find apartments in my price range (~$1800 for 2br) in decent areas, it's definitely possible. But search for apartments without a price filter, and you see a massive inventory of places for rent in the $3000++ range. Odd--that doesn't look like the going rate for rents as much as it looks like the payment on a severely overpriced condo.
CFC gaps up again, my long stop gets bumped up again.
Legion - seems like you are the only trader here. If CFC surpasses 20 I will initiated yet another short position.
Good luck mate!
RE: BAC, I too bank with a local but I LOVE their stock. 5.1% yield PLUS 13.4% annual appreciation over the last 5 years - I've been happy with it.
Sept '08:
"Give me your wallet or I'll blow your head off, motherfucker!"
PV:
"I'm not sure why Bank of America is still in business;"
It gives my spam-bucket lots of exercise...ditto MBNA.
My "cup" runneth over...
A house near us (5 houses down) was completely ripped apart last year. A couple bought and had no idea how much it would cost to repair, I mean replace the damage. It was a realtor who had it. He took out everything. The windows, doors, all the cabinets, all of the pipes, all of the wiring, every piece of metal, all of the flooring, the light switches, the garage door, the ceiling tiles, the carpet. He even axed most of the dry wall. I mean honestly, if there was a chance it could be removed, he removed it. The house was worth $550,000 but sold for $220,000. When I saw it, I told my husband that I would have knocked the whole thing down and only would have saved the footprint if it was good. We didn't go for it because we didn't have the time and I thought it was too big of a risk. And I thought adding the costs of knocking down and removing the remains of the house made it too expensive. I would have made the bank go way less than that. And I have NOOOOOO experience if this. My parents have built and bought houses partially finished. But they haven't bought 'teardowns'.
Hey TK, thanks for that you tube link to that piece of shit's video. Sheesh, we get pictures of people crying, a graduation, a lonely kid, a marriage, president Bush. so what the hell is he selling again? Oh yeah real estate guru.
@FCB
lol, ride em going up and ride em going down..good work and keep it up. Myself, I'm out for a while so I can go spend some of my cash:-)
I was thinking of going to a real estate seminar about how to make money in foreclosures....
Legion,
New post about 410 Avocado up that needs your attention.
Don't you understand? THIS is your RE seminar. The "tuition jar" is always open. ;-)
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