Irvine Housing Blog

it seems to me that one of the fundamental questions here is whether you can find a house that will rent out for more than your cost of ownership.  Am I right that that is the question?  or is it just is it cheaper to rent than to own?

the reason i ask that is because getting a mortgage means you have to state that the house is owner occupied and if you rent it out you are in violation of the terms of your mortgage.  it also puts you in violation of your homeowners insurance. the alternative is a commercial loan and commercial insurance but i think these are a lot higher. 

so really we’re not talking about whether your can buy it and rent it out, right?

the aticle in the atlantic.com is truly eye-opening

If you liked the Atlantic Article check out The Baseline Scenario - the writers, of which the author of the Atlantic article is one, is a very well written, objective and easy to understand blog.  They have alot of great stuff.  My wife subscribes to their NPR podcast for a daily briefing on key economics.  Sure beats the shrill shouting heads on CNBC.

The Atlantic Article hits it on the head with the connected financial elites designing and leading various countries into deep trouble. 
IMHO:  Yesterdays, T. secretary TG’s bailout plan is BO’s plan.  That plan smells.  The taxpayers will be double paying for the meltdown.  Loss on pension (assess transferred to investment banker), then bailout of banks by the BO plan (enriching banker) and getting stuck with the bill and debt to pay off accepting the bad loans through national debt.

Cash flow investers can hang-on of a long time even when the market is dropping.  Just has to watch out the inflation, law changes, regulation and taxes will not increase expenses to make it unprofitable and also loss money on lowering house prices.

according to mi figures he has over estimated the rent of $1,600…take a closer look at numbers and time to rent out.  In a rental market in which rents are dropping I would say it should rent out at approximately $1250 to $1300 tops.  So we have over estimated rent, nothing for vacancy which looks to run about 1 to 2 months when vacant and it is hard to find and 20% down.  Most lenders want a minimum of 30% down in this lending climate for non-owner.  the joy of managing a low end unit. After all the adjustments and appreciation of zero for the next 3 to 5 years the whole thing changes dramatically! I have owned and managed rentals for over 25 years.  I could be wrong he could be right…what do you think?

Careful Irvine Renter, posting that quiet coup article could get you labeled a communist.  Seriously though, nationalization is the only way to save the banks at this point.  The current plan will delay the inevitable at best and make the necessary changes impossible at worst.  As far as home prices go, I am under the impression that your previous predictions had the bottom (the base valuation) tied to rents,inflation and ultimately rising paychecks.  However given the rise in unemployment and looming threat of deflation, could the bottom end up being a lot lower than you predicted?

test

Thanks for the tip on NewHomesMatch.  Looks like they still need to work out a few bugs, though—on the property I tried out, clicking on “Floor Plans” just brought up a very small empty on-page popup with a close button.  Tried IE as well as Firefox and got the same behavior.  Then tried another property, but that page managed to crash my Firefox.  Tried the page again in IE, but the “Plans” section was greyed out on that one.  Tried a third property and “Plans” was greyed out there too.  Same with the fourth.  Gave up at that point, but look forward to this site being useful in the future.

Now if only there were a site that archived floorplans for new homes while they’re available online and then gave access to them when the houses are being sold used.  Closest I’ve seen to this is a few of the nicer realtor sites, but of course they only have plans for properties they’re listing, and of course not for all of them.

That “Construction of our New Home” video was kind of cool, though I would have preferred to hear their commentary, rather than the horrible song they put over it.

That ad for the Mocca classifieds was gross.

I’ve never seen so many homes available for sale under $100K (using Redfin).  A lot of them in the fringe areas (Hesperia, Palmdale, Hemet)  but quite a few in the L.A. area (mostly around southcentral).  Quite easy to find sub-$50,000 homes too.

IR,

Check out this NYT article “Banks Starting to Walk Away on Foreclosures”.  Don’t think it will happen in Irvine unless the economy gets really bad so that there are riots and looting but it sure could happen in the depressed areas of the IE.  Pretty sneeky of the banks… property is worth less than the cost of forclosure, repair, maintenance, taxes so walk away from forclosure without telling the mortgagee he/she’s still responsible but will never be able to sell because the bank retains a lein on the property in perpetuity.

www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/us/30walkaway.html?_r=1&hpw;