Driving out of my charmless tract home subdivision this afternoon

when i see a big sign, a Keller Williams realty sign and attached to that was a large "Bank owned! Open House➜!" sign. My charmless tract subby is a relatively small one compared to many of them in my city but on my street alone, all of 23 houses there have been 5 foreclosures including my next door neighbor who finished moving out today. 5 foreclosures on one small street this year.

and THAT was 8 years ago....

we never borrowed off the equity and have a plain old boring 15 year fixed mortgage that we're 7 1/2 years in to. We won't be selling for another 6 years or so but it just sucks seeing your neighbors lose their home.

My sister mentioned that 11 of the 17 homes on her street have For Sale signs out front right now, and two more look abandoned and will presumably have signs up soon.

Of course, she lives in a newer neighborhood in Modesto California, which is pretty much ground zero for the real estate implosion right now. She paid $520,000 for her home two years ago and refi'd it with an ARM for $615,000 shortly after that. Last time she mentioned it, the home was estimated to be worth about $450,000 and it's still dropping. Yes, her home may soon join those for sale on her street.

i hope it all works out for your sister though.

She's a nurse and her husband is an underpaid Lowes delivery guy. They had no business taking out a $615,000 loan, and only got it because it was a 3.something percent 30 year IO ARM. Their payments are already climbing, and I have no clue how they're going to continue to afford the house. She's convinced that they'll come up with some way to keep it though.

Still, she's family, and I've already offered her a corner of my property if it comes to that. I bought before prices erupted...back when $350,000 got you a few acres in the Modesto area. I simply cannot believe what some people around here were paying for ugly stucco boxes with no yards.

down the next block, and the next--all the way to the endo of the commute.


We, the people, are feeling it--and no amount of financial racket cheerleading is going to change that.

is resetting all at the same time.

they all reset about the same time..

we just sensed that that was a really bad idea. We got a very comfortable home in a lovely new neighborhood. We didn't need that much sfootage and surely didn't want it.

We, and most of the new neighborhood, are stable, but the next door neighbors have to sell to pay for the grandchild's kidney operation. I fell apart when they told me; very nice people, my son made good friends with their grandkid.

Ouch--this is going to get very sad, I'm afraid.

They have one of the 'best houses' in an old neighborhood--which used to be just nice, but now is 'tony.' Their lot is twice what most are, they have the big two car garage (many here don't have one at all as the lots are not big) and more square footage than most. They're selling their house just over assessed/taxed value, and that 'just over' looks like a bit of bargaining slack.

The whole thing was rigged from the start.

Gotta keep the appearance of a great economy, so you keep the home-builders building..the Home depots busy, the furniture stores going.. and how do you do it?

Home builders ran rampant, building houses..somebody's gotta BUY them, so of course the financial guys figured out a clever little ponzi scheme that would "qualify" just about anyone with a pulse..They would then start the "paper" moving like a hot potato, and eventually, someone gets stuck with burned hands, and the naive people who ended up unable to afford the price , are back to being renters, only with worse credit than ever, from trying to keep up with the Joneses before they could afford it.

are pulling out of town and leaving neighborhoods unfinished "We'll be back when the market picks up" um sure.

People thought they could just "flip" their way to millionaire real estate baron status...in their spare time..on borrowed money..

TV made it all look so easy:eyes:

Maybe I'm fortunate to have a good radar or something--or maybe it's just the granddaughter of a Kansan tenant farmer in me, but something told me that was gonna be a bad, bad debacle.

Too good to be true and all that...

I would LOVE to have a nice shiny new house, but we cannot afford it, so we are still in the house we bought in 1981..for $82K..with 13K down..

It's funny too.. I would have liked to have a "cool house" when my kids were adolescents , but their friends with the rich parents & the cool houses grew up to be some pretty screwed up people..

Maybe it IS about the people and not the "stuff", after all :evilgrin:

And a hundred a month after that.
Duckie

Wow.

But of course, the economy is just peachy... :sarcasm:

How many would you have gotten, say, a year ago?

When I took over the department in April, we had 30 properties. We're up to seventy, but that's counting properties that are under contract.
I'm currently the only one in the department. We're getting two more people in the middle of December.
Duckie

:evilgrin:

Some large properties that are fixer uppers.
Duckie

As a state, we were apparently very slow to come out of the post 9/11 recession so apparently our housing market didn't explode quite as quickly. (Although, personally, I was able to sell a house that had been purchased for $55k for $365k the day after the open house in 2003, and the market has been very hot since about 2002/2003). And there were far fewer ARMs written in Oregon, so the rate of defaults in the state is lower. Houses are still selling, but they're taking about twice as long.

And our job market seems steady. I'm seeing many jobs in my field at my experience level starting at $60k+. Fresh out of college kids in my field have opportunities to earn nearly $50k/year.

Knocking on some old-growth Doug firs here, feeling bad for California.

My dad lives in the Newport area, and he was telling me that they're starting to see issues around there because of all the people who bought second and vacation homes on IO ARMs. Lot's of them can't afford the houses anymore, so the market is starting to saturate.