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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy Jetson who wrote (5669)	9/28/2002 10:05:58 PM
From: John Chen	Respond to of 306849

Elroy,re:"they deflat". The argument that the 'payment' is the same, so it's the best time to buy, is fault at best if not fraud. The interest stay with you until you sell the house, the 'mortgage' stay until you pay it off. I rather have high interest rate if the P&I is the same. This time is different? How come we hear the same phrase time and again with all these investment advisers. Whatever they are selling is always different and then you don't hear from them when they switch to another vehicle that belong to: 'this time is different'.

To: Elroy Jetson who wrote (5669)	9/29/2002 8:18:46 AM
From: nextrade!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

With a Gift, Fannie Mae Slips On Golf Shoes By GRETCHEN MORGENSON nytimes.com WHEN it comes to protecting its interests, nobody lobbies harder or smarter than Fannie Mae, the titan in home mortgage financing. It is known to be tough as nails in doing what it must to maintain its very profitable status quo. For example, Fannie Mae only recently pledged to begin filing its financial statements and reporting its executives' insider transactions with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Even though its shares are publicly traded, Fannie Mae had for years successfully argued that it did not need to file these forms and had escaped paying millions of dollars in filing fees each year. It finally bowed to pressure from investors who want to be able to fathom the company's financials and will begin making these filings in 2003. Because it is a government-sponsored enterprise, Fannie Mae pays significantly less to borrow from investors than its private competitors. So Fannie Mae's lobbying focuses on keeping that government subsidy safe. All of which makes a bit of recent Fannie Mae lobbying especially intriguing. In documents filed with the Maryland State Ethics Commission, Fannie Mae shows up as having provided 5 percent or more of the receipts taken in by the Committee to Save the Trail, a lobbying group in Chevy Chase, Md. The only other large contributor for the period, which ended April 30, 2002, was the Columbia Country Club of Chevy Chase. The documents do not disclose how much either Fannie Mae or the club gave to the committee, but the company said it contributed $11,000. The Committee to Save the Trail exists to fight Maryland's plans to build a light rail project that would link areas in and around Washington. The project, known as the Purple Line, would ease the commutes of masses of working people and is Maryland's top transportation priority, according to John P. Cahalan, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Transportation. The project has been approved, and provided that federal and state financing is received, the line should be operating by 2012. "You have a very congested area, and a lot of people are transit-dependent in this corridor as well," Mr. Cahalan said. "You have workers transferring on buses and taking an enormous amount of time to get to their job place and earn a living." The Purple Line has support from more than 40 public interest groups, Mr. Cahalan said, including those representing business, labor, environmentalists and mass transit advocates. BUT not the Columbia Country Club. It is fighting the line because it would run on currently unused tracks, on public property, that have dissected the club's grounds since it was founded. The old tracks are now a gravel trail; the club has said that when the line goes in, it may have to move tee boxes at Holes 15 and 18. As it happens, Jamie S. Gorelick, a vice chairwoman of Fannie Mae, is a member of the Columbia Country Club. Did Fannie Mae make its contribution to fight the rail plan so the golf course might be allowed to stay just the way it is? Of course not, a Fannie Mae spokesman said. It contributed to the committee last February because the line would run near low-income housing and impinge on a green space that is beloved by residents. So far, the efforts to derail the line have failed. But the project must still go through the design and engineering phase and then secure financing. The people who are interested in preserving the beauty of the Columbia Country Club may still get their way. And, as anyone who has come up against Fannie Mae's lobbying might well tell you, it is not usually wise to bet against them.