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No, I am not talking about people renting after being foreclosed. I am talking about the risks renters face when their landlord is foreclosed.
When a non-commercial note secured by residential real estate is foreclosed the tenants have no rights. Nope, not even if there is a lease. They get evicted unless the new owner agrees [...] Read more »

That is the subject of an email message I received this morning. It was from a new investor who is over-whelmed by the information dump that happens daily.
“No matter how hard I try I can’t sort this stuff out. Some say things are bad, some say things are fine. Some say the stock market is [...] Read more »

Yes, the retail residential real estate market is still volatile and trending down. But, only real estate speculators buy at retail. The investor buys properties based on value and cash flow.
Yes, there is some weakness showing in some commercial real estate markets. But, again, the long term value investor will be fine.
REITs are massively over-sold. [...] Read more »

I get the same calls and emails everyone else gets. They tell you gold is approaching all time highs. And they tout how much the price of gold has risen since 2001.
But, why do they pick 2001?
Because gold was at historical lows.
By 2001, gold was nearly two-thirds lower than it was in 1980 and in [...] Read more »

Over 150 lenders have already gone out of business since the peak of the sub-prime orgy.
This year over 1,000,000 yes, one million individual foreclosures are expected to happen.
Over $300,0000,000,000 that’s three hundred billion dollars of loans have been written off by the lending institutions and the best estimate is we are a little over half [...] Read more »

I had an interesting instant message chat yesterday with a lawyer friend who has been approached by a major lender.
Seems this lender is looking for local resources to follow-up on short sales after the closing. They want to make sure the “value” everyone agreed to at the short sale closing was really the “value” at [...] Read more »

Foreclosures Hit a Snag for Lenders
I’ll have more to say on this in a later post but this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone familiar with CDOs.
It is going to be extremely interesting to watch it all get sorted out over the next few years.
Unfortunately for the people in the neighborhoods affected, blight, crime [...] Read more »

I’m going out on a limb here but I really do think when the dust settles and the hindsight clears this quarter will mark the start of the recession.
I had hopes it could be averted and I still have hopes it can be minimized but I am a realist.
When the Fed dropped the rates 50 [...] Read more »

Cash is King and the best deals will always be had by those with the means to act quickly and decisively.
There are some media reports talking about some very well funded groups taking advantage of the housing market problems, especially in Florida. Many of these reports try to portray these groups as predatory and swooping [...] Read more »

Right now, there is no question I get asked more often than that one. I used to try to break it down and answer it by describing the fundamentals driving the many disconnected corrections around the country.
But, I grew tired of getting the confused hamster stare back at me. So, yesterday, I took a different [...] Read more »