The AntiGuru on May 23rd, 2008

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 [...]

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The AntiGuru on February 6th, 2008

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 [...]

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Research Group on February 1st, 2008

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. [...]

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Continue reading about Looking Forward, This Should be a Good Year for Investors.

The AntiGuru on January 27th, 2008

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 [...]

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Continue reading about When the Pundits Promote Gold, Why do They Only Go Back to 2001?

The AntiGuru on January 22nd, 2008

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 [...]

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Continue reading about The State of the Housing Market for 2008

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 [...]

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Continue reading about I Wonder If Other Lenders are Looking At This as a Potential Loss Recovery Center

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 [...]

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Continue reading about Readers of my Subscription Newsletter in 2005 Knew This Was Coming.

The AntiGuru on October 24th, 2007

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 [...]

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Continue reading about We Are Already In A Recession, We Just Don’t Know It Yet.

The AntiGuru on October 22nd, 2007

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 [...]

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Continue reading about Will Institutional Money Freeze Out the Small Investor?

The AntiGuru on August 7th, 2007

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 [...]

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Continue reading about When Will the Housing Correction End?