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There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Group Therapy (page 59 of 81)

November 1, 2009

“The net effect of government intrusions in the real estate market is to create a standing wave of foreclosures amid steadily-declining home values”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This from my Arizona Republic real estate column:

As I write this, the entire real estate industry is on tenterhooks, waiting to see if the $8,000 first-time home-buyers tax credit is going to be extended.

It’s not really a tax credit, it’s a taxpayer-funded subsidy, a “gift” extracted by force from everyone who does not buy a house under the program. The money taken from taxpayers — either now or later by deficit spending — is money that cannot be spent or invested elsewhere.

And it’s not as though this were a zero-sum game. The actual marginal sales — the home sales that would not have happened without the subsidy — may have cost taxpayers from $40,000 to $75,000 each. And as huge as those numbers are, they ignore the interest cost of the borrowed money, the opportunity costs of mal-investment and the compound interest value of those opportunity costs.

Government action cannot create wealth. At best, it moves wealth around. At worst, government destroys wealth by taking it away from the very people who have new ideas and new technologies to invest in.

But as bad as this tax credit is, it’s only temporary. Someday it will end. The mortgage interest tax deduction — which almost no home-owners actually get — is forever. The government dominance of the secondary mortgage market — FannieMae, FreddieMac, GinnieMae, etc. — is forever.

And here’s the real kick in the head, given all we’ve been through in the real estate market over the last eight years: The National Association of Realtors reports that 59% of all new home loans this year were underwritten by the Federal Housing Authority, the Veterans Administration or the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

What this means is that a huge number of homes will have been sold this year with down-payments ranging from 3.5% to -5%. Six out of ten new mortgages are essentially nothing-down loans.

The U.S. government wants to buy your vote by making home-ownership easy. But the net effect of government intrusions in the real estate market is to create a standing wave of foreclosures amid steadily-declining home values.

 
Steal this book: I’ve written over 200 Read more

October 28, 2009

Post-Opt Best Practices: Internet Marketing Meets

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

Really quickly. A lot of us have various opt in methods. Free books, blog comments, FB adds.

What are we doing with that noise? Hello.  Call them.

Objection #1 “But I Can’t Find A Numba”

OKAY, fine.  You can’t find a number.  Sergey and Eric made this little website, it’s a good starting point.  So is linkedIn.  So is Twitter.  Search your lists.  Search everything you do, and yeah, you can “find a numba.”

It’s not hard.

Some hints:  a lot of people are in the 90 and 9 in your fb list.

A lot of people are in linkedin.

A lot of people are attached to someone else.

Objection 2: But, Daddy, They’ll HAAAAAAAAAATE me.

Twice, maybe.  Twice I’ve called people and gotten some sort of jerk face.  Offense that I’d dare call them.  I call  about 15 people a day.  75 a week.  I have had a bunch of people I got no interest in, that’s for sure.   I have a bunch of people that I can’t stand…another given.   And a bunch of people that want the free stuff.  No sweat.

More often, I call people, decide that they are morons and don’t pursue anything.  With them.  I call, they’re not interesting….to me.  See, calling about 75 people a week gives me options.  I don’t need to chase every imbecile or get anxious about stuff.

…I don’t have any Boiler Room Jedi Mind Tricks.  I don’t even currently have a script.  I’m not that good…I step up to the plate and take my hacks.   And that’s enough to make me a living that has been six figures 9 out of 10 years 2006, friends was the bad, bad year  I know you all were laughing, but I was rocked hard by the IRS, my own ego, and a bunch of rental properties that were imbecilic.

Objection 3:  I shouldn’t have to sell.  I’m such a great blogger that they should come to me.

Okay fine.   Look, they did. They came, saw and commented.  They gave you love, they gave you some confidence.  Now pick up the phone, and close the deal.  They are BEGGING to give you their money.   Read more

October 28, 2009

Please do NOT extend the $8,000 tax credit

by

Realtor, Guerilla Technologist

Author website

If you are on the far left, there is no need to read any further, for what I am going to say, is from a capitalist “conservative” mindset (which only means to left wingers that…I must be a hate monger for not wanting to extend the first time home buyer tax credit to those poor innocent people who can’t afford a home in the first place).

To extend the tax credit is simply going to increase the national debt load beyond what taxpayers can already afford to pay, yet weakening the economy even deeper.  Simply put I’m sick and tired of Realtor’s wanting the extension of the tax credit because it only benefits a few parties to a transaction instead of bettering the country.  We need to look at the big picture.  The fact is the tax credit must end at some point in time; that is a fact!  Realtors need to put their own personal interest aside and do what is best for this country, not themselves!  Extending the FREE money tax credit will only increase the pain of debt until the US dollar is worthless.  So the FACT is…Americans must be willing the do the tough thing!

What is the tough thing you might ask? well, for me,  I have refused to work with buyers looking for the tax credit!!! YES, you heard me correctly.  I know that if I am against the tax credit, then I must ACT as I believe.  I BELIEVE the government should not be handing out any of my money “tax payer money” to try and stimulate an economy that is FALSELY INFLATED in the first place.

How about this for a thought.  How about Americans need to live their WAGE so no tax credit is needed!  Here is my thought for the day.  WHAT IF, your home cost 125k instead of 300k?  what if you drove cars 10 years old with no car payments?  Could YOUR WIFE be a stay at home mother for her CHILDREN if this were the case?  Would the 10% unemployment rate drop to near zero if Americans lived their wage so Read more

October 28, 2009

If you want to do what you can to kill this pestilential home-buyers’ tax credit…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

…today is probably the day to make contact with your state’s U.S. Senators.

(Incidentally, if you want for your political communications to have maximum force, you have to do more than write a check. You’ll get double the impact is you make a photocopy of your check — and then mail the photocopy to your candidate’s opponent. This should be very effective over the next two years in “purple” districts.)

October 26, 2009

7 Things Every Home Buyer Should Know – Part 2 – Don’t Worry

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

Time to take a look at the second installment in the 7 things series.   If you recall, last time, we looked at the fact that, in a rapidly changing market like we are, 6 months ago is ancient history.    What someone paid 6 months ago…… Well, just read about that at 7 Things – Part 1.

So what’s Part 2 about?   Here’s what I wrote last time:

2. Don’t worry so much about what you paid for your house. Instead, look at the difference between what you can expect to sell your house for and what it’s going to cost you to buy the new one that you want. I expect you’ll find that those are much more important numbers (unless you end up without any equity, in which case you don’t sell).

There are a couple of things that I think still hold true and one big thing that I think doesn’t hold true any more.    First the things that hold true:

  • If you are selling one home to buy another, the most important number is not what you paid for the existing home, the most important number is the difference between the two homes.   If the value of your home has fallen by $40,000 but you’re in a situation where you can buy a newer home with less maintenance and 1000 square foot bigger for a “net” difference of $20,000, then it might very well be a good deal.   
  • If your family situation has changed (i.e. – We got married and are expecting our second set of twins in the last 2 years! – Yikes!) then what you paid for your house doesn’t matter.   I’ve got a client who is negotiating on a house where the seller has to sell within the next three weeks but they are “hung up” on what they paid for the house.   If you need to do something, don’t worry about what you paid for your house, just focus on what the financial and logistical aspects and make the move.    I’m working with Read more
October 25, 2009

The bad news: Tens of thousands of people, including IRS agents and including at least one four-year-old, fraudulently claimed the $8,000 first-time home-buyer’s tax credit. The good news? When these morons take over your health care, you’ll probably die before you suffer too terribly much…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From Politics Daily, the you-just-can’t-make-this-shit-up section:

Four-year-olds are adorable, trustworthy, and, having never owned a home before, fully eligible for the first-time homebuyer tax credit that Congress passed in 2008.

As a result of that loophole and numerous faulty reporting mechanisms, a House panel learned Thursday of tens of thousands of cases of fraud in the tax credit program, including more than 500 instances of people using their children — including a four-year-old — to apply for the credit to get around income caps and a requirement that the purchaser has never owned a home.

Together, fake or faulty claims for the $8,000 refundable tax credit may have cost the government up to half a billion dollars so far, investigators told the Ways and Means subcommittee.

Russell George, an inspector general with the Treasury Department, told the subcommittee about the most brazen instances of bogus claims that he had come across since the IRS created a filtering system last May to weed out suspicious applications.

George said he had found nearly 20,000 returns for people who may not have actually purchased homes; thousands for people who already owned homes; 3,200 taxpayers who could not prove they were in the country legally; and an unspecified number of IRS employees wrongly applying for the credit.

It is completely implausible to me that anyone could expect anything other than disaster from government-run anything. I like to say that governments are only good at one thing — killing people — but even that isn’t true of the U.S. government: The Army expends 20,000 rounds of ammunition for every confirmed kill. No worries, though:

This week Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) began a push to expand the credit to all homebuyers and extend the deadline, now set for Nov. 30th, to July 2010.

Good plan…

October 22, 2009

Driveby Economics – $8,000 Price Cut?

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

I had coffee yesterday with a long time friend of mine who works for a local title company.   We were talking about a variety of things, including some of the new stuff I’m working on on the web.

The topic came around to the $8,000 First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit.   He said to me that he’s had 3 different Realtors tell him that on December 1, the value of all of their listings is going to drop by $8,000 each.

Let me say that again, on December 1, each of the houses that they have listed is going to drop in value by $8,000.   Why’s that?   Because the first time buyer credit is going away.

Now let’s look at a couple of things (according to this story):

  • It’s called a FIRST TIME HOME BUYER tax credit.
  • According to these Realtors, it has inflated (or kept up) the prices of homes by $8,000.  So does the buyer benefit or does the seller?
  • Somewhere less than 50% (according to the last stats I’ve heard) of the buyers qualify for the tax credit.
  • But 100% of the buyers are paying paying $8,000 more.
  • And the government is paying $43,000 for every additional sale we’re getting.

Now, do you really think that it’s such a good idea any more?

Oh, and in reality, the prices of the homes aren’t going to wait until December 1 to drop.   Realistically, if you haven’t signed a purchase agreement by Halloween, it’s going to be very difficult (but not impossible) to get the deal closed by the end of November.

All is not as simple as it seems.

Tom Vanderwell
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October 20, 2009

I was joking – honestly, I was really joking!

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

Approximately a month ago, I was getting a client approved for a mortgage with mortgage insurance and while going over the details of what we needed to document the deal, the customer deadpanned to me, “Where do I go to get the bloodwork done?”    My response, “Nah, we don’t need that —- yet.”

The report below is actually from England but it now appears that the government is going to start requiring mortgage lenders in England to ask questions about how much their borrowers spend on tobacco and alcohol.

Now, if you ask me, I think that tighter restrictions in terms of downpayments, debt to income ratios, credit scores, job histories, cash reserves, etc. all make sense.   But whether my neighbor spends more or less on alcohol than I do, I can’t see what substantive difference that makes in our ability to repay our mortgages.  (Hint – I’m not the one who spends more on alcohol.)

The pendulum is swinging too far in the other direction in some areas and not far enough in others.

Tom Vanderwell

Homebuyers face questions on alcohol and smoking under new mortgage rules – Times Online

Homebuyers could be forced to provide detailed information about the amount of money they spend on alcohol each month to qualify for a new mortgage under a new clampdown on reckless lending.

In a sweeping review of the mortgage market published today, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) said lenders needed to be far more rigorous about their financial checks of potential borrowers.

It said lenders should delve deeper into homebuyers’ personal spending including the amount they spend on alcohol and tobacco.

Spending on shoes, clothes and childcare could also be assessed under a new, industry-wide “affordability test”.

At present, the FSA does not prescribe rules about assessing a consumers’ ability to repay a mortgage and practices vary from one lender to the next.

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October 19, 2009

7 Things Every Home Buyer Should Know – Part 1

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

Here’s what I wrote about item #1 on the list last time:

6 months ago is ancient history. What your neighbor sold his house for 6 months ago doesn’t matter.   What the seller was asking for the house 6 months ago doesn’t matter.   What matters is what the market will support today.

So, how are things the same and how are they different?   A couple of things that need to be discussed:

How are things the same?

  • What happened 6 months ago is still ancient history.   Since I wrote the first piece, Fannie, Freddie and FHA have tightened up their appraisal guidelines and they will no longer allow an appraiser to use a sale that is more than 90 days old unless they have no other comparables and can write a 5 page essay of why they need to use that one.
  • I can’t tell you how many times over the last 12 months, I’ve heard people say, “3 years ago, the seller bought the house for $100,000 more than what I’m paying the bank for it.   I’m getting an awesome deal!”    My first response is, “Maybe.”   Maybe you are getting a deal.   But maybe the seller bought it at the peak of a bubble in the market and paid way too much and now things are just adjusting down to the market.    Maybe it’s not down to what the market will really absorb for the house and if you tried to sell it next year, you’d end up selling it for less than you paid for it.
  • “They just dropped the price by $50,000!”   This is a great deal!    Maybe, but then again, I can put my house on the market for $650,000 and then offer to give you $100,000 off the asking price.   Is that a good deal for my house?  (Hint – my house is still WAY overpriced at $550,000 – but I’ll sell it to you for that.)

So what is different?   A couple of things are a bit different from last year:

  • The First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit/Buyer Frenzy – If you are any where near the radio/newspaper/any mortgage lender or Realtor, you’re Read more
October 17, 2009

A Look Back – What Has Changed and What Hasn’t…..

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

In July of 2008, I wrote a piece as a guest post on Paul Kedrosky’s site, Infectious Greed.    I called that piece The Top 7 Things Every Home Buyer Should Know.   The piece got a lot of “press” and actually got me interviewed by the New York Times.    I was talking with the reporter who I’ve gotten to know at the New York Times about a month ago and we realized that it was almost exactly a year since he had ran the piece, “Considering the 7 Year Plan.”    He made a comment at that point, “It would be interesting to see what, if anything, has changed over the last year in your opinion of what a home buyer needs to think about.”     I agreed and decided at that point to do that.

So this is the introduction to what will be a 7 part series over the course of the next week or so.   I’m going to take each item, one by one, and look at what my view was in July of last year and then factoring in what I think has or has not changed over the last 15 months.

Here’s a hint for you – out of the 7 parts, I think that we’re going to find that at least 3 or 4 of them have changed substantially.

I’ll have the first one up in a day or two.

Thanks for listening in/reading what my thoughts are…..

 

Tom Vanderwell

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October 15, 2009

When you’ve got your health, you’ve got everything…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

Here’s what happened: I had to stop walking because I was sick. You may not know it, but on top of all the other scourges it entails, the state really has it in for itinerants. You may never have wanted to run off to Alabama with a banjo on your knee, but I’d bet you’re more than a bit dismayed to discover that you can’t. Got to have a fixed address, so they can inflict all their precious ‘benefits’ on you.

So I had to stop walking and I had to see a doctor, and of course I couldn’t. I’ve walked myself right out of society, and I have an inkling I may have walked myself right out of the human race. At least that’s the way Nurse Martinetti made me feel.

That’s really her name, but I think she must have married into it. She looked like American Gentry to me, which is to say John Bull white trash six generations from the last capital crime. Short, bottle-blonde with a cut that looks cute on smudged-nosed tomboys, thick through the ankle and the cortex. My guess is she became a nurse because she red-lined the psych profiles for meter-maid.

First, it’s not a doctor’s office, not anymore. It’s a ‘Health Services Cooperative’. We all know what a cooperative is: It’s a place where you go to not get whatever it is you came for. It would make too much sense to stay home, where you already don’t have it. In any case, Nurse Martinetti is charged with making sure that no one gets anything they came for, although they might get stuck (literally!) with quite a lot they’d have sooner done without. But I wasn’t even that (un)fortunate, because I don’t have a fixed address.

Nurse Martinetti gripped her clipboard and said, “What do you mean? How can you not have an address? Everyone has an address. Some people even have two!” She looked at me as if I were something a puppy accidently left on the carpet.

“…,” I said with a shrug.

“Are you homeless?”

“I wouldn’t say so. I sleep Read more

October 15, 2009

Why I write on the Bloodhound Blog….

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

and on Zillow’s Mortgages Unzipped Blog and on the Straight Talk About Mortgages. I was asked that question the other day and the answer I gave surprised the person who asked it.   I found that intriguing, so I thought I’d share both the question and the answer.

Why do I write on these blogs?   The person who asked it reads a lot of what I write on these blogs and other places, so they know that even though writing comes rather easy for me, I do spend a lot of time on it.

Here’s my answer:

  • I write on these blogs because the mortgage world can be terribly confusing and I want to try to help educate people, and that’s true even in the best of times.
  • I write on these blogs because sharing my understanding and knowledge of what’s happening and what it means helps to elevate the professionalism and expertise of the mortgage and real estate professions.
  • I write on these blogs because we are in horrendously confusing times and the full ramifications of what’s happening won’t be truly felt for decades.
  • I write on these blogs because there are a lot of people who have experienced and are going through severe financial disruptions and need someone to help them understand what’s going on.
  • I write on these blogs because the economy is going through what I believe we’ll see to be “seismic shifts” in consumers attitudes toward credit, saving, investments, banking, and real estate.  I’ve based my entire mortgage career on helping people manage their money wisely and making solid decisions and this is a logical extension of that.

The person who asked the question was surprised at my response.   He said, “I would have guessed that the reason you write on these is to write more loans!”

Have I written more mortgages that I wouldn’t have otherwise?   Yes.   Is that why I’m doing it?   Nope.

And that brings me to the main point of this post.   I’m working on something new.   Let me explain:

  • There are a lot more facets to people’s financial condition than just mortgages.
  • There’s a lot of people who are struggling to understand what’s happening Read more
October 14, 2009

Howard Brinton : A Chance To Do Something Really, Really Cool.

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

I remember a long time ago, getting Star Power manuals in the mail.  Big, 3 ring binders full of worksheets that I’d work out with fear and trembling.  I remember getting star of the month stuff.

I remember hearing stars, ordinary schmoes like Phil Herman–a former postman talk about what made him separate from the pack.  I was hooked.  There was a formula to this success stuff, and this guy went out and gathered it up.

A collection of excellence was what Star Power was about, formed in the pre-Internet days, largely, maybe a precursor to the Bloodhound Blog of sorts.  In any case, Howard Brinton has been given a most unfavorable prognosis by his doctors.

So, a tribute site popped up, and it’s a place to go and reconnect with the stars, and to leave thoughts and tributes.   There, not here.   Thanks much.

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Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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