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

To: John Vosilla who wrote (243722)	4/11/2010 11:31:26 AM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Buckpasser at it again.... Greenspan says goal of housing trumped all. upi.com WASHINGTON, April 7 (UPI) -- Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Congress would have intervened had the central bank tried to slow down the risky housing bubble. Testifying for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in Washington, Greenspan said there was "a fairly broad consensus" concerning a goal of supporting housing and that "Congress would have clamped down on us," had the Fed interfered with that goal, The New York Times reported Wednesday. Greenspan, who said the Fed issued warnings about risky lending in 1999 and 2001, met with harsh questioning from Brooksley Born, a member of the panel examining the causes of the financial crisis. Born said Greenspan "appropriately" considered regulation "preventative" in nature. "But the Fed utterly failed to prevent the financial crisis ... the housing bubble … predatory lending … (and) our biggest banks and holding companies from engaging in activities that would bring them to the verge of collapse," she said.

To: John Vosilla who wrote (243722)	4/11/2010 11:34:42 AM
From: Jim McMannis	Respond to of 306849

Mountain of foreclosures in Colorado resort communities denverpost.com Harry Cessna admits he has struggled to make payments on the modular home he bought in Gypsum in 1989 with his soon-to-be wife. He was late a couple of times as he helped his wife fight cancer for two years, a battle she lost in 2007. Without her salary, Cessna, a house painter, could barely make payments on the acre-lot home bought for $55,000. He used his G.I. Bill money as a down payment. Now, painting jobs in the Vail Valley have dried up along with the rest of the construction industry. He has filed for bankruptcy. Last month, the bank foreclosed on his home. While foreclosure sales have been on the downturn along the Front Range, mountain communities are experiencing increases often of triple-digit percentages as homeowners from the wealthy on down lose their properties. "I sat here — happy and content in my little home — and watched all these big boys play with money, and I saw how greedy everyone got, selling and going bigger and selling and going bigger. Now I'm getting punished along with the rest of them," said Cessna, 52, who has a teenage son One of those "big boys" is John, a former top-producing loan officer for Bank of America who owes $1.2 million on his 5,000-square-foot home in Edwards and is in foreclosure. "I'm the first, and there are probably another few hundred behind me," said John, who at 41 worked as a vice president for two regional banks in the Vail Valley and as recently as two years ago earned $600,000 annually making loans. He asked that his last name not be used for fear of damaging his banking career. "Everyone was getting greedy, and everyone was living like kings, and everyone was making money thinking it was never going to end. Now everyone is getting scorched. Everyone," he said. In 2007, his home was worth $1.8 million, $1 million more than he paid four years earlier. He tapped that equity and bought two investment homes. Those, too, he will lose to foreclosure, he said. Today, John is not making any money. He's packing his stuff, joining a mass exodus of formerly flush locals fleeing the valley.

To: John Vosilla who wrote (243722)	4/11/2010 2:52:32 PM
From: SouthFloridaGuy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

That prediction was generally correct, but it wasn't easy. I picked up properties in Texas, Louisiana area after Katrina. Those areas have done very well compared to the rest of the country, but not great. Houston and New Orleans are doing pretty well right now so maybe I'm doing better than I think. The assets cash flow and I don't pay attention to price like the bloggers do. At the end of the day, I own property which is conservatively at the same value it was in 2007. I think that's saying a lot compared to many friends who bought overvalued, overbuilt commercial property in CA, NY, FL, etc. I don't feel bad for them. Wealth is a privilege not a right.