Depends where on Warren you live. Warren is sprawling and shaped weird. the house on Mountain Ave you would probably be better off driving to Summit. About 15 to 20 minute ride. The Mountain ave housw would be near the Gladstone line and could catch a train at Murray Hill, Berkeley Heights, New Providence, but that train doesn’t run very often and stops every 4 minutes. It takes 45 minutes to go from Basking ridge to Summit, yet you can drive it in 25 minutes

I agree. I had to read that one twice. Wamu is screwed.

“Megie still couldn’t sell it. “There’s oversupply,” he said. The home sold in 2005 for $110,000.”

“Fannie Mae acquired twice as many homes through foreclosure in the first quarter as it sold, regulatory filings show. The value of Fannie Mae’s foreclosed property doubled in the first quarter to $4.72 billion from $2.4 billion a year earlier, and the number of homes it owned climbed 64 percent to 43,167, according to a regulatory filing. The amount the company sold was $952 million, compared with $706 million a year earlier.”

“Part of the difficulty for all owners of foreclosed property, and not just Fannie Mae, is a shortage of qualified agents in the field who can sell the homes efficiently, said Jesse Ramirez, a broker associate at Re/Max Partners Real Estate in Corona, California.”

“They are all recent college grads without experience,” Ramirez said. “They have 300 files each and they’re overwhelmed. They don’t understand how the typical transaction goes. These people didn’t have jobs two years ago, not doing this.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aMz0dl3IdwjU&refer=home

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/525-RED-ALERT-RAPE-BY-CONGRESS-IMMINENT.html

I hear realtors offices are packed. I guess everybody is out bidding?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/business/23rates.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

“As losses mount, a clause in the TPG agreement makes it more costly for WaMu to raise capital or be acquired. If WaMu is sold for less than $8.75 a share or is forced to raise more than $500 million in equity, it must compensate TPG for the difference, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.”

“We don’t know how their investment plays out, but we also don’t know how this affects WaMu to the extent they need to raise more capital,” said Steven Davidoff, law professor at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit. “They really can’t raise equity.”

“Washington Mutual is screwed. It cannot raise capital by equity deals even if it wants to. Those who translated “We have no plans to raise capital” into “No Need to Raise Capital” are sadly mistaken.”

“WaMu desperately needs to raise capital. However, those death spiral financing arrangements it made means WaMu can’t raise capital. And if WaMu can’t raise capital, it stands to reason it would have no plans to do so.”

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

Retailing: New habit of discount shopping hits all economic strata.

Hard liquor sales for the first six months of the year are up 4 percent over the same time period last year. That increase is due to increased sales and price increases by the manufacturers. The number of cases sold in the first six months of this year was up 2 percent.”

http://waldo.villagesoup.com/Government/story.cfm?storyID=122238

Carnival barkers’ pleas fall on frugal ears