Posted on 12/07/2008 9:17:55 AM PST by Bean Counter
I had this at the house next door. A flipper bought it, made some improvements and sold it to an older couple at the peak. The older couple then tried to flip the flip. They had it up for sale for 2 years and had 1 offer. The husband died and the wife is renting it out. My guess is she ia barely covering he taxes and other expenses.
You cold, cruel SOB. These poor retirees were just trying to improve their nest egg. Now you want to hold them accountable for their own personal investment decisions? How can you be so heartless? It’s our obligation to pay more taxes to help out these hapless souls. I know I am undertaxed and am only more than happy to fork over more money to prevent more of these sad cases from going to foreclosure. We should all do our patriotic duty and send more money to Washington.
Capitalism implies a profit motive, which is another word for greed. Let them succeed if they can, but if they fail, then that's on them.
The real greed is on Wall Street, where trillions of dollars of securities where sold on the foolish notion that markets will always go up, never down, and risk is spread out so widely as to be inconsiderable. All false, but because they had such powerful allies in Washington then they where bailed out, at our expense.
We all said "let them fail", but that's not what our overlords in Washington wanted.
The government is not supposed to save people from themselves. Who would be so stupid to buy an investment property in an undeveloped area, where there are no jobs?
Still may be a few trillion short!!!
What makes him think he's not speculating that the bottom has been reached. The article says the glut of empty lots and partially built homes there will depress prices for "months if not years". Buying a grossly-overprised home at a 20% discount in a falling market is not, IMHO, a good practice.
Interesting, she tried for a whole year at $749K after starting at $799K.
The year with no sale should have given her an inkling of the conditions... she probably could have easily dumped it for more than the $633K she bought it for in that period...
It seems that a lot of these late term “flippers” were people who had little experience in the commercial world and finally got greedy watching the market.
We have some friends of similiar social service type background who are in deep do do with multiple properties in CA. These people should not be bailed out. When they were getting in..we were getting out. A lot of people in the CA and west thought the bubble would go on forever, but bubbles always burst.
There will be another wave of foreclosurers as more investors walk on property beyond their means..job losses will further fuel the fire.
“Number six is the real kicker, $35,447.00 in wages and some lender made him a loan on a $638,206.00 house. Someone should be in jail!! “
The story doesn’t ID the lender, but I’ll bet you a burger it was WAMU...
Those shows on TV show the flippers actually IMPROVING a rundown house, not just a buy-and-hold strategy waiting for prices to go up. This couple learned the wrong lesson.
” The husband died and the wife is renting it out. My guess is she ia barely covering he taxes and other expenses.”
....I wish you well on this my friend...in our old neighborhood we had several houses that didn’t sell so they bacame rent houses....which meant they became problems...
So far the people are not bad. I will have no tolerance for it. it is weird that sometimes they are not there.
These were speculators. they took risk in order to make a profit. They lost their gamble. There is always risk associated with this sort of transaction. Although Wall Street is working very hard to eliminate risk, it won’t work.
There’s a whole lot of 5000 sq. ft. houses out there. A whole lot more than there are families of ten to live in them.
I’m buying right now. The house is modest and tidy, if a bit large for just myself and the soon-to-be-adopted cat. I put a hard-saved 20% down on it, and the mortgage payments are less than I would pay in rent.
Job number one after settlement will be accumulating a significant cash reserve. I am planning to accumulate a YEAR’S expenses before I branch out at all financially, with the exception of doing a company stock purchase thing.
I went through my flat-broke can’t-afford-a-tank-of-gas phase about two and a half years ago. I ain’t going there again, not if I can help it.
Greedy speculator gets burned.
Solves two problems at one fell swoop! I expect this to be happening in the near future, with government stepping in to give these homes away to socialism's constituents.
they’re just not making those loans anymore. Can’t see stupidity being outlawed however. This is Darwinism in action and regardless of how much money is thrown at the problem it will continue to play its way out.
“We should all do our patriotic duty and send more money to Washington.”
Amen. No one pays enough taxes and no one is regulated too much. /s off.
Who would have thought that the country that Washington, Adams (Both of them), and the others would fall so far so fast.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.