Sigh... yet another great article from an out-of-the-USA publication... sad sad sad when I have to find foreign journalists to be the only ones reporting accurately on my nation. And the little blurb on Iran vs. Iraq vs. US... oy... Iraq doesn't want to get in the middle of our little spat and told both of us to cool it. ya' sher didn't hear dat on da mainstream drive by media... we're too busy gettin' ready for da' next wahr...
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America's housing

Home truths



May 8th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Congress can't stop people losing their homes, but it can do a little to help

AMERICA'S policymakers have fought the credit crunch with gusto. The Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates, pumped liquidity into markets and spun a new safety net for investment banks. Politicians have applied a fiscal stimulus and, to keep housing finance flowing, relaxed prudential controls on government-sponsored mortgage lenders. As The Economist went to press, the House of Representatives was set to vote on the latest plan: to stem foreclosures and stabilise house prices by allowing the government to reinsure up to $300 billion of problem loans through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

It is not hard to see why politicians are so keen to help. For all the hope that the worst may be over in financial markets, the housing mess is getting nastier. Nationally, house prices have fallen between 3% and 13% depending on which index you look at. And they have further to sink. The stock of unsold homes is huge and the ratio of prices to rents suggests that property is still expensive (see article). Some 1.5m households went into foreclosure in 2007, up 50% from the year before. And with 9m people owing more than their house is worth, that figure is likely to soar.

In general, governments should not try to prop up prices in inflated markets. However, as Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, argued this week, there is a case for government intervention to avoid unnecessary foreclosures. Evicting a homeowner and selling his property takes months, during which vandalism and legal fees can destroy a large part of the home's value—and drag down the price of the neighbours' homes as well. Borrowers and lenders would often be better off renegotiating and writing down loans than going through foreclosure. Yet securitisation has made it harder to reschedule loans and nobody knows how far house prices will fall. Too few home loans have been renegotiated.

So is the FHA plan the answer? Supporters, from Wall Street financiers to all three presidential candidates, claim it will do great things: save 1.5m people from losing their homes and, as a result, help to stabilise house prices. Opponents, including the veto-wielding Bush White House, lambast it as a misguided taxpayer rescue for the imprudent. Neither is true.

Criticism notwithstanding, the plan is hardly a bail-out. Lenders would have to write down their loans to 85% of the current value of a house. Borrowers would pay a fee for the insurance and give up a share of any later price rise to the government. By reinsuring more mortgages, the government would take on more risk, but the bean-counters at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) put the explicit subsidy at about $1.7 billion over five years—a fiscal rounding error rather than a reckless handout. Yet because the plan involves little government cash and is voluntary, its effects will be modest, helping half a million households at most avoid foreclosure, according to the CBO. For all the hoopla, the FHA plan will be a useful addition to the anti-foreclosure tool-kit. But it will do less than its supporters hope—or its detractors fear.
The virtues of modesty

That is no bad thing. The role for government is to prevent more foreclosures than necessary, not to prevent them altogether. Given the scale of likely house-price declines and the laxity of lending standards during the bubble, many Americans are in homes that they cannot afford. In these cases, the right answer is to make foreclosure faster and less damaging to everyone else, so that homes can swiftly be bought by people who can pay for them. A useful counterpart to the FHA plan would be a federal effort to streamline the states' convoluted foreclosure laws. You will not be surprised to hear that no politician has supported that.

http://www.foxsearchlight.com/youngatheart/


Laughed hilariously, cried, tired but glad I went this eve.

Synopsis:

Young@Heart is a New England senior citizens chorus that has delighted audiences worldwide with their covers of songs by everyone from The Clash to Coldplay. Based in Northampton, Massachusetts, the group is made up of two dozen spirited seniors who specialize in reinterpreting rock, punk and R & B classics from a unique perspective. Their lineup includes former schoolteachers, executives, doctors and food service workers, and the chorus is guided by their longtime director Bob Cilman. With less than two months to go until a one night only concert in their hometown, the performers struggle with the new lyrics and unfamiliar melodies of seven new songs. During their thrice weekly rehearsals, they gradually take possession of music ranging from R&B classics like Allen Toussaint’s “Yes We Can Can” to Coldplay’s emotionally powerful ballad “Fix You,” upending assumptions about old age, love, sex and death

The official websites:
http://www.youngatheartchorus.com/

http://www.myspace.com/youngatheartchorus

When the Young@ Heart began in 1982 the members all lived in an elderly housing project in Northampton, MA called the Walter Salvo House. The first group included elders who lived through both World Wars. The current performers in Young@Heart range in age from 73 to 92. There are some with prior professional theater or music experience, others who have performed extensively on the amateur level, and some who never stepped onto a stage before turning eighty. None of the current performers of Y@H were part of the original group that formed in 1982, but they have kept alive the spirit of the early pioneers and continue to push the group into glorious new directions.

And the following on their myspace site which has something w/ the Drunk Stuntmen.





Run, don't walk to go see it...

tags: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/youngathea

Our US president hasn't acknowledged a recession. the technical term is 2 quarters of negative growth. Bloomberg TV this morn says things aren't so bad. Hmm... sure we're in a recovery. uh huh. that would indicate we have been in a slowdown/recession etc. If we look out there in day to day life (beyond my survey to client DB which came back ststing they think this will last into 2009 easy) the following are sure signs:

* L.A. trainer losing longtime clients, cutting back from lack of funds, hit by taxes etc.
* nail place i frequent in LV is now closed Sundays. The backup on spring mountain totally closed.
* constable in LV is scheduled SIX WEEKS out to deliver evictions (discovered last friday inspecting a strip mall in LV who is now down to 70% occupied, last year it was 100% occupied)
* hair care place is down. people are cutting their own or doing it less frequently. i hear this when having my eyebrows waxed by my usual nail place in same tenant area.
* oil is $125 per barrel. i filled up at $3.99 at arco in LA. in LV it was 3.85 Arco last week. previous $3.59. i'm glad my car gets 38 mpg highway. i'm buying a bike to ride to work.
* House cleaners are abundant and cheaper
* meeting more former mortgage people out in the real world taking other jobs; enterprise rent a car etc.
* more gov jobs in comparison to private job or public for-profit company hirings...

list to be continued later...

From my ex fiance' in honor of my Bday last week... me like... wine better but not a bad prayer...


THE BEER PRAYER

Our Lager, which art in barrels, hallowed be thy drink,
Thy will be drunk, (I will be drunk?), at home as in the tavern.
Give us this day our foamy head, and forgive us our spillages,
As we forgive those who spill against us,
And lead us not to incarceration, but deliver us from hangovers,
For thine is the Beer, the Bitter and the Lager,
Forever and ever. Barmen.

The Federal Reserve System's economists have assembled six maps dealing with the state of the U.S. housing market. They show where the popped bubbles were concentrated, as of the fourth quarter of 2007. The mortgage delinquency and foreclosure situation is much worse today, but the maps will not change much in 2008. The red and orange-colored counties will not get lighter. In 2009, hundreds of light-colored counties will get redder.

All of this was easily predictable. I warned my readers in April 2005 that this was coming, saying that it was time to sell your home if you lived in California.

If you are a home owner in any of the red-colored counties, you have my sympathy. You can view four of the six Federal Reserve maps here.

These maps show a disaster – a disaster created by the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan. The housing markets have depreciated substantially, but there is lots more depreciation ahead. This is a disaster in progress. This is a train wreck in which the locomotive and three passenger cars have gone off the tracks, but a long line of cars is still moving forward because of inertia. They are still on the tracks, but not for long.

Any family in a red-colored county who bought a home in 2005 through early 2007 has suffered capital losses so great that it is unlikely that the family will ever get its money back – money in today's purchasing power, I mean. The family bought a dream just as the dream was about to end. The buyers signed mortgages that will hang over them until they finally pay them off 28 years from now, or until they declare bankruptcy. They thought that agreeing to pay anywhere from $400,000 to several million dollars was nothing. "I'll make money on the deal!" No, they won't.

Neither will the investors who loaned them the money.

"NO BIDS, EVERYBODY DOWN!"

On Monday, May 5, I read an article by Las Vegas banker Doug French. French reported on an auction for foreclosed houses. It was quite a show. It had a professional auctioneer. It had hype. It lacked only one thing: a single bid. There was nothing. The lenders had all placed minimum bids on the houses, and there was not one bid at or above the minimum bid. So, the lenders took back every property.

On Tuesday, May 6, at the other end of the country, my wife stood at the courthouse steps in a small town in Georgia. The town is a semi-rural suburb of Atlanta. My son-in-law is moving there. My wife went to see what would happen at an auction of foreclosed properties.

There were several people offering properties. Each of these people carried stacks of papers on the properties for sale. There was not one bid. The lenders took back every property.

Over the weekend, my son was attending a real estate seminar in Las Vegas. John Schaub was one of the speakers. My son reported to me on May 4 regarding a story one of the speakers had told. This story tells all.

The speaker said a friend of his who is a professional investor in homes spotted a foreclosed home in his town. He went to the lender to see if he could buy it. He was told by the local representative of the national bank that had foreclosed that the local bank had no authority to negotiate a sale. "Who can?" he asked. The national office. It had not yet released the property for sale.

The guy really wanted to buy the house. So, he got on a plane and flew to the bank's division that is in charge of all of the bank's foreclosed properties. The division is in the Midwest. He went to the building and located the office. The door was locked. He banged on the door. A uniformed guard opened the door. The guard told him that the bank does not deal with the general public. So, he flew home.

Within two months, vandals had stripped that home of everything moveable. It was probably worth at least 25% less than before the guy took his plane trip. It is lowering the value of homes on the same block. It is lowering the real estate appraisers' estimates for the homes in the immediate area.

This is happening all over the country.

The lenders are huge, centralized conglomerates. They bought pooled packages of real estate loans. This was all very scientific, the lenders were told. It diversified risk.

This crisis is not like previous housing crises. There is no local banker who made the loan with his bank's assets. There is therefore no highly motivated local seller of a foreclosed property. There is no one locally with the authority to negotiate. Centralization lowered costs getting into the deals. It has dramatically increased costs of getting out.

My son-in-law looked at a foreclosed house that is being offered for sale for $127,000. He was able to find out that it was repossessed with a mortgage liability of $80,000. The repossessing lender put $15,000 into the house to get it ready for sale. The lender wants to make over $30,000 on the transaction. So, the property gets no bids.

These people are babes in the woods. They have never been through a housing recession. They weren't around in 1991. They surely weren't around during the savings & loan crisis of the mid-1980's, when Congress intervened with taxpayers' money to bail out the over-leveraged industry. They have not read of bidders at auction buying homes with their credit cards, as happened in Houston.

There are today over 18 million empty houses in the United States today. Of these, 650,000 are in foreclosure.

Under these circumstances, lenders should be aggressively negotiating to get new buyers to take over the payments. They should be dropping prices to market levels. If they don't, vandals will strip these houses of everything movable.

But the foreclosure system is paralyzed. The locals have no authority to negotiate. The distant bureaucrats are insulated from reality. They dream of a government bailout. They don't want to sell at the newer, lower prices, because this will force them to write down their loans' value. They refuse to declare losses that the market has already imposed.

The foreclosure market is in paralysis. No one in charge knows what to do. This includes Ben Bernanke.

BEN'S CALL FOR A BAILOUT

When FED policy creates a boom followed by a bust, the FED calls for Congress to bail out the banks or savings & loans. This is a perpetual scenario. Bernanke is merely following tradition.

First, a FED chairman pumps in new money. A boom ensures. Then bubbles appear. Then the FED chairman is replaced. A new austerity is imposed. The bubbles pop. The country goes into recession. The banks suffer huge losses. The FED then calls for Congress to bail out the banks. There was the Burns/Miller inflation boom of the 1970's, followed by the Volcker austerity of the early 1980's. Then Volcker reversed policy on August 13, 1982. A new inflation-driven boom ensued.

We have seen it again in this decade. Greenspan played Miller. Bernanke is playing Volcker. He will eventually reverse his austerity policy. But he is trying to hold out. He is swapping T-bills for (it says here) AAA-rated mortgage debt held by the banks.

Will he buckle and inflate? Of course. But he hasn't yet. So, he needs help. The magnitude of the mortgage losses is too great. The asset swaps don't include sub-prime and Alt-A loans. So, the FED can't do much to help. Solution: call for a bailout.

On May 5, he gave a speech at the Columbia Business School's 32nd Annual Dinner. This was appropriate. Grad students at the Columbia Business School were the source of a hilarious 2006 music video on Bernanke. It has all come true: falling demand, stagflation, the inverted yield curve.

Bernanke began: "President Bollinger, Dean Hubbard, Co-Chairman Kravis, and distinguished guests, I am very pleased to be here and especially honored to receive the Columbia Business School's Distinguished Leadership in Government Award."

CBS is smart. It hands out a freebie – an award – and it gets a free speech. The following is not true: "There ain't no such thing as a free speech." CBS counterfeits something of seeming value, and it gets the Counterfeiter in Charge to give a speech that will be used for fund-raising later. This is academia in action.

Dr. B pursued his usual script. He summarized what everyone knows.

As my listeners know, conditions in mortgage markets remain quite difficult, and mortgage delinquencies have climbed steeply. The sharpest increases have been among subprime mortgages, particularly those with adjustable interest rates: About one quarter of subprime adjustable-rate mortgages are currently 90 days or more delinquent or in foreclosure.1 Delinquency rates also have increased in the prime and near-prime segments of the mortgage market, although not nearly so much as in the subprime sector. As a consequence of rising delinquencies, foreclosure proceedings were initiated on some 1.5 million U.S. homes during 2007, up 53 percent from 2006, and the rate of foreclosure starts looks likely to be yet higher in 2008.

He could begin every speech with "As my listeners know. . . ." He then went on.

. . . if a foreclosure is preventable, and the borrower wants to stay in the home, the economic case for trying to avoid foreclosure is strong. Because foreclosures impose high costs, including legal and administrative costs as well as the costs of leaving the property vacant for a possibly extended period, both the borrower and the lender often are better off avoiding foreclosure.

Keep these words in mind: "If the foreclosure is preventable." To determine if it is preventable, the following questions need specific, real-world answers:

1. Who can say if it's preventable?
2. Who is in charge to make this assessment?
3. What are his incentives to sort out preventable vs. non-preventable foreclosures?
4. Is there an existing hierarchy that knows how to assess the differences?
5. Are there incentives up and down this hierarchy to differentiate the types of properties?
6. Do local agents know what is happening?
7. Do they have authority to take action?
8. Who has the money to fund new mortgages?

You don't need the Federal government to make this approach work. You merely need lenders who are ready to discount their barns full of turkeys, sell the inventory to investors, take back the mortgages, and wait for the next round of foreclosures, which are coming.

The trouble is, these are not today's lenders. Today's lenders are unwilling to admit to auditors what is clearly the case: they are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars of losses. These losses will get worse when the vandals get finished with the capital in question.

Moreover, it is important to recognize that the costs of foreclosure may extend well beyond those borne directly by the borrower and the lender. Clusters of foreclosures can destabilize communities, reduce the property values of nearby homes, and lower municipal tax revenues. At both the local and national levels, foreclosures add to the stock of homes for sale, increasing downward pressure on home prices in general. In the current environment, more-rapid declines in house prices may have an adverse impact on the broader economy and, through their effects on the valuation of mortgage-related assets, on the stability of the financial system.

This is now happening. It is unlikely to be reversed in time. The lenders must act now, not a couple of months from now. But they are in paralysis mode.

When what Bernanke warns against happens, watch the wealth effect go into reverse. When home owners see at long last that their wealth is diminishing, they will cut back on spending. The recession will accelerate. The FED will get blamed, but not for the right reasons: Greenspan's bubbles.

What is Bernanke's first line of defense? Further study.

To determine the appropriate public- and private-sector responses to the rise in mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures, we need to better understand the sources of this phenomenon.

He then introduced the FED's "heat maps," as he called them. More free information!

He then summarized the FED's programs to monitor the train wreck. As an academic, he believes in the power of monitoring. A professor stands on the sidelines and counts the train's cars as they derail, one by one. This makes things better, apparently.

First, we have employed economic research and analysis, a particular strength of the Federal Reserve, to increase the sum of knowledge about mortgage and housing issues. For example, we are providing community leaders with detailed analyses identifying neighborhoods at high risk of foreclosures, analogous to the heat maps I showed you this evening.

Terrific. Just what we need. A weekly print-out of the wreck. Thanks so much.

To help address this problem, the Federal Reserve is joining in a partnership with the nonprofit NeighborWorks America to develop materials, tools, and training programs to help communities and others acquire and manage vacant properties. The goal is to support the provision of affordable rental housing and new homeownership opportunities in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.

Oh, good. A nonprofit network. Nobody owns anything. Committees own everything. These outfits will spread the word: New homeownership opportunities! Don't you dare ask: "Funded by whom?"

These new programs will put an end to the influx of crackheads who are moving in. After all, there is nothing like the prospect of owning a vandalized house to thrill low-income buyers. Credit-worthy low-income buyers, that is.

Prospectively, we are committed to promoting an environment that supports the homeownership goals of creditworthy borrowers. To this end, the Federal Reserve Board has proposed new regulations to better protect consumers from a range of unfair or deceptive mortgage lending and advertising practices.

The horse is out of the barn. The barn is now about to be occupied by crackheads or stripped by vandals. So, the FED issues new rules.

Why didn't it issue them in 2001?

The Federal Reserve also is continuing its long-standing practice of providing educational and information resources to help consumers make informed personal financial decisions, including choosing the right mortgage.

That's it! More brochures! Now, if we can just get the lenders to take market-clearing bids on these properties. Not possible? Well, then, let's get Congress involved.

The Congress can take an important step by moving quickly to reconcile and enact legislation permitting the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to increase its scale and improve its management of risks.

But that's not all. "Separately, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – could do more."

Thus, now is an especially appropriate time for the GSEs to move quickly to raise significant new capital, which they will need to take advantage of these new securitization and investment opportunities, to provide assistance to the housing markets in times of stress, and to do so in a safe and sound manner.

The question is: With whose money? Where will they get this money? From you, maybe. Not from me.

Most Americans are paying their mortgages on time and are not at risk of foreclosure. But high rates of delinquency and foreclosure can have substantial spillover effects on the housing market, the financial markets, and the broader economy. Therefore, doing what we can to avoid preventable foreclosures is not just in the interest of lenders and borrowers. It's in everybody's interest.

Then what about non-preventable foreclosures? Silence.

CONCLUSION

We are all in a large canoe. The canoe is headed for the falls. We can hear the roar of the water.

Meanwhile, Dr. Bernanke is giving us lectures about past scenery and future prospects if we can just find a new creek to go down.

I know what creek Dr. Bernanke is likely to choose. It won't be down; it will be up. He has three paddles: fiat money, a dwindling supply of Treasury debt to swap, and footnotes.

I suggest that you get off the canoe and swim for shore. Soon.

May 14, 2008

Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.

Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com

This is probably one of the more concise 'real' evaluations i've seen in comparison to my experience from Socal to home in Vegas.
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Your tour guide through the housing finance "misinformation maze".
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Mr Mortgage - BREAKING APRIL CA FORECLOSURE STATS

Posted on May 13th, 2008 in Mr Mortgage's Personal Opinions/Research

The new April CA foreclosure stats are just out, compliments of Foreclosure Radar. They are now the first company with real foreclosure data on the street each month. In April, Foreclosure records were set across the board in California still confirming, in my opinion, a disaster of epic proportions coming. The data continue to worsen.

Please check-out YouTube video version here! (Be sure to rate it highly if you like it!)

The real data are in stark contrast to the bullish nature of a popular recent Wall St Journal story by Cyril Moulle-Berteaux, managing partner at Traxis Partners in New York, various reports and comments from Trim Tabs beginning about a month ago when the firm’s CEO publicly announced it went long financial stocks, and various other ‘analysts’ trying desperately to call a bottom for the past year, to an even greater degree in the past two months.

First, Notice of Defaults (NOD = pre-foreclosures) were up 2.6% to a record high of 44,100 from 42,700 last month. This is the first step to foreclosure when a borrower is approximately 90-days past due on their mortgage. In about 75% of cases, these are not cured leading to a jump in foreclosure sales and bank owned Real Estate Owned (REO) for months to come. If you combine March and April NOD’s, CA had a whopping 86,800, which should produce almost 65k Foreclosure Notices in the next 2-3 months. That is more than the total monthly sales in CA for many months now. Keep in mind that this is only new foreclosure activity entering the system and not home owner, builder or bank REO inventory, which is where the bulk of the inventory lie.

Second, Notice of Trustee Sales (NTS = Foreclosure Notices) were up 7.8% to a record high of 28,892. These are issued roughly 90-days after the NOD (above) so this figure was mostly from the NOD’s filed in Jan, which totaled approximately 38,500. For next month’s preview of NTS, use the Feb NOD number of 37,400 and multiply by 75%…28,050 if the trend holds. Then, the NTS number begins to balloon due to NOD counts accelerating into 2008. As an example of rate of change, NOD’s for Nov 2007 were 23k, Dec were 33k, Jan 08 were 38,500, Feb were 37,400, Mar were 42,700 and Apr were 44,101. The time from NOD to NTS is roughly 4 to 5 months, so judging from the past four months of NOD’s (162,700) at a 25% cure rate (44,700) we will have approx 122,000 units slamming the CA auctions over the next 4 months. Of those, if the trend continues of 97.5% going back to the bank as REO, the banks will get back 119,000 homes to add to their shadow inventory. Again, this is more than the total monthly home sales over the past four months including home owner, builder and bank-owned REO sales combined.

Third, Foreclosure Sales at Auction jumped 44% for a total of approx $9.5 Billion from $6.87 Billion last month. This DOES NOT mean consumers bought the homes. As a matter of fact, if there are no bidders then the bank who holds the note typically buys the home. So, the total ‘sold at auction’ count increasing is more a function of the total NOD’s increasing 4 to 5 months earlier. What is important to track is how many went back to the bank, which stayed very high at almost 98%. So essentially, Foreclosure Sales at Auction is bad thing because it shows actual foreclosures are increasing and so is bank REO, which is the shadow inventory wildcard.

Fourth, Discounts were at a record pace. 84% were discounted by 25% or more off the original note amount. 47% were discounted by a whopping 30% or more. Keep in mind, this ‘discount’ is from an 80% first mortgage in most cases so many of these could be selling for 50-60% off the prior appraised value.

Fifth, 97.75% of the homes failed to sell at auction so the banks bought the rest back. That percentage was in line with last month. Bank REO is quickly becoming ‘The Real Estate Market’.

Important Notes…

For those of you who live and die by the monthly existing and new home sales report, remember, that bank REO sales are counted in the existing sales number and is very quickly becoming ‘the real estate market’. As a matter of fact, Data Quick reported that 38.4% of last month’s total CA Existing Home Sales had foreclosure action within the past 12 months, meaning much was bank REO shadow inventory. With so much new foreclosure inventory entering the system and discounts getting deeper each month, there should continue to be more bank REO sales of existing homes in the future, perhaps making it seem as the housing crisis is ending.

This is the primary problem with so many ‘analysts’ positive housing predictions. How can you truly judge inventory vs. sales numbers when the banks are taking back more homes at auction and adding to their shadow inventory than sell each month? Remember, the NAR only reports homes listed with a real estate broker as ‘inventory’ and a very small percentage of bank REO inventory is listed. The amount of ‘non-listed’ bank REO inventory is staggering.

What is most frightening is how quickly values are dropping as a result of this. With as much bank REO inventory selling for as deep of discounts as we are seeing, it is forcing an immediate and swift mark-to-market change in values of entire neighborhoods all over the state. If a few of these homes sell at a 30% discount within a mile radius of your home and they are similar properties, your home value will be negatively impacted. Very quickly, America’s real estate is being marked-to-market by the bank’s shadow inventory, accelerating a natural process that should take years. This causes even greater numbers of home owners to go into a negative equity position causing even more loan defaults. It is a vicious cycle that has never been seen before.

For those financial institutions looking for more detailed foreclosure and REO information by bank, please email me at mrmortgagetruth@gmail.com

Home owners/buyers and Realtors stay tuned! In the next month a new service will be launched, which will enable you to see the real foreclosure risks surrounding a particular subject property, perhaps your home. It is now apparent that the foreclosure market is quickly becoming ‘the real estate market’. With foreclosure inventory carrying such deep discounts, heavy foreclosure or bank REO inventory in your neighborhood presents a threat to your home’s value. Finally, you will be able to easily identify those threats and act according.

Before you go, please be sure to subscribe my blog email or RSS feed on the home page. Then, you will be updated quickly and I promise you that I will continue to have data nobody else does. Make sure you go to Foreclosure Radar for your FREE CA monthly foreclosure report.

Have a great day and by all means, Don’t Believe the Hype! -Best, Mr Mortgage

Please check-out YouTube video version here! (Be sure to rate it highly if you like it!)

Below are some other Mr Mortgage Stories on this unfolding crisis.

The End Of The Housing Crisis??? Huh???

Is Now the Right Time to Buy a Home?

How Much Home Can You Afford? Are You Sure!?

ALT-A Disaster Looming - Know the Facts!

Fits this morn now moreso 2 years after made. another article to come on this credit malay...

At least the owner called me after my 'love letter' went out. He had an all-cash offer from a contact of his mother-in-law. It went for $25K lower than his list price and no realtors were involved. The jist of our conversations were that he felt the market was not going to fall but retain 95% of it's value as another property he has had... yeah... uh huh... given all the foreclosures in the area, mom & pop businesses failing... i'm not expecting a 20% drop as in single family houses in the area but 5-12% for multifamily properties is to be expected.

Here's an article highlighting WHY which is the most plain-English I've seen:

http://mrmortgage.ml-implode.com/2008/05/13/84/

Surprise for Mom and the folks, Middle brother Scott and wife of over a year are Preggo. I'm surprised it took that long which was essentially what I told Scott. She is due end of November. They don't want to know the sex of the kiddo ahead of time. It will be the first grand child for her folks and ours.

Time for Auntie to visit the East coast before the blessed event and it gets too cold w/ their move!

:-)

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2008/05/02/the-police-and-elvis-costello-begin-again-in-ottawa/

Going to see the Police and Elvis Costello on the 23rd then fly out to Denver the next morning for the Lib national convention in Denver.

tags: http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/in

Fabulous movie. Sadly, I may have to change my opinion of doing away w/ the National Endowment for the Arts.

http://www.rapeofeuropa.com/





The Theatrical Trailer for The Rape of Europa is here: http://www.rapeofeuropa.com/videosTheStory.aspx

It won't embed so click the link above. Worth a few minutes to view the piece and certainly the price of admission to the flick itself. Fairly completely engrossing it is neither politically correct nor damning.




And of course one of the producers on Charlie Rose. It says 54+ minutes but Edsel is 1st. Snippets of the movie are also shown. Edsel spent about 2.5M of his own $$ to do the book and his "Rescuing DaVinci" as well. There are hundreds of pieces still missing. And of course the pictures of Klimt were eventually returned to descendents in the USA after lawsuits then sold... so much for family history but ah... great stories!

tags: http://www.rapeofeuropa.com/

On the run out of LAX a few weeks back I was early as usual and took my usual disgusting non-humorous but not hostile airport stance. The lovely multi-million dollar scan body thermal machine was broken. it sat there for all to see. after the usual poking in line and getting to the other side w/o too much harassment from TSA (thousands standing around) as usual, I note a Latino father and son w/ friend (male) traveling who have been detained. They take a swab of someone's bag, clothing etc. and leave. Friend and 8 year old in adorable cowboy hat are standing there. I'm early to the plane so watch this a few feet away. the two cops are talking away and don't notice what's going on but they weren't eating doughnuts. Several TSA are standing around doing nothing. The guards who took the swab don't come back. So i ask the friends in Spanish what's up? They are more clueless than I and look not scared but very placid, obeying but concerned. the kiddo is concerned about Daddy. these guys so don't even smell like the possibility of drug smuggling or anything other than workers returning home. I don't bother to ask for immigration papers. what, i'm part of the marshalling forces?

So i bother the police officers who shift the blame to talking to one of the TSA guys w/ the most bars. he should be able to answer my question of why these guys have been detained. the guy w/ bars has no idea what's going on, though supervisor, talks to the Latino man detained and I translate asking where the original officers who detained him are. He doesn't know and they haven't returned. He releases them to go. i ask WHY were they detained in the 1st place. He blames Delta and shows a red mark on the guy's ticket - indicating secondary screening as selected by the airline. I try to explain this in my non-practiced Spanish to the guys and apologize for what has become a charade of force in this country. They thank me and we go on. I'm still disgusted weeks later by the whole situation. Neither did the officer-supervisor of TSA apologize, offer to when I suggested it but shifted blame on the airline... of course not his own people who left the family standing there for 20 minutes.... I did time it.

LAX is the worst, most obnoxious TSA i've encountered in my travels on the west coast. Not saying much but the Las Vegas are probably the most customer-friendly of the bunch. Charade, scheme, ploy.. many other words...

I wonder when and how we will finally get rid of the TSA assholes... all my time traveling Europe singing before 9/121 and then right before and after the Germans, Irish and English were never this much of a pain in the ass.... even scanning my travel kenwood keyboard.

From a catch-up reading this weekend. The other article maybe not to cut/paste is the Earth's suspected 3 moons 4.5B years ago. And of course I caught up on the travesty of the FLDS children in the hands of the Texas CPS... gee, we haven't heard anything in awhile... sensationalism gone in the face of the major screw-up acknowledged and not by the Gov.

Below would explain the number of tenors I've worked w/ over the course of my career who would slow the entire cast down. Some of the Bass players in the jazz band also come to mind. ;-0
--------------------

People who score high on intelligence tests are also good at keeping time, new Swedish research shows. The team that carried out the study also suspect that accuracy in timing is important to the brain processes responsible for problem solving and reasoning.

Researchers at the medical university Karolinska Institutet and Umeå University have now demonstrated a correlation between general intelligence and the ability to tap out a simple regular rhythm. They stress that the task subjects performed had nothing to do with any musical rhythmic sense but simply measured the capacity for rhythmic accuracy. Those who scored highest on intelligence tests also had least variation in the regular rhythm they tapped out in the experiment.

“It’s interesting as the task didn’t involve any kind of problem solving,” says Fredrik Ullén at Karolinska Institutet, who led the study with Guy Madison at Umeå University. “Irregularity of timing probably arises at a more fundamental biological level owing to a kind of noise in brain activity.”

According to Fredrik Ullén, the results suggest that the rhythmic accuracy in brain activity observable when the person just maintains a steady beat is also important to the problem-solving capacity that is measured with intelligence tests.

“We know that accuracy at millisecond level in neuronal activity is critical to information processing and learning processes,” he says.

They also demonstrated a correlation between high intelligence, a good ability to keep time, and a high volume of white matter in the parts of the brain’s frontal lobes involved in problem solving, planning and managing time.

“All in all, this suggests that a factor of what we call intelligence has a biological basis in the number of nerve fibres in the prefrontal lobe and the stability of neuronal activity that this provides,” says Fredrik Ullén.

###

Publication: ‘Intelligence and variability in a simple timing task share neural substrates in the prefrontal white matter’, Fredrik Ullén, Lea Forsman, Örjan Blom, Anke Karabanov and Guy Madison, The Journal of Neuroscience, 16 April 2008.

one of my fav pics of the boy...

Buster's winter habitat...




Buster making himself friendly to Libertarians in Feb




Bumper sticker in my parking garage




Left over museum pic from Tucson - nose art



the missle museum near tucson




ocean nuclear bomb testing off hawaii - another tucson museum pic


Buster at my office


obviously spending too much time in my L.A. office as the analyst is starting to look droopy...

Red rock hiking area which is one of my favs away from tourists

My older cousin whom I always remember w/ purple hair from visiting us one summer.  Seems she and hubby are blossoming in Lawrence, KS.  Of course my mother doesn't understand the whole thing and anything 'different' is questionable hence she sent the article.  I'm glad they finally found their niche.

Townie guide to... tatting, flipping and entrepreneur-ing

By Gavon Laessig (Contact)

Monday, May 5, 2008

You guys will be opening up a real estate office/tattoo parlor at 19th and Massachusetts—that's right up there with fried chicken and waffles as a combo you don't expect to work, but somehow it just does. How did you guys come to this confusing business model?

Sunshine: "Well, maybe it’s more like A&W with Long John Silver's—that seemed weird at first and now they're everywhere. Seriously, first we looked into renting a space, but the rents are too outrageous. Then we ended up buying this building. We still lived in L.A. at the time, and it took quite some time to get our house sold and move. Meanwhile, we started the process of bringing the building, which is actually a house, up to code with parking and getting Martin’s license for tattooing in Kansas. Since it took so much time to get things in place, it was a toss-up on which one of us would use the space. It was decided that the real estate office would move in and open first. In the meantime, Martin commuted to work in Kansas City, Missouri, at Irezumi Body Art while waiting to get his Kansas license. The guys at Irezumi are awesome—we love them.

Ironically, just as the parking lot and rehabbing the building finished and Virtual Value opened, Martin was granted his license. This left us confused as to where to locate his shop. By Thanksgiving, we had a friend visit that does new store openings for Crate & Barrel. We asked for his opinion on a location for Martin’s shop. He looked around town and asked an interesting question, 'Why not share the space?' At first, we both thought that it would seem weird, even for Lawrence. After looking at rents again, and my business partner in Virtual Value announcing he was moving to Overland Park, we decided that it would work temporarily until the tattoo shop gets busy. Then I plan to move Virtual Value to another space, since office rent is cheaper than retail rent. Until then, we will be sharing the space and realtors get 10% off tattoos."

What were some of the hurdles and red tape clusterf*cks you had to navigate?

Sunshine: "Well, there were a lot. Getting a site plan, hiring an architect for only four parking spaces, meeting the neighbors—who are super, by the way—and getting tons of paperwork done, including having it notarized by a U.S. consulate in another country. It felt like that '60s movie, 'It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.' Best advice—always ask questions at least four times, be tenacious, and when in doubt hire a professional."

Martin, how did an Argentinean tattoo artist with a love of Japanese art wind up in Kansas?

Martin: "We visited Lawrence a few times and I liked it. I love the Spencer, the art history library, and that there is a great Asian Studies program. Also, downtown reminds me of the neighborhood where my grandma lived outside Buenos Aires. Moving here I was interested in being able to expand my knowledge of fine art and Asian art history, and use that to make better Japanese-style tattoos."

Sunshine, how did an L.A. rockabilly gal with her own record label wind up in real estate?

Sunshine: "My mom and my grandparents were all realtors when I was a kid. I originally didn’t pay much attention to it, but I guess osmosis was involved. My record label was called Fiasco Records—check out Trouser Press, I'm listed there. Around the time the internet changed the music business, I gave up on working in the business and just did office work. When Martin and I got married, we bought our first house and I got totally interested. A friend in St. Louis, who was a realtor, got me thinking about flipping houses. I did that with him for about a year and a half, traveling a lot. Not the fun and glamor you see on TV. During that time, my friend encouraged me to get my license. So I started working in Los Angeles during the boom up until the start of bubble troubles. When we decided to move to Lawrence, I discovered something missing here. There was no discount real estate brokerage, which is a company that has discounted commissions. Since this is something happening in most cities, I thought it was a great opportunity to apply my craft and fill a missing niche in the real estate market."

What are your plans for the shop once it opens?

Martin: "I will be by appointment while it grows, then expand to full-time hours. We'll try to have quality guest artists if they are able to get licensed, and have some art shows several times a year with some of the 'kustom kulture' and tattoo fine artists I am friends with from Japan and the U.S.A. Eventually, I want to sell the t-shirts I design and other things too. It is called Ichiban Tattoo Studio and we are getting inspected by the state on May 6 and ready to go after that."

Any advice for aspiring real estate entrepreneurs out there? And by "real estate" I mean both land and decorated human flesh...

Martin: "Wear sunscreen—protect your investment from the sun. And always remember, 'Cheap tattoo today, expensive fix tomorrow.'"

Sunshine: "Remember when you said to yourself, 'I wish I bought back in 2002'? Well, the real estate clock has turned back time and you should look around—you can find some good deals out there and rates are still low."

tags: http://www.lawrence.com/news/2008/may/05

less than 2 minutes, humorous and the link is below

tags: lunchbomb.com