The Real Estate Bloggers

Remember the movie The Sting with Robert Redford and Paul Newman where they set up an elaborate betting parlor to set up a sucker for a big bet? Well that is what the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Banking industry did to the Hispanic community in the United States.

You think I am overstating this, think again. I have excerpted a part of the Wall Street Journal’s investigation into this collusion with an amazing article. It shows how the subprime lenders and the desire of the Hispanic Black Caucus set Hispanics up in bad loans that were barely sustainable in good times and down right toxic when the economy turned south.

And do not be surprised when you hear the politicians screaming about the lenders putting these people into subprime loans. The lenders were just following directions!

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus created Hogar in 2003 to work with industry and community groups to increase mortgage lending to Latinos. At that time, the national Latino homeownership rate was 47%, compared with 68% for the overall population. Hogar called the figure “alarming,” and said a concerted effort was required to ensure that “by the end of the decade Latinos will share equally in the American Dream of homeownership.”

Hogar’s backers included many companies that ran into trouble in mortgage markets: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both now under federal control; Countrywide Financial Corp., sold last year to Bank of America Corp.; Washington Mutual Inc., taken over by the government and sold to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.; and New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest Mortgage Corp., both now defunct.

Hogar’s ties to the subprime industry were substantial. A Washington Mutual vice president served as chairman of its advisory committee. Companies that donated $150,000 a year got the right to place a research fellow who would conduct Hogar’s studies, which were used by industry lobbyists. For donations of $100,000 a year, Hogar offered to provide news releases from the Hispanic Caucus promoting a lender’s commercial products for the Latino market, according to the group’s literature. 

Read the whole article at WSJ.com.

While real estate agents had lots of time for Christmas shopping this year, mortgage brokers probably gave lots of gift cards as mortgage activity reached a 5 year high.

With the historically low rates and consumers watching every penny, refinancing was the word on the street.

Now we can hope that some of this activity translates to home sales as the great prognosticators in Washington have predicted.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday its weekly application index was essentially unchanged for the week ending Dec. 26. The index came in at 1245.7 from 1245.4 a week earlier. Applications surged earlier this month to the highest level since July 2003, when refinancing activity boomed at the peak of the housing market.
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More than 80 percent of applications came from borrowers looking to refinance at more affordable rates, the trade group said. Refinance volume dipped by 0.4 percent, while purchase volume rose 1.4 percent. via  msnbc.com.

After the rough couple of years for real estate agents and firms, is consolidation the name of the game for 2009? It is for agents and brokers at Prudential First Properties and Hunt Real Estate Corp in Upstate New York.

Hunt Real Estate has 85 agents affiliated with its two residential real estate offices in the Syracuse area. Prudential First Properties has eight offices and 322 agents. Hunt also has a commercial real estate division in Liverpool.

Hunt said his company was attracted to Prudential First Properties, already the largest company in the market, out of a long-held respect for its owner, Tom Teelin, his family and the work force they’ve assembled over the years.

Given the economy and the real estate market, it made sense to find ways for both real estate companies to work together, Hunt said. via  syracuse.com.

The pressure that individual agents are feeling is magnified by the brokerages right now. They need to have a certain amount of sales to keep the lights on and pay the back of the house people.

With the slowdown expect to see many such mergers on the horizon as firms find ways to survive the slowdown, reduce costs, and provide needed services.

It looks like that there will be a great deal of downward pressure on retail landlords in the coming year. Combining a downturn in retail sales that is expected to see 73,000 stores closing in the first half of 2009 and the amount of shopping center inventory coming online rents are expected to be driven down in the coming months.

Like their residential brethren, the commercial landlords will need to be tightening their belts in the coming months.

Retailers may close 73,000 stores in the first half of 2009, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Talbots Inc. and Sears Holdings Corp. are among chains shuttering underperforming locations.

More than a dozen retailers, including Circuit City Stores Inc., Linens ‘n Things Inc., Sharper Image Corp. and Steve & Barry’s LLC, have sought bankruptcy protection this year as the credit squeeze and recession drained sales. Investors will start seeing a wide variety of chains seeking bankruptcy protection in February when they file financial reports, said Burt Flickinger.  via Bloomberg.com

Nature abhors a vacuum. As foreclosures in central California multiply a new creature has moved in. Arriving with pumps they clean out the pools of homes that have been left empty and turn them into skateparks.

This is not so bad as one would think. In the past the problem with empty homes in the region were pools that became stagnant and allowed disease carrying mosquito’s to run rampant. Now with municipal cutbacks in California due to the budget deficit the city should work out a deal.

Perhaps this modest proposal could help. Instead of sending out a city crew to drain the pool the city would send out a bunch of skaters. They would clear out the pool and then be allowed to skate on it for the next day. Instead of running the risk of trespassing charges being filed against the skaters, they could be providing a service. The homeowner, or bank, would not have to worry about paying a ticket, they instead would take the risk of any damage to the pool.

A win-win in my book.

In these boom times for skaters, Mr. Peacock travels with a gas-powered pump, five-gallon buckets, shovels and a push broom, risking trespassing charges in the pursuit of emptying forlorn pools and turning them into de facto skate parks.

“We can just hit them back to back,” said Mr. Peacock, who preferred to give his skateboarding name because of the illegality of his activities.

Skaters are coming to places like Fresno from as far as Germany and Australia. Mr. Peacock said his floor and couch were covered by sleeping bags of visiting skateboarders each weekend.

Some skateboarders use realty tracking sites like realquest.com and realtor.com to find foreclosed houses with pools, while others trawl through satellite images from Google Earth. On the Web site skateandannoy.com, where skaters trade tips about how to find and drain abandoned pools, one poster wrote about the current economic malaise. “God bless Greenspan,” the post read, “patron saint of pool skatin’.” via NYTimes.com.