Friday, March 23, 2007

SL's Water Cooler - March 2007 (part 4)

Post off-topic links, observations, and stories here. Please read the comment policy before posting.

Some weekend reading:

  • MarketWatch: Will 'lemming loans' drive economy off the cliff?
  • Credit Suisee Report: Mortgage Liquidity du Jour: Underestimated No More (pdf report available via a link in this TMTGM post)

18 comments:

AnalysisGuy said...

The MarketWatch read about lemming loans is great. Anyhow, I just shoot up a report on a new city - San Luis Obispo. I didn't realize how insane the runup was until I ran the numbers.

SLO Report

Perfect Storm said...

Pizza chain seeks ex-loan bosses for work (OCR)

The JoJo’s Pizza four-store chain of Italian restaurants from Chino Hills is seeking laid-off mortgage supervisors to fill managerial openings. Joe Bonafede, owner of JoJo’s, “feels that he can offer these employees a great opportunity. Everyone has been involved in the food business whether they have worked or ate at a restaurant.”

For more information, contact Bonafede (joe@jojospizza.com or jojospizza@hotmail.com or 714-390-4573) or VP Chris Parker (cpden@sbcglobal.net or 714-709-3743) or marketing director Jaclyn Rovida, (jackie_jojos@hotmail.com)

Anybody from Ameriquest or Coastal Pacific Mortagbe need a job. I doubt you would be qualified, but give it a shot.

2cents said...

Home sales in February up nationwide
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/24/BUGBGOQSEK1.DTL

In California, the number of homes sold fell 9.6 percent in February compared with the same period a year earlier, while the median price of a home climbed 5.7 percent to $564,700, according to a separate report from the California Association of Realtors.

The declining sales and rising prices suggest sellers are unwilling to lower prices to get deals done, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "There's a delicate dance between sales and prices now being played out and you can see it in the California data," Zandi said. "It argues for weaker pricing over the course of the year."

patient renter said...

Lemming loans... I like that. Very true.

Perfect Storm said...

North Highlands $254,500.00 $294,500.00 -13.6%

North Highlands down 13.26% from Feb 06 to Feb 07.

Anybody know how far North Highlands is down from the peek?

In two years it will down 60%, also included in that boat will be Rio Linda, I guess Rush calling it Dirt Linda does not help much.

Anybody who buys a home in these areas will be making a serious financial mistake.

Perfect Storm said...

Anybody check out the dataquick report for February 2007, it was not good news for Sacramento County.

I bet the lower income areas of Sacramento home prices are going to sink.

Perfect Storm said...

Check this out, oh the good old days, before crooked mortgage campanies.

http://www.homebust.com/

2cents said...

City of Sac, 5-month trend:

10/24/2006: preforeclosures = 1383, auctions = 444
3/25/2007: preforeclosures = 3083, auctions = 1006

source: realtytrac.com

Perfect Storm said...

3/25/2007: preforeclosures = 3083

Wow preforeclosures is beating out monthly sales, that can't be good.

cole said...

John Saca much like the other Crook, Craig Nassi, is going DOWN!

Sacramento Superior Court 07AS01028, March 7
Foundation Constructors (plantiff) v John Saca (defendant)...Breach of Contract...lol...aka the creep Saca didn't pay his Contractor...

Liens are only the first step...shutting these crooks down is the next...and then firing Kerridge, Fargo, and the rest of the sleazeballs...

The hype, lies and BS driving all this "growth" and "speculative bubble" downtown and hell all over the Valley is driving decent people to run for cover...

Unlike the poor suckers in West Sac and Roseville, the rich creeps downtown are being bailed out by YOUR money...the government bankrolling developers to build condos for the wealthy...

But that's just the facts for the liars and creeps "Living in Urban Sacramento"....

Perfect Storm said...

From the Davis Enterprise

Sunday March 25, 2007

Enterprise staffer shot, killed: South Sacramento shooting followed carjacking attempt

"Jess Reiter, the circulation manager for The Davis Enterprise, was shot and killed in an apparent carjacking attempt in Sacramento early Saturday morning, police reported."

Anybody want to buy a house in South Sacramento or Oak Park?

This is very tragic.

a_builder said...

Anybody else see the analysis of the existing home sales? It appears that the majority of the "gain" was due to statiscal corrections made to the data due to "the unseasonably warm winter".

ie; more fraud.The numbers that propped up the market last week were false! They are making the inevitable crash worse and worse.

Toll Bros. at Serrano (Pinnacle) lost 5 (five) of their 7 meager sales last week mostly due to lenders going belly up. This market is waaaaaaaaay worse than even most bubble bloggers realize. All the inventory building you guys have seen/reported in the Sac markets is coming to a screaching, smoking stop. Cancellation rates are running at 70+% as all the move up buyers find they can't offload their boxes.
The forced, canned optimism from executives is getting comical; I have heard the following from my bosses and I just have to choke myself not to laugh...

"after the Stupidbowl, things always pickup" uhhhh noooope

"As soon as the rains stop, springtime will bring out the buyers" uh uh, lots of lookie loo's but no buyers...

"we have to find the market" "we're not going to do fire sales like Centex, we'll just increase incentives". (well, they have REALLY increased incentives!

The sales people in these offices are putting little sold flags on lots in the topo display that arent really sold..

The mexicans are getting restless- you did know that 82+% of the const. workers are mexicans right? You also know that the trades now pay less today than they did in 1980, NOT EVEN FACTORING IN INFLATION. The "piece" prices have been driven further and further down by successive waves of unskilled illegals willing to work for ever lower rates.

Withot construction jobs- Mexicans will start stealing in ERNEST. I predict crime will absolutely SKYROCKET this year. Sorry for the brutal honesty (I know, I'm a raaaaaaaaaacist-insert liberal whiny tone here)but these guys are survivors- I've worked with them for 20 years- they have NO QUALMS about larceny...

Depression 2007- learn to garden, QUICK!

Perfect Storm said...

Toll Bros. at Serrano (Pinnacle) lost 5 (five) of their 7 meager sales last week mostly due to lenders going belly up. This market is waaaaaaaaay worse than even most bubble bloggers realize.

Not me I know it is bad, very bad. However, JoJo's Pizza is hiring and they are looking ex-loan bosses, so if any laid off loan professionals cannot find employment in the liar loan business you might look into the food service industry.

... said...

Toll is not a goot indicator in our market - they haven't been sucessful here yet.

Look at closings of $1mil homes in El Dorado, Granite Bay, Arden - all picked up since 1/1/7. (see sacbee.com)

Diggin Deeper said...

New home sales down 3.9%. Analysts expected 6.7% increase. I guess we have to blame the weather.

Diggin Deeper said...

a_builder said...

"Depression 2007- learn to garden, QUICK!"

And they all say the subprime problem won't spill over into other areas of the economy. Those analysts didn't call the savings and loan problem nor the dot.bomb problem, how could anyone believe them when they say "no problem" to the rest of the economy. The existing home sales numbers were just another way of NAR and Lereah sugar coating the real truth. Got to cull through the figures to get to the bottom line.

Citgroup just announced they might cut 15,000 workers this year. Auto companies cutting, homebuilders cutting, construction related jobs tanking, mortgage and real estate jobs nonexistent. Smells just like every other recession we've been through in modern times. Watch the employment numbers over the next several months (if you can cut through the spin to find the truth.

Depression? Big word and one that the Fed will fight with liquidity to avoid. A Depression in real estate might equal a long protracted recession in the US. And if its much worse than anticipated by the so called analysts, we might even be headed for a sequel to Japan's deflationary period of the nineties. Buyers today aren't as ill-informed as they were when the buying panic in '04 and '05. Consequently, they aren't likely to buy until the market shows signs of stability.

Anonymous said...

I had a "the tide is turning" moment yesterday when I walked into our dept mail room and a flock of faculty were all talking about moving to NC because of the cost of living, the attitudes of the Universities, and how supportive the environmnet is there for scientific research. The money quote was "NC is now THE place to live".

Anonymous said...

Did anyone catch the news last night? I thought I saw another pot house bust. This time it was in Natomas. I'm sure Anatolia is next.