Category Archives: Housing

May 12, 2013

Declining Police Forces Impacting Property Values

Posted on May 12, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

It should not be a surprise that safety is a primary consideration in home buying. In fact, in our survey of almost 20,000 home shoppers, safety ranked above price when asked what were the most important characteristics when purchasing their next home.

So, what happens when a city cuts back on services such as police officers? Our consulting team is finding numerous instances all over the country where demand is declining in certain cities and rising in neighboring cities, and we believe the change is largely attributable to deteriorating services such as police, fire and school quality.

To provide the best feasibility analysis for our land buying clients, and to determine the best cities for our single-family rental landlord clients, we set out to identify which cities are in the most severe financial distress. We found the task somewhat overwhelming and even downright misleading, as many cities that are well-known to be in dire straits had highly rated bonds. The best data we found is on the total number of police and crime. While simplistic, it goes to reason that cities who are cutting back on police are likely to be more amenable to criminals.

California Example

Look at the results in the City of San Bernardino, which is currently in bankruptcy. The number of police officers has steadily declined, while crime has risen. We counsel our clients away from investing in cities such as this, unless their investment thesis fully incorporates the negative changes we believe are occurring and will continue to occur.

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Posted in Housing, Law & Courts

April 15, 2013

Obama orders same policy that sparked mortgage meltdown

Posted on April 15, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Government: Lend to less qualified or face discrimination lawsuits.

Undaunted by the housing market collapse that crashed mortgage banks, cut the rug from underneath homeowner equity and slammed taxpayers for billions in bad loans, the Obama administration now has launched a major push for banks to hand out mortgages to those with “weaker credit,” including some on public assistance.

Edward Pinto, a former top executive at Fannie Mae, now with the American Enterprise Institute, confirmed to WND the government’s adoption of a strategy that requires banks to lend to less qualified borrowers or face discrimination complaints.

Just like before.

He is outraged, as are other housing industry experts and economists.

“This push by FHA will continue to set up for failure the very families and neighborhoods its mission is to help,” he told WND.

Economist Stan Liebowitz told WND the move is an “unnecessary risk being imposed on the economy for no gain except some political chits being generated by politicians for their own venal purposes.”

Liebowitz, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, said the federal government is once again pushing banks to lower lending standards, which is “exactly what the government did starting in the mid 1990s.”

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Posted in Bubbles, Democrats/Progressives, Government, Housing, Law & Courts, Obama, Radicals

March 2, 2013

Desperate workers forced to live in tiny ‘coffin’ apartments of Tokyo – which cost up to £400/m

Posted on March 2, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Definitely not for the claustrophobic, many don’t even have windows and the doors and anyone over 6ft tall would have trouble stretching their legs.

They are barely large enough for a single person to squeeze into at all, let alone swing a cat.

But incredibly these tiny ‘coffin’ apartments in central Tokyo still command rents of up to £400 a month.

The Japanese capital is one of the most crowded cities in the world, and to cash in on the chronic housing problem, landlords have developed what are known as ‘geki-sema’ or share houses.

They are little more than cupboards, tiny cubicles stacked on top of each other with just enough room for one person and a few of their possessions.

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Most are used by young professionals who spend most of their time at work and outdoors, using these tiny accommodations just for sleeping.

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Posted in Asia, Housing

February 8, 2013

Florida Is Swamped with Foreclosures – And Deals on Distressed Homes

Posted on February 8, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Small-time investors also face tough competition from huge corporate buyers who have been scooping up foreclosures on a grand scale (think: tens of thousands of homes bought in a few months’ time) so that they can be rented and, later, resold when prices rise even higher.

Ah, Florida. It’s celebrated as the land of sunshine, snow birds, theme parks, and beaches. This year, it’s also considered the hottest state for snatching up foreclosed homes on the cheap.

For deals on distressed homes, look south. According to a new study from the foreclosure-tracking firm RealtyTrac, Florida was home to 8 of the country’s top 20 metropolitan areas for highest foreclosure rates last year. By no small coincidence, 5 of the top 10 “Best Places to Buy Foreclosures in 2013? also just so happen to be in Florida.

To come up with its “Best Places”—one of the few “Best Places” lists cities would prefer to not be associated with—RealtyTrac uses data points including the number of months of inventory of foreclosure homes, the percentage of total sales that are foreclosures, and the average foreclosure discount percentage. Tally up the numbers and the hottest market for scooping up distressed properties at major discounts is the Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville area of Florida. RealtyTrac summed up the market’s top-ranking data this way:

Topping the list of best places to buy foreclosures in 2013 was the Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville metro area in Florida with a total score of 394: 34 months’ supply of inventory, foreclosure sales representing 24 percent of all sales, average foreclosure discount of 28 percent, and a 308 percent increase in foreclosure activity in 2012 compared to 2011.

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Posted in Bubbles, Economy and Debt, Housing

February 5, 2013

U.S. Accuses S.&P. of Fraud in Suit on Loan Bundles

Posted on February 5, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The case against S.& P. focuses on about 40 collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, an exotic type of security made up of bundles of mortgage bonds, which in turn were composed of individual home loans. The securities were created at the height of the housing boom. S.& P. was paid fees of about $13 million for rating them.

The Justice Department late Monday filed civil fraud charges against the nation’s largest credit-ratings agency, Standard & Poor’s, accusing the firm of inflating the ratings of mortgage investments and setting them up for a crash when the financial crisis struck.

The suit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, is the first significant federal action against the ratings industry, which during the boom years reaped record profits as it bestowed gilt-edged ratings on complex bundles of home loans that quickly went sour. The high ratings made many investments appear safer than they actually were, and are now seen as having contributed to a crisis that brought the financial system and the broader economy to its knees.

More than a dozen state prosecutors are expected to join the federal suit, and the New York attorney general is preparing a separate action. The Securities and Exchange Commission has also been investigating possible wrongdoing at S.& P.

From September 2004 through October 2007, S.&P. “knowingly and with the intent to defraud, devised, participated in, and executed a scheme to defraud investors” in certain mortgage-related securities, according to the suit filed against the agency and its parent company, McGraw-Hill Companies. S.&P. also falsely represented that its ratings “were objective, independent, uninfluenced by any conflicts of interest,” the suit said.

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Posted in Debt, Housing, Law & Courts

U.S. Accuses S.&P. of Fraud in Suit on Loan Bundles

Posted on February 5, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The case against S.& P. focuses on about 40 collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, an exotic type of security made up of bundles of mortgage bonds, which in turn were composed of individual home loans. The securities were created at the height of the housing boom. S.& P. was paid fees of about $13 million for rating them.

The Justice Department late Monday filed civil fraud charges against the nation’s largest credit-ratings agency, Standard & Poor’s, accusing the firm of inflating the ratings of mortgage investments and setting them up for a crash when the financial crisis struck.

The suit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, is the first significant federal action against the ratings industry, which during the boom years reaped record profits as it bestowed gilt-edged ratings on complex bundles of home loans that quickly went sour. The high ratings made many investments appear safer than they actually were, and are now seen as having contributed to a crisis that brought the financial system and the broader economy to its knees.

More than a dozen state prosecutors are expected to join the federal suit, and the New York attorney general is preparing a separate action. The Securities and Exchange Commission has also been investigating possible wrongdoing at S.& P.

From September 2004 through October 2007, S.&P. “knowingly and with the intent to defraud, devised, participated in, and executed a scheme to defraud investors” in certain mortgage-related securities, according to the suit filed against the agency and its parent company, McGraw-Hill Companies. S.&P. also falsely represented that its ratings “were objective, independent, uninfluenced by any conflicts of interest,” the suit said.

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Posted in Debt, Housing, Law & Courts

January 14, 2013

Councils refuse to reveal # of homes they give to foreigners: Authorities stop giving figures amid worries over impact of immigration

Posted on January 14, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The way subsidised homes have been going to foreign citizens and not to families with long-standing local connections has become politically sensitive as immigration hits record levels and the recession has undermined ordinary people’s ability to afford to buy or rent private homes.


Refusal: Local authorities have stopped giving figures for how many houses and flats they have given to foreign citizens amid rising worries over the impacts of immigration, a report said

Councils are trying to cover up the number of taxpayer-subsidised homes they are handing to foreigners, it was claimed yesterday.

Local authorities have stopped giving figures for how many houses and flats they have given to foreign citizens amid rising worries over the impacts of immigration, a report said.

Councils in London, where one in five publicly-financed homes are already known to be occupied by foreigners, are among those no longer supplying the figures.

Now MPs have called for an inquiry into the suppression of information on who gets council and housing association homes.

Labour’s Frank Field and Tory Nicholas Soames said in a statement on behalf of the cross-party Balanced Migration group: ‘This is a huge issue for many people.

‘The Government must now launch a full inquiry into what is going on in the allocation of social housing in London.’

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Posted in Entitlements, Europe, Housing, Immigration

December 14, 2012

Britain’s new homeless: Banker sleeps rough in park (Video)

Posted on December 14, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Britain is in the grip of a housing crisis of a sort not seen before, where even the most unexpected people are losing their homes.

Video linked here.

Kevin Browne is an investment banker. He moved to America and ran his own firm until the crash in 2008. His company went bust and his marriage fell apart.

He eventually lost his home and returned to England on a flight paid for by a charity. BBC Panorama met him last summer while he was sleeping rough in a park in Croydon.

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Posted in Bubbles, Economy and Debt, Europe, Housing

December 5, 2012

Amsterdam to create ‘scum villages’

Posted on December 5, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Amsterdam is to create “Scum villages” where nuisance neighbours and anti-social tenants will be exiled from the city and rehoused in caravans or containers with “minimal services” under constant police supervision.


The plan echoes a proposal from Geert Wilders, the leader of a populist Dutch Right-wing party

Holland’s capital already has a special hit squad of municipal officials to identify the worst offenders for a compulsory six month course in how to behave.

Social housing problem families or tenants who do not show an improvement or refuse to go to the special units face eviction and homelessness.

Eberhard van der Laan, Amsterdam’s Labour mayor, has tabled the £810,000 plan to tackle 13,000 complaints of anti-social behaviour every year. He complained that long-term harassment often leads to law abiding tenants, rather than their nuisance neighbours, being driven out.

“This is the world turned upside down,” the mayor said at the weekend.

The project also involves setting up a special hotline and system for victims to report their problems to the authorities.

The new punishment housing camps have been dubbed “scum villages” because the plan echoes a proposal from Geert Wilders, the leader of a populist Dutch Right-wing party, for special units to deal with persistent troublemakers.

“Repeat offenders should be forcibly removed from their neighbourhood and sent to a village for scum,” he suggested last year. “Put all the trash together.”

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Posted in Entitlements, Europe, Geert Wilders, Housing, Law & Courts

November 21, 2012

New York sues Credit Suisse in latest mortgage lawsuit

Posted on November 21, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

“It’s not about one deal or five deals or ten deals,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. “It’s about their entire course of conduct in the residential mortgage-backed-securities business.”

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Credit Suisse, alleging that the bank repeatedly defrauded investors in sales of mortgage-backed-securities.

The suit marks the latest effort by government officials to hold Wall Street firms accountable in connection with the financial crisis. Schneiderman co-chairs a task force announced earlier this year by President Obama to address the issue, with a specific focus on mortgage-backed-securities.

These securities, which derive their cash flows from pools of mortgages, were a central part of the crisis, prompting huge losses for banks and investors when the housing market went bust. Schneiderman alleges that in 2006 and 2007, Credit Suisse sponsored mortgage-backed-securities worth $93.8 billion that, as of August, had suffered $11.2 billion in losses.

The lawsuit seeks damages to recoup these losses, as well as additional relief, meaning Credit Suisse (CS) could be on the hook for a massive penalty compared with most crisis-related cases.

Last week, Credit Suisse paid $120 million to settle allegations from the Securities and Exchange Commission that it failed to disclose its practice of collecting cash settlements from mortgage originators for loans that went bad without passing on the proceeds to the investors who bought the related securities. The bank was also accused making misstatements in its SEC filings about when it would repurchase problem loans from investors.

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Posted in Bubbles, Economy and Debt, Housing, Law & Courts