The Ides of September: Dickensian blogging for Yahoos
update below
Look, even the OKC neurosurgeon and his wife are selling their Oklacastle at a loss, so that means everybody's hurting. OK?
No, Yahoo doesn't actually say that. I'm kidding, OK? I'm such a kidder. And to be fair, maybe I've been excessively critical of Yahoo on occasion(also here). I imagine they're not substantially better or worse than average as far as corporate new media go. For all I know the people updating their front page actually put these kinds of items in stark opposition deliberately, to obliquely comment.
A Medieval-Style Castle in Oklahoma
By Rob Bear, Curbed September 13, 2011
"...they've put their Oklahoma City travel alternative up for sale at a loss, despite having filled the place with glamorous European light fixtures and furnishings. The castle was first listed for $4M in early 2011 and took a quick $500K price cut in May.
[...]
At 9,600 square foot, "[i]t's a big home and everything suits it," the owner says. "The chandeliers and the big door handles. Everything is more perfect than I could pick out in a million years." Yet the six-bedroom manse, a hodge-podge of faux finishes and architectural styles, might be one of the most muddled designs we've come across.
Yahoo Finance/AP: Mortgage default warnings surged in August
Report: Mortgage default warnings spiked in August, signaling potential new foreclosure wave
(also here, and here)
update:
Rob Payne of Halcyon Days adds some useful information, in the comments:
I assume it’s part of the bailout, the subsidizing of banks who are holding onto foreclosures. It’s a really bad situation, the banks won’t loan because often the foreclosures have serious problems, damage, termites, sometimes the people who lost their home damage the property but the bottom line is they are often in terrible condition. And the question is, if the bank loans on a decrepit home, who fixes it? Who pays for it? You can bet the banks don’t want to.
I’ve read that the banks are holding onto properties to keep the number of homes for sale down so that it doesn’t further drive prices down. If they dump them on the market prices would no doubt plummet again depending on the geographical area. Rich neighborhoods are by and large not affected nearly as much as working class neighborhoods. For the wealthy prices have only dropped slightly and in some cases not at all. That’s the advantage of the wealthy and upper middle classes...
-the rest is in the third comment.
Labels: journalism, truly lazy blogging, wealth-n-poverty
posted by Jonathan Versen @ 11:33 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
The government actually pays banks for holding onto forclosures. Banks won't loan on forclosed houses or houses that are so-called short sales. In other words even though prices have dropped by about half the only way you can buy a forclosed house is with cash. Something very few can do.
Hey Rob,
Didn't know that you couldn't finance the purchase of a foreclosed home, but it makes sense.
I imagine that the argument goes they're not really paying the banks to hold on to foreclosures, they're just trying to prevent more bad loans from further disrupting the system.
Reading between the lines, you get the sense they may still be hiding more bad loans on the books, but the big banks and the gummint decided to avoid disclosing that.
And people wonder if the HAMP program was deliberately bungled. Ha!
I assume it’s part of the bailout, the subsidizing of banks who are holding onto foreclosures. It’s a really bad situation, the banks won’t loan because often the foreclosures have serious problems, damage, termites, sometimes the people who lost their home damage the property but the bottom line is they are often in terrible condition. And the question is, if the bank loans on a decrepit home, who fixes it? Who pays for it? You can bet the banks don’t want to.
I’ve read that the banks are holding onto properties to keep the number of homes for sale down so that it doesn’t further drive prices down. If they dump them on the market prices would no doubt plummet again depending on the geographical area. Rich neighborhoods are by and large not affected nearly as much as working class neighborhoods. For the wealthy prices have only dropped slightly and in some cases not at all. That’s the advantage of the wealthy and upper middle classes.
Then they have what are called short sales which are where a person who is bankrupt and has a mortgage on a home that is worth more than the home wants to sell the house for less than the market value. But once again, banks will not loan on these short sales and the buyer needs cash to buy and the seller needs permission from the bank holding the mortgage. Supposedly it was designed to help sell houses but because of the banks it doesn’t work that way. Short sale homes are far less likely to sell than one sold by the owner without the banks involvement. In the end banks are not very motivated to sell these homes since they aren’t making a dime on them and are happy to be subsidized by the government.
Banks were deliberately targeting Blacks and Mexicans with their shady deals and ballooning payments. Recall the no down payment and low payments for the first year banks were offering. It was a deliberate bamboozle designed to steal from the poorest segment of the population. Predatory.
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