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yeah, i saw this about a month ago and the thing that struck me was i expected worse like the refrigerator, toilets, stove being ripped out, more glass broken as i've heard about elsewhere.
Besides the graffiti, pretty typical stuff there. I don't know how the caneraman can make it through that whole video without one off-color comment. a better man than me.
Reminded me of this thread from a SD investment group.
Crazy Desperate Times - SDCIA Message Board
"I monitor the local market closely and recently saw an REO property sell for $250K that should have easily sold for $480-490K even in the current market conditions. The home was purchased on 2005 for $552K and the homeowners apparently couldnt keep up with the payments. This is (or was) a nice house.
It is 2 year old home, 3400 sq ft, 4 bed/4 bath home on a 10,000 sq ft lot in a very nice upscale neighborhood of Temecula. Upon closer review of the MLS description, it was clear that the property had been gutted out on the inside so badly that it reduced the value of the proper over $200K (see attached pictures). Talk about a rehab project. The bank would take only cash since the property would not qualify for a loan. Ive seen foreclosed properties vandalized by the people who have lost their homes before in lower income neighborhoods but never this badly in a nice neighborhood. All the plumbing, toilets, cabinetry, sinks, appliances, and even wood railings were removed."
OT- some here on this site have made comments about how a large short interest can provide never ending fuel for stock mkt rallies and squeezes with the potential to shove the major indices to the moon. i would like to offer this counter commentary as elucidated quite nicely by Doug Noland here:
404 - Error: 404
"The stocks of Ambac and MBIA collapsed this week. I can only surmise that part of the selling pressure emanated from players caught on the wrong side of rapidly widening Credit default swap prices. Since these companies have limited amounts of bonds trading in the markets in debt markets generally suffering acute illiquidity those needing to hedge rising default risk in this industry had little alternative than to aggressively short the stocks. And the faster the stocks declined, the wider the CDS spreads and the more dynamic hedge-related selling required. This dynamic could play out throughout the financial sector and beyond. The "dynamic hedging" (shorting securities to offset increasing risk on derivatives written) of Credit risk today poses a very serious systemic issue."
while we will undoubtedly continue to see short squeezes, i predict they will become less frequent as the credit squeeze applies more pressure. remember, these short squeezes can only happen with fictitious capital which is decreasing as we speak. they will also reverse more quickly as we saw with CFC after an impressive one day ramp of 30% plus. its now back down to 14.5 and will fall some more.
i hereby dub the new trend "The Long Squeeze".
From the director of the Blair witch project?
yeah, i saw this about a month ago and the thing that struck me was i expected worse like the refrigerator, toilets, stove being ripped out, more glass broken as i've heard about elsewhere.
Some work had clearly already been done: the carpets were removed and the broken windows were boarded up.
All that damage was probably caused during one Saturday night party. Imagine what could happen over the course of a month or two. Crack house, anyone?
A couple more examples:
I wonder what they are leaving for the bank? - Housing Doom
Error: Page Not Found | KGET TV 17
As some one else noted, for the most part it's nothing that a week of drywall and paint wouldn't cure. It's oddly tempting to post tips on how to do it right. I had to replace the copper in my first house because someone had removed it with hedge trimmers.
OT
Doug Noland states "The Credit meltdown is now moving too fast and furious."
Santelli indicates that the credit markets are expecting Paul Bunyan shoes to drop.
We see scary indicators - treasury yields dropping, CDS widen, credit insurers tanking, ABX, etc.
I'd like to determine how much of this is fear and how much is real. Where are the shoes? It seems like a bit more than $5-10B here and there.
So was that caused by the pissed-off homeowner or by vandals after the place was vacated? These days I guess the "bank" was lucky some copper scavenger didn't remove all the plumbing too - that happened to NEW construction near us.
Animals. My great grandparents, who never had an indoor toilet or electricity are spinning in their graves.
Are we going to get a reprise of the famous skunk-and-chihuahua story?
Are the vandals being prosecuted? And seeing jail time?
They should be...
I'm with Nemo... people should be prosecuted for this.
Nope. Now if you can find evidence of sommma them there mareejuana cigarettes amongst the wreckage, that'd be prosecutable.
I'm sorta planning on relocating to Las Vegas in 2009 or so (figure it's a good place for a self-employed programmer who mostly goes out at night) . . . hope there are still houses standing there, then.
about 10 years back, I lived in a duplex in tampa. nice outlying neighborhood. real decent landlords. next door neighbors were... difficult (to put it mildly). one day the landlady came by to pick up the rent checks. neighbors shoved her to the ground... so went over gave her some temporary comfort until the husband could get there. eventually the scum next door were evicted. on the last night before the sheriff was supposed to kick them out, they trashed the place. eggs and milk in the linen closet.. totally destroyed anything they could. as a final parting shot, they broke the keys off in both deadbolts (front and back). a pair of needlenose pliers solved that little problem tho. iirc, the landlords took strong legal action.. both for the assault and for the vandalism.
I'll never understand why some people are like that.
OT: New Englanders plan to spend less
Shoppers cut holiday spending plans - The Boston Globe
This year New England residents plan to spend 19 percent less on gifts according a recent survey.
Troy,
IF you can find a job in LV in 2009 it'll have to be in a casino. On the bright side, you'll have your choice of houses.
I'll never understand why some people are like that.
It is possible that if you had had to walk in their moccassins prior to that point you would have greater understanding.
Not that you would become the scum these people were, but we all become who we are via a chain of contingent agencies, both good and ill.
Living in Japan for 8 years allowed me to see what social capital is all about.
"In some corners of the global financial system, institutions are already trying to come clean about the pain. It is relatively easy, for example, to calculate the losses at so-called structured investment vehicles (SIVs) a breed of specialist fund because they are required to publish regular net asset value numbers. According to the rating agencies, for example, the average value of assets in SIV vehicles has fallen by a third since the start of the summer."
"However, the challenge for policymakers today is that the 2007 credit storm unlike the Lloyds debacle is not a contained affair: on the contrary, the opaque subprime chain has created unexpected linkages between an extraordinarily wide range of investors and institutions around the world. The longer investors continue to fear that this chain could produce unexpectedly large future losses, the greater the danger of a downward spiral in investor confidence and thus the higher the risk of a knock-on impact on the real economy. "
FT.com / Comment / Analysis - What’s the subprime damage?
"It's amazing what some people will do to their houses."
??????????????????
But they don't view it as "their house" anymore. It is the bank's house, right?
The vandals might actually be doing potential buyers a favor. Based on the abysmal build quality over the past 5-7 years (at least in Phoenix), it would be nice to be able take a peek under the wallboards.
Realtor: "And here's the master bathroom."
Me: "Excuse me for a minute while I knock out the wall and make sure that toilet is plumbed correctly."
This has always gone on. Maybe its shocking when it's an upscale home, but nothing new there either. As an insurance agent, we get claims from the lender for vandalism by the now departed homeowner. (Yes, that is covered because acts of the named insured do not invalidate the insuring agreement under a mortgagee clause. The problem is separating true vandalism from mere "sloppy living".)
Unfortunately, I have no idea of such claims are on the upswing -- still relatively rare, but I don't really have a count of how often a home we insure is repo'd. (I.e., when a policy cancels we usually aren't told its "because I gave it back to the bank" as people euphemistically term it.)
I just wanted to let all you butt hole bloggers know my wife and I are going dancing tonight after I lost my job today. Thanks for nothing.
Charles Prince has resigned as Citi chairman and CEO. Robert Rubin to be named chairman. Sir Win Bischoff will be interim CEO.
WSJ
Citi to take $8 billion to $11 billion in additional writedowns.
WSJ
Now the only question is how early will Cramer be on to tell people to "back up the truck!" on Citi.
here lies the material portion-
"Citi to take $8 billion to $11 billion in additional writedowns."
Business News & Financial News - The Wall Street Journal - WSJ.com
The damage looks like the result of teenagers and other local transients not the foreclosed upon homeowners. Just judging from the grafitti - tags everywhere - and the haphazard breaking of holes into walls for kicks.
If you look at videos teens take when they wreck abandoned houses its the same kind of damage. I would be very surprised if it was the former homeowners who did this.
This year New England residents plan to spend 19 percent less on gifts according a recent survey.
Ministry of Truth | 11.04.07 - 3:36 pm |
I live in NH and last year at this time it cost $600.00 to fill your oil tank, now it will take $800.00.
Heating oil is around $2.90 and rising quick, my guess, $3.25 by Thanksgiving and $3.75 by Xmas. Many homes in NE use oil, and along with the housing melt down, I don't think shopping will be as crazy as previous years.
"The damage looks like the result of teenagers and other local transients not the foreclosed upon homeowners."
You forget that "teenagers and other local transients" are the core of the Vegas workforce. They ARE the homeowners who were getting the no-doc loans.
Sir Win Bischoff-
Citi - Corporate Governance
"Currently he is a Non-Executive Director of The McGraw-Hill Companies, New York, and of Land Securities plc since October 1999, of Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, since June 2000, of Akbank Turkey since March 2007, and Prudential plc since August 2007. "
Nothing more but here is the WSJ article.
In Citi Shake-Up, Broader Troubles - WSJ.com
After the home equity loan ran out, the credit cards maxed and the bank forecloses, there is always one more bit of equity to be extracted...copper pipe and wire!!!
more on the size of potential writedowns-
Expired
citi release-
Expired
I forget. Does this vandalism help or hurt America?
I know "they" couldn't ever seem to decide if hurricane Katrina helped or hurt us financially anyway.
Will Hurricane Katrina increase GDP?
Perhaps rather than waging the war on poverty we can instead pursue a war on property. Hurray!
Are Wars Good for the Economy?
The standard "a war gives the economy a boost" argument goes as follows...
Let's just stop reading right there and call it good!
from the press release linked to by risk capital:
Expired
"...approximately $18 billion of super senior tranches of ABS CDOs, consisting of approximately $10 billion of high grade ABS CDOs, approximately $8 billion of mezzanine ABS CDOs and approximately $0.2 billion of ABS CDO-squared transactions."
most mezzanine is collapsing ?
"Perhaps rather than waging the war on poverty we can instead pursue a war on property. Hurray!"
Yes, we must abandon the neutron bomb that killed people but left the property standing. Instead we need a bomb that:
1: destroys all the property so Haliburton can get a contract to rebuild it;
2: stuns all the ordinary citizens so they can be taken into custody and tortured; and
3: gives wily terrorist leaders a free ticket to the mountainous regions of Pakistan.
This would allow us to accomplish the last four years of war on terorism in one mission!
albrt,
Fighting all these wars at once seems a bit like whack-a-mole. I suspect if your version becomes a reality the war on drugs is unwinnable!
Unwinnable: It is also known as a walking dead, dead end or zombie situation.... Walking dead situations occur due to an earlier mistake or oversight by the player that cannot be corrected (compare with point of no return), for example the player has lost or destroyed an essential object, became trapped in a place with no exit...
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking. - Steve McCroskey, Airplane!, 1980
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking. - Steve McCroskey, Airplane!, 1980
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. - Steve McCroskey, Airplane!, 1980
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines. - Steve McCroskey, Airplane!, 1980
This was a rental property. The washer and dryer are the tip off. They belong to the owner/landlord otherwise they would have been taken by the tenant at move out. Ranges usually stay with a house, but refrigerators move too.
As noted earlier, the bank is lucky that the damage was not more thorough. I am not going to give any tips, but there are few simple steps that could have been taken that would have made the damage much much more problematic.
Attacking the electrical and waste lines would have been a start.
I received a call from the police one night asking me to come check my vacant townhouse rental unit under rehab, next door to a unit they'd found vandalized by way of disgruntled evictees stopping all drains, damming door sills, then turning on all the water taps upstairs....which was discovered when water began seeping out the front door the next day.
Fortunately the concrete party wall kept mine from damage, but was instructive. I am pleasant, courteous and nice even to evictees and have never had more than the usual simple landlord problems.
One of the basic rules of warfare is to insure that your opponent has some way to survive when you win. Because the object is to win, not to destroy your opponent. Desperate people will do desperate things.
Yea the 'powers that be have written the rules so that they win absolutely, but in doing so, they also insure that the losers will not follow 'the rules' and go quietly into the night.
Interesting marketing ploy that realtors are having to resort to here in Atlanta. This past weekend I noticed some sign twirlers beckoning drivers by to an "auction" of a luxury home. This home is in a new development built within the past 3-4 years with the original prices in the 800-900K range. The development has not sold out; the last two houses built have sat on the market for over a year.
Being the curious type, I drove back yesterday to take a look see. Turns out that it isn't a true auction, the real estate apparatchnik (pleasantly mannered, as always) explained that they are letting people walk through for a few days then taking sealed "bids" starting at a reserve of 1.1 million. Upon receiving bids, they will notify the bidders and give them the chance to outbid the highest bidder in 5K increments.
This house wasn't one of the builders unsold units, it is a "used" one where the owner got into trouble and is trying to avoid foreclosure. The reserve price is I think the outstanding balance on the property owed the bank.
The house itself was enormous but other than the granite and fancy tile, I cannot see any way this thing is worth anywhere near 1 million. The lot is pretty small, you can see your neighbors houses looming nearby with no trees for privacy.
The worst part was the basement, I headed there first and found it partially finished with some sheetrock hung but no drywall compound applied or sanded. I asked one of the agents about that and she said that the owner started the project but never finished.
The agents claimed that the comps in the 'hood are in the 1.3 million range, which I seriously doubt. I should have asked how the builder would react if this house sold for 1.1 thereby blowing away his comps, but I chickened out.
Another thing that stood out was the financing. I took home a sheet from a lender with three scenarios - 30-year fixed, I/O and our good friend the Option Arm. I was expecting the worst but when I sat down and read it, all three scenarios required at least 20% down. The option arm scenario had the lowest monthly nut, of course, but it was still over 5K. APR's in the 6.785 to 7.75 range, depending on how much of a gambler you are.
I still cannot understand how the heck an option ARM works (2.00% interest rate, 7.785 APR = WTF?) I need to go back and re-read Tanta's ubernerd posts.