Category: Real Estate (page 98 of 266)

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Years ago, when my kids began asking questions about presidential campaigns it became necessary to sit down with them, explaining the foundational beliefs of the two basic ways of thinking in our country. The first of these talks took place with my son, (now the Brown who’s after the ‘and’) ’92 when he was a 12 year old middle schooler, during the presidential campaign. Later, at about the same point in the ’96 presidential race, the talk was repeated with his sister.

Here’s how I explained the difference between the two belief systems. Would love your thoughts. (Ready Pandora?)

A thousand years ago there was a river hundreds of miles long. Two villages were located on the river, but were totally unaware of each other’s existence. Both villages were based upon the water and fish provided by the river.

The first village discovered they had families among them who weren’t doing as well as most others. Today we call those folks, poor. The leaders cared greatly for all the villagers, so this couldn’t be ignored. What to do? They decided the solution was simple.

They went to the best 20% of fishermen in the village and demanded much of their catch be given at no cost to those who were having ‘bad luck’ fishing. Any of these 20% who refused were visited again by the leaders, this time armed with spears and knives. The message was received, and the fish was given away to those who couldn’t or wouldn’t get the job done.

Over time, the most talented fishermen and their families stopped catching so many fish, as having ‘extra’ had become a painful experience. Since they didn’t ‘need’ any more fish, they simply caught just a little more than they necessary to keep their family well fed. They had tired of fishing for others.

The second village had the same problem — there was a small percentage of families who just weren’t makin’ it. The leaders got together and came upon the solution they would employ. They invited the village’s best fishermen to meet with them. They asked these elite fishermen if they’d Read more

by Chris Johnson

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

Pass this one…and many many more will follow.

Hell, even the stuff already enacted by fiat guarantees that failure is emboldened.

And soon, every single industry will come crying with their hand out.   Even the hint of passing this one–and the beginnings of it have had the auto industry lining up to start sucking at the teet (or if you believe as I believe, plunging their fangs into the neck) of our worker.   Fear will be the ultimate arbiter.   We have–perhaps too briefly–stood up to the extortion of the unknown for a day or two.  But more folks will come at us with ‘for our own good’ legislation in many forms.

They’ll claim calamity, and they’ll siphon more and more of our power.   The problem that we have is that we’re getting smarter|faster|better & more productive.   We’re creating more to steal, and we still are mollified by an increasing standard of living.   We’re currently creating wealth, knowledge and joy faster than the thieves can steal from us.   And I am glad for it, but I wonder how much we’d accomplish if the stealing wasn’t happening.   What progress has been stolen because of the siphoning off of half or more of our growth, passion, power and love?

It’s not a time where we can blame the seekers of social justice on the left side of the aisle.  The Republicans still rhetorically endorse some ideas of liberty, but in practice, they have been devouring us faster than the liberals.   Government grows and it becomes corrupt when it gains in power.   And seriously, how much cancer is too much?   Even a little must be shocked and starved.

Those in our industry–and I’m talking to anyone lining up at the trough for bailout money–that purport tht they are better equipped to dispense with the fruits of my labor than me…how dare you.  You financiers that tried to maximize risk, knowing full well that the Government would bail you out…you have colluded to weaken the freest society in history.  Mankind has lived thousands of years in bondage and serfdom, and you’ve put us on that path.

Trust and credibility civiity and citizenship Read more

by Sean Purcell

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Whether or not you approved of the bailout, you have to count yourself lucky to be witnessing an historic event.  Take a good, hard look at what is unfolding before us.  One elected official after another said they could not vote for this legislation because their constituents back home were not in favor of it and would vote them out of office.  As a matter of fact, this was part of an openly discussed game plan yesterday before the vote:

Both parties were also scouring the political map to identify lawmakers who face little or no opposition for re-election in November, knowing they would be more willing to vote yes. New York Times News Service

Think about that again.   They wanted to vote for it, but the people they represented were overwhelmingly against it and would have thrown them out for approving the bill.  How often does anything of REAL importance happen this close to an election?  This is so close to election time that the legislators are accountable for their votes.  Imagine that!  And they are scared.  They can not do their politics as usual because they don’t have time so spin it.  This is a magical time to witness: politicians acting out of accountability rather than self-interest.  Were that it was always true…

by Brian Brady

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

I didn’t believe it when I read it; the bailout bill is “earmarked” and ACORN is one of the beneficiaries of the largesse.   ACORN may control up to 20% of the $700 billion proffered by the Bush/Obama Bailout Plan.

ACORN?  Are you kidding me?  THIS is what ACORN really is (from Sol  Stern):

ACORN’s bedrock assumption remains the ultra-Left’s familiar anti-capitalist redistributionism. “We are the majority, forged from all the minorities,” reads the group’s “People’s Platform,” whose prose Orwell would have derided as pure commissar-speak. “We will continue our fight . . . until we have shared the wealth, until we have won our freedom . . . . We have nothing to show for the work of our hand, the tax of our labor”—claptrap that not only falsifies the relative comfort of the poor in America but that also is a classic example of chutzpah, given ACORN’s origins in a movement that undermined the work ethic of the poor. But never mind—ACORN claims that it “stands virtually alone in its dedication to organizing the poor and powerless.” It organizes them to push for ever more government control of the economy, as if it had learned no lessons about the free-market magic that made American cities unexampled engines of job creation for more than a century, proliferating opportunity and catapulting millions out of misery.

Remember, ACORN has been one of the largest groups to criticize “predatory lending” and the use of sub-prime loans.  Here’s ACORN President Maude Hurd, speaking about last night’s Presidential Debate:

“Given the recent turmoil in our financial markets and the ongoing negotiations around a bailout package for Wall Street, it’s not surprising that much of the debate focused on the current economic crisis, which was in many ways predictable.  ACORN has been sounding the alarm for years as more and more deregulation stripped protections for consumers and basic safeguards of sound lending.

Senator McCain failed to acknowledge the trigger of this explosive crisis: predatory lending, which entrapped hundreds of thousands of homeowners into toxic mortgages they could not afford fueling record numbers of foreclosures.  If Mr. McCain is unwilling or Read more

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Yesterday as I was waiting in my satellite office for the ‘other Brown’ to show up for a planning session, I laid my book down, taking advantage of the rare opportunity to sit quietly and think, sans any communications devices invented after 1951. I pondered more deeply what a previous morning conversation had reenforced for me.

Since my firm deals with builders and lenders in several states, I’m often privileged to hear what local market experts have to say. Much of the time it falls under the heading of, ‘What the hell?!’, but sometimes you find builders/lenders who’ve really drilled down into their corner of the real estate world. They ignore everything but empirically documented facts. Then with careful, objective analysis, they search for any opportunities hiding behind all the LameStream media’s ongoing fertilizer convention.

The phone call.

One of the builders I especially like and trust, had just hung up with a local lender he both trusted and respected. I’ll cut to the chase here. The lender knows what my firm’s been doing in his state. (For the time being, the lender, builder, and state must remain anonymous, by their request.) We’ve been tearin’ it up. They wanna go off the grid so to speak, setting aside a few boatloads of capital to lend to our clients, (not exclusively) without the constraints of Fannie and Freddie.

The builder? He’s no small fish, but his net worth doesn’t require three commas yet. 🙂 His product has been sellin’ itself during this correction. It still is. His biggest problem today? He can’t find enough land — or when he does, a bigger fish plays hardball and shoves him out the door. Most recently he walked away after being under contract. Now that’s hardball.

Also, this builder told me the recent builder surveys in the region as a whole, showed their confidence as an industry had risen almost 20%. Go figure. The lender is willing to revert to classic Old School lending by opting out of the secondary market and keeping these loans. What a concept. This will enable them to loan on a virtually Read more

by Brian Brady

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Wanna have some fun?  I have an idea about how to “save” the banking industry.  Through mergers and acquisitions, the banking cartel grew to become infallible.  Dave Shafer pins the tipping point of this crisis to the repeal of The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.  I’m not so certain he’s incorrect.

The intention of The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was to avoid this:

Commercial banks were accused of being too speculative in the pre-Depression era, not only because they were investing their assets but also because they were buying new issues for resale to the public. Thus, banks became greedy, taking on huge risks in the hope of even bigger rewards. Banking itself became sloppy and objectives became blurred. Unsound loans were issued to companies in which the bank had invested, and clients would be encouraged to invest in those same stocks

Do the 1920’s sound like this decade? As Dave Shafer points out,  the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 ENCOURAGED  the financial behemoths  explaining  “economies of scale” as the primary reason for the repeal of Glass-Steagall.  While financial institutions with strong technology infrastructures can reduce the cost of banking processing functions, the GLB act of 1999 discouraged what Greg Swann calls “flinty banking practices” and encouraged rampant speculation, this time in risky home loans rather than new stock issues.

We were so interested in free online banking that we fed the growing gorilla until he bloated to 1600 pounds. Today, we’re shocked that he busted out of the cage and is chewing up the zookeepers and zoo patrons.

Let me try an analogy for those less interested in economic history .  You once had neighborhood grocery stores.  Certainly, economies of scale favor the supermarket approach.  Distribution costs drop which lower retail food prices.  As those supermarkets vertically integrate, they branch out into ownership of trucking companies, slaughterhouses and farms.  Prices keep dropping and everybody is happy. A chicken in every pot becomes two and all praise is given to the phrase “economies of scale”

Then, a company like Starbucks comes around and the demand for coffee, on a retail level, skyrockets.  Supermarket companies, now owning the commodities Read more

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

I grab myself by the ear and drag my own sorry ass to the ‘place’ where I’m supposed to be writing something significant on a daily basis–a small, shady library room in the front of our 1890s Victorian house in Chicago. I look around and consider my resources: Mission style writing desk and leather straight back chair; Laptop, printer, copier; A collection of books by the greatest writers who have ever lived (and died); Google, Dictionary.com, iPhone; Sleeping dog, indifferent cat, supportive third wife; Eight years of The New Yorker stacked on every available dusty surface; Picture window; Bucolic setting; Liberal arts degree from a Pennsylvania state college.

Lamps, photographs, framed art. Unlimited coffee less than 20 feet away…

Viscerally speaking, I have only one excuse–nothing is funny to me these days. I’m just not feeling it. I stare at the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest every week and no juice. Nada. Zilcho. I hate Seinfeld anymore. Larry David, too. What a schmuck.

“Have you written anything today?” she asks from the other room. The television room across the hall where fallen stars dance and more desperate housewives than mine (I would hope) plot their own nefarious outcomes.

“Yes. The electric bill,” I say. “I wrote a check for the electric bill.” Ha ha funny.

“What about the mortgage?” On a different subject now. Diversion from the creative to the financial. Not very funny. (What she really means is ‘have you sold any real estate lately?’)

Good question. What about the mortgage? We’re being triple escrowed by our lender because the Cook County Tax Assessor’s office incorrectly recorded our deed while in a land far, far away called Reality, the whole banking industry is in a wind sheared tailspin. I look at the Due Notice.

“Too many digits,” I say, really wanting to run it through the shredder. “I’ll do that tomorrow before I work on my book. We have until the 15th.” Like something magical is going to happen between now and the ides of procrastination. An economic recovery package perhaps. Not even Ha ha. Barely LOL.

“How is the book coming?” she asks. Read more