Irvine Housing Blog

“A spa-like master suite and retreat that is straight out of the Ritz-Carlton”?

Haha - he forgot to add “with only HALF of the equity burn!”

At a 1% teaser, and if the heloc was at 6% or so, they were making a higher payment on the heloc than on the main mortgage!

GLOUCESTER [later Richard III]
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up,
About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’
Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.

“A spa-like master suite and retreat that is straight out of the Ritz-Carlton”?

BWAHAHAHAHA, with a plastic shower enclosure? Oh my that is hilarious.

I really like this line:

“The good news is that the America that will emerge on the other side of this severe and protracted recession will be the America we once knew.”

I’m really hoping this recession will be the end of places with $5 coffee, $5 frozen yogurts, $20 hamburgers and $300 jeans.

Last weekend I spent the day going to liquidation sales at Mervyns and Linens and Things thinking I could find a good bargain.  All I saw was a bunch of overpriced junk.  I know it will be unpleasant for a lot of people, but I’m really not going to miss most of these newly popular retail establishments.

The $270/month dues are rough.  I drove through this area this past weekend.  I got the same claustrophobic feeling that I do in Turtle Rock.  I find it a shame this relatively nice area (many parts of SoCal really) was built to max density with low intrinsic desirability instead of regular/larger homes on normal lots.

We are going to eventually buy a house in Irvine or nearby because we have to due to work, but we are also going to buy another one somewhere else that can be a real home instead of a uber-expensive, pseudo apartment like this one.

My guess is this place will easily fall to <$500k.

Is it just me or have those credit card solicitations like Capitol1 which used to plug up my mailbox dropped off to near nothing recently?
This may be an upside to tighter credit and reduce wear and tear on my shredder.

How about George Winston…...Winter.

“The downpayment was $90,000 or 10%. If this property sells for its asking price, and if a 6% commission is paid, the total loss will be $242,940. The owner will lose his $90,000 plus his credit rating, and the lender will lose the rest plus some negative amortization.”

That’s not bad with only $90000 lost. ( I wish I were in that good of shape with the 401.)  It looks like in CA, the debt is “eliminated” with the sale of the house.  Not bad, in the lots of placings the world the debt follow you.  Friend’s parent walked away with only a 70 point deduction on their credit score.  Not bad for over $200000 debt relief.  I though it would be much worse.  Better than stocks in which a real $200000 would be lost.

Newbie points out that the non-recourse status of CA. first mortgages and the really minimal hit you take on your credit rating conspire to make walking away so utterly and undeniably logical. Given the peril it puts us all in though I would think it ought not be so very attractive.
One of the redeeming features of the Mc Cain plan was to make these mortgages recourse.

I’ll BET you that right now your credit rating would get dinged more by a $10000 judgment than a $250K walkaway.  That ain’t right-

I’m sure that most of you have heard that the credit card companies are now heading south.  People are not paying or paying very late.  Thus the CC companies are clamping down.  If you are late one day they start calling you, I heard this on NPR they are also cancelling cards that do not have activity on them, but are in good standing, seems to me they are trying to reduce as much risk as they can.  But seeing how our nation lives on CC I see this as another straw that will break the camels back.

I wonder how many borrowers know that in a short sale the lender will 1099 them with the difference, thus owing the IRS taxes.

With every job being lost, there are several others that get into danger of being lost as a consequence of cut in spending. That’s the impact the recessionary unemployment makes. With average negative savings rate and I would guess 90% in deep debt (net debt), I doubt that average american can even survive a single month without a paycheck, let alone those who literally live for Friday paydays.  Its about to get very ugly and very voilent in the coming months.