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Showing posts with label inflation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inflation. Show all posts

Thursday, June 16, 2016

I am Relocating And Need To Sell My House In Orlando - Written by Eugene Hoffman

I am Relocating And Need To Sell My House In Orlando

selling my Orlando house relocationRelocation is a complicated exercise in coordination. We get local Orlando home sellers calling us or submitting their house info on this website every week saying “I’m relocating and need to sell my house in Orlando“.  The great thing is that we’re able to help a good many of those sellers sell their house quickly (because we’re actively buying houses in Orlando right now!).
There’s an insane amount of details to keep together, plus the stress of whatever is making you move in the first place – often it’s a new job or a sick relative, but the true need to move always comes with a dramatic change.
So how do you make the most out of a difficult situation?

I am Relocating And Need To Sell My House In Orlando

selling my Orlando house relocationRelocation is a complicated exercise in coordination. We get local Orlando home sellers calling us or submitting their house info on this website every week saying “I’m relocating and need to sell my house in Orlando“.  The great thing is that we’re able to help a good many of those sellers sell their house quickly (because we’re actively buying houses in Orlando right now!).
There’s an insane amount of details to keep together, plus the stress of whatever is making you move in the first place – often it’s a new job or a sick relative, but the true need to move always comes with a dramatic change.
So how do you make the most out of a difficult situation?

Don’t Agonize – Organize.

You don’t want to be in a situation where you end up paying to own and maintain a vacant house for 2 years. That gets expensive and it doesn’t have to be that way.
Although the market is relatively stable right now in Orlando, things can change in the blink of an eye. We’ve heard some serious horror stories over the past couple of decades. Unless you’re filthy rich, you probably can’t afford to wait it out.
So how do you make the right choices when you’re relocating and need to sell your Orlando Florida house fast?

Relocating And Need To Sell My House Fast In Orlando… Your Options And Steps

First…
  1. Find out what your house is worth: To do this you can contact a reputable real estate agent or connect with us and we can give you a no cost no obligation valuation on your property.  Once you know what the house may be able to sell for in the current market… that sets the basis for how long you may or may not be able / willing to sell the house.
  2. Decide how fast you need to sell your house after you relocate: This is a biggie. I’ve seen professionals who moved out of state for a job who had their house on the market for over a year before selling it for a much much lower price than they hoped. Decide how fast you need to sell your house… and how long you’re willing to keep making 2 mortgage payments, insurance payments, etc.



Thursday, March 27, 2014

Contracts to buy homes fall for 8th straight month by Josh Boak, The Associated Press

Inventory has been increasing for the number of homes on the MLS. Sales have slowed a little here in Central Florida so the slight decrese in prices in not seasonal.

Gene Hoffman

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans who signed contracts to buy homes fell for the eighth straight month in February, a sign of slow real estate sales over the next few months.

 The National Association of Realtors says its seasonally adjusted pending home sales index dropped 0.8% to 93.9. The index has fallen 10.5% over the past 12 months.

read More...

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Sell butter and make $$Millions$$ greasing the political wheel BY FRANCISCO TORO

Venezula has more oil offshore than any county in the World an yet people are lined up arounf the block to buy one stick of butter and a roll of toilet paper. Gene Hoffman

A recent New York Times article about the protests in Venezuela reported that "demonstrators condemn a wide range of perennial problems, including… shortages of basic goods like sugar and toilet paper." This has become a meme in coverage of the unrest, as just about every story mentions these "shortages" as a reason for the student demonstrations. The word has become a kind of shorthand for the chaos and decay of the Venezuelan economy, driven by bolivarian socialism's uniquely self-destructive mix of economic policies. But how, you might wonder, does government policy cause a toilet-paper crisis?

Read More...

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Short Sale Valuation Problems by Realtor.org

 In this article it directs a Realtor to the necessary online form to dispute a valuation of a Fannie Mae listing price. Fannie Mae is in a fight against investors. Fannie Mae is helping the Banks sell their foreclosed properties at a much higher price to first time home buyer than the property is really worth. Invests will not pay the high  price of HomePaths' homes. Realtors have the right to dispute the value and a good Realtor should help an investor that wants to buy it.


January 23, 2013
Beginning in the latter part of 2012, a number of REALTORS® across the country reported that Fannie Mae had started jeopardizing short sale transactions by requesting purchase offers at significantly higher prices than market values. REALTORS® continue to report that Fannie Mae’s actions have led to a decrease in the number of Fannie Mae short sale transactions, an increase in the number of borrowers going through foreclosure producing further negative effects on surrounding property values. As a first step to address these concerns, Fannie Mae expanded its online HomePath for Short Sales tool to help speed up its escalation process in order to review problematic transactions more efficiently.

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U.S. Housing Market Mortgage Purchase Applications Running Out Of Time by Doug Short

The article and chart from Doug Short shows that wages have been declining. In Fact it shows median wages have declined to 2005 level. following the decline is mortgage applications. Both wages and mortgage application peaked at the end of 2006, What the chart doesn't show is the huge rise in the median price of a house. The median price of a house has rose 14% nationally. In Florida where I live prices rose over 20% in 2013. With house prices rising and wages on the decline house sales will decline in 2014 if one of two things do not happen soon. Either the twenty percent of people who are not looking for a job anymore find a good job or prices of houses must decline. If income remains the same most sellers will bot be able to find enough qualified offers to float the market.

by Gene Hoffman

U.S. Housing Market Mortgage Purchase Applications Running Out Of Time by Doug Short

For 2013, one of the main stories in housing was the cool down in existing home sales numbers over the second half of the year, in spite of the relative strength in GDP. What was the main reason for this? Follow the data and the answer appears. When interest rates spiked we did not see the mythical sideline home buyer rush to the market place. Rather what we saw was a collapse of the mortgage purchase application index.

Read More...

Immigration Minister Chris Alexander reveals contradictions in citizenship law by Jenny Uechi

Should I or should I naught by Gene Hoffman


Should I or should naught get my Canadian citizenship. I had the choice to have dual citizenship before I was eighteen, but then the law changed. Now the opportunity has arisen once again. I would love to live in Vancouver or better yet Victoria Island. It is above my pay-grade because all the rich Chinese have moved there and they bought up all the nice homes. Their houses are now priced as the second highest in the world(I have an article on my blog site).

Read about the new Canadian immigration policy by Jenny Uechi

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Christopher Alexander tread a fine line between sympathy and sticking to government script when speaking about the overhaul to citizenship law proposed by the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act.
Speaking at the Sutton Hotel ballroom on Tuesday at an event hosted by the Canadian Club of Vancouver, Alexander spoke about the injustice suffered by Lost Canadians: legitimate Canadians whose citizenship was removed due to archaic and often blatantly discriminatory provisions of past laws. While the majority of Lost Canadian cases were resolved in 2009, it continued to exclude people born before 1947, as well as creating a whole new category of stateless children born abroad.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Colorado's marijuana firms beg banks to take their cash By Kim Gittleson of BBC

The Federal Government has found a way to punish people who try and make a living growing plants for profit. They are doing in a similar way(but different) they control the gun owner's bullets. The US has contracts with all the major manufactures of ammo to sell Homeland Security 85% of their product to control supply. This has driven prices more than the 3% inflation(CPI) that is reported. In the article I have attached the BBC article that explains how the US Fed is trying to control the the Marijuana Industry. First they they need to get an idea how big the market is and then they will find a way to get their "cut". The mafia usually wants about 50- 50. We will have to see what history brings.

Look what happened in Montana and how voters changed their minds on Medical Marijuana to De-crimalized system allow people to grow pot for their own use. Other states have done this and it appears to work better in my opinion.

by Gene Hoffman

Article  By Kim Gittleson of BBC

"Let's just say we have a couple of armed staff," he says.
The owner of Pink House, a marijuana dispensary in Denver, Colorado, Mr Klug has armed his employees because he has been unable to find a bank that will accept the thousands of dollars of cash he takes in each day since recreational cannabis became legal in Colorado on 1 January.
"Even armoured cars have been told not to do business with us," says Mr Klug.

Read More...

Friday, February 21, 2014

How big is a house? Average house size by country by Lindsay Wilson

I read an article today(02/2014) in Reality Trac that the median income need to purchase a median price house in San Fransico is $228,000. That was a staggering number in my mind, but what is even worse is the median price of a house in England. I say this because the median square foot of a house in England is 884sF and the median cost has gone over $400,000. That equates to $450sf. The reason prices increase so much in 2014 is because of a loosing of loan qualifications at the beginning of 2014.

Hong Kong has the most expensive housing on Earth by income; plus their median size house is 484sf in size. The second most expensive homes by income is in Vancouver Canada. I have an article about that in my blog.

Gene Hoffman

Read more...

Thursday, February 20, 2014

The Vampire Squid Strikes Again:by Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone Magazine

Call it the loophole that destroyed the world. It's 1999, the tail end of the Clinton years. While the rest of America obsesses over Monica Lewinsky, Columbine and Mark McGwire's biceps, Congress is feverishly crafting what could yet prove to be one of the most transformative laws in the history of our economy – a law that would make possible a broader concentration of financial and industrial power than we've seen in more than a century.

Cost of owning a home is spiking in 2014 By: Diana Olick CNBC

Supply and demand will balance out soon and I believe home prices will decline a small amount in the next two years before the next election. In order for a seller to find a qualified buyer two things must happen. A seller must be willing to a sell at both an affordable price and the home must appraise at the selling price. Second item the market must be big enough to attract dozens of qualified buyers with strong incomes and having good, well paying jobs.

Article by:  Diana Olick    CNBC

The sharp rise in home prices in 2013 caused two conflicting results: The return of positive home equity for hundreds of thousands of borrowers and considerably weaker affordability for an equally Read More... large pool of potential homebuyers.

While positive equity allows more borrowers to move, weaker affordability keeps them in place. So which will be the greater driver of housing this spring?

Read more...

Monday, February 17, 2014

‘Boomerang buyers’ could boost market by Kimberly Miller



JUPITER, Fla. — Some housing experts are trumpeting changes that allow foreclosure sufferers to buy back into the American Dream sooner than they probably imagined, calling 2014 the year of the “boomerang buyer.”
Revisions made over the summer to Federal Housing Administration guidelines and technical updates in November to Fannie Mae loan approval systems have opened the door for some former homeowners to buy again just one year after foreclosure.
Founders of the San Diego-based company AfterForeclosure.com said last month that millions of banned borrowers nationwide will be eligible for a mortgage this year, while Jupiter, Fla., mortgage broker Skip McDonough said his firm is already doing deals with homebuyers who were forced into default during the housing bust.

Read More ...

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Banks Loosening Mortgage Lending Standards by Philip van Doorn

It feels like 2006 again. I believe the mortgage market is heading to financing sub-prime borrowers. This smells bad to me.

Gene Hoffman

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The decline in mortgage activity in the United States continued in January and big banks, including Wells Fargo (WFC) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) are responding by lowering their underwriting standards.
The Mortgage Bankers Association projects that originations of one-to-four family mortgage loans in the U.S. will decline to $1.116 trillion in 2014 from an estimated $1.755 trillion during 2013, with the wave of refinancing slowing as long-term interest rates have risen.
According to a preliminary estimate from Inside Mortgage Finance, the issuance of single-family mortgage-backed securities by Fannie Mae (FNMA), Freddie Mac (FMCC) and Ginnie Mae totaled $67.8 billion during January. That's down 10% from December and is also the lowest figure since January 2009.

Read More ...

Housing market pits younger buyers against older homeowners flush with equity by Wall Street Journal

Housing sales will continue in 2014 much like sales were in 2013 with one difference. First time home buyers are through. Cash buyers will make up a larger portion of the market.

GeneHoffman


HOUSTON, Feb. 11, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- While rising home prices are leaving older homeowners flush with increased equity so they can buy new or second homes -- increasingly outright with cash -- younger people are finding it more difficult to buy into the American dream of homeownership with price tags that outpace their income growth, according to the latest BBVA Compass research.
"For these prospective homebuyers, home prices have risen faster than their incomes during the recovery," BBVA Compass economist Jason Frederick wrote in his 2014 housing outlook. "Currently, home prices are now on the high end of a historical relationship between median home prices and median family income, and young families will need to see faster income growth and save additional money to make a larger down payment."

 Read More ...

Sunday, February 2, 2014

What is the qualified mortgage? By Jim Gay


Oh boy, more government regulations affecting consumers seeking mortgage loans that are eligible for Fannie Mae, FHA and Freddie Mac pricing. Could this be the last? We can only hope. However, for now the letters QM or qualified mortgage need to be understood and dealt with, like it or not. It is one of the final pieces of the Dodd-Frank Act. Whew!
On Jan. 10, QM went into full swing. It contains two main terms we all need to understand: “ability to repay” and “qualified mortgage.” Ability to repay is merely a refocus, once again, on the borrower’s income, credit and liabilities. If you have a mortgage, you surely went through this taxing scrutiny. It is the name of the game. So, what’s new? Extra scrutiny on the borrower’s income calculations and a new limit of 43 percent debt-to-income ratio.

A qualified mortgage is defined somewhat differently than mortgages have been for the last three decades. Negative-amortization loans, interest-only loans, loans exceeding 30 years, and balloon loans are not allowed. Also, a limit has been set on the fees normally paid to the mortgage companies or banks and may not vary even for the benefit of the borrower. Generally, under QM, the limit of points and fees associated with a home loan is now 3 percent of the total loan amount.
What is wrong with this? It sounds like these new QM rules will keep consumers from making unwise mortgage decisions. Yes and no. Qualified borrowers have long enjoyed the options of interest-only loans, balloon loans with lower rates, and amortizations longer then 30 years, but not any more.
Remember, also, that these rules are only for loans eligible for Fannie Mae, FHA and Freddie Mac, which means that jumbo loans are not part of the QM definition.
Most of the details in the QM regulations test the resolve of lenders and homebuyers will never see the complexity involved. So what is the bottom line for the consumer? Associate yourself with a lender possessing experience and knowledge to guide you through any new regulation.
All regulations that make the lending world more complex have the result of shrinking the available lenders that can complete your home loan. For the last three to five years, mortgage companies and loan officers have been leaving the business. Eventually, this trend may result in higher costs for loans because of less competition.
For the family looking to buy or refinance, my continued advice is to find a trustworthy and knowledgeable loan officer as an ally and proceed to accomplish your goals. Ignore the new QM regulations implemented on a national level. Let your chosen loan officer deal with any changes in the mortgage world.

Friday, January 31, 2014

LocatePLUS Announces the Next Generation Skip Trace Tools by PRWEB

LocatePLUS, the leading provider of cost effective, personally identifiable information in the US, is proud to announce the latest in affordable searches and reports in an easy to use interface. The latest data, and easy to assemble reports, empower customers to solve more cases faster like never before. An improved log-in experience features a convenient format that enables everyone to harness the full potential of the LocatePLUS proprietary data retrieval system.
Free VIP training and complimentary customer support are included with every subscription to guarantee a successful user experience. Skip trace professionals, law enforcement, collection services, attorneys, bail bondsman, financial services, repossession companies and private investigators please contact sales to find the right plan that fits a usage profile and budget.

Read More ...

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Housing Bubble 2.0: "More Flipping, Bigger Profits, In Less Time" With 156,862 Homes Flipped In 2013 by Tyler Durden

Late 2013 pending home sales may have been horrible, and were blamed on the weather (though as even Goldman notes "The broad-based declines by region suggest that colder-than-average weather was likely not the primary driver, given slightly warmer-than-average temperatures on the Pacific coast in December") , but it appears the weather had zero adverse impact on that other, most pernicious home "selling" activity: flipping.
The topic of home flipping is not new here ("Flip That House" In These Bubbling Cities, Housing Bubble 2.0 Edition: "25 Markets Where Flipping Homes Is Most Profitable", etc) - indeed that best-known flashback of the last housing bubble is easily one of the best indications just how fragile the current housing bubble truly is as investors gobble up real estate not with the intention of keeping it but merely to sell to the next greater fool, in the process setting marginal prices based purely on the availability of cheap money, money which has now been tapered by $20 billion in the past two months. However, to get the full picture on just how pervasive "house flipping" has become, we go to the source, RealtyTrac, which has just released its 2013 summary of this troubling trend.
In summary:
  • 156,862 single family home flips — where a home is purchased and subsequently sold again within six months — in 2013, up 16 percent from 2012 and up 114 percent from 2011.
  • Homes flipped in 2013 accounted for 4.6 percent of all U.S. single family home sales during the year, up from 4.2 percent in 2012 and up from 2.6 percent in 2011.
Read More ...

Everyone In America Is Even More Broke Than You Think by the Huffington Post

The massive and growing gulf between rich and poor is one of the direst challenges facing the U.S. economy. Highlighting this gap, more than half of U.S. wage earners made less than $30,000 last year, according to an analysis released by the Social Security Administration on Tuesday. That's not far above the $27,010 that marked the federal poverty line for a family of five in 2012. We've created this infographic to help visualize the skewed income distribution in the country. Where do you stack up?

Read More ...

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Derivatives: The $600 Trillion Time Bomb That's Set to Explode by Keith Fitz-Gerald

Do you want to know the real reason banks aren't lending and the PIIGS have control of the barnyard in Europe?

It's because risk in the $600 trillion derivatives market isn't evening out. To the contrary, it's growing increasingly concentrated among a select few banks, especially here in the United States.

In 2009, five banks held 80% of derivatives in America. Now, just four banks hold a staggering 95.9% of U.S. derivatives, according to a recent report from the Office of the Currency Comptroller.

Read More ...

Saturday, January 25, 2014

My opinion of inflation looking at housing prices. The Case Shilling History of Home Values


What is the True rate of Inflation



http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/2011-Case-SHiller-updated.png


The inflation rate reported by the US Government has been more or less 3% since 1990. Three factors may effect our "Standard of Living" regardless of the CPI calculations. One is the rising cost of housing shown by the Case Shilling "History of Home Values. The CPI is calculated based on the "House Price - Rent Ratio. The second factor is the "Declining Median Household Income adjusted for Inflation". A Third factor  is the staggering cost of education.



 Housing cost almost doubled between 1995 and July 2006. The chart to the right is from The Case Shilling Report. Housing cost typically make one-third of a family's budget. If the biggest part a family's budget rises eight percent a year the "True Cost of Inflation" must be much higher than the 3% stated value of CPI the government is reporting. It is true that housing values came down fifty percent in many parts of the US, but in 2013 the median housing cost rose again by nearly thirty percent.

The American family's "Standard of Living" has been declining because of improving productivity (overseas jobs and robotics).  The chart below shows both the actual median income and the "True Value" after adjusting for inflation.

For more information
Read More ...

Median Household Income in the United States




Share5


First off - what is median household income?

Paycheque - IllustrationAccording to the U.S. Census Bureau, "household median income" is defined as "the amount which divides the income distribution into two equal groups, half having income above that amount, and half having income below that amount."

The U.S. Census Bureau currently publishes median household income data from 1967 until present day.


YearNo. of HouseholdsNominal $Inflation Adjusted $
2012122,459,000$50,099$51,017
2011121,084,000$49,158$51,100
2010119,927,000$48,415$51,892
2009117,538,000$48,916$53,285
2008117,181,000$49,406$53,644
2007116,783,000$49,341$55,627
2006116,011,000$47,317$54,892
2005114,384,000$45,496$54,486
2004113,343,000$43,544$53,891
2003112,000,000$42,560$54,079
2002111,278,000$41,624$54,127
2001109,297,000$41,458$54,766
2000108,209,000$41,262$55,987
1999106,434,000$39,985$56,080
1998103,874,000$38,127$54,702
1997102,528,000$36,210$52,784
1996101,018,000$34,704$51,720
199599,627,000$33,238$50,978
199498,990,000$31,338$49,429
199397,107,000$30,210$48,884
199296,426,000$29,473$49,122
199195,669,000$28,875$49,529
199094,312,000$28,506$50,994
198993,347,000$27,391$51,681
198892,830,000$25,693$50,776
198791,124,000$24,489$50,389
198689,479,000$23,339$49,764
198588,458,000$22,109$48,063
198486,789,000$20,948$47,181
198385,407,000$19,494$45,760
198283,918,000$19,032$46,082
198183,527,000$17,974$46,205
198082,368,000$16,542$46,995
197980,776,000$15,090$48,520
197877,330,000$13,575$48,655
197776,030,000$12,132$46,842
197674,142,000$11,311$46,548
197572,867,000$10,531$45,788
197471,163,000$9,921$47,019
197369,859,000$9,226$48,557
197268,251,000$8,520$47,596
197166,676,000$7,896$45,641
197064,778,000$7,651$46,089
196963,401,000$7,292$46,449
196862,214,000$6,673$44,785
196760,813,000$6,140$42,934






-- U.S. Median Household Income Chart - 1975 - 2010 --

  

A popular topic of conversation at the dinner tables in 2013 has been "the Rich are getting Richer and the Poor are getting Poorer". Huge blocks of people in certain demographics are being squeezed possibly on three fronts. Students graduating before 2006 were able to get a fair paying job, get married and then buy a house at double the cost(after adjusting for inflation) of the previous generation. Also the chances are in 2009, when the foreclosures started this same demographic had huge student loans along with a high mortgage.  Many of these same people lost their job in 2009 so they lost everything, including their homes. Why then does not the CPI rate of inflation show this triple threat to our "Standard of Living?


A possible answer is the CPI rate is based on the price of home rentals. The price of renting a home rose at a steady rate until 2006/07 rents started rising faster. When the housing market crashed in 2009 rents only slightly declined. Renters had leases that stabilized their rent price. In 2010 when it was time to renew their leases people moved in two directions. The group of renters that lost their good jobs moved their families in with family or friends. The group of people who kept their job upgrade their home but was able to keep the same rent price range. That means people without income did not rent and people with income paid the same amount of rent. Therefore the calculation of rent prices for the CPI indicator calculates the inflation rate of housing at a low rate of inflation.

The people hurt by this effect were low-rent landlords and people who had both a high mortgage payment and student loans. In 2010 when people moved out of the leases many people were able to move into a much nicer neighborhood with better schools for the same rent price. Thousands of low-rent landlords had houses they could not rent. Landlords had long term vacancies and were not able to sell their properties for any price. Remember nobody was buying houses in 2010, The pace of existing home sales fell twenty-seven percent.

In conclusion three factors destroyed the "Standard of Living" for millions of Americans. Any one of the three factors may have affected the financial prosperity of millions of Americans, but some people experienced all three. Whether paying too much for a house during during the feeding frenzy for a seven year period or loosing a job during the "Financial Melt-down" combined with debt from credit cards or student loans caused millions of Americans to live with lower discretionary income. The time may have come where paying for a college education will not provide the life style benefits as the previous generation did.

Take a look.


Cost of education in 2013 dollars. This is staggering rate of inflation not shown in the CPI inflation

rate.

Read more about college tuition.

from: Home
 

Friday, January 24, 2014

The Boom And Collapse Of America's 'Subprime Generation' by Chris Porter

Talk about an amazing reversal of fortune! This may be the most amazing, underreported demographic fact today.
  • 30-34 year olds in 2012 had the lowest homeownership rate of any similarly aged group before them!
  • Five years prior, this exact same group had the highest homeownership rate at 25-29 years old than any group before them!