[JohnG72]

Originally Posted by airics

whatever... next you will say that to buy a condo, the bank will give it to you for free! i've got rentals here with no issues... i raised my rent... took it off the mls, threw it on craigslist.. gone in 72hrs... maybe the expensive (150k stuff) is going down.. but the investor (cheap stuff) is still just bouncing along.. too bad its so hard to buy with all the bidders.. i've bid on 5 in the last 3 months.. no luck...

and speaking of rent... we certainly did not have the drop that you did... DOWN 25% IN THE QUARTER! Sucks to be a landlord there, doesnt it?
91401 Home Prices and Home Values - Zillow Local Info

?????????

I'm not a landlord. And I don't even live in Valley Glen anymore. I move to downtown LA and live in an apartment where my monthly rent is a full $1200+/mo cheaper than it would cost to buy an equivalent property.

However, I've been trying to argue that rents in LA are dropping even though the numbers show rising rents.

Thank you for that link. Bolsters my argument a great deal.

According to the GLVAR, the median price of a single-family house sold last month was $125,000, down 5.3 percent from $132,000 in December. The average listed price was $157,081. The median price of condominiums that sold last month was $64,900, up 4.7 percent from the month before

http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/blo...ousing-market/

[007 license to sell]

On our local tv station last night this startling news article came across. This terrible thing that happended to these home owners may not be a common occurance but it is worth noting. And anyone that is facing forclosure has to take this serious and have a proffessional help them like an attorney.
This is a must read especially if your in foreclosure and you move out before the process is fully executed. The banks continue to ruin people's life over their incompetency.

Contact 13 Investigates: Foreclosed but not forgotten

[logline]

Case-Schiller numbers just released this morning. Vegas reached a new low and is down 58% from its all-time peak:
Calculated Risk: Case-Shiller: National Home Prices Are Close to the 2009Q1 Trough

On a related note, the National Assoc. of Realtors (NAR) are a bunch of liars and overstate sales and understate months of inventory:
Calculated Risk: Real House Prices fall to 2000 Levels, Update on NAR Overstating Sales

Here's the money quote: "Those who argued prices bottomed some time ago are already wrong - and prices are still falling."

Anybody here a member of this crooked organization?? Hmmm??

[WestieJeff]

No sympathy from me here. At the end of the day if you don't pay your mortgage, there is going to be far reaching implications and it will potentially make your life difficult for now and years to come.

Is that not how it should be?

Originally Posted by 007 license to sell

On our local tv station last night this startling news article came across. This terrible thing that happended to these home owners may not be a common occurance but it is worth noting. And anyone that is facing forclosure has to take this serious and have a proffessional help them like an attorney.
This is a must read especially if your in foreclosure and you move out before the process is fully executed. The banks continue to ruin people's life over their incompetency.

Contact 13 Investigates: Foreclosed but not forgotten

[JohnG72]

Originally Posted by logline

Case-Schiller numbers just released this morning. Vegas reached a new low and is down 58% from its all-time peak:
Calculated Risk: Case-Shiller: National Home Prices Are Close to the 2009Q1 Trough

On a related note, the National Assoc. of Realtors (NAR) are a bunch of liars and overstate sales and understate months of inventory:
Calculated Risk: Real House Prices fall to 2000 Levels, Update on NAR Overstating Sales

Here's the money quote: "Those who argued prices bottomed some time ago are already wrong - and prices are still falling."

Anybody here a member of this crooked organization?? Hmmm??

Yah but ya know...bouncing along the bottom...ya know.

[jfkIII]

Originally Posted by WestieJeff

Is that not how it should be?

IMO, it has to be, in order to maintain stability. Not only with mortgages, but any type of loan. It's how it has been since the invention of money. If you borrow, you pay back according to the agreed upon terms. If not, you suffer the consequences. They are just lucky they borrowed from Bank of America, as opposed to the mafia. Suffering bad credit is better than suffering death, in most cases.

Financial chaos would ensue, otherwise.

[fishordie]

Originally Posted by 007 license to sell

On our local tv station last night this startling news article came across. This terrible thing that happended to these home owners may not be a common occurance but it is worth noting. And anyone that is facing forclosure has to take this serious and have a proffessional help them like an attorney.
This is a must read especially if your in foreclosure and you move out before the process is fully executed. The banks continue to ruin people's life over their incompetency.

Contact 13 Investigates: Foreclosed but not forgotten

A few notes about this. (I am not an Atty.)

First, anyone who leaves their home and does not insure all utilities are turned off and taken out of their names are being foolish. (I will define foolish later)

Second, anyone not verifying the foreclosure actually took place (NOT an actual sale but the lenders foreclosing on the property and taking it out of the homeowners name) is a fool.

Third, any liens placed by an HOA are only against the property and fall away when the foreclosure actually occurs.

Property taxes are still owed until that property comes out of your name.

Definition of foolish in this case: For the majority of folks caught in this economic downturn they were just unaware of the potential pitfalls dealing with real estate. Most did not take the time to learn all the possible scenarios which could occur including changes of interest with a variable rate loan, the possibility of a down turn in the market, the potential loss or worse of your equity, how refinancing or taking out a second could create additional problems, etc. Shame on them for not taking time to learn this stuff before making the biggest investment of their lives, at least for most of the. However that does not make them foolish. What makes them foolish is discovering by not paying their mortgage, for a variety of reasons, and having their homes threatened with foreclosure, many of these same folks again chose not to learn as much as they could before making their possibly next biggest mistake by just walking away from the property without fully realizing the consequences. This would make this the second time these individuals, at least most of them, failed to learn everything they could regarding what their next choices and actions would lead to.

Just wait as right about now or just recently the majority of these folks will be hit with a 1099 from their lenders who foreclosed or accepted a short sale situation below the amounts owned on the loan. Not knowing which situations would lead to being 1099'ed was just foolish. Of course these folks, who yelled out load about losing their homes, now are yelling because many will have to pay additional income taxes as well. I noted some time ago this would happen to those who re financed or took out second trust deeds on their homes without putting every extra cent back into those homes. The cost of taking out home equity to purchase that new vehicle or vacation could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxable liabilities.

Many will go bankrupt and most will certainly not be in a position to purchase their next home for many, many years if ever. Again, market conditions for Vegas and the outlying areas are just not good for appreciation except for the very low end market where you can still get double digit returns on your investment. I continue to state the rest of the market has nothing I am aware of to keep it from falling more and more.

The only good news I see is eventually the commercial real estate market will have collapsed to such a point and perhaps combined with greater incentives by Nevada regulators to bring in business, Vegas might just get to the point were we will once again see an influx of working residents who will be able to afford to purchase reasonably priced higher end homes. The other option will be for the huge amount of baby boomers retiring now to have enough incentive to come to Vegas but most of those pocketed some good monies in the last many decades and probably will prefer to live elsewhere but hopefully our regulators can create incentives that will bring that segment of the population to Vegas. Until this happens I just do not see Vegas real estate as appreciating for a long while.

I am sorry for those folks who lost everything in this economy but with the internet there was certainly enough information out there to make more informed decisions. Unfortunately the damage had already been done when folks over leveraged their homes or took out loans they could ultimately not pay for. However, for those who did not take out additional monies from their homes after purchase, I believe you will find you will not be 1099'd. Always check with a tax Atty. and or knowledgeable accountant.

This is not all about those bad, bad banks doing us in as those in this position held their own guns to their own heads. Sorry, but that is the truth as nobody forced anyone to sign on the dotted line and nobody promised a bail out to those taking out loans should the market go south.
I do not like the banks and I do not like the power the big banks are now wielding in so many aspects of the world but in this case the banks or lenders were not wrong in my opinion.

FOD

[jfkIII]

It's like placing 100x odds on the craps table when six is the point. That area behind the pass line is very valuable while you're waiting for that six to be thrown. Then oops...seven-out. That area is now worthless. Who the heck stands there and expects the casino to return to the odds when the seven is rolled? Why should the bank give you a free ride when you seven-out with the housing die?

No one asks the bank to increase their mortgage when housing values rise...but they expect the bank to decrease it when the housing market tanks? Just doesn't make much sense to me. If someone wants to screw the lender out of money when they can't pay, then they should borrow from family. It's the only place that that odd math seems to work.

[JonathanLB]

I also live in Downtown L.A. John, I wonder how far you are from me, haha.

But as for the LV real estate market, it's definitely near the bottom. I'm not saying overall that it might not go down another couple of percent this year, but the condo prices are absolutely ridiculously low. Maybe I just don't know enough poor people or something, but when I first looked at the prices on the Strip for these premium, brand-new luxury buildings, I just thought, "Ok this must be wrong, is this some really old building? Wait no 2007 hmm ok. Maybe there's something wrong with this building. Wait no here are other buildings with cheap prices. Hmm maybe these units are just the short sales. Wait no it seems like almost every unit is this cheap!" I was in complete disbelief. I just assumed even the smallest condos in most markets are around $300,000, because even the ones in Portland, Oregon go for about that and the weather sucks up there. In Downtown L.A. you can't find anything good for that cheap, you're still looking at almost $400,000 for most units and up. So to find all kinds of great condos in Vegas for in the $100s was really surprising, even some nice units in Platinum for under $100K. Unbelievable. They cannot drop more than that because there's nowhere left to drop.

[airics]

Platinum is cheap due to the location.... geeezzz..