Thursday, January 24, 2008

Miami: burning down the house, by gimleteye


All layers of the housing market, not just poor people who own a home they cannot afford, are being swept up in the worst market since the Great Depression.

Here is one, on a favorite historic street in Miami, Espanola Drive where smaller homes built in the 1920’s mix with larger, beautiful estates.

The owner of 1828 Espanola is in foreclosure, according to county documents, with Deutsche Bank. This would be, then, one of several thousand foreclosures in South Florida for Deutsche Bank.

But the difference between the two is that traders at Deutsche Bank, in 2006, shorted the ABX index thereby saving the bank losses of hundreds of millions of dollars and the owner of 1828 allegedly burned down the house.


According to the AP, sales of existing single-family homes plunged by the largest amount in 25 years. Nationally, the median price for a single-family home dropped 1.8 percent to $217,000.

The current owner bought the house in October 2005 for $825,000. It is now on the market for $650,000, close to its assessed value, but whoever buys this house is up for a gut job.

But not to worry: the National Association of Realtors chief economist, Lawrence Yun, said to AP, that he "expected sales to start to rebound this spring."

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting timing of the date on the city notice: just another tax planning event?

Anonymous said...

did you see the piece on Jorge Perez starting a vulture fund...what a weasel.

Anonymous said...

This house was purchased in 2005. Wonder why now the building department is calling it unsafe. Usually, they will save the buldings that are declared unsafe and find a buyer.

Anonymous said...

Funny, I think I mentioned that there were fires in my family's neighborhood recently-and this is one!!
The City posted it as unsafe after the fire.
Curiosly, there was another fire several weeks later ,just around the corner in Joe Carollo's ex home.
If you look a little deeper into the 1828 homeowners info you will see connection to several foreclosures and mortgages on this and other properties in the last few years.
Hopefully his insurance company will have him in jail soon.

And later down the road, another unsightly McMansion will infest the property here.

Anonymous said...

Whenever the media reports verbatim, ANYTHING that Lereah or Yun says without first qualifying the statement with some disclaimer like: "This economist works for the NAR and has a professional bias. He has been uniformly wrong in every single estimate made over the past 5 years" -- then the media is a party to the financial ruin of its readership. Quoting these individuals isn't just questionable journalism -- it is a financially motivated lie. We should NEVER be reading quotes from these two individuals. Why? Because they are simply NOT "authorities". Why on earth are journalists EVER talking to them? The media (as it was in the 90's) has played right along with the creation of this bubble. I can't stand them. Blogs are all we have. Stop reading your local newspaper, people. Let them all go under. They've disgraced themselves.

Anonymous said...

I am a real estate broker myself so maybe you will find my comments biased.
However, I do think that many times you will see that these situations are even mortgage fraud, or insurance fraud in case of a fire, or both.
What I really don't understand is why banks and lenders are so slow to put a unit to detect mortgage fraud.
My own radar is up when I see a property bought in 2005-06-07 sold later with a 10% to 40% and more appreciation. They should know for now that the market was at best flat since 2005. Nothing did appreciate.
How difficult is it for the lender to include this verification in their software and investigate this mortgages inquiries. They will be the first ones hit after all.
Well it surely will not be the only thing that surprise me in this bubble bursting.
But the market will correct itself. We lacked affordable housing for years and we will have soon plenty.
If only our local governemnt could solve the property taxes and insurance mess, because the market will not correct that.
Best regards.
FD @ Condo Hotel Miami Beach

Anonymous said...

The Market IS correcting itself. We took awhile to get to this point and we will take a while to get to affordable housing prices again. But if you want to sell your property you must catch the market not chase it. I sold my home at auction 7 months ago and last week an old neighbor contracted his home (same style etc) for what I already sold it for seven months ago. There are ways out, but we have toaccept that we must get in front of the slide not ride on it to the end.

Anonymous said...

Yun is a joke, and a bad one at that.

Just take whatever he says, and reality is likely to be the exact opposite. The guy is a professional misinformer, a shill working for the real estate industry. Yet he's quoted everywhere, as if he has any credibility left at all.

Too funny.

Anonymous said...

Yun is a joke, and a bad one at that.

Just take whatever he says, and reality is likely to be the exact opposite. The guy is a professional misinformer, a shill working for the real estate industry. Yet he's quoted everywhere, as if he has any credibility left at all.

Too funny.

Anonymous said...

I completely agree with the poster who questions the integrity of our news media. Quoting these asswipes from the NAR and such is such complete and utter BS. Since when does the opinion of people who have been CONSISTANTLY WRONG for the past 5 years even merit print?.

When I need to knoew what's going on in my neighborhood I get much better info from PRAVDA and EL PAIS than any American media bozos.
And BTW the consensus overseas is that the USA is BROKE ...BOTH FINANCIALLY AND MORALLY.

Anonymous said...

The US is morally broke? I think you mean mis-guided. Literal Bible readers abound.

Anonymous said...

THIS IS A 30 SECOND VIDEO OF THE FINANCIAL MARKETS AND REAL ESTATE MARKETS AS DEMONSTRATED BY AN INVESTOR THAT AVERAGED 47% A MONTH IN LAND SALES! ENJOY

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2074880339891647986