1 year ago
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
In California, "pain just beginning" for affluent neighborhoods. According to this article, people with more assets have been able to fend off foreclosure, until now. Anecdotal evidence (like an appraiser telling me that her firm's workload here in town is now 50% pre-foreclosure appraisals, up from nearly zero in past years) suggests to me that we're about to witness the same phenomenon here in Greenwich.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
10 comments:
Chris: is the appraiser's business as busy as it was in, say, 2004-2005?
Or is it at 2008 levels, so just a couple of appraisals, and "50% pre-foreclosure" is just a couple of houses a month?
My husband and I had been saying for ages - since we don't lead a big lifestyle, and I work - we couldn't understand how people seemed to live in such big houses, with income so much greater than ours. It was depressing.
If it is the case that they were borrowing to do it, at least I'd feel that all our hard work and spend-only-what-you-make was rational, not "old-fashioned" thinking.
CEA
To paraphrase, Warren Buffet we don't know who is swimming naked until the tide goes out.
Well, the tide, more like riptide, is going out and we will soon learn who has been faking it, both at the macro as well as the micro (which neighbors) levels.
There is no question in my mind, after looking at the accumulation of debt in the country, that the landscape may take on the feel of a French nudist beach.
Additionally, the foreclosure problem has still got a lot of life to it. Banks have been slow to foreclose in many cases (can only handle so much, will the government bail out the bad loans so wait and see, etc) and there is an entire new wave of PIK and Option Arm still to come.
I have my bathing suit secured with belts and suspenders. Hope you do as well...
Retired IB'er
Some say own the biggest house you can afford - and call it home! Yes - I too - don't understand why we find just one or two living in such big houses!
A nudie beach? Well heck, that's okay then - I like nudie beaches! There's one on Nantucket ...
From what the appraiser told me, I'd say she's very busy and doing far more than two pre-foreclosure appraisal a month. I forget her exact figures, but there's a bunch of stuff in the pipeline.
"There's one on Nantucket ..."
Gee, that reminds me of a limerick...
There was once was a house on Nantucket, so near the beach you could... well, on it,
But the tide went the wrong way, and swept everyone away,
So now the beach and the house are just empty.
Retired IB'er
If limericks were named after Limerick, Ireland, how on earth did they get written on the Emerald Isle before the Irish discovered Nantucket?
(It was precisely to encourage minds like yours, IB'er, that I mentioned the nudie beach on Nantucket instead of, say, the beaches of St. Barts - doesn't rhyme with much). Of course, there's also such a beach on Gay Head, Martha's Vineyard, and surely some fertile brain could ....)
Ok, IB'er, if you won't rise to the challenge, ...
There once was a man on St. Bart's,
Who dined only on beans and his ....
His girlfriend said geeze, if you'd just eat some cheese,
we could swim at our ease, drink wine as we pleased,
and the natives won't whack our rear parts.
Pretty bad, but for top of the head stuff, it'll have to do. How about,
There once was a girl from Gay Head'
whose boyfriend was desperate for er, you know -
He begged and he pleaded, she felt she was needed but said Darling, I'd rather be dead.
Your turn!
Not bad, Chris, but I have to deduct points for the non-real estate related angle. For you blog something more like this might be appropriate:
I once knew a girl from St. Barts,
To many, they loved her big heart.
Until the day came,
That her house she set in flames (the mortgage you know).
Now she sits in a jail, accused of arson-inspired art,
As her neighbors cry out, she was always a tart.
Retired IB'er
Not real estate related, eh? Well that girl from Gay Head was certainly defending her real estate. I'll work on St. Barts.
Post a Comment