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Thursday, April 2, 2009
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16 comments:
Did anybody catch the NPR Marketplace segment yesterday about the new face of housing?
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/04/01/pm_new_staging/
Sellers have resorted to hiring actors to play the role of neighbors, gardeners, dog walkers and even using little league teams from nearby communities to give the impression when selling a home that the community is full of life. This is all in an effort to cover up the apparent absence of life in communities that have been ravaged with foreclosures.
That's hilarious. NPR had a lot of gags yesterday (the whale farming was awesome) are you sure this wasn't one of them?
How to get a house sold:
http://franklymls.com/FX7005980
Price it right. Listed for $299k, sold for $335k.
Here's an interesting source of data for the number crunchers out there:
http://perdiem.hqda.pentagon.mil/perdiem/bah.html
This site provides current and historical data for BAH, aka the housing allowance provided for military members in lieu of base housing. It is searchable by rank and location. The allowances are based on area rents and are set using a very comprehensive market survey including proximity to workplace/base (must be within 20 miles), demographics of area, etc. What is interesting to see is that the rental allowances rose significantly in tandem with the housing bubble. For example, in 1999 pre-bubble the BAH for an O-3 with dependents (typical of say, a junior officer at the Pentagon) was $1196/month. By 2006, it was $2232, a 100% increase in 7 years. Since then, BAH levels have gone up just slightly, and for senior officers they've actually gone down slightly this year.
This data makes me wonder if rents aren't also set to fall, thereby calling current rental parity into question? Or is this just a normal adjustment?
TBW -- today's WSJ has an op-ed piece on affordability you might find interesting. There's a link to it over on Bubblemeter.
Very interesting GiGi. I played around with it a bit. The results are different based on area Loudoun County (which it defines as the warrenton area) and Prince William (quantico area) are showing falling rents. However, where I am looking (the Washington area) rents are still rising. Sigh...
Anon -- the curious thing is if you plug in a rank of O-4 (Army Major) or higher, you will find the allowances are falling in the DC metro area (albeit slightly). This would indicate that housing the military considers at the senior officer level is starting to drop in price. Don't know what, if anything, that means in the big picture, but it could be the beginning of a trend.
Ahh - got it. I was only looking at the lowest grade where rents are falling outside the beltway, but rising inside.
http://franklymls.com/FX6990528
More great comps in the mail for me! $217k for a totally acceptable TH in Burke. (very very well staged too). There's hope for me yet.
Cara - how do you search for solds in Frankly?
I signed up for Trulia's alerts on solds for 3+ BR TH in 22015, 22152, 22153 and 22030. Here is what I got the other day (none were 4 BR):
5943 Heritage Square Dr, Burke VA
sold for $298,500 on February 27th, 2009
3 br, 3½ ba, Townhouse
5804 Jacksons Oak Ct, Burke VA
sold for $280,000 on February 27th, 2009
3 br, 2½ ba, Townhouse
8906 Gutman Ct, Springfield VA
sold for $320,000 on February 27th, 2009
3 br, 3 ba, Townhouse
8025 Orange Plank Rd, Springfield VA
sold for $244,200 on February 27th, 2009
3 br, 3½ ba, Townhouse
9057 Blarney Stone Dr, Springfield VA
sold for $315,000 on February 26th, 2009
3 br, 3 ba, Townhouse
8070 Tributary Ct, Springfield VA
sold for $179,900 on February 26th, 2009
3 br, 3 ba, Townhouse
5578 Hecate Ct, Fairfax VA
sold for $250,000 on February 26th, 2009
3 br, 3 ba, Townhouse
8702 Sheridan Farms Ct, Springfield VA
sold for $270,000 on February 26th, 2009
3 br, 3 ba, Townhouse
7309 Rolling Oak Ln, Springfield VA
sold for $220,000 on February 26th, 2009
3 br, 3 ba, Townhouse
7742 Brandeis Way, Springfield VA
sold for $304,000 on February 24th, 2009
3 br, 3 ba, Townhouse
T,
If you sign up for email alerts for a given search on Frankly it emails you the solds. Of course for me that artificially distorts them because my search window is 150-300k. You have to pick a price window for Frankly so that's a bit distortionary.
(as far as I know you can't search the solds on Frankly, but I could be wrong)
my current search is only 22015 and 22032, and also only 3bdr because it didn't like two sets of paranthese (that may also have been fixed by now)
T,
If you're working with a realtor on the sale of your TH, he/she should be able to send you an mris link with the solds/under contracts for your desired area. When we were semi-entertaining the idea of buying a few months ago, I had our realtor send us a link of sold comps in a neighborhood we liked. I saved the link and found when I clicked on it later it automatically updated the information.
Melissadata.com is another web site that e-mails the home sales each week.
Enter a zip code you want to monitor then click on Free Home Sales Alert.
AIG is called Ponzi scheme:
In fact, our investigation suggests that by the time AIG had entered the CDS fray in a serious way more than five years ago, the firm was already doomed. No longer able to prop up its earnings using reinsurance because of growing scrutiny from state insurance regulators and federal law enforcement agencies, AIG’s foray into CDS was really the grand finale. AIG was a Ponzi scheme plain and simple, yet the Obama Administration still thinks of AIG as a real company that simply took excessive risks. No, to us what the fraud Bernard Madoff is to individual investors, AIG is to the global financial community.
As with the phony reinsurance contracts that AIG and other insurers wrote for decades, when AIG wrote hundreds of billions of dollars in CDS contracts, neither AIG nor the counterparties believed that the CDS would ever be paid. Indeed, one source with personal knowledge of the matter suggests that there may be emails and actual side letters between AIG and its counterparties that could prove conclusively that AIG never intended to pay out on any of its CDS contracts.
Subprime Mortgage Pricing: The Impact of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender on the Cost of Borrowing
5. Conclusion
In a sample of over 75 thousand 2/28 subprime mortgages we were able to merge LP and HMDA data together to provide a more detailed picture of loan pricing. Our results provide no evidence of adverse pricing by race, ethnicity or sex of the borrower in either the initial rate or the reset margin. If any pricing differential exists, minority borrowers appear to pay slightly lower rates. We also find that borrowers in Zip Codes with a higher percentage of black or Hispanic residents or a higher unemployment rate actually pay slightly lower mortgage rates.
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