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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldworldnet who wrote (482422)	4/13/2012 4:37:42 AM
From: Farmboy	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794282

I'm in the same boat. Quit in 1992.

To: goldworldnet who wrote (482422)	4/13/2012 4:59:10 AM
From: unclewest	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794282

Once upon a time I owned 84 rental properties. Began buying in 1983. Watching as prices were being paid and loans were being made that would only create negative cash flow, I became a seller of opportunity and sold into the bubble. I still have 2. Kept them just in case an immediate family member ever needed a place to live. That did not happen and of course I never told them about that option. Now I have excellent long-term tenants and I won't sell and possibly disrupt their lives. This foreclosure process is a financial bomb that has gone off and is waiting to really go off. The longer these properties remain vacant the faster they deteriorate physically and in value. Most banks and the fed still carry the value of these properties at the original appraised value when the loan was made. Now and when the properties are sold at a fraction of loan value, the lenders finally have to admit and book the loss. It needs to be done, but this is not going to be pretty on balance sheets. uw Investors Await Feds' Foreclosure-to-Rental DealsBy VANCE CARIAGA, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted 04/12/2012 05:53 PM ET The government is inching toward action in a national initiative to sell foreclosed properties to real estate investors who'll rent them out, but small investors remain in the dark. It's an indication of how hard it can be to deal with a large number of foreclosures in a streamlined manner, and of the close-to-the-chest way government's approaching the effort step by step. The first phase was announced in February, and not much has been revealed since.Fannie Mae ( FNMA) will sell nearly 2,500 properties with a market value of about $314 million. Bank ownership of homes rocketed in spots like Las Vegas after the housing bubble. This month the Fed told banks it's OK to rent their homes out. View Enlarged Image The homes are in hard-hit housing markets, including Southern California, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Chicago and parts of Florida. The lack of detail made publicly available by Fannie and the Federal Housing Finance Agency is no surprise, says Alex Villacorta, research director at Clear Capital, a real estate data and consulting firm. "My sense is that there are still a lot of questions surrounding the program," Villacorta said. "It's not that no one wants to give an answer. It's just that they are probably still trying to work out the details themselves." Many would-be participants would like to know the whens, wheres and hows from Fannie Mae and the plan regulator, the FHFA. "We can't find out anything about the program," said David Hicks, co-president of HomeVestors, a real estate investment firm. "We'd love to buy the properties. We have the money to buy them and the expertise to operate them as rental properties." Hicks' company runs "We Buy Ugly Homes" ads and claims 200 franchisees. It sells franchises to local real estate investors who buy bottom-dollar fixer-uppers to renovate and then sell or rent out. But industry reports suggest that private equity investors, hedge funds, broker-dealers and other big institutional investors will have the upper hand in buying homes via Fannie Mae's Real Estate Owned (REO) Initiative. It will let investors buy pools of foreclosed properties, with the stipulation to rent them out for a certain number of years. The idea is to avoid flooding an oversaturated market with more homes to sell. The FHFA announced the first pilot transaction Feb. 27 and said it would send details to prequalified investors. Those investors posting a security deposit and signing a confidentiality agreement would get access to details on the properties. "At that stage, interested investors must submit a comprehensive application, which will be reviewed by an outside firm. Only investors who are qualified through this rigorous process will be eligible to bid," the announcement said.