I never cease to be amazed at how bad the listing pictures are…why don’t sellers (or their realtors) spend 5 minutes clearing all the junk off of countertops and stashing clutter into a closet ?  My guess - they just don’t care anymore. The houses themselves look depressed. 

On a big picture note - wow - stunning price drops.

You forgot to mention “very well landscaping.”  Nice.

What scares me the most is that every week IR reports more than $ 1,000,000 in losses to lender. For the last 2 years.
Thats 5 houses a week @ an avarage of 200 grand.
Hmm, it might even be closer to 1,5 mil a week..

Now, picture an iceberg :D
And now think about the enormous losses thats is per week per bubblestate…

I’ve seen the complete price erosion of a couple of WCI communities in FL.  One where most of the construction completed in late 2006/early 2007, putting every buyer underwater.  Whole blocks of 20-30 $1Mln range homes where every home has problems on the horizon.  One street has 4 homes owned by one speculator.  Another development where prices are falling below 2002-3 new construction pricing levels.

Recent list prices on Bamboo
62 - $900k
65 - $830k
64 - $759k (was listed at $1050k, prev sale $950)
43 - $589k

Obviously, “very well” is a landscaping technique that is, um, very well known to realtors like this one, but not so well known to us non-professionals.

Either that, or their is a very deep cistern in the back yard.

“very well” landscaping.  I love it.

You did good Mr. listing agent.  I’m sure you’ll do an even weller job in the future.

I’ve asked the same question.  I’ve seen a lot of photos in listings that are out of focus or noisy.  This is completely unacceptable ... photos are a very important element of the listing.  Along with price, photos attract people to strike an interest to spend more time looking at the listing.  I think photos are more important than the description.  But that’s just me.

If I were a realtor, one of my first business expenses would be a modern SLR camera with a ultra wide lens.

A lot of homes like this represent the whole being worth less than the sum of its parts.  Seeing that ~50” TV less than 6’ from the couch is a living room that was not thought out very well.  You can put a lot of expensive ‘stuff’ (counters/cabinets/floors) into a home, but if the underlying home won’t support that level of extras, the value of the ‘stuff’ goes down.

What blew me away about any home show on TV during the bubble was how installing something in a home increased the value of the home more than the cost of the install.  If any corporation tried to account like that, it would be illegal.  Things depreciate.

The toxic asset problems are not over.

The gov’t stress test assumes the worst case scenario is 10.3 percent unemployment by 2010.  That’s laughable.  The baseline and more adverse scenarios are so optimistic that actual data for 2009 could be worse than the adverse scenario.  In fact, it’s April and we’ve almost reached the base line unemployment for next year.

Hate to sound so gloomy, but most of these banks will undoubtedly become much closer wards of the federal gov’t.

I think it’s time for the gov’t to stop bullshiting people.

On the low end in Riverside, you are lucky if you get ONE photo of the outside of the house.  The REO condo listed yesterday is typical of this type of listing.  (BTW, it appears that condo sold-it’s off the market now.)

10.3% nationwide sounds right.  California will be higher than that, of course.

Vary impressive and funny title!

The good news is, if the house you paid $800,000 for has a market value which drops to $400,000, you save about $400-$430 per month in property taxes.

Note that in many parts of the US, mortgage payments are $400-430/mo.

A “very well”, like the related “artesian well” taps the underground aquifer, providing free water with no chlorination or other treatment.  Excellent for growing food, and also does not stain/bleach building exteriors.

.

I have a feeling other scenarios have been run, but only the two announced scenarios will be revealed.  Either that, or a week after the announcement they run new scenarios.

If I had been in charge of the project, I would have used a technique which avoids the problem with scenarios.  I would have run a simulation with various combinations of unemployment, home price declines, and GDP declines.  Then, I would see what circumstances put each bank below required capital levels, and what circumstances put them into insolvency.

That kind of a technique also tends to show what kind of risk is most severe for each type of lender.  If you are primarily a credit card issuer, unemployment will be your worst problem.  If you are primarily a mortgage lender, home price declines will be more important.  If you are a commercial lender, GDP will be more important to you.

It’s my understanding that if someone purchases the property at a price way above market, the assessor will put in the market price.  If not, the buyer can ask the assessor to adjust it.

What scares me the most is that every week IR reports more than $ 1,000,000 in losses to lender. For the last 2 years.

Yea, but the NEWS just reported yesterday that consumers are feeling a lot more “confident” now.  So you need not worry. 

I know-I know… I know what you are thinking; tremendous financial losses, foreclosures, unemployment, bailouts, etc.  I say irrelevant .  If we all just cuddle up together, stick our heads in the sand, and pretend everything is cool then things will get better.  It’s just a big mind game is all… 

We are going to pray our way out of this and think happy-thoughts.

Now, let’s all go and get ourselves into some debt. On 3! 1…2…3!

One street has 4 homes owned by one speculator.

Like in the Monopoly board game?  Man, he should raze those houses and start putting up hotels - much more money to be made on those.

Well it can’t stay that way for long. 

As has been pointed out by some astute observers here in the past - California has all of the country’s finest talent.  The country cannot afford to have this pool of awesomeness out of work for too long if we plan on continuing to improve our society and make better progress so that the lower rungs of civilization in the remaining 49 can eek their way by.

Wow! The current owners are paying $11,481 a year or $957 a month in taxes on a taxable value of $820,335. That works out to 1.4% of the property value in taxes. I’m always amazed by these tax numbers, especially when you have to pay your HOA for your local streets, street lighting, and other infrastructure instead of having them provided by the city.

Does that mean that the new owner would be paying $785 a month if this sells at $680K?

And what’s with the HOA fees?
This property shows $202 a month.
65 Bamboo shows $120 a month.
43 Bamboo shows $254 a month.
25 Grape Arbor at $142.

What’s with that?

And what’s with this subdivision lay-out where they have the garages on alleys? This is bizarro new urbanism.

You may be right ... 10.3 percent ... however, that’s not the gov’t baseline for unemployment ... it’s the most adverse scenario.  The gov’t says the baseline for unemployment is 8.8 percent next year.  This is way too opportunistic.

The stress test also assumes -3.3% in GDP negative growth for the most adverse scenario.  Yet this morning the gov’t released the actual GDP numbers ... a drop of -6.1% for the quarter.

Note that in many parts of the US, mortgage payments are $400-430/mo.

It’s a good thing too.  We are going to need their extra cash to pay for the deadbeats in CA. 

We are extremely fortunate that some people played it safe otherwise we would be totally screwed and have nobody to steal from.

I should have also included deadbeats in AZ, NV, and FL. 

CA is not the only offender, although they did start it and infected the others.

LOL!!!

The awesomeness is most awesome in the smug, satisfied world of South Orange County, where we made our houses pay us with tax-free income every year, unlike the chumps in the rest of the country who were paying for their houses.

He should get the card “go to prison” for abusing the system.

Well Said ... +1

Depending on your view of things, the taxpayers are either subsidizing deadbeats or subsidizing stupid lenders.  Maybe both.

I grew up in Long Beach, and our house in Belmont Heights had an alley- - it’s way better than maing the garage the focal point of the “look” from the front of the house (so many new houses these days look “all garage” and no house).  The trash guys come through the alley, so no need to drag your “dirty laundry” to the front curb for all to see (and pick through) - you can hide your excess consumption from your neighbors.  Plus in front of the garage doors in our old house was a huge concrete area I used to play basketball in - -very flat, very safe, and balls don’t go bouncing into the street as they often do when the portable hoops get set up in the streets (a result of the switch from alley garages to street front garages, it seems).  You can wash your car in privacy as well, which may not be a huge perk, but still.  So I would vote for a return to alleys, if it was up to me!

For a short sale, those pics are not that bad. Agents don’t want to spend much time on short sales, and the owner is depressed, drinking away their troubles, or could care less what happens because they are not going to be profiting from the sale.

We are going to pray our way out of this and think happy-thoughts.

1) Know exactly what you want.
2) Ask the universe for it.
3) Feel, behave and know as if the object of your desire is on its way.
4) Be open to receive it and let go of (the attachment to) the outcome.

Now repeat after me, “there is no recession, I’m not at risk of losing my job, I will sell my home for a 100% profit next year” ~ See, it’s already working!!!

The only way this would make sense is if the cost mentioned was only the cost of materials and the flipper did the work themselves.

Stop living in a fantasy world.  This is real life where things are much more complicated.

Our gameboard has no such card.  We don’t even use Chance cards.  Instead we use two stacks of Community Chest cards.

He shall pass go, collect 200$ stimulus cash, receive a tax cut, and a subsidized mortgage renegotiation, and remain hopeful and confident.

So of course the market is up today. ???

The problem with alleys is that they become avenues for prowlers.

LOL. That’s awesome!!!

This is location in Northwood II, or so called new Northwood community, I was about to invest in Celia and Bella Rosa because of selling another investment condo, but I decided to hold because I always fell the price is so unreasonable. And from the experience along with some of my friends’ experiences, I firmly believe Irvine company cross the legal and moral line to drive the home prices high. Now because people just give the house back to lender and become REO, but remember, at the end of day, the tax payers will pay for this mess. So I fell there is a need to fire class action against IAC, not for the justice but also to ensure the future home buyers.
(Sample claims, IMHO.
1. From 2003 to 2005 and first half of 2006, Irvine company and contracted builders use illegal, unfair and unconstitutional methods to prioritize home buyers to manipulate home prices to mislead home buyers. During this period, Irvine company release home by phases, and each phase price can go up to $25,000 to $50,000 (such as Bella Rosa and Celia) with some additional mandatory upgrade, the total phases of each model is various, and each phase may include two sub-phases. The master plan communities include Entire Northwood II, Quail hills, most part of Turtle ridge and half of Woodbury.
2. The method of claim 1, the home buyer priority number is not determined by first-come-first-serve policy or the buyer’s qualification, but rather the buyer’s financial strength. Even if a buyer submit the application early and can get a loan from a lending constitution and is well qualified but the specific buyer still will be pushed to later phase because a buyer does not make ‘more’ money than other buyers even if they submit the application form later. So the later buyer will need to pay much more money to own a home because the buyer is pushed to later. If a buyer is pushed to later phase because of weak financial strength than others, than the buyer should not be qualified for later phase, but this mean more financial burden.
3. The method of claim 1, in order to further manipulate the prices, in most case, they require buyers to register in IAC web site first with very detailed buyer’s financial info, and in a case the web site indicate this is first-come-first-service, so the buyer has incentive to fill in all the personal info that in additional enough to use to determine the qualification. However in some of the cases, the priority policy changes in the grand opening day from first-come-first-service to undisclosed measurement method and therefore IAC use it to manipulate prices. With this intentionally misleading first-come-first-service method, IAC able to gather more people and therefore to create a illusion for demand at each phase release and therefore the raise the price during each phase.
4. the method of claim 1, in the grand open day, it may further announces a lottery system to determine phase one buyers, which may only include specific person can be in the draw, all the draw is per-defined to only include builder’s employee and IAC executive’s relatives, and in some cases, each phase is spitted into phase A and phase B with different qualification buyers but release at same day where the prices may also jump up 5% of selling prices.

Hey David..don’t you mean your speculator owns four caves?

Does Mello Roos count in as part of the taxes?

.

BOTH.
Didn’t you know that Obama’s Mortgage Rescue Team has already started expanding into rescuing 2nd mortgages, i.e., HELOC loans.
Spend, spend, spend!  And our big uncle will come to the rescue.

Nah, caves are only for people in AZ.  We are trying to appeal to a broader - more sophisticated audience.

I had a 500’ artesian well when I lived in New England. You need substantial filtering and well pumps go out if you run them too hard (like for spinklers on a big lot). I was always scared about what happened if the well ran dry.

What does it mean when you click on a listing and it says “Backup Offers Accepted”?

Do you think it is possible that there are lots of people who think that $700,000 for a 2400 Sq Ft sfr is an excellent price?

I’ve been checking out a lot of MLSs in SoCal and it seems like $680-$699k are the hot numbers this month for homes. That’s still a lot of money for very little product but I’m encouraged because these same homes were asking $950k during the summer of ‘07. Hopefully $620k will become the next resting point as the spiral continues.
On a side note, I agree with the folks sold on ‘99 prices but how do you determine what a ‘99 price is for a home that was built in 2005? I hope this won’t involve “interpolation”.

In Dallas and Plano most homes have these alley ways as well. I didn’t really like the look. A lot of wasted space as well. As for washing your cars I do mine in the driveway and yes a wifey already said to me why do you wash your own cars? Take it somewhere. I told her I like to take care of our cars, I like to wash them. And I still do!

Usually when the market ignores bad news, it’s a signal of something bad to come. The market has ignored bad news in the beginning of January and in the beginning of February before.

how do you determine what a ‘99 price is for a home that was built in 2005? I hope this won’t involve “interpolation”.

You don’t need to.  Just compare the house to others in the neighborhood.

If all the other houses are valued at 400K, you are going to have a tough time appraising it for a whole lot higher even if it is the most awesome place on the block.  If some builder spent a million building it in 2005 - oh well, that’s too bad.  Chalk it up to a misallocation of resources, I guess. 

Like they say - “location location location”

Note that the $400/mo in “saved” property taxes just about covers the HOA and Mello Roos fees for this fine abode.

Not everyone in South OC relied on their house as a source of income. My brotha is Laguna Niguel bought his house in 98 for $350K and never tapped the equity, instead choosing to responsibly pay the loan.

He’s in great shape now; he has a very nice home that has a reasonable mortgage payment and very reasonable property taxes and HOA dues.

Just for fun, I checked Zillow and it still says the house is worth $750K+ but that is still hyperinflated. The 1998 purchase price of $350K is in line with what household incomes in the neighborhood can afford.

Prices NEED to fall back to these levels, that’s the only way to restore order in the market and the only way to free up cash so us consumers can start spending again. Any government trickery is just delaying the inevitable. Always remember that the lower the mortgage payment, the more money there is to spend and keep our economy going.

I should also mention that he’s currently unemployed and looking for work, however he’s not struggling. His wife is still employed and her salary is more than adequate to cover their living expenses. See where being responsible gets you?

Does anyone have any estimate on how many people have lost their jobs, where they completely relied on those jobs to pay their high debt servicing costs? What effect does that have on the housing market?

That makes me think of a bumper sticker I saw last week:

“I REFUSE to participate in a recession”

I found it cheaper and less time consuming to simply take my car somewhere. $10 for a complete wash twice a month was so worth it as opposed to sweating over it myself.

That one is a keeper. I love how you put the Scream with Homer over the mantle.

Personally, I like alleys and New Urbanism. If you drive around Woodbury, it is hard to find a garage door. I think it makes for a much better street presentation.

I am so sick of whiny people seeking redress in courts for the stupidity of choosing to take part in a deal where the odds were clearly stacked against them.
No one made you buy from them so quit whining. IF you were unwise enough to part with your money you signed the contract, you knew at least some of the onerous crap being handed out as a condition to do biz with them. If you went ahead and got reamed, to be honest, you were greedy, suck it up.

separate and general question - these guys re-fi’d and took money out - Are they on the hook for repaying any of the loan, given that they re-fi’d?
I know if it was a straight home loan, they’d have gotten away with the equity extraction from the idiot lenders… but do they succeed in keeping their paws on the money when a re-fi is involved?
and are there any it depends to that answer?

Yes, that is exactly what is happening in the market. Because of the influx of short sales—which are not really for sale—and the organic sales with WTF pricing, the only real market in Irvine is REO, and there is not much of that on the market right now. There are plenty of knife catchers and little real inventory. That dynamic will be completely reversed this fall and winter.

Because the banks like to turn the tables on the pending buyers and re-arrange the goal posts once they have them in the prone position. 

The buyer will suddenly find out that the bank is requiring more upfront money to complete the closing or maybe the interest rate is changed to a higher percentage, etc.  There are all kinds of shell games that they run on you once they think you are committed to debt slavery.

In the event that the buyer balks and does not complete the transaction, it’s good to have another sucker lined up and ready to throw down so that all the hustlers involved get their commissions/fees quicker without having to start over from square 1. 

It also gives the hustlers extra leverage over their victim; he will be more likely to go with the flow if he thinks other buyers are ready to swoop in and turn his loss into their gain.

Pretty good mind game if you ask me.

Your proposal is interesting, but I wouldn’t give it much chance of success. First, the Irvine Company can lawyer any suit like that to death, and ultimately they can make the argument they were merely reacting to market forces. They were doing what any business would do and worked to maximize their revenues. There isn’t anything illegal about it.

I love new urbanism, and I’ve lived in an old urbanism neighborhood with alleys. But the neighborhood that benefits from alleys doesn’t have cul-de-sacs or McMansions.

Instead it is far more efficient in its use of land, with grid streets and far less asphalt.

We have four cars so that would be more expensive compared to me washing them. I use a bucket to keep the water usage low. I need to sell one of them since my daughter moved to a city and no longer needs her car.

Looking into claim 2, something wrong with this business practices, this is type of Wall St. running the CDO and which cause the big chaos of our nation.
Button line, bases on the spirit of our constitution, once a buyer is qualified by a well-known lender with prove of income and down payment, the specific buyer should not be pushed back because of weaker financial strengths than others - especially this will lead the buyer pay more money and hence more financial burden.

Yes, you can do it, we can do it, as long as we have faith. If Obama can do it, why we can’t do it and fight against with IAC, what are you afraid of?

Obama has a new dream now!

The actual GDP (and it’s not for the 1st quarter, it’s the annualized rate that is reported) loss is about 3.3%.  The 6.1% number also includes a reduction in inventories.  It’s kind of phony to think of inventory draw-downs as GDP loss, as they have already been made.

Also, for anyone who cares, remember that the Guvmint’s unemployment rate does NOT count people who gave up looking for a job (whether they went back to grad school, or just decided to be a house dad,mom) nor people who are working part-time when they want full-time work.  So any unemployment number you see, you should add at least 2-3% on top to get the true unemployment rate.

Seriously, WTF were you trying to say here Nana?

You guys are sounding like Tim Geithner.

Why not?

This is a private company selling property, as long as they are not discriminating due to race I cannot see an illegal issue with this practice. They never entered into a binding agreement with you or any other buyer that you would be the first to receive the opportunity to buy the property. If you did not like this practice you had the opportunity at any time to walk away, if you did not that was your decision.

Can you point out in the constitution where it is written that “once a buyer is qualified by a well-known lender the specific buyer has a right to buy a house from a private company?”

I would disagree with your sentiment, the constitution does not provide, imply, or even remotely hint what you are suggesting.

<i>The actual GDP (and it’s not for the 1st quarter, it’s the annualized rate that is reported) loss is about 3.3%<i>

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch)—The U.S. economy contracted violently again in the first quarter of the year as business investment declined at a record rate, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.

BTW, We know it’s annualized, but it’s also based on economic activity for the 1st Q.  It is the 1st Q GDP.

Zillow is, not to mince words, completely fucked up.  Their numbers are pulled from thin air, as far as I can tell.  The fact that they seem to count bank foreclosures as actual purchases (even though they supposedly don’t) makes matters worse.  Lots of REOs I see have a Zillow chart that’s falling, falling, until the bank takes it back for a fictional price, and then it shoots up to that price, even though the house is really worth half that.

Their numbers are like short sales and Bank of America-just ignore them and pretend they aren’t there.

I think Nana is saying that Ron Paul will save the world.

New urbanism only really works if you can walk to shopping, entertainment, restraunts, services.

I always thought Irvine looked like Springfield. Now I know it’s true!

“As has been pointed out by some astute observers here in the past - California has all of the country’s finest talent.  The country cannot afford to have this pool of awesomeness out of work for too long if we plan on continuing to improve our society and make better progress so that the lower rungs of civilization in the remaining 49 can eek their way by.”

Yes and Californicators can start by finding a vaccine for the swine flu.

Oink

Being “really” responsible is being able to be live frugally during unemployment when you save a lot during the bubble years while anticipating for this disaster to occur.

Now how many Americans fall into this category?

I love the pointing out the faults of others whilst you fumble.. hillbilly speak..their is a deep cistern up in them their hills…dee ta dee

Possible if you live off the grid.

Corp do that all the time.  It called goodwill, value added, etc.

Keep your property value up… for water damage restoration and carpet cleaning services visit http://www.citrusfreshcom

I’m not sure which is worse, this spam, or the lawsuit against the IC thingey….

That is one of the things I like about Woodbury; you can walk to the commercial center from anywhere in the community without crossing a major arterial.

Me, laid off a year ago today…

Our spam filter caught the first one, but this poster was persistent, and the second one got in.

archie was poolside basking in the sun and veronica said..how can you lay by the pool with all the problems in the world and archie said if everyone laid by the pool…there would be no problems in the world…

I think you should let that crap in and watch it work to their detriment..

Congratulations on Irvine Company, what you have done last few years even Wall St smartest smugglers should learn from you how to legally maximize the profit and in certain way the tax payers and our nation will pay for it.
While Obama and the nation were basing Wall St, but all the people in this blog believe and praise you that this is a super smart business practice and that you can walk away with clean hand.
The only challenge left for you is to just let all the new comers sign a real-live slaver contract with you directly without buying a piece of cage.

Anti-competitive practices
Monopolization
Collusion
Formation of cartels
Price fixing
Bid rigging
Product bundling and tying
Refusal to deal
Group boycott
Exclusive dealing
Dividing territories
Conscious parallelism
Predatory pricing
Misuse of patents and copyrights
Laws and doctrines
United States

Sherman Antitrust Act
Clayton Antitrust Act
Robinson-Patman Act
FTC Act
Hart-Scott-Rodino Act
Merger guidelines
Essential facilities doctrine
Noerr-Pennington doctrine
Rule of reason
Europe

Trade Practices Act 1974
Enforcement authorities and organizations
International Competition Network
List of competition regulators

Collusion is an agreement, usually secretive, which occurs between two or more persons to deceive, mislead, or defraud others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically involving fraud or gaining an unfair advantage. It is an agreement among firms to divide the market, set prices, or limit production. [1] It can involve “wage fixing, kickbacks, or misrepresenting the independence of the relationship between the colluding parties.”[2] All acts affected by collusion are considered void.[3]

Good for you. I’m in the same boat except I’m still employed.

Still waiting for that sev pkg…...........

Wow, that’s a pretty freaky and demented one, AZ!  Nicely done. 

http://www.thesoundarchive.com/play-wav-files.asp?sound=simpsons/barney/belching.wav