Irvine Housing Blog

You’re welcome.

What kind of human being would I be if I didn’t sympathize with the plight of the less fortunate that earn more than 98% of the population?

Someone has to make more than 98% of the population.  It’s a mathematic certainty.

Kill off the top 2% you’ll still have a top 2%.

Nobody wants to kill them - only tax them.  Under Eisenhower they’d have had a 50-90% tax rate and still be considered rich.

Yeah, where’d this whole killing thing come from?

I simply pointed out how America has dealt these poor souls such a raw deal. It must be absolutely miserable to be in the top 2% of earners.

Perspective, you should start a revolution.  Create a new country where you won’t be taxed like that.  Start penning your declaration of independence immediately.  It’s time to end the tyranny.

Nobody wants to kill them - only tax them to death. 

That’s more like it.

The sad part about your robin hood mentality is that the poor suffer as an end result.

I would wager that Perspective has far more sympathy than you. (on a rational level of course)

My intent was not to express a complaint, but rather to take a shot at the language Obama has used to describe higher earners.  “Rich” is a term best used to describe a great balance sheet, not a great income statement.

I also am shocked how Obama wants to tax these poor helpless 2%’ers to death. I mean their top bracket going from 35% to 39.6%? How will these people afford food and medical care paying an extra 4.6% of their income to this unjust socialist government?

An American Anthem

Don’t be discouraged by your pauper plight Kirk!  With a lot of hard work and dedication, you too, yes YOU, can earn a college degree and a med, bus, or law grad degree, and join the force of working professionals Obama castigates.

Become a high earner?! Are you crazy? High earners have the worst life! Haven’t you read your own comments? No, I’m going to stick with minimum wage and live in paradise. I only hope they lower minimum wage so I can live even better.

Tis true. Tis true…

Let us then celebrate the freedom we have to choose our path, and complain about our choices…

Why would I complain? I don’t have the heavy burden of making more than 98% of the population. That is your burden to bear. Life is very difficult for you, it is easy for me. I am very sorry this country has committed this atrocity against you.

It’s only an extra 4.6% on income > 350k, or an extra 3% of income between 250k and 350k…

Ah, spoken like a true Democrat: “It’s only ____.”

Why don’t we agree that amount of money the IRS receives is sufficient, and start from there?  Why don’t the Democrats slash military spending or the other big chunks of spending (SSI & Medicare)?

If that’s not possible, why don’t Democrats go after the truly “rich” - those people who have a great balance sheet?  Allow the estate tax to return to the $1M exemption and 50%+ rate in 2011.

I’m confused. Is the Republican position to seize property from the “truly rich” like the Soviet Union did? I was upset enough over the Democratic plan to get an extra 4.6% on income past $350,000. Now you’re telling me the other side wants to seize property?

For the love of God Almighty! Who should I vote for?! Someone tell me!!!

OMG!!! OMG!!! If you die with over $1 million in 2011, everything past $1 million gets taxed at 55%!!! It’s already been done!!!!!! This country is doomed!!!!!!

What kind of afterlife I’m I going to have when I only get to take $1 million with me?! I mean, I don’t want the rest of it after it’s been tainted by taxes!!!

Wait a minute… calm down Kirk… calm down. I don’t have a million dollars. Okay… okay… everything is fine. omg…

Claude Raines.

Calling someone “rich” is a hate crime! Obama should be impeached!

I don’t really understand why you seem to hate people who have become successful.  A flat tax seems to be the fairest method of taxation, not because of what the impact is to each individual, but because it shares the tax responsibility proportionately.  For those who think the “rich” should pay a higher percentage than the “poor”, why stop at taxes?  Why not charge rich people more for a gallon of milk than poor people?  Why not charge a rich person $100,000 for a Honda Civic but sell it to a poor person for $100?  Same basic concept, it’s just more obviously ridiculous when you look at it this way.

The income tax has always been a progressive system, with the rich paying more than the poor.  The financial hit of a flat tax that would generate the same amount of money as the current system to the poor would be extreme.

I’ll tell you what the deal is with Winstongator’s self-loathing. This country has been cruel to people like him! That’s why hates himself and his kind! Like an abuse victim that cuts themselves, Winstongator votes for people like Obama. It is very very sad.

Well, I for one will continue to advocate for the downtrodden quarter-millionaires and the destitute multi-billionaires that don’t have the power to speak for themselves!

I don’t think a flat tax is fair at all. Think about it. The poor use much more public services than the high earners (don’t you dare say r*ch!). My proposal is that people earning $0/year should pay $30,000/year in taxes. Those taxes would phase out until they are a flat $1,000/year for those making over a million dollars a year. Millionaires still use roads. They should pay for them. But, they don’t use many other public services. So, why should they pay for them?

Be careful for what you are thinking. Imagine if the election of 2008 had elected McCain. And he had a myocardial infarction and passed away. Sarah Palin would be our commander and chief.
Now just think about it long and hard. You betcha.
http://www.palinaspresident.us/

That’s another thing. Old people use too much Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security! When you get old, you should be taxed more! When you are a baby, you should be taxed more! When you are poor, you should be taxed more!

When you are wealthy and healthy, you should pay a very minimum tax rate since you aren’t leaching off of society!

That Palin site is very uplifting!

Going to guess you have never been outside the country. Try going to Scandinavia. Holland, Australia, Even a country like Costa Rica. Almost no crime. No huge Prison Population. No wars. The American Dream is broken. The GOP are going to try one more time. Now they can get money from the Chinese and pump it into the Elections from Corporations. NutMeg paying 150 Million to become the Governor. Give me a break. WTF. How many hours a day you watchin Faux News ? Have fun with the Palin site. Open the doors and explore the site. It has hundreds of hidden tricks.

I’ve been to the Netherlands. It is a VERY SCAREY place! Lot’s of sinful people trying to lure me into their hellfire lit lairs! And just the other day someone died at Schiphol Airport!

Luckily, I was able to make my tulip investment and escape unscathed. I’m never going back to that awful place!

Fox is spelled F-o-x, not F-a-u-x. I’m not sure why people get confused by that all the time, but I see it a lot. I haven’t watched Fox News since getting my implant.

Loved Holland. Great Marijuana Laws. So much fun to get stoned in the bars. Just think in a couple months we will be doing that in California. I know. Its better to outlaw our number one cash crop and keep all those cops and prison guard unions flush with cash. Guess how many people Die at LAX and the surrounding ghetto every year. Way more than the entire country thats Holland.

Death is not a problem that needs to be solved by big government. Sinning is the issue that needs government intervention. If you’re free of sin then there is no reason to worry about death. Am I the only one here with common sense? BTW, anything that makes you happy, other than loving our Lord, is probably a sin.

Well here are 5 of them, just from Bank of America.

http://consumerist.com/2010/10/bank-of-americas-greatest-foreclosure-fck-ups.html

Why are people putting forward a false choice of having to accept banks falsifying documents or freezing all foreclosures?  Either one of those is a stupid choice.

Simply make banks follow the laws that they helped write.  As Jon Steward said… They are the ones who INVENTED small print.  They should have to follow the procedures that are outlined in the small print. They are trying to take short cuts and do their job on the cheap, and innocent people are getting caught in the process.  Why should we cut them slack?  The foreclosure mess has been going on since 2008, they’ve had plenty of time to hire and train people to handle the paperwork. 

If that haven’t done that yet, they better get busy.

HOLY SH_T!  Not 1!  But 5!

Yeah, thats it.  Only 5 people in the whole country have been done wrong by banks.  That web site found the only 5 people who were wrongly foreclosed on, and it was only Bank of America that made any mistakes.  The rest of the industry has a spotless reputation.

Again, I don’t get this false choice… Let banks do whatever they want with paperwork, or stop all foreclosures. 

They are big boys, they have been running the mortgage business for a century, and they have had years to realize that foreclosures have been ramping up.

All I want is them to actually verify their facts before they possibly ruin a persons finances.

And if it has a byproduct of stimulating employment if they have to hire some new workers, I can live with that too.

I’m just saying that it’s highly likely that these incidents are the exception rather than the rule.  Also, I suspect that BOA has resolved the issues (as they should!)

In reality, most of these people getting foreclosed on do in fact need to be foreclosed.  It sucks for them, but they rolled the dice and lost.  Betting that nothing bad will happen over the next 30 years is a very foolish thing to do.

Yeah, they’d be bearer bonds but oopsie, those are illegal to sell in the US (at least to US citizens & corporations) thanks to the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. IMNAL nor an accountant but what I found in my quickie search is here. I’ve seen better writeups on this lately, likely at Naked Capitalism or The Big Picture but I read a lot of blogs & it can be tricky to retrace one’s peregrinations over the course of a couple of weeks…

Accordingly, under existing law, private U.S. and foreign issuers (and the U.S. government) cannot issue bearer bonds marketed to U.S. investors, but bearer bonds can be sold abroad under arrangements reasonably designed to ensure that the bonds will be sold or resold in connection with their original issuance only to non-U.S. persons, interest is payable only outside the United States, and there is a warning on the face of the bond that any U.S. holder will be subject to limitations under U.S. tax law.

And what exactly does that have to do with the enforcement of the mortgage?

Enforcement of the mortgage? Nada except now who has standing to pursue foreclosure?

Break in the title chain? Big problem for the next owner. And the part that really honks me off about this fraud is depending on what mechanism is ultimately used to resolve these title defects, the same mechanism could cause a title defect for someone who is paying their mortgage on time. And I fully expect the title insurance companies to take as much responsibility for fixing this mess as every other involved party already has, namely NONE. NADA. ZIP.

Again, I have no sympathy for HELOC abusers or people who knowingly got in over their heads. My sympathies are with those that played by the rules and next those who were swindled by fast-talking con artists. And I really resent that it will be the responsible homeowners & the low to middle income tax payers who ultimately will pickup the tab for this. While the endless wars rage on…

I’ll be honest.  I am having trouble following your argument.

What I will tell you is that I have never seen any of this work in a court.  Occassionally, you get an oddball ruling out of a trial court, but every case that I have seen that partially accepts one of these crazy theories is quickly and summarily rejected by a higher court.

I would liken this to the arguments that a group of people raise for why taxes are unconstitutional.  Those groups can make very convincing arguments that sound great, but have no basis in the law.  But, at least those tax cheats follow their own advice and don’t pay taxes.  The groups and indivuduals peddling these foreclosure defense arguments pay their mortgage.  Why? Because they know that their brand of BS will be rejected by every court out there.

The courts are sympathetic to defaulted borrowers.  I have seen them give individuals chance after chance to try to cure a defective lawsuit even though there is no chance they can file anything that has a chance of surviving even the pleading stage.  This does nothing other than prolong the process.  I have seen the court absolutely rip attorneys who bring these claims, but they still prolong the process because they do feel bad for the defaulted borrower.

We are well past bottom.

Look at the graph in the middle of this page:

http://www.redfin.com/city/9361/CA/Irvine

The bottom was in March 2009 (look at the sold graph only).  This is even more clear if you change the graph to houses only.  (If you switch it to condos only, the bottom becomes less clear-because condos are an inferior product.)

I doubt prices for Irvine houses will ever again drop below the $335/sq ft sold price on March 2, 2009.  (Current price is $357/sq ft.)

The partial moratorium may cause prices to get close to the $335/sq ft number again, but probably not drop below it, IMHO.  Once that is lifted, prices will slowly (very, very slowly) rise, IMHO.

Seriously, you believe that?  Looking at YOUR graph current price is at $339/sf , only $9 above that bottom during the period when the stimulus was still on.  As you can see prices have begun to drop yet again.  I would hardly call teetering $5-10 above that low, during the period of stimulus, constitutes us being “well past” bottom.  And as you can very plainly see on that graph the asking price has a steady trend downward the ENTIRE time period.  What does this tell you?  That seller psyche is still on the decline, which does not bode well for selling price.  The trend downward has been building for a while DESPITE the stimulus.  Think about that, despite the stimulus the market has gone up 2.5% in 18 months, while the asking price has gone DOWN 5%!  And that sounds like we’ve reached the bottom to you?

As for the house-only thing, people don’t buy “SFRs only”, they buy houses, period.  Regardless of how you view condos as a product, excluding them is only manipulating the statistics to your liking.  When it’s all said and done, people buy homes at whatever agreeable price.  You can’t just conveniently remove a segment of that just to make your numbers look better.

High end has not fallen yet.  Stay tuned.

geotpf is delusional.  he should go be an economic advisor for Steve Thomas or maybe the realtor association.

I do believe they will debase our currency enough to stop house prices from falling.  We are not there yet.  The dutch boy only has so many fingers to plug holes in the dam.

Once the bond pendulum is released and swings the other way, prices will face severe downward pressure.  the question is when.

It is absolute common sense.  All one has to do is think back to the good old days of 1998.  I would happily jump into a time machine and return to the booming days of the late ‘90’s when everything was just grand.  How were Irvine house prices doing back then?  Fast forward back to today and look at how super F_CKED up the economy is and suddenly the big giant elephant that is prices in places like Irvine reveals itself.  Folks like PR are going to claim that it’s because the rich have just gotten that much richer.  Maybe the super-rich, but not the kind of folks who buy in Irvine.

I am so delusional I hallucinated the graph that shows that Irvine houses (not condos; the figures I used were for houses only; and sold numbers only, not listing prices) at $22/sq ft above peak, or 6.6% above bottom.  Heck, prices on Irvine condos only have been basically flat for a year and a half.

Almost every city you can pick has similar numbers.

Here’s Riverside, for instance:

http://www.redfin.com/city/15935/CA/Riverside

The bottom for Riverside houses was June 1 to July 6, 2009, at $111.  Currently, it’s at $128/sq ft, or a 15.3% increase.  (There are so few condos in Riverside the numbers don’t change much if you include them.)

THE BOTTOM ALMOST EVERYWHERE WAS IN SPRING OR SUMMER 2009.  Period.

If you have data that disagrees with my analysis, please share such with the class.  Otherwise, it is you who is delusional, not I.

It’s not about being delusional, I think quite to the contrary.  The argument is actually intelligent and well thought-out.  However, it falls into the classic case of statistical manipulation of looking only at the data that put things into fit the opinion of the author. 

Looking only at final selling price for sfr’s is angling to only show the positive info for a specific segment.  It actually should be looked at along with the trend of what sellers think (asking price), which speaks to the other side of the market.  And obviously the view should be on the entire inventory.  What is the reasoning for excluding condos?  “Housing” is not just SFRs, and statistically should not be looked as such to base the state of the housing market off of.  That’s just manipulating the stats.

geotpf
I like Housing Tracker.
http://www.housingtracker.net/asking-prices/riverside-california/

As for Riverside. I am of the same school as Jim Cramer. We should just bulldoze the Inland Empire. Thats the only way your going to get prices up out in the 909. Calling the Bottom right now is INSANE. Forclosure issues and the fact that government intervention in the market is still going on.  And whats up with 32K units on the market in Riverside. That seems like a buch of inventory to me.

I’m sure Irvine was considered a premium area then.  Now, almost everywhere in Orange and Los Angeles Counties is a premium area (with Irvine a super-premium area due to high rated schools and low crime rate), with the exceptions of a few high crime areas and the Lancaster area.

I suspect that honcho knows what he is talking about.  He has been systematically laying waste to the lynch mob for a couple of days now with relative ease.  This latest sideshow will blow over in a couple of weeks and the hustlers will then have to go back to throwing more SH_T at the wall.  I am still waiting for them to dig up a class action lawsuit for all these people living on the streets who were wrongly foreclosed.  When they get tired of obfuscating the semantics of “foreclosure fraud” maybe they can get back to finding the real victims.

Possibly but I’m not suggesting one should use the “show me the note” site/tactic for defense against a foreclosure, I’m suggesting one might want to use the “show me the note” site to but SEE. THEIR. OWN PERSONAL MORTGAGE NOTE. And nothing more. This could be total B.S. but one never knows unless one does it for ones self or knows someone personally who has done it. (On the internet no one knows you’re really a cat) My last mortgage was in 1987 but I was always curious as to why after negotiating with a local mortgage company for five months the note was transferred to ANMC less than two weeks after closing…

And AZDavidPhx, here is your class action suit or something similar

Oh & **meow**