I am officially convinced. The Home Affordable Refinance Program’s (HARP) 2nd coming will actually be productive. Well, to be honest it’s not me that is convinced: it is all my lenders. They are hiring underwriters like mad in an effort to staff up for the tsunami of applications they anticipate.
I was admittedly skeptical because, let’s face it, every government program aimed at fixing the housing market thus far has failed as bad as a LeBron to Wade late tie-the-game pass. (too soon?)
On that note, congrats to the West on their win tonight. Enjoy that and… I dunno. What else do Westerners enjoy? Overly twang-y music? Dry, arid summers? Cheap labor from illegal immigrants? Corn? The last two sort of work in tandem…
Anywho, this HARP thing is happening. There are still a lot of question marks surrounding the details of the program and how involved lenders will get. But if it comes out in the iteration that most industry professionals believe it’s going to come out in, there will be a mad dash for the door to get approved. So, if you or anyone you know is thinking about attempting to capitalize on it, call or e-mail me now. We’ll get your info loaded up so that the moment the floodgates open you will be as ready as humanly possible. Looking like mid-March is when we’re going to get concrete answers.
Europe continues to be a hotbed of issues. Every time that regulators and authorities come to some ground-breaking save-the-universe conclusion, everyone begins to question their ability to actually DO what it is the country in question says they’re gonna do. This constant lingering threat of gyro-flavored doom has kept investors on guard and in large part parked in safe havens like mortgage bonds. So, from a purely selfish perspective, yaaaaaaaaaaay for the awful fiscal policies of those blokes across the pond. Helping keep our mortgage rates nice and low.
Anyone from Europe I call a bloke. I know they all have their own countries and languages and heritages and all of that, I just don’t care. Deal with it. I’m just glad we’re not the financial pariah of the world anymore. There is nothing a geek loves more than and even bigger geek to distract the bullies.
Concerning real estate (as that is supposed to be the point of this entire newsletter), it’s kind of weird out there right now. Local realtors are seeing houses pop onto the market and have a double-digit number of offers in a matter of hours. In fact, looking at a macro level, the National Association of Realtors reported that the inventory of homes for sale has dropped to the lowest level since march 2005. Yet we’re not seeing house prices move north in an appreciable manner.
What gives?
The fact is, I don’t have a thrillingly good answer to that question. Could be the preponderance of distressed sales in the market as banks unload properties off their books. Could be the “shadow inventory” bleeding into the market and skewing statistics. Could be that all the demand is at the bottom of the price pool for homes. Could be that move-up buyers have been gridlocked into their current properties because they are financially underwater. Could be that us Floridians were hit particularly hard by the downturn and our recent surge in demand indicates that we’re at the forefront of the bounce off of the market bottom. Lots of theories floating around.
I do have my own theory about it, though. I’m a believer in the pendulum effect. Things go too far to one side and on the return trip they essentially skip the middle-ground and end up entirely too far to the other side with a lot of momentum to artificially hold there for a while. Things were excessively good for a while, now the opposite is true.
Think about it. Go ask John Q. Public how housing is doing and he’ll probably give you some sort of story about how so-and-so lost everything in real estate and is suffering because of it. But John’s talking about something that happened two years ago. Everyone is. But the markets aren’t concerned about two years ago. They’re concerned about the here and now.
And with all that negative sentiment floating around effectively keeping a lid on price appreciation and needlessly sidelining eligible buyers, foreign money and cash investors are snapping up properties at fire-sale prices. Doing it right in front of everyone and still going unnoticed. Because as bad as things are, owning a piece of America is still a smart long-term investment.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Monday, February 6, 2012
It's Half-Time America
Well, the sonogram went well so I have been told I am now allowed to make it official: I am going to be a father. Erin’s at about 10 weeks right now. Cuh-RAZINESS.
Facebook is going public. Almost feels weird to say, doesn’t it? Because it FEELS so public already? Evidently Facebook’s inability to cope with China’s inability to cope with open-content engines will stunt the IPO’s initial growth. However I imagine the social media giant will in short order be ridiculously well funded AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND concurrently ridiculously outside-controlled to where it will become encumbered so badly with ads and stupid, commercial content that it will be re-placed by some MySpace 2.0 upstart because it “hasn’t sold out.” Yet.
Eat that, counter-culture. I know your game. Also my high school English teacher just blew his coronary over that run-on sentence I just pulled. And starting a sentence with a conjunction. Twice.
Romney decisively won the Florida Republican primary. He then neatly took Nevada. So, since Florida’s vote usually coincides with the primary winner (no factual data was used in making this statement so I’m basically making it up), I’m calling Romney as the Republican candidate. WOOOOO!!!!! ROMNEY 2012!!! Multiple wives for everyone!
Oh wait. That’s Newt’s thing.
Gross Domestic Product came in at +2.8% but still disappointed, growing mostly due to re-stocking inventories than actual increased demand. So, we’re not exploding with growth quite yet. Although I for one am pleased to see the plus sign beside the number instead of a minus. Any growth is good.
Unemployment rate dropped to 8.3%, but what really happened? True, we netted an increase of 243,000 jobs. However, 1.2 million other people aren't considered unemployed anymore. They have simply left the system. You see, if you quit looking for a job for long enough our statisticians figure you’re just done working forever. You have been “put out to pasture”. Given the popularity of X-box Kinect I am in no way surprised so many people have stopped worrying about work. Have you played that thing? You don’t even need real life anymore.
Obama continues to rally for a 5-10 billion dollar homeowner refinance package financed in part by a tax on large financial institutions. So banks: let me level with you. It would be SUPER if you would go ahead and refinance a bunch of performing paper from higher rates to obscenely lower rates because we freaking say so AND we’re going to tax you if you actually profit from it.
And be snappy about it. I got a re-election to win.
Now don’t get me wrong: from a ground-floor perspective I get it. I do. But I can see things through the eyes of the folks who actually are supposed to implement the plan. Doesn’t sound as thrilling to them. That being said, I still hope it goes through. Will do a lot of short-term good. I’ll keep you posted.
Congrats to the New York Giants for winning Super Bowl XLVI. Sure played some serious football out there.
FOOTBALL!!!
Quick side note: did anyone else notice that it looked like Madonna was actually singing until Nicki Minaj showed up? Then she suddenly started lip synching? Because Nicki Minaj can’t get by performing live? Then Madonna went right back to singing after Nicki was off-stage? I know you’ve got it recorded. Go watch it again. I’ll wait here.
OMG, doesn’t Nicki Minaj suck?!?
Facebook is going public. Almost feels weird to say, doesn’t it? Because it FEELS so public already? Evidently Facebook’s inability to cope with China’s inability to cope with open-content engines will stunt the IPO’s initial growth. However I imagine the social media giant will in short order be ridiculously well funded AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND concurrently ridiculously outside-controlled to where it will become encumbered so badly with ads and stupid, commercial content that it will be re-placed by some MySpace 2.0 upstart because it “hasn’t sold out.” Yet.
Eat that, counter-culture. I know your game. Also my high school English teacher just blew his coronary over that run-on sentence I just pulled. And starting a sentence with a conjunction. Twice.
Romney decisively won the Florida Republican primary. He then neatly took Nevada. So, since Florida’s vote usually coincides with the primary winner (no factual data was used in making this statement so I’m basically making it up), I’m calling Romney as the Republican candidate. WOOOOO!!!!! ROMNEY 2012!!! Multiple wives for everyone!
Oh wait. That’s Newt’s thing.
Gross Domestic Product came in at +2.8% but still disappointed, growing mostly due to re-stocking inventories than actual increased demand. So, we’re not exploding with growth quite yet. Although I for one am pleased to see the plus sign beside the number instead of a minus. Any growth is good.
Unemployment rate dropped to 8.3%, but what really happened? True, we netted an increase of 243,000 jobs. However, 1.2 million other people aren't considered unemployed anymore. They have simply left the system. You see, if you quit looking for a job for long enough our statisticians figure you’re just done working forever. You have been “put out to pasture”. Given the popularity of X-box Kinect I am in no way surprised so many people have stopped worrying about work. Have you played that thing? You don’t even need real life anymore.
Obama continues to rally for a 5-10 billion dollar homeowner refinance package financed in part by a tax on large financial institutions. So banks: let me level with you. It would be SUPER if you would go ahead and refinance a bunch of performing paper from higher rates to obscenely lower rates because we freaking say so AND we’re going to tax you if you actually profit from it.
And be snappy about it. I got a re-election to win.
Now don’t get me wrong: from a ground-floor perspective I get it. I do. But I can see things through the eyes of the folks who actually are supposed to implement the plan. Doesn’t sound as thrilling to them. That being said, I still hope it goes through. Will do a lot of short-term good. I’ll keep you posted.
Congrats to the New York Giants for winning Super Bowl XLVI. Sure played some serious football out there.
FOOTBALL!!!
Quick side note: did anyone else notice that it looked like Madonna was actually singing until Nicki Minaj showed up? Then she suddenly started lip synching? Because Nicki Minaj can’t get by performing live? Then Madonna went right back to singing after Nicki was off-stage? I know you’ve got it recorded. Go watch it again. I’ll wait here.
OMG, doesn’t Nicki Minaj suck?!?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)