Underwater . . vs. Drowned According to The New York Times, “about $500 billion in mortgage debt is already underwater” (“Bailout Likely to Focus on Most Afflicted Homeowners“). That’s realtor-speak for a house being worth less than the mortgage against it. Unfortunately, based on my calculations, that number appears to be conservative. Using industry statistics,...Read More
Trulia.com Hits — and (Mostly) Misses Like Zillow.com, Trulia.com promises to arm prospective home buyers with reams of data about homes for sale. Buyers can search by property type, price, square footage, zip code, etc.; get information about schools and other community info; and even pose questions to the Trulia. com “community” that generate email...Read More
Rebutting Ritholtz on “Housing Affordability” The [Housing Affordability Index] as presently constructed is utterly worthless. It provides little or no insight into how affordable US Housing actually is. Further, what is omitted from the index is especially relevant to the problems occurring in the housing market today. The Index fails to account for — or...Read More
“Honey, I Blew Up the Financial System” Question: What do you call a financial house of cards that’s insured? Answer: an even bigger financial house of cards. Just as portfolio insurance was fingered as a prime culprit in the 1987 stock market crash, another kind of insurance — against credit defaults — is rapidly emerging...Read More
FSBO Mistake #4: Not Proofing the Listing on MLS If you try to fix your own plumbing and screw it up, it might cost you, at most, a thousand bucks or so and a weekend of your time (for clean-up, calling plumbers, etc.) Ditto if you botch fixing your own car. However, if you try...Read More
Many are Text-Messaged . . . Few are Chosen I always thought an unwritten rule of criticizing the SAT’s — (way) back in high school — was that to be credible, you had to have scored well. If you did poorly and were critical . . . it was just sour grapes. Well, in that...Read More
