From the NY Post:
Bear Stearns is being blasted by a leading independent research shop that says the Wall Street titan’s robust purchase of subprime mortgages has helped fuel the sector’s meltdown.
Describing the firm’s buying activity as an example of “the fee foxes guarding the mortgage hen house, ” CreditSights, an independent firm specializing in corporate cash flow and balance sheet analysis, slammed Bear for having subprime loans that have experienced extensive payment troubles and defaults, and “stood out in terms of weaker performance.”
Bear, like a number of Wall Street firms and some mortgage lenders themselves, buys loans in order to package them as collateral for debt securities sold to investors.
CreditSights’ analysis was based on reviewing mortgage performance at lenders like Countrywide, Washington Mutual and GMAC’s ResCap unit, as well as Bear.
In the subprime category, Bear had the highest percentage of borrowers who were more than 90 days’ delinquent, at an eye-popping 4.57 percent, according to CreditSights’ analysis. That compares with ResCap’s rate of 0.92 percent, Countrywide’s 1.42 percent and Washington Mutual’s 1.48 percent.
“Bear, and a lot of other dealers – including Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley – really aided and abetted this [subprime] industry collapse,” said David Hendler, the lead CreditSights analyst on the study. “They did nothing to ensure that the loans they were buying were kosher. There was no ‘good guy’ here, no voice of reason or advocate for conservative standards.”
Also from the NY Post:
‘STEARN’ RESPONSE TO TIMES ARTICLE
Bear Stearns is claiming that one of its analysts was done wrong in a scathing New York Times analysis of the collapsing subprime mortgage industry.
Bear analyst Scott Coren was described as having written “an upbeat report” about a collapsing subprime mortgage lender, New Century Financial, a company considered to be just days away from bankruptcy.
The article, written by Pulitzer prize-winning columnist Gretchen Morgenson, chronicled in a Page One article how Wall Street willingly created a burgeoning market for bonds-backed loans that were virtually certain to have trouble making their principal and interest payments. Coren, who upgraded his call on New Century on March 1, appeared to be portrayed in a conflict of interest to rival that of the notorious Internet bubble era.
But, in fact, Coren had made a series of gutsy calls on the subprime mortgage sector – no mean feat at Bear Stearns, a firm that in recent years has earned hundreds of millions of dollars annually from mortgage trading.
He put out a “sell”- called an “underperform” at Bear – when New Century stock was at $38 and maintained it until it slumped to $15.
Even Coren’s upgrade on March 1, when New Century was clearly beginning to collapse, advised investors to “stay on the sideline.”
Nor was Coren the only analyst to recommend the purchase of New Century stock.
UBS, a major player in the mortgage bond market, raised its rating on the stock to “neutral” on Feb. 23, while Stifel Financial upgraded to “hold” Feb. 13.
A Bear spokeswoman said, “The characterization of Scott’s research was a complete misrepresentation.”
More problems at Accredited? From Bloomberg:
Accredited Home May Raise Money, Seek Debt Waivers
Accredited Home Lenders Holding Co., a U.S. lender to people with poor credit, said it will seek debt waivers and try to raise new funds after creditors asked for more money to cover the risk of defaults.
The company will cut jobs to reduce costs and may delay filing its annual report, it said in a statement distributed by Business Wire. San Diego-based Accredited has paid about $190 million in margin calls this year, with two-thirds of that since Feb. 15, according to the release.
A housing slump in the U.S. has pushed to a seven-year high defaults on loans to consumers with patchy credit histories, forcing more than two dozen lenders to close or sell operations. New Century Financial Corp., the nation’s second-biggest subprime mortgage lender, yesterday said it doesn’t have enough cash to pay creditors who are demanding their money.
“The secondary market for subprime loans and mortgage securities backed by subprime loans has become less liquid, and that’s a concern that probably a lot of people haven’t yet seen,” said Daniel Tabbush, an analyst at CLSA Asia Pacific Markets in Bangkok. “This will have a knock-on impact on the economy.”
From Bloomberg:
CDOs May Bring Subprime-Like Bust for Buyouts, Junk-Rated Debt
Bond investors rattled by mounting losses in subprime U.S. mortgages say trouble is brewing in collateralized debt obligations, the same securities that fueled the boom in leveraged buyouts and cut-rate finance.
Sales of CDOs, which package loans, bonds and derivatives into new securities, rose by almost half to $918 billion last year, according to data compiled by JPMorgan Chase & Co. Demand for investments to use in CDOs has helped push risk premiums lower for everything from home loans to high-yield, high-risk bonds, forcing managers to borrow ever more money to maintain returns and stand out from the competition.
“There will ultimately be a shakeout,” said Oliver Wriedt, a partner at New York-based GoldenTree Asset Management LP, which oversees about $8 billion and manages CDOs and was founded in 2000. “Many” new managers “lack the pedigree, or at a minimum the track record. Many have not managed” in a downturn, he said.
Managers of CDOs backed by speculative-grade loans are borrowing as much as 13 times the amount they raise in equity from investors, up from nine to 10 times as recently as late 2005, according to Wriedt. Forty-one percent of the 142 CDOs backed by corporate loans and rated by Moody’s Investors Service last year were set up by first-time issuers.
UK rate rises start to deter home buyers
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e228a9c6-d108-11db-836a-000b5df10621,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2Fe228a9c6-d108-11db-836a-000b5df10621.html&_i_referer=
Rising interest rates have started to scare off potential homebuyers and are helping to cool the housing market, according to a report that will be welcomed by the Bank of England.
Mervyn King, Bank governor, has expressed hope the three rate rises since August would slow house price growth and would help bring inflation back to the official 2 per cent target.
What is $500 million between friends?
From Reuters:
New Century Financial understated CSFBMC debt
Troubled subprime lender New Century Financial said on Tuesday it had understated debt owed to Credit Suisse First Boston Mortgage Capital LLC by $500 million on Monday.
The company said the repurchase obligation of its subsidiaries to CSFBMC was about $1.4 billion as of March 9, not $900 million as published
Usual Disclaimers apply;
Bear and Lehman; like the weather, may be time to take the long john’s off and put on the shorts.
Maybe Goldman sets the bar high today & Bear/Lehman can’t clear it later this week.
From MarketWatch:
KBW sees ‘liquidity crisis’ at Accredited Home
Keefe Bruyette & Woods on Tuesday downgraded shares of Accredited Home Lenders to underperform after the subprime lender said it’s seeking more capital and exploring strategic options after paying about $190 million in margin calls since Jan. 1. “Based on our new significantly lower volume and margin assumptions, we estimate that LEND will lose money for the foreseeable future which will likely trigger a liquidity crisis,” KBW said in a note to clients. KBW lowered its price target on the stock to $7 a share from $26 share.
“Hiring? A little less likely
U.S. employers’ hiring intentions nudge lower: Manpower”
“U.S. employers “are planning to tone down their hiring activity during the second quarter,” said Jonas Prising, president of Manpower North America. “If you look at the last three quarters, employers are shifting into neutral from a forward gear.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/us-employers-hiring-plans-nudge/story.aspx?guid=%7BD8CEE181%2DC6DB%2D4340%2D95A0%2DDAF2A7EC7614%7D
Maybe Goldman sets the bar high today
Indeed they did.
jb
Grim (10)-
That number now puts GS at a 7 P/E at yesterday’s close.
All disclaimers apply.
Is the U.S. Consumer finally tiring? From Marketwatch:
U.S. retail sales rise 0.1% in February on cars, gas
U.S. retail sales stayed soft in February, rising just 0.1% after no gain in January, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. Sales were led by a solid 0.9% rise in auto sales and a 1.2% rise in gasoline station sales, which was boosted by higher prices at the pump. Sales were weaker than Wall Street’s expectations for 0.2% gains for both overall sales and for sales excluding autos. Sales elsewhere were weak. Sales excluding autos fell 0.1%, the first decline since October. And excluding both cars and gasoline sales, retail sales fell 0.3%, the largest decline since April 2004.
Hat tip to Tim at TMTGM (The mess that Greenspan made) for posting this interesting piece up:
Even Reader’s Digest Hates Realtors
Last fall, Marjorie Deprez decided that she didn’t need a traditional real estate broker to sell her Chappaqua, New York, home. After all, she had bought the house as an investment and wanted to maximize her profit any way possible. So she paid an online discount broker a flat fee of just under $1,000 to list her home on the Internet.
Deprez would handle everything else. She’d pay the buyer’s agent a 2.5 percent commission but save on the usual seller’s commission — in this case, about $25,000.
Smart idea, except when she held an open house for brokers, only a few showed up. When Deprez joked with one of them that she’d been blacklisted, the agent replied, “Who told you?” To Deprez’s amazement, she was then informed that a local real estate executive had been calling brokers and urging them not to show her house.
Sure enough, Deprez got very few nibbles, even though her house was priced to sell quickly. Frustrated, she finally took her home off the market.
“It was an organized boycott,” says Deprez, who reported her experience to the New York Attorney General’s office. Put another way, it was a case of insiders rigging the system to protect their sweet deal. In a traditional home sale, the brokers for the buyer and seller split a commission that usually amounts to around 5 to 6 percent of the sale price. This broker fee doesn’t just hit the seller’s wallet; the buyer pays more because the commission gets built into the price of the home.
Hot off the wires, New Century to be delisted by NYSE, moving to the pink sheets.
jb
LEND down 52% at the open. Margin calls galore on them.
Interesting piece from Russ Winter:
The Minsky Moment: They Can Run, But They Can’t Hide
jb
Don’t usually post stats from far-away states, but the most recent post over at Ben’s blog is very interesting. A number of analysts have proclaimed that the steepest part of the housing decline (volume, of course) is behind us. These most recent numbers seem to say otherwise. From the Orlando Sentinal:
Record glut drags down housing sales in area
The slumping residential real-estate market in the Orlando area is still searching for a bottom.
The number of homes and condominiums sold by Orlando Regional Realtor Association members in February fell by nearly 39 percent from the same month a year ago to 1,386, according to preliminary figures released Monday by the Orlando trade group.
At the same time, listings by local Realtors grew again in February, to an all-time high of 22,055. That represented a more than 15-month supply at the recent sales pace, according to the group’s estimate.
Transcript/Real Audio from PBS:
High-risk Mortgage Foreclosures Likely to Rise
Off topic, but we talked about this when it first took place. Was only a matter of time before the big artillery was rolled out onto the battlefield.
Viacom Sues Google’s YouTube for Alleged Copyright Infringement and Seeks $1B in Damages
MTV owner Viacom Inc. said Tuesday it has sued YouTube and its corporate parent Google Inc. in federal court for alleged copyright infringement and is seeking more than $1 billion in damages.
Viacom claims that the more than 160,000 unauthorized video clips from its cable networks, which also include Comedy Central, VH1 and Nickelodeon, have been available on the popular video-sharing Web site.
A little analyst CYA:
Was only a matter of time before the big artillery was rolled out onto the battlefield.
…pesky copyright infringement laws.
The MBA will release 06.Q4 delinquency and foreclosure data at noon today.
jb
Hey all, I usually don’t post much but noticed something after the recent DST +1 hour on my daily 35 mile one way commute through central Jersey.
My wife and I live in Red Bank and I work in the Princeton area so I basically drive all backroads 35 miles in the morning and 37 miles on the way home (I take 2 slightly different routes that have SOME overlapping roads due to traffic. It took me WEEKS to develop my patented route and takes me roughly 1hr 5-10 minutes door to door.)
Anyway, now that it’s light out later, I started noticing a lot more for sale signs up so I decided to count them. At the height of it in the summer of 2006, I counted no less than 45 “For Sale” signs of one form or another- new construction, FSBO, realtor sign, etc. on my way home. I was astounded – that’s more than 1 per mile! And I did my best not to double-count (e.g. “House For Sale – 1 Mile ahead” does not count in my book – only on the front lawn.)
So I started counting last night- get this 53 homes for sale on my 37 mile drive. On the way in this morning I counted to see if I was insane and I got 51 homes for sale on my slightly altered 35 mile route.
Wow. Maybe that’s “normal” but I was very surprised. There are going to be a LOT of houses for sale this spring. I was surpised over the summer when I counted 45 – I figured it included a lot of people who said, “What the hell, let’s over price our house by 20% and see if somebody bites – we’ll make a killing and just find some other place to move!”
But I have to imagine the only people selling now are selling more because they “have” to (financial reasons, expanding family, moving, job related, health related, etc.)
This is my VERY non-scientific survey so take from it what you will.
I can’t believe anyone would believe this wouldn’t play out as Napster v2.0. What every happened to “Do no evil”, I suppose copyright infringement isn’t “evil”.
Back during the file sharing craze a friend and I developed a file sharing package that specialized in all forms of media sharing (Movies, Documents, Music, etc). The software was named Splooge, and we became very popular in a short period of time. At our pinnacle, we had more than 20,000 users online at any time during the day. I admit, we were late to the party by about 2 months. I was the sole coder, back in my “lyt3 haX0r dayz”, so it took some time. We were interviewed and featured in Time, BusinessWeek, the WSJ, and a number of AP/Reuters pieces.
We managed to fly under the radar for a number of years. When music sharing moved to other venues, we became the niche site for trading “adult” media. We never intended for that to happen, but I admit, in retrospect, naming the site “Splooge” was asking for it.
jb
whoops
New Century said in a filing to regulators that its obligations to Credit Suisse First Boston Mortgage Capital — a unit of Credit Suisse Group — were $1.4 billion, not $900 million as it previously reported.
There’s a column in today’s WSJ:
YOUR MONEY MATTERS
Your Nest Egg
Why Your Home Isn’t the Investment You Think It Is
Too many people rely on their home as their primary savings strategy. That’s a mistake.
By DAVID CROOK
March 12, 2007; Page R1
Planning your retirement? Don’t bet the house on it.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117329581356629863.html?mod=mostpop
Grim (24)-
Thanks. Coffee now all over my computer screen.
“Splooged”, as it were.
Google had it coming, they paid WAY too much for a company that had zero revenue.
They could have built up their own site for MUCH less then the 1.5billion they spent on it. They already had the traffic to their engine.. Until the internet hits “unlimited” bandwidth, it’s going to be a financial drain on them.
-R
I’m pretty sure they already had a “Google Video” in beta when they acquired YouTube.
What was the quote?
“We didn’t realize how heavy dog food was, and that shipping it would be so expensive.”
jb
Looks like video.google.com is still functional.
jb
watch these videos again and again
Real Estate buyers and Investors were forewarned months ago !!!
http://www.paperdinero.com/BNN.aspx?id=93
jb, ever think of putting 3 or 4 questions out there for the main page and keeping a running track of the results? If we believe, well, each other, that things are a little out of control in NJ, then collectively it would be nice to see, over time, what predictions we make, as a (somewhat bias) group. Like…
1) When will median housing appreciate by 5% or more per year?
2) What percent lower will median NJ pricing versus its 2005 peak at it’s bottom?
3) When?
..then as data comes in, we could collectively ‘revote’ as info comes out.
…just a thought.
dave
Clotpoll Says:
March 13th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Grim (24)-
Thanks. Coffee now all over my computer screen.
“Splooged”, as it were.
grim: my opinion of you just dropped off the table [if that is even possible] – now I realize that my references to Polska Kielbasa was a double entendre as far as you were concerned :(
#24, 28
“I can’t believe anyone would believe this wouldn’t play out as Napster v2.0. What every happened to “Do no evil”, I suppose copyright infringement isn’t “evil”.”
“They could have built up their own site for MUCH less then the 1.5billion they spent on it.”
If Utube is such a glaring mistake, why would smart folks at Goggle throw themselves at it? Google surely had teams of lawyers pouring over Napster/Grokster case and scouraging Utube? What about the zero revenue?
My assumption is Google knows what it is doing. The 1.5b Google paid was not for the architecture, but for those blurry cellphone videos, low rez short clips, foreign works, lonelygirl123, promotional ad competition, parody/satire, etc. All the cases look for actual and substantial non-infringing use, and every non-infringing original work is worth its crappy pixal in gold. UTube has tons more actual non-infringing use than Napster/Grokster ever did. It has a function to flag copyright contents and to remove for copyright reasons–and in fact things are flagged for infringement. The 10 min size limit and low rez upload makes the clips easier to qualify under Fair Use doctrine.
Google is waiting for this lawsuit. My gut feeling is that Google will keep UTube a cost-center until it survives the first big litigation. Utube has a better shot than Grokster/Napster, because it has substantial legit content.
The winner gets to decide what’s good and evil.
The WSJ is crazy.
I just checked on my ING account and the banner ad at the top told me that my house is a great place to save money! It also told me they have IO products available.
I pasted the banner ad in case anyone wants a laugh:
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l30/hulaman75/ing.jpg
lincoln78
cirrus #23,
I was driving down Rt. 27 in Princeton this weekend and EVERY OTHER HOUSE (without fail) on Rt. 27 has a For Sale sign.
I’m not looking in the area and I am not familiar with the Princeton market. But there’s no way the prices there are going to hold up.
grim: my opinion of you just dropped off the table [if that is even possible] – now I realize that my references to Polska Kielbasa was a double entendre as far as you were concerned :(
By that point in the project, I was already long gone. We had already outsourced 100% of the development to a firm in India. The last part of my involvement was attempting to develop a way to search remote document contents (XLS and DOC). At one point we were in talks with a European company that was interested in the product as a corporate tool, but nothing ever materialized.
The co-developer shut the site down shortly after realizing why we were so popular. We had no interest in being part of that vertical (maybe “horizontal” would be more appropriate).
jb
I’m sorry, but the WSJ actually has an investment advice column written by a guy named Crook?
New Century’s stock has plummeted 96.8 percent since a 52-week high of $51.97 last May. The stock, which was halted on the Big Board for most of Monday, traded last at $1.66.
I wish I’d bought an option to trade NEW at 36$ a year ago – it was very cheap back than….
Once again … if I’d have a crystall ball…
I wonder – if the New Century management bought those options a year ago?? They probably new what is going to happen – thay had all true data….
With those 45millions/year salaries they could have increased them x20!!!
From MarketWatch:
New foreclosures at record high
Many more U.S. homeowners were unable to keep up with their mortgage payments in the fourth quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Tuesday, with the rate of homes entering the foreclosure process hitting a record 0.54% and the delinquency rate on U.S. home loans leaping to 4.95% from 4.67% three months earlier.
More at link above,
Rich
#38 – Lindsay
geez, I didn’t even notice that the guy was named Crook! :)
Have you guys noticed that David Liar from NAR has been awfully quiet these days, ever since the problems with subprime came on to the news.
That guy should be hung high when this mess unfolds.
Rich,
Thanks for posting the link, that news is pretty grim.
jb
Additional text, from MarketWatch:
New foreclosures at record high
Many more U.S. homeowners were unable to keep up with their mortgage payments in the fourth quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Tuesday, with the rate of homes entering the foreclosure process hitting a record 0.54% and the delinquency rate on U.S. home loans leaping to 4.95% from 4.67% three months earlier.
“Although the U.S. economy and job market remain solid, the housing market continued to decelerate in the fourth quarter of 2006. Nationally, house prices increased at a slower rate and the pace of sales and construction activity continued to slow,” said Doug Duncan, MBA’s chief economist.
The rise was led by subprime mortgages, where delinquencies increased to 13.33% from 12.56%, and FHA loans, which saw a record-high delinquency rate of 13.46%. Trouble in subprime mortgages, made to borrowers with the riskiest credit, has roiled lenders and the stock market in recent days.
…that news is pretty grim.
The market agrees with you, down ~50 points after the news came out.
Duck (34)-
Well stated. And would you rather be Google, with a “first-mover” advantage once the legal wrangling is over…or Yahoo, groping in the dark for a concept- ANY concept- and doing things like holding bloggers’ URLs hostage?
The timing of the MBA release couldn’t have been any worse..
jb
Duckweed Says:
March 13th, 2007 at 11:30 am
“My assumption is Google knows what it is doing.”
Bad assumption.
Google is acting high and mighty like AOL did back in the day.. Remember that AOL bought Time Warner?
Where are they today? Last I heard they wanted splitsville.
I’m a fan of google for a search engine, but honestly the quality of searches has really taken a hit. They claim that they do not alter their results, although I beg to differ.
I’ve done my share of searches for retail products and found that a lot of the time, the top 10 results always contained a link to an eBay auction. And why does this make me think something is up?
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/ebay.html
-Richie
Richie Says:
March 13th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Google had it coming, they paid WAY too much for a company that had zero revenue.
Rich: they paid with inflated stock…sounds like a good deal to me
curiousd Says:
March 13th, 2007 at 11:27 am
jb, ever think of putting 3 or 4 questions out there for the main page and keeping a running track of the results?
d: I vote to change the name of the site to the “New Jersey Splooge Report”
Traffic would skyrocket on the change.
jb
What’s the relationship between late payments and fico scores? I know scores go down on late payments but does anyone know by how much? Are there published rules?
I was wondering how many of these defaulted ‘bag holders’ just got classified as subprime.
njre,
I don’t believe borrowers are “requalified” during the loan. What you describe is certainly an interesting phenomenon to track, especially in a down market. Instead of a borrower builing their fico through ownership, they are destroying it, making refinancing out of a bad loan even more difficult.
jb
The google-Youtube thing would be an interesting case study.
[quote]
The two companies even share a common financial bond: Sequoia Capital, an early Google investor that owns a roughly 30 percent stake in YouTube. Menlo Park-based Sequoia remains a major Google shareholder and retains a seat on the company’s board — factors that might have helped the deal come together after just a week of negotiation.[/quote]
So a major VC company essentially took a bunch of google shares from the right hand and put it in their left under the guise of a buyout.
I’m not sure what their long term plan was, but google’s shares did really well after the trade, so I wonder if they didn’t start selling some.
On a housing note,
realtors told me last week that Verizon is moving thousands of jobs to its Baskin Ridge complex and the area is really going to boom, or words to that effect. I smiled and thought, yes everyone relocating from a nonbubble land to Somerset County is going tbu in Bakin ridge/Bernards. If you believe that maybe Corzine has a bridge, or at least a highway to sell to you.
Late Mortgage Payments Reach High
Tuesday March 13, 12:31 pm ET
By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer
Late Mortgage Payments Jump to 3 1/2 Year High
WASHINGTON (AP) — Late mortgage payments shot up to a 3 1/2-year high in the final quarter of last year and new foreclosures surged to a record high as borrowers with tarnished credit histories had trouble keeping up with their monthly payments.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070313/late_mortgages.html?.v=6
From the Jersey Journal:
Bayonne Councilman: Raise taxes, layoff workers
A Bayonne City Councilman says tax hikes and layoffs would be better than Mayor Joseph V. Doria’s plan to bond $25 million to close the city’s budget gap.
Councilman Gary LaPelusa said his proposed hike and layoffs would “decrease both our debt and our dependence on borrowing.”
Under his plan, property taxes for the average Bayonne home assessed at $135,700 would go up by approximately $250 for the final quarter of the 2007 fiscal year. The $250 increase would be spread over all four quarters of fiscal year 2008. (Doria, who opposes LaPelusa’s plan, says the increase would actually be $274 for the average home.)
According to LaPelusa, the tax hike would reduce the budget deficit by $5 million and therefore reduce the amount the city would have to bond to cover the deficit.
In addition, LaPelusa proposed laying off 60 to 80 city workers and reducing overtime pay, which, he contends, would save the city between $500,000 and $1 million.
Cirrus #23 & Rentlord #36,
You 2 have inspire me. I have to drive from Livingston/Florham Park to New Providence/Berkley Heights border today. I will try to count all the for sale signs i see. I’m guessing the 10 mile drive is over 50. Maybe we could all adopt a route and count it once a week? I’d swear there are a lot more for sale signs then there were 2 weeks ago. I don’t ever remember seeing so many homes for sale where ever I go in Jersey.
In addition, LaPelusa proposed laying off 60 to 80 city workers
At least someone in this state has the courage to do what really needs to be done.
JB(54)
I am worried (not really) about the percentage of these defaulters who may fail to refinance because of any number of reasons (ARM reset….).
Some of the lenders state that their subprime exposure is low. With the resetting of scores their subprime holding would have increased.
http://www.myfico.com/FICOCreditScoreEstimator/Default.aspx
look like a 30 delinquency on a mortgage pulls your fico score by a significant number.
bairen (56)-
That news is so January ’06. Funny thing is, Verizon pays their people so little, they couldn’t afford homes here. Most of them who’ve come are renting, and the few who bought did it miles away from Basking Ridge.
Verizon’s net effect on market here= 0.
DOW down 243 pts. New Century being delisted.
“Verizon’s net effect on market here= 0.”
Clot,
What about the bonus babies that flooded Westfield from WS. Any spillover in the hills??
By the way, I don’t like that # 0. It reminds me of how many points in the pool I may receive if I take the Iggles in the 1st round.
Mozilo said on CNBC that investors and speculators are over reacting. LOL!!
How much will other lenders like American Home Mortgage and Thornburg Mortgage be affected by this sub-prime debacle? They don’t seem to have that much sub-prime exposure. Can anyone in the industry comment on how much and how they will be affected by the fallout?
BC (65)-
That would be 0, too. What WS guy is coming all the way to Bedminster or Tewksbury to pay Summit/Westfield prices and give himself another 30-40 minutes in traffic?
WS comes about as far west as Warren/Watchung…and that’s it.
Anon (67)-
Those are two top-tier, old-school mortgage outfits, run by total pros. They will be there when the smoke clears.
thanks Clotpoll for the confirmation. I thought that was the case, but they are getting flogged right now with the sub-prime lenders too. Doesn’t make sense, but it looks like a possible investment oppt’y.