Hampton Roads Housing/Real estate/and Economy

[adctvmonkey]

At the end of the day, it's all driven by greed (I'm not trying to judge people, because I have no right). But from the ones on top in the gov't, the media, the corporations, and down to the common masses who should have kept themselves, however difficult, within reasonable bounds of affordability and reality.

[adctvmonkey]

Formation of a Hampton Roads Defense Organization - 'Pentagon South'

This is an article from about a week ago. Surprisingly, the cities of HR are emphasizing regional cooperation on this, led by Va Beach and Chesapeake.

Edited October 19, 2007 by adctvmonkey

[Telmnstr]

Another day, another billion dollars gone!

Countrywide reports 1.2 billion losses. Looks like giving loans to anyone and everyone (knowing they will default in the future) isn't such a good thing.

I've been seeing numbers like $2 trillion worth of real estate value loss should be seen in the next few years, but didn't log the sources.

It's still going to be mega bloody. You figure the median asking (wishing) home price in Hampton Roads is down to $325K, and given the median incomes it will need to revert to something around $160K? Assuming 3 x median household income. That is about a 50% haircut, which seems likely.

Everything is playing out as expected. Right now, lending/credit is disappearing rapidly, which will end many first time home buyers and also stab a bunch of people who were told by realtor/mortgage brokers that they could always refi in the future before their reset dates.

I saw what looked like a leaked memo yesterday that BofA is killing all warehouse financing of loans in November. BOOYA.

Countrywide is trying to do some deal where they will redo loans for trapped "homeowners" who won't be able to afford their new payments. Basically, they don't want them walking -- they want them continuing to pay on an asset that will likely be worth $100,000 or more, less than what they owe. They should way away.

It's finally starting to get a bit bloody, but there is a long way to go. The idea that subprime is the only loans that are bad is a joke. There are many cases of very over leveraged people with good FICO scores that gambled, bought 16, 20, 70 properties and now are going to loose them all.

The Pilot, at least the online edition, has been super silent about housing. But if you watch bloomberg, the business world is watching the banks and others crumble hard.

Basically, this was all greed driven, and unfortunately a bunch of rich people got much more rich off of this. It did nothing for the common people. Housing values doubled, many extracted equity to buy short life goods, now the values will fall leaving em trapped.

Honestly, with so much tech and R&D and development moving overseas, I don't see America really recovering so great from this. Add the trade imbalances and everything else. I just heard that public key cryptography might have issues since two groups now have quantum computing setups in the lab. These computing setups can rock at cracking encryption. Who's got em? China and .Au ....

Japan had a rise and fall in housing. Theirs went on for 15 years of decline.

I know you all thing I kill the parade, that I'm negative. But I've been saying this is going to happen because it makes sense. Everyone ignores the fact that you can't run a ponzi scheme forever.

This is serious stuff, and it was ignored by our leaders.

[erdogs]

I don't understand how all this is working. The housing market in Austin has yet to fall like the rest of the country. We already have two condo high rises one over 40 floors nearly topped out and another over 30 topped out. Two more one over 40 and over 50 floors broke ground the past few months. They are having no problem selling either.

My condo would sell for about 50,000 more now than last year. Maybe it's all just evening out as I can see home prices here and in HR come closer together. Houston home prices are still very low. You can buy a 2,000 sq ft all brick home for 200,000. The market in Austin will level off in the next few years as demand is filled, but hopefully the rest of the nation will level back off to normal levels by then.

[urbanvb]

I think that Austin never experienced the housing 'bubble' such as Hampton Roads and other areas and has always been more affordable than HR - though perhaps less so now. And as far as the local scene, I have noticed condos in my neighborhood are selling for prices not seen since about 2 years ago and so some prices do seem to be dropping.

[Telmnstr]

Actually, I think Austin had a run up way before everyone else. I remember going to Austin ... hmm when I worked at NASA which would have been about 7 to 8 years ago. The class I was in, our instructor said his house had doubled in value in a really short period. He commented that it did him no good as anything he might want to move up to is now twice the cost. It seems like they are out of sync with the mania.

I believe Austin has a pretty good job market in terms of technology and what not. There should be a number of game companies there, Dell is there, and some others. I have a friend that relocated from Hampton Roads to there to work for Dell. He left Dell and moved up to something better. I'll have to ping him and see what's up.

Each location is going to be different. Raleigh is starting to see increases, probably driven by un-affordability elsewhere. Perhaps people are cashing out and moving to Austin as well.

There are so many factors to the mania... I mean, you have to figure in how many people that had abysmal credit became proud candidates for 100% financing. How many trump wanna-bes were running around buying up everything using leverage from property owned for a long time.

Austin was neat from what I remember. I remember traffic lights that took forever. I remember the interstate had that interesting exit system that seemed like it might have been intelligently designed. Instead of the cloverleaf cluster....s, there are those side entrances on each side that go up to the elevated crossroad. Everything seemed to be cut and pasted down the interstate, so no surprises. 6th street, hell yea. I got the inspiration to try to duplicate their local music TV channel thing and almost had a computer driven show on Cox channel 71, but couldn't get content from local bands (I bugged a ton of them though!).

Wow... that brings back memories.

Let's take a look back at a project ol' Tele Monster here tried to pull off in technologically dead Hampton Roads.

Televisions have a feature called closed captioning that everyone is aware of. But there are at least 4 modes on most TVs, Closed Captioning 1, 2, then Text 1 and Text 2. My setup could play videos from a Linux based computer in broadcast quality, and also do some text overlay for upcoming show schedules. But where it gets interesting, I had it setup to feed Text 1 and Text 2 (which I've never seen used). Closed captioning can do colors, which is hardly used (Alanis Morissette video had it once, that clued me in to it). Combine the two, and I had it setup so the artist information would show up on Text1 and a repeating show schedule would show up on Text2. Here is a picture of a real television, and you can see the Pentium II rackmount computer and the closed captioning hardware to the left of it:

There were very few videos though... that was the issue. Hardly any bands in Hampton Roads had content. I talked to Doc Holiday, I talked to bands that were practicing at storage units. I pinged every artist on mp3.com. And then when I got around to looking into the viability after youtube launched, the rates for airtime had jumped way up (It was either $300+ or $500+ an hour after 11pm on Channel 71). Channel 11 is off limits to mere mortals... I've heard stories about that. The computer loaded the data into the captioning encoder, it was all totally scriptable. It was to replicate the artist information from the local music site I had, music.hrconnect.com (which still exists but is pretty outdated).

Man... That would have been way cool if it had worked.

I actually *did* get 2 videos in hand.

My local music site also replicated upcoming who's playing where in Hampton Roads to LED signboards, that can dial in and get the information daily. I tried to get Alpha Music and AL&M to host them, but never got anywhere. (Photo of the signs can be seen at http://users.757.org/~ethan/pics/geek/life...ce/IMG_3313.JPG ... to big to inline it).

What can ya do.

(I think the hardship of trying to do cool things in the community and always getting no where adds to my bitterness for the region. I think it's just the culture of the area, it is not a region for innovation).

Edited October 29, 2007 by Telmnstr

[cpeakesqr]

Here's a brief summary of the presentation by some big wig from the Brooking's Institute.

[Telmnstr]

Here's a brief summary of the presentation by some big wig from the Brooking's Institute.

Hmmm I'll look at it tonight.

Are all these people going to be in the Navy, or work for gov't contractors or what?

I can see influx of people tapering off, or dying.

Florida used to get like 1000 new people a day. Now it looses people every day due to high housing and insurance costs.

[Telmnstr]

This rapid run-up in home prices has most likely enabled locals to afford to temporarily live above their means, via the wonders of HELOCs (equity extraction).

Once this source of money for consumerism is fully tapped, what do you think the result will be in regards to consumer spending in our region? How many people that are dining out at town center every night will revert to eating at home once the value of their home drops, and reality sets back in that their salary isn't so hot and they have little savings?

[Telmnstr]

The Daily Press from Viginia.

[vdogg]

Hampton Roads market outlook

Paints a pretty rosy picture

[Telmnstr]

Hampton Roads market outlook

Paints a pretty rosy picture

Interesting, but the heck knows... Just because employment is strong doesn't mean there can't be a recession. Also, the strong employment could be driven by 1099 workers (rRaltors, contractors) leaving their once-fruitful employment as a private subcontractor and returning to normal employment. It is my understanding that Realtors are often 1099'ed).

The important thing is that REO, that is, bank owned properties are increasing, and that we aren't even halfway trough the ARM loan reset woes, which will be followed by 3 other (but less severe) reset cycles.

2 million or so homes will be lost and returned to the market to be combined with all the others for sale. Prices will decline. There are so many houses for sale, and credit will farther tighten eliminating that many more "buyers."

Anyone else paying attention to the banks writing off very very very large amounts of losses due to homes? Crazy stuff. Wish the Hampton Roads market would already start to really drop.

Friend just lost his job the other day. 6 figure type stuff, lots of cutbacks at his company.

Same drum I've been beating, but now you can hear the funky beat on Bloomberg, CNN, MSNBC, Fox and all the others.

BTw, I didn't think the ports really employed that many people. Thought they were most automated with machine vision systems.

Oh yea, also was talking to someone else who I sorta know who deals in supply to home builders and the residential market. I was like "so has it slowed down" and the reply was to the effect "MAJORLY!" ...

Edited November 18, 2007 by Telmnstr

[scm]

Interesting, but the heck knows... Just because employment is strong doesn't mean there can't be a recession. Also, the strong employment could be driven by 1099 workers.......

I won't try to talk you out of your pessimism,, but I will challenge what you present as facts.

1. THere are two generally accepted definitions of a recession -- first is two declining quarters of GDP. Second is the period between peaks and troughs in "business activity" as measured by industrial production, retail and wholesale sales, real income, and employment. So, if there is a low level of unemployment, almost all of those measures will be rising or flat -- and therefore, not in a recession.

2. How you are paid, has nothing to do with whether you are counted as employed or unemployed. If you are a civilian, and work for pay or profit, you are employed, according to the official gov't stats (as relates to the civilian work force). By your mythical 1099 standard, anyone who filed a Schedule C would be unemployed as well -- which couldn't be further from the truth.

Most interesting thing in that article was the opening of a TJ's in W'burg, and no announcement of anything on the southside.

[Telmnstr]

I won't try to talk you out of your pessimism,, but I will challenge what you present as facts.

1. THere are two generally accepted definitions of a recession -- first is two declining quarters of GDP. Second is the period between peaks and troughs in "business activity" as measured by industrial production, retail and wholesale sales, real income, and employment. So, if there is a low level of unemployment, almost all of those measures will be rising or flat -- and therefore, not in a recession.

2. How you are paid, has nothing to do with whether you are counted as employed or unemployed. If you are a civilian, and work for pay or profit, you are employed, according to the official gov't stats (as relates to the civilian work force). By your mythical 1099 standard, anyone who filed a Schedule C would be unemployed as well -- which couldn't be further from the truth.

Most interesting thing in that article was the opening of a TJ's in W'burg, and no announcement of anything on the southside.

Virginia Employment Commission provided the number for the Pilot article, not sure about the Real Estate magazine. I don't see information on how they count employment, I've always heard it was based upon those filing for unemployment benefits. So that would exclude people like me who once upon a time were 1099'ed. I couldn't file for unemployment, I didn't count in those statistics. If you base your employment on yearly tax filings then it would make it difficult to track employment on quarterly or monthly basis.

Don't get me wrong, I know that employment is pretty darn good. There are lots of gov't contractors who can't get the talent they want for the money they are offering (had two friends jump ship this week).

But you just can't avoid all of the credit problems that the greed of the country has caused. There are going to be lots of huge losses going forward.

This says it all:

You just can't avoid it. Housing is un-affordable, was based on lax lending standards and people cheating, and now there is going to be a massive payback required to straighten it out. The gov't is talking bailouts already. Which of course is nice... Wall Street and mortgage slime get to take home the profits while everyone gets to cover the losses.

*shrug*

I was in bank of America getting my new secured visa card (Which is LOL in itself) and the news was on with all this doom and gloom stuff about the housing market. The guy said... straight up said that it wouldn't recover until 2009. Of course he is wrong.... but it's still eerie hearing sources telling the American sheep what is going on. I remember when the bloggers were considered tin foil hat that real estate could ever possibly decline a single percent... now people are getting worked into the realization that ... yea, get ready for 40%+ declines.

Another great chart:

Note, 1 is January 2007 ... so we are currently at 11 ... Make no mistake, the prime loans and other "products" are going to have massive amounts of resets and losses too... the idea that it is contained in subprime is a fallacy, because people with high FICOs could qualify for prime loans to use to speculate on property.

Anywho, craigslist has millions of properties for sale. There are tons of people begging for low cost places to live in the housing wanted, and the newspaper has quite a selection of foreclosures. And in the end, it's NOT a buyers market, it's a FOOLS market.

[Telmnstr]

Did you all see the top story on Pilotonline today?

TOLD YA!

The whole subject of the housing bubble, and main stream media ignoring it while they pander to their real estate advertisers.... I'd have to say (at least to me) it really hurt the credibility of the newspaper. It was my awakening, the real experience that I could never trust them for good information.

[hoobo]

Did you all see the top story on Pilotonline today?

TOLD YA!

The whole subject of the housing bubble, and main stream media ignoring it while they pander to their real estate advertisers.... I'd have to say (at least to me) it really hurt the credibility of the newspaper. It was my awakening, the real experience that I could never trust them for good information.

Happy New Year, Chicken Little.

What about Moody's Economy's report that predicts a 10% correction in the HR home price over the next two years before bottom is hit in late 2009 based on several indicators not just units on the market? That doesn't really figure into the sky-is-falling scenario too well.

[Telmnstr]

Happy New Year, Chicken Little.

What about Moody's Economy's report that predicts a 10% correction in the HR home price over the next two years before bottom is hit in late 2009 based on several indicators not just units on the market? That doesn't really figure into the sky-is-falling scenario too well.

Yea but I wouldn't trust any main stream media report. It's not in their best interest to tell the truth. Look how they've hidden the facts so far.

It all comes down to supply and demand, and what people can afford to pay for housing. Take away the stupid lending and it what they can afford doesn't match the prices.

[hoobo]

Yea but I wouldn't trust any main stream media report. It's not in their best interest to tell the truth. Look how they've hidden the facts so far.

It all comes down to supply and demand, and what people can afford to pay for housing. Take away the stupid lending and it what they can afford doesn't match the prices.

But that same report predicts a 30% drop in Miami, 25% in Vegas and Phoenix, 15 - 25% in the L.A. metro (depending on the county), 15% in San Diego and Jax, 20% in DC metro, and upwards of 35% in secondary and tertiary markets in California and Florida. What's presented in the report sounds reasonable. What you're describing isn't a return to true market rates, but a depression. And why is it in your best interest or any bloggers best interest to tell the truth? By creating a panic and driving down prices, these bloggers could swoop in a pick up undervalued properties. I sincerely hope that your dire predictions don't come true otherwise I'll see you in the bread line.

[Telmnstr]

But that same report predicts a 30% drop in Miami, 25% in Vegas and Phoenix, 15 - 25% in the L.A. metro (depending on the county), 15% in San Diego and Jax, 20% in DC metro, and upwards of 35% in secondary and tertiary markets in California and Florida. What's presented in the report sounds reasonable. What you're describing isn't a return to true market rates, but a depression. And why is it in your best interest or any bloggers best interest to tell the truth? By creating a panic and driving down prices, these bloggers could swoop in a pick up undervalued properties. I sincerely hope that your dire predictions don't come true otherwise I'll see you in the bread line.

These predictions are only recent, even though the blogworld has been calling for it for years. An economy based on insane debt loads isn't a very good one.

Look at that graph. How can you deny there is an issue with that? The real estate mania was a ponzi scheme. So called leaders like Alan Greenspan were avoiding small downturns by blowing bubbles. Now we will have a big one. It could have been avoided. It was predicted by some, but most of the media were pumping this thing up with no regard for the dangers. Seriously look at the numbers of $600K and above homes in Hampton Roads. Do the math on the costs. Now figure out many of the jobs that afforded those are themselves based on the building, sales and financing of those very same homes. It HAS to end, and revert to affordability.

We need Americans to save money for retirement, not rely on the fantasy of selling their $200K home for $10 million to their neighbor's kids in 15 years.

Edited January 4, 2008 by Telmnstr

[Telmnstr]

More and more and more...

SOME MORE FACTS FOR THE UNHOLY! RAISE UP AND PRAISE THE HOUSING BUBBLE JESUS... CAUSE I BRING YOU MORE FACTS. PRINT THESE OUT AND STICK EM IN YOUR BIBLE.

So if you look back a year or two, this local real estate REO website (that means banks own them cause people defaulted) had all of 6 listings. There was nothing. But now, holy CRAP!@ Huge list:

http://www.williecolston.com/listings/index2.php3

So anyone look at the PilotOnline.com recently? If you go to the new ugly site, click on the classifieds tab at the top. Then go to full category listing that is hidden on the right. Now go to foreclosures. HOLY CRAP. Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, all of them are bumping.

So. Now think about all the money that has been flowing due to houses. People buy new houses and need to buy lots of crap to fill them. People have houses, and decide they need a new Benz so they HELOC (borrow against, or as the sales people put it "Free your equity") and buy cars, boats, jetskis, granite countertops and stainless steel appliances, cars, and whatever else. It's pitched as free money, and people feel rich because their property values have jumped up so fast.

Now take all that spending, and remove it. Remove the jobs it all supports. And then the value of those houses that have been borrowed against all drop, because the value was really out of line as to what people can afford to pay with their jobs.

When I pimped through neighborhoods like Greystone and some of these other higher end hoods, it looked like a good number of the vehicles in the driveways were construction vehicles. Not that the houses were being built, but the people that lived there were in the industry that was going die the minute the mania died.

My big beef is that the media did NOTHING to report what was going on. Long time appraisers were complaining to the boards that they received no work if they didn't hit numbers for lenders. There were people who had mountains of evidence regarding fraud - cash back schemes and straw buyers. They really had to work to get the feds to listen. Anyone who is not an idiot could have seen this coming in 2004. But no one would take off their rose colored glasses, or forget about their quick effortless earnings for a minute.

As a country, we can't survive reselling overpriced pressboard boxes to each other on ever growing mountains of debt.

[Telmnstr]

Heya Heya! You know what time it is!@# It's the NEW YEAR! We saw record numbers of stuck people trying to dump their overpriced houses, they missed the peak. But the day that is considered the real kick off of the next housing sale season is the day after the super bowl. While listings might soar, sales will remain sour.

From what I understand, Bank of America purchased Countrywide.... and now Countrywide is totally pulling back on the numbers of loans it will make. Actually, it might be cutting off all brokers from reselling it's stuff. I forget the situation exactly, but as I understand it ... it's basically the #1 provider of loans is cutting back. Of course this is on top of all the subprimers that already went out of business (over HALF of them!). They might have folded so they couldn't be forced to buy back all the crap they shoveled, which is a normal part of those contracts. If the new "home owner" misses a payment in the first 6 months or 12 months they brokers have to buy the crap back. But OOPS they are out of business!

Anyways, it looks like inventory dropped just a tad for Christmas, and now is on the rise again:

http://www.housingtracker.net/askingprices...lk-NewportNews/

Also, Wall Street lost a record amount (80 billion dollars) for it's little investor people, and in turn is taking home record bonuses. How lovely. Wall street is pretty criminal.

We will see how long the Gov't can hide the truth of the meltdown. Now we've got our banks looking to sell chunks of it to foreign investors. That means, communists and terrorists.

Hopefully we will see large numbers of perp walks, but somehow I have the feeling that it will never happen.

So let's hope that the gov't doesn't try to bail out "home owners" who foolishly overextended themselves, often times lying on loan applications about their income so they could qualify for loans.

And lets hope the gov't doesn't do much else drastically stupid. I guess they are talking about mailing out free money checks to try to get people to spend it. But the polls are saying that people are saying that they will use the checks to try to service already outstanding debt. Quality.

[Telmnstr]

Well, looks like things are going down the toilet like I predicted.

Anyways, here is a good report on why we are no where near through the housing downturn. The realtors and talking heads that say it will bounce back in a few months have objectives other than honesty.

http://www.blownmortgage.com/files/presentation3-2008.pdf

[scm]

Well, looks like things are going down the toilet like I predicted.

Anyways, here is a good report on why we are no where near through the housing downturn. The realtors and talking heads that say it will bounce back in a few months have objectives other than honesty.

http://www.blownmortgage.com/files/presentation3-2008.pdf

Funny, I thought the topic here was "Hampton Roads Housing" -- there isn't a single reference to HR anywhere in these 75 pages (and if you can explain what a "M5 Tranche of the ABFC 2006-OPT2 Trust" is, and how it effects housing prices here, ...........)

There is a great line from Shakespeare which gave us the title of a Faulker book that comes to mind.

[Telmnstr]

The housing woes are just a glimpse at the greater credit bubble in our country.

There is a trickle down effect that will negatively impact many industries.

http://hamptonroads.com/2008/03/woes-begin...teries-cut-back

[urbanvb]

I'm soon to be in the market to buy a house. Not a bad time to actually buy one but at the same time I have to first sell mine and wonder how long this may take. I've noticed a lot of homes are just sitting there for months on end.

Edited March 31, 2008 by urbanvb