Friday, January 11, 2008

New Inventory A'Comin


How many Countrywide employees can afford their houses in the Thousand Oaks area? [Only the orange man raises his hand.]

13 comments:

w said...

Perhaps Ventura County can be declared a Federal Disaster? What would top it off is a real good freeze around March.

Property Flopper said...

Can't believe BofA is buying them - talk about throwing good money after bad. Not that I mind, I used to bank with BofA long, long ago and was VERY unhappy with them. Would love to see them suffer.

serinitis said...

There are three reasons I can see for BOA moving here.

1. The Feds are covering their asses so it is a no lose deal.

2. They are covering their asses from the 2 billion earlier purchase. We don't want to see any embarressment from their earlier deal gone south.

3. Buddies protecting each other. If CFC went bankrupt, the orange man would end up in an orange suit. This way they can claim there is no need for an investigation. and Mozillo will pay back his friends with some of the additional 100,000,000 he is getting out of this deal

ratlab said...

"the orange man would end up in an orange suit."

Classic. Well-played.

Rob Dawg said...

LoL, the talking heads on CNBC just said exactly the same things in the same order. It sounded like they were reading off the blog. ;-)

Peripheral Visionary said...

If CFC failed, it would be an unmitigated disaster for the market. This was equivalent in essence to the LTCM bailout; the participants realized that they were facing either a short-term loss or a market meltdown, and chose to take the loss.

BofA's main mistake was that it took the CFC burden all on itself. A couple more weeks and the Fed could have rounded up all the major banks, showed them CFC's finances, and given them the LTCM speech: "either you guys bail these idiots out or we all go down."

Rob Dawg said...

The regulators fingerprints are all over this deal. In that respect BAC did a smart thing. They took one for the team and when the really nasty stuff starts flying they have a favor to call in.

w said...

Hillary is busy in LV getting out the illegal immigrant vote.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/13702902.html

The money quote... "We treat these problems as if one is guacamole and one is chips, when ... they both go together," she said.

Did they teach that at Yale? Where did she go to school?

chickelit said...

Another question is can they afford to move?

Interesting capital phase change IMO- all that liquidity crashing out of solution into an varible assortment of gems and dreck...oh well, at least such solids can be filtered and the rest decanted.

What's another name for "house-poor"?

All I can say is the housed are hosed.

Rob Dawg said...

When i first started this blog oh so many years ago I called it "house arrest."

The CFC refugees will be of all varieties. I imagine a third will sell with a comfortable profit. Another third will technically sell for a profit but in truth it will turn out they already extracted that profit. The last third is screwed. They bought in 2004-07 and/or re-fied up to peak price leverage levels. A very few of those will be saved by BAC relocation assistance. We are talking several thousand houses total.

Peripheral Visionary said...

I think you're assuming that someone's going to buy those houses . . . what jobs will people work if they want to move to the area, crossing guard at the elementary school?

sk said...

Somebody's pain, somebody's gain. Once that lot has cleared out and the traffic on the 101, 118 quietens down a bit, I look forward to coming back - a second home in th Conejo Valley ? nahhh - its damn silly when I only expect to use it 3 months of the year - but one can dream.


-K

chickelit said...

"House Arrest" -that's good, was that before "Arrested Development?"

The Germans have the concept built into their word for real estate: Immobilien

Also love how they use the same word for guilt and debt: Schuld