2008 Florida Housing market Thread Jan - Mar (Estero: mortgage, loans)

[faithfulFrank]

Jammie,

Thanks...you are correct. I truly believe that the things we own are called possessions, not because we own them, but because they own us.......

I have done a huge personal paradigm shift this past year. Now that I bought the house in Florida, and have a 3 year plan to relocate there, I am aggressively getting rid of so much.....I will move there with some tools and some pictures and some clothes and that's about it. I currently have a big house with many things, but that is and will change. If you cannot find something you own within 5 minutes....you are either not organized or have too much junk.

Working on the Fire Dept, I see so many who are literally choking and drowning in there junk....people die because we can't get the guerney too them...they see no one because they are surrounded by years of junk....killed by their possessions.

Sorry I strayed off topic........Back to the bad fed, home overbuying, economics, etc...........

Frank D.

[LM1]

Originally Posted by faithfulFrank

Jammie,

Thanks...you are correct. I truly believe that the things we own are called possessions, not because we own them, but because they own us.......

I have done a huge personal paradigm shift this past year. Now that I bought the house in Florida, and have a 3 year plan to relocate there, I am aggressively getting rid of so much.....I will move there with some tools and some pictures and some clothes and that's about it. I currently have a big house with many things, but that is and will change. If you cannot find something you own within 5 minutes....you are either not organized or have too much junk.

Working on the Fire Dept, I see so many who are literally choking and drowning in there junk....people die because we can't get the guerney too them...they see no one because they are surrounded by years of junk....killed by their possessions.

Sorry I strayed off topic........Back to the bad fed, home overbuying, economics, etc...........

Frank D.

Not to stray too far off topic, but I agree with this sentiment 100%.
As a lifelong collector of many things, I too realized that junk and possessions can have an adverse impact on ones life (although if you can figure out a way to break the tool buying addiction, let me know. I swear, we tool addicts need a support group . I own tools to address eventualities that are unlikely to exist anyplace other than repairing a space shuttle )

[faithfulFrank]

LM1,
that is funny....I can indeed relate.....
I'll start a new thread on this subject later today, so we don't go off subject....a "downsizing, moving, organizing" thread.....

Frank D.

[firemed]

“According to Fort Myers MLS Board figures, it would take 44.5 months – nearly four years – to work off the current inventory of homes for sale. That doesn’t count the discouraged sellers who have taken their houses off the market but still want to sell.”

Florida was like a stateroom in a Marx Brothers movie: more and more people kept arriving, and hardly anyone left. During the 20th century, Florida’s population boomed, with growth rates ranging from 20 percent to 80 percent per decade. But Foreclosures in Lee County, of which Cape Coral and Fort Myers are a part, shot up more than fivefold last year, to 12,566, according to RealtyTrac. The median price of single-family homes in the county fell to $239,300 in October from $322,000 two years earlier, according to the Florida Association of Realtors. If you don't need a job this would be a deal.



www.kansascity.com | 01/26/2008 | ‘All of a sudden, everything stopped’ in booming Florida towns (broken link)

[smj2076]

Greenspan encouraged everyone to get homes on low interest teaser rates and the proceeded to jack up the rates. Everyone who got suckered into buying mortgages they didnt fully understand (not necessarily their own fault) got a big shock when the rates reset to a higher level, which is why foreclosures are at record highs. The Fed is a privately controlled banking cartel which illegally prints fiat money which violated the constitution.

[Ten]

Originally Posted by Mike Peterson

What ever happened to personal responsibility?

Were people forced to buy homes that were more than their budget could handle?

As I stated before, the rate cuts may have spurred buying but the wannabe investor and those buying a $500,000 home on a $200,000 home budget were a cause of the bubble not the effect.

Mike, you're a real estate agent, no? Did you refuse to write paper during the Fed-induced housing bubble?

It's a rhetorical question and I'm not actually asking you personally. The point is that if you're only going to hold the market responsible, why aren't you willing to make the 1%-interest, boom-era Fed responsible as well? Did they not induce (many say create) two consecutive bubbles in a vacuum? Of course not.

Or where they and the tech stock market and then the mortgage industry and now the stock market again in a fully symbiotic relationship? Wouldn't that be more accurate? The Fed didn't "print" cash for no reason.

The entire point is that the market wouldn't have done what the Fed directly induced it to do if more than ample opportunity didn't exist. That opportunity wasn't provided by the market.

Now we even have the Bush administration going down the same foolish path the Carter administration did decades before: Simultaneous inflation, rising unemployment, plus "tax" refunds printed on air, and a resulting Fed-increased money supply, only this time the M3 is fantastically higher than it was in the Seventies. See the spikes in the rate of change centered on the Carter era (stagflation, IIRC) in the Clinton administration (the tech bubble) and again in the recent era, the housing bubble?

Now note the actual money supply. It's up 25x in a bit over a quarter century. How long do nearly exponential trends typically last?



I ask again, regardless of the finger-pointing, how long can you play a fiscal shell game?

Source.

[GregTraub]

Originally Posted by GregTraub

Yup it's a big conspiracy, the government, the FED they all specifically lowered interest rates to create a housing bubble that would drag the economy into a recession today. Yup makes sense to me too!!!!

Or maybe they were doing all they could to make the recession after 9/11 not as terrible as it would have been....side effect, cheap mortgages, side effect of that, people trying to get rich quick. FED starts to raise interest rates when Economy is doing ok...slows the economy so it doesn't have to much "over exuberance" (not talking JUST housing here people, the economy is MUCH bigger than that 1 sector). We are starting to see signs of another recession, this time led by collapse of credit/housing bubble (last side effect) now fed lowers rates to help economy not be effected as much.
Right now the Fed rate is 3.5%. And mortgages just dipped to levels matching rates back in 2003 when the fed rate was 1%. Get the idea people, the fed doesn't change their rates to change what you pay for a mortgage. They are looking at a MUCH larger picture. There isn't even a direct correlation to the fed rate and mortgage rates.

If the economy gets bad, people buy bonds....that directly effect mortgage rates and push them down. Economy gets better, they sell their bonds and invest in stocks and other assets, mortgage rates go up. The fed's only purpose is to make our economy less volatile. They aren't perfect, nothing CAN be perfect when dealing with an economy driven by imperfect people. But the FED is a much better alternative to what would take it's place. The banking system is here to stay....unless we go back into the dark ages.....it's either the fed which has some government oversight, or it will be a conglomerate of private banks doing whatever they want.

The monetary system is a really complicated beast.

"flaming renter? is that what you call yourself?"

Anyone know what the above is supposed to mean? I don't speak forum sometimes, just want to know what the Negative rep meant.

Also just noticed that the thread I originally posed this comment in must have been merged into this one, that I purposely chose not to participate in.

[SANDYHAIR]

Bye GregTRAUB

[Wild Style]

Originally Posted by Mike Peterson

What ever happened to personal responsibility?

Were people forced to buy homes that were more than their budget could handle?

As I stated before, the rate cuts may have spurred buying but the wannabe investor and those buying a $500,000 home on a $200,000 home budget were a cause of the bubble not the effect.

I agree with you and CJ, it was the govt, the banks, the investors and the buyers fault. No one is innocent in any of this and all should be left to their own devices (no bail out)

[Wild Style]

Originally Posted by GregTraub

Yup it's a big conspiracy, the government, the FED they all specifically lowered interest rates to create a housing bubble that would drag the economy into a recession today. Yup makes sense to me too!!!!

Or maybe they were doing all they could to make the recession after 9/11 not as terrible as it would have been....side effect, cheap mortgages, side effect of that, people trying to get rich quick. FED starts to raise interest rates when Economy is doing ok...slows the economy so it doesn't have to much "over exuberance" (not talking JUST housing here people, the economy is MUCH bigger than that 1 sector). We are starting to see signs of another recession, this time led by collapse of credit/housing bubble (last side effect) now fed lowers rates to help economy not be effected as much.
Right now the Fed rate is 3.5%. And mortgages just dipped to levels matching rates back in 2003 when the fed rate was 1%. Get the idea people, the fed doesn't change their rates to change what you pay for a mortgage. They are looking at a MUCH larger picture. There isn't even a direct correlation to the fed rate and mortgage rates.

If the economy gets bad, people buy bonds....that directly effect mortgage rates and push them down. Economy gets better, they sell their bonds and invest in stocks and other assets, mortgage rates go up. The fed's only purpose is to make our economy less volatile. They aren't perfect, nothing CAN be perfect when dealing with an economy driven by imperfect people. But the FED is a much better alternative to what would take it's place. The banking system is here to stay....unless we go back into the dark ages.....it's either the fed which has some government oversight, or it will be a conglomerate of private banks doing whatever they want.

The monetary system is a really complicated beast.

I agree with you to some extent but your view ignores certain factors in bubble creations. Govt does more than just lowers interest rates to pave the way for these things. They also start to pass legislation to make doing business with in these bubbles more conducive. With out bubbles our economy would be in dire straits to say the least. We in America have two choices. One is take our medicine, restructure our economic system and move forward OR create bubbles to keep 7 yr recessions turning into something worse. It seems our Govt chooses the bubble route.