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From Star Ledger article: Indeed, New Jersey’s work force sits on an impressive economic plateau. According to Hughes, if the state’s 11 northern and central counties were a distinct metropolitan area, it would rank fifth nationwide, with 3.6 million jobs — more than the metropolitan areas of Atlanta, Miami, Boston and Dallas.
So much for dependence of NNJ on NYC. The NYC angle is over stressed on this discussion board, but reality is most people in NJ work in NJ.
GOP Candidates Blame Dems on Flight From N.J.
Republican candidates are holding up a new poll that reports that half of all New Jerseyans would leave the state if they could as an illustration that Democratic tax policies and spending are driving people out of the state.
The leading reasons were sky-high property taxes, the state’s generally high cost of living, elevated housing costs and escalating state taxes.
But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from using the poll as an opportunity to place blame on the ruling Democratic Party. “Every survey conducted since Governor [Jon] Corzine took office shows that residents are fleeing the Garden State’s crushing tax burden and unbelievable cost of living,” said Assemblyman Richard Merkt, R-Randolph. “Each time a fresh report is released, the news is worse than before. Yet the governor and this Democrat-run Legislature have done nothing to ease the taxpayer’s pain or solve the state’s fiscal crisis. New Jersey residents aren’t stupid; they’re heading for the doors in record numbers.”
Merkt added that New Jersey is in a fiscal crisis and that immediate governmental reforms are need, and the Republican Party is the best equipped to make those changes.
“People have figured it out for themselves and want to get out before the fiscal time bomb goes off,” he said. “Yet the governor and the Democrats remain deaf to what the public is telling them. If they don’t start listening soon, New Jersey will face bankruptcy in the foreseeable future.”
Republican Declan O’Scanlon, who is running for Assembly in the 12th Legislative District, said the poll is an indictment of the tax-and-spend policies of the Democrat leadership in Trenton. He said that Democrats, since they have been in power, have increased state spending by $11 billion and hiked 94 taxes and fees to pay for that spending. They also presided over a 36 percent increase in property taxes
“If anyone wants to see the results [of the] Democrat leadership in Trenton, this poll provides a clear picture of what they have perpetrated on the citizens of our state,” O’Scanlon said. “The excessive tax-and-spend policies of Democrats have made this state unaffordable for New Jersey families, and now those families are looking for a way out.”
NEW JERSEY’S AFFORDABLE HOUSING GOALS MUST BE MET
Middletown, NJ – According to Lenny Inzerillo the Democratic Senate Candidate in the 13th District, New Jersey must step up its efforts on affordable housing, and do everything it can to help lower the high cost of living in the Garden State.
“Probably the most important thing we can do for the future of New Jersey is to work on ways to rein in the soaring cost of living in the State,” said Inzerillo, D-Middletown. “With the high cost of real estate, over-the-top property taxes and other soaring living expenses, it’s so difficult for young adults to start a family, or seniors on fixed incomes to live out their retirement years here. We need to provide adequate affordable housing for the working poor, and seek other ways to make New Jersey affordable to folks in all income brackets.”
“Raising a family in New Jersey, or enjoying post-retirement, shouldn’t be out of reach for those making a decent living,” said Inzerillo. “We need to do more to meet our State’s affordable housing needs, but we need to also address the factors which make New Jersey so unaffordable in the first place, not just for those at the lowest end of the income spectrum, but for everyone. Without structural reforms and regulatory oversight, New Jersey will be overpriced for all but the extremely wealthy.”
Readers clear on “should I stay or should I go”
Some really nice discussion. I wonder if they put all the posts in Print.
http://www.startribune.com/535/story/1494455.html
How much more of this?
“Who wants to buy a portfolio when a lot of the risk is unknown?”
From MarketWatch:
HSBC is sued over subprime bond valuation: report
U.K. banking group HSBC is being sued by U.S. real-estate fund Luminent Mortgage Capital Inc. over allegations the bank’s U.S. mortgage-trading operations took advantage of the recent credit crisis to profit at the fund’s expense, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Luminent is claiming that HSBC applied an improperly-low valuation to several subprime-mortgage bonds that were used as collateral for loans, the newspaper reported. The complaint says HSBC bought the bonds at a deep discount to their fair value, the Journal said.
The Republicans won’t be afraid to cut spending, social programs, etc. I hate to say it, but most people in my generation are so hateful towards conservatives they can not see anything objectively and blindly vote for people like Menendez
This guy says there is no magic bullet.
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/10/19/subprime_cowboys/
“The mortgage market has changed forever – for good and bad. We are not going back to the old days – not always so good anyway – when the banks wrote most mortgages. Today, mortgage companies control about 80 percent of the market, and it is past time that regulation caught up with the markets. Coakley’s new mortgage regulations are designed to rein in the brokers’ compensation system, as will US Representative Barney Frank’s bill, which is expected next week and is likely to ban yield spread premiums and restrict prepayment penalties for subprime borrowers.
….But more closely aligning the interest of buyer and seller is a good place to start.”
—-
But isn’t ‘consequence’ the magic bullet? Getting burned? Learning?
Why does anybody have to interfere and “more closely align the interests of” anybody? I’m not sure I understand why this is necessary. If you do think that regulation to more closely align the interests of two parties to this transaction is in the best interest of everyone, then why?
they are politicians, they seize on any weakness, say anything to get elected….and then proceed to screw things up some more. true.
“GOP Candidates Blame Dems on Flight From N.J”
But people keep voting for Dems so weeee, weee, weeee but Republicans are the loosers.
But people keep voting for Dems so weeee, weee, weeee but Republicans are the loosers.
Can you tell me what the Republicans could realistically accomplish? I don’t think having a picture or an elephant or donkey on the front door in Trenton would really make that much of a difference. This is a state with very stong political lobbies and changes that involve reductions to someone’s budget are very difficult. I don’t care who you are.
No…people who spell loser “looser” are losers….
grim: Sands implosion? Do you have a video of the NJ Real Estate market imploding?
Here’s an example of Republican “genius”:
Christine Whitman, the Republican governor in the 90’s, ultimately relied on buoyant stock-market predictions to finance hefty tax cuts, which were the centerpiece of her administration. In 1997, New Jersey borrowed $2.8 billion, at an interest rate of 7.64 percent. The money was advanced to its pension system, on the convenient theory that its pension managers would make more in the market than the state paid out in interest. For a while, they did. The state even raised benefits.
Meanwhile, Trenton achieved a sort of transitory budget balance by contributing less to its pension system. New Jersey’s contribution to the Police and Firemen’s Retirement System was zero in 2001 through 2003. But during the dot-com debacle, its investments plunged. And the state came under intense budget pressure because of the recession, and so gave itself a few years more to start paying down its pension liability (which further widened the gap). This year, the last easy-funding year, New Jersey will contribute $220 million to its pension system; by 2010, the annual bill will be an impossible-seeming $2.5 billion.
–NYT, Oct 30, 2005
In the article of Pat [8] it said “The higher the rate, the higher the commission” – reminds me when I worked for a captive auto finance company and the dealers routinely marked up the rates customers might have gotten from the banks. Called “dealer reserve” the salesman typically made about 2-4k off the increase in the spread. This brands dealerships made more money off the financing then the “metal”.
The Republicans won’t be afraid to cut spending, social programs, etc. I hate to say it, but most people in my generation are so hateful towards conservatives they can not see anything objectively
I agree. The Dems are going to retain power in November in NJ. I think a large part of this will be many voters who see voting Democratic as a vote against the party of George Bush and the war in Iraq.
People in NJ need to realize two things; first, there is a big difference between a NJ Republican and a Texas Republican. Second, G.B. frankly doesn’t care about NJ. NJ is not part of his constituency. NJ voters can “send Bush a message” all they want, but they will only be prolonging the status quo and he isn’t listening anyway.
I don’t know if the Republicans can really fix anything. What I do know is that the Dems, who are currently in power, have done absolutely nothing to fix the situation. I also know that voting out the Dems would send a powerful message to Trenton (both parties) that Pols will be held accountable to the electorate.
This is a state with very stong political lobbies and changes that involve reductions to someone’s budget are very difficult. I don’t care who you are.
In that case, why not form a political lobby as well and get what you want in return. My opinion, is don’t wine about the system that can’t be changed, understand it and use it to your advantage.
I think first time buyers have strong case for lack of affordability of starter house in NJ. This was not the case just 5 or 6 years ago. It may not be case for few on this board who work on Wall street and make 200K, but that I don’t think is majority. To me this is no brainer. I think the major issue is most young folks are apathatic to politics and don’t understand the system and how to use it to their benefit. They feel politics does not hurt them, but the reality policies such as Tax deduction, zoning have much more significant impact. Unfortunately all of that is governed by older folks who don’t worry about the new families trying to buy their first house.
# 8
Why does anybody have to interfere and “more closely align the interests of” anybody? I’m not sure I understand why this is necessary. If you do think that regulation to more closely align the interests of two parties to this transaction is in the best interest of everyone, then why?
you really have 2 choices; you can have an educated and intelligent general population that actually makes a point of understanding what they are signing and reads the contract, or you can have a (Friskies eating) barely educated reality TV population that will sign on any dotted line you put in front of them if it means they get a shiny new car/house/plasma.
In the RealityTV population you need to have heavy regulations since the government needs to take care of people who dont even understand the concept of personal responsability
A broker sent me an e-mail stating that “the latest quarterly Otteau Report on New Jersey’s real estate scene is relatively good news for several Essex County Towns – the “train towns,” to be exact. All with New York Direct service, Glen Ridge, Maplewood, South Orange, and Millburn/Short Hills are bucking the lazy-market trend.” Have fun with that one.
I think first time buyers have strong case for lack of affordability of starter house in NJ. This was not the case just 5 or 6 years ago.
If what is written on this blog for the past two years is true, prices will be coming back down to more affordable levels. NJ will always be one of the most expensive places to live in, but if prices come down to acceptable levels people will be less inclined to leave.
As far as the taxes go, everyone realizes that we are at the critical point where something must be done. The Dem’s better get their a$$ in gear pronto because everyone’s getting tired of dealing with it
#14
Pikers.
In Ohio, they invested the state pension fund in the governor’s top contributor’s coin collection.
SG # 16,
you have a point…. but it would take more then just “organizing”. The current lobby groups that hold power have ensured that they are tightly woven into the fabric of NJ politics. The only way to really challenge them is to have an intimate knowledge of the political landscape and all of its back allies and dark corners. Any group that wanted to challenge the current lobby’s will need high powered lobbiest(??) and high powered attorny’s; oh and VERY deep pockets.
I think that the NJ problem can only be fixed from the inside; unless, the majority of the state population decided to vote EVERYONE out to make a point. But that isnt going to happen.
I think the breakdown of the US Dollar will have severe impact on the economy. Inflation will accelerate and interest rates will rise putting another nail in the coffin for the housing market. Lets face it the Federal Governemnt and our State Government are broke. 10,000 boomers are going on Social Security every day – this is scary. Also, there is absolutely no way NJ can pay for the pensions aff its retirees – the money just is not there.
Since Corzine has been in office, my property taxes have gone up 38% and the State sales tax has gone up 16.5%. But I know he cares about me and that’s what really matters. :o
#19 –
“All with New York Direct service, Glen Ridge, Maplewood, South Orange, and Millburn/Short Hills are bucking the lazy-market trend.” Have fun with that one.”
not sure i agree with that one.
however, if true, and they keep bucking the trend, and prices don’t adjust, then more people will move to the off train line towns. the inconvenience of driving a few extra miles will be off-set by the convenience of having extra money in your pocket at the end of the month, or with a more roomy house or yard.
while those towns are on the train line, they do not exist in a vacuum.
ChiFi #13: That appears to be an allegorical reference to New Jersey’s real estate market.
JM
(snooty college English off)
http://www.insee.fr/fr/ffc/ipweb/ip1082/img/graphique2.jpg?ref=patrick.net
Just for fun here is a circular graph for the quants on the board.
1 dead in N.J. explosion
The explosion occurred around 7:30 a.m., and involved a vacant house and a new home that was under construction, said Paul Loriquet, spokesman for the Essex County prosecutor’s office.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071019/ap_on_re_us/house_explosion;_ylt=An4oSNXTTGj3ZXda09iFOGGs0NUE
200K does not solve any problems. Houses should be 2.5 incomes so that means 200K should buys you a 500K house. (Good Luck). Historically, in North Bergen, Harrison NY or Manhasset LI pre 2002 people paid a premiumn of 4 times incomes to live in those towns so that buys you an 800K house. Nice 4 bedroom two car garage houses in tony surburbs with direct train lines to the city with under a 40 minute commute do not sell for under 800K anymore. I started bottom fishing a few weeks ago and those houses with newer bathrooms and kitchens are still at around 1.2 million to start. So at 4X income you need 300K just to buy the cheapest livable 4 bedroom in those towns. People make a lot of money. I read that on Long Island for instance there are one million homes and 10% of homes make over 200K a year income, so 100,000 families make over 200K. That is who the builders were building for in 2002 to 2006 not the other 90% of the world. The 200K number is household income and plenty of cops with school teacher wives and some good ot and interest income break 200K it is not just the doctor crowd or trader crowd.
think first time buyers have strong case for lack of affordability of starter house in NJ. This was not the case just 5 or 6 years ago. It may not be case for few on this board who work on Wall street and make 200K,
Grim,
You did an excellent job calling the top of the market in this recent bubble. Any plans to call the bottom when you think it arrives?
A decade-long push into investment banking by one of America’s biggest retail banks came to an abrupt and painful end yesterday, as Bank of America said the credit crisis had destroyed its Wall Street profits.
Ken Lewis, the ambitious chief executive who masterminded the bank’s expansion into exotic new businesses, bluntly ruled out any further acquisitions in its investment banking division. “I’ve had all of the fun I can stand in investment banking at the moment,” he told analysts.
And he promised a review of whether Bank of America would stay in the investment banking business at all, refusing to say that he would “stay the course”. At the very least, there will be big cuts, he signalled.
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article3075710.ece
Frankly I haven’t seen any evidence that the Republicans are any more fiscally responsible than the Dems. That strikes me as dreaming of a knight on a white horse, rushing in to save NJ. More realistically they are salivating at the prospect of perks.
I’m more in favor of the concept of voting out ALL incumbents at the next couple of elections to scare the h*ll out of the lot of them. I’d be willing to lose all of the “experience” considering that experience doesn’t seem to have done much good except line politicians pockets. A couple of cycles of severe job insecurity might incline a few of them to start paying attention to what NJ actually needs.
John # 27,
That is scary graph! i think it goes something like “the bigger they are the harder they fall…”
we should take a lesson from brusters million, and all vote “none of the above”, would certainly send a message. But does anyone know what effect this would have legally?
So when will DR Horton lose it investment grade rating on its bond? Come on now, a bond maturing in six years with a YTM of 8.% with a rating agency investment grade. Are these rating agencies for real!!!
BAA3/BBB- 30 23331AAP4 D.R. HORTON INC NT 6.875 05/01/13 8.579(W) 92.628
I’ve been walking on a bad ankle for about 5 weeks now. The doctor seems to think it may be ligament damage. I’m pretty sure that nothing is torn because it’s a little painful but if rested it doesn’t hurt as bad.
Does anyone know what the treatment is for ligament damage and will it heal itself?
Lifelong Democrat here–albeit raised in a “Rockefeller Republican” home. I will vote for Republicans in a heartbeat, as long as they don’t hew to the retrograde social (cf: “moral”) policies that so-called Conservatives have championed for the past 40 years**.
But, really, faced with the ability to hand out spoils to business cronies, and pass debt off to successors, what Republican could REALLY reform NJ? (Remember: Jesus today would be a left-winger…) The system is too ossified; the GOP is too tightly vertically integrated in its quest for political power at the expense of good governance (see: Bush, George W.). The democrats? Good intentions gone bad. Very bad.
**Actually, in Bergen Co, I’d even vote for Jim Dobson or Ted Haggard, if only to get rid of Feriero and McInerney.
#36 d2b –
Ligament damage takes months to heal unlike a bruise or a cut. You may want to use an ankle brace for a few weeks. But in any case it will take a long time to completely heal. Be patient.
Fun with Banking Numbers:
http://www.minyanville.com/articles/Citigroup-Enron-Paulson-SIV-bailout-banks-assets-Treasury-rules/index/a/14544
“Be patient.”
Good advice.
#36
Dr. Andrew Brief in Englewood or Teaneck.
1 DeGraw Ave
Teaneck, NJ 973-512-4188
sl
Sell!! Sell!!!
#29
“Historically, in North Bergen, Harrison NY or Manhasset LI pre 2002 people paid a premiumn of 4 times incomes to live in those towns so that buys you an 800K house. Nice 4 bedroom two car garage houses in tony surburbs with direct train lines to the city with under a 40 minute commute do not sell for under 800K anymore. I started bottom fishing a few weeks ago and those houses with newer bathrooms and kitchens are still at around 1.2 million to start. So at 4X income you need 300K just to buy the cheapest livable 4 bedroom in those towns. People make a lot of money. I read that on Long Island for instance there are one million homes and 10% of homes make over 200K a year income, so 100,000 families make over 200K.”
*****
A couple of points:
First, most high income households have older breadwinners. These people already own homes. What you really want to know are the incomes of people who are actually in the market to buy, which is a fraction of those 100,000 families you’re citing.
Second, most of the people looking at those 4 BR homes in top towns are trade up buyers. They are dependent on first timers buying their current homes. Also, I do not think that a majority of people could afford these trade up homes based on their incomes alone. They count on price appreciation of their starter homes to get them there. That appreciation is slipping away right now.
#39 – HEHEHE
Thanks for that link. That’s pretty much exactly what I’ve thought was going on. How much longer can they keep the bodies hidden?
After all we are talking about positively huge losses here.
It’ll definately be interesting if they can keep those things off the books ad infinitum.
h [39],
Enron, Refco, Worldcom, etc.. Same crap, different flavor. Do we become Japan [Nomura] or France [Soc Gen]? Simply a ruse, not a very good one. Hard to believe that Paulson has his fingerprints all over this.
I am coming around to the opinion that JPMC 3Q07 results were an attempt by Dimon to get Prince fired. Revenge is best served cold.
Monetary loss is best created by using this information for investment purposes. Do yourself a favor and retian professional advice.
BC Bob,
Can you elaborate on this statement –> “Do we become Japan [Nomura] or France [Soc Gen]?”
I’m asking because I don’t know if you’re comparing the two or contrasting.
Regarding the SIV’s: come on….I understand everyone’s cynicism, but there is a wholesale difference between Enron/Worldcom and any of these external structures.
Enron/Worldcom was flat out fraud. Cash flows between two wholly controlled entities being booked as revenue. Capitalizing clear operational expenses.
The SIV stuff is plastic surgery, not selling fake V!agra.
Earlier yesterday there was an argument regarding Hillary Clinton.
I tell you what. Everybody here should hope that who ever gets into the White House raises taxes to pay for the amount of debt outstanding.
Simply put you boomers, lets rename you guys the “Weasels” are bunch of worthless, arrogant garbage that stain the name of your fathers.
Your parents -“the Greatest Generation” as per Tom Brokaw, went to the moon, contained communism & wacked the Nazis, and had incredible prosperity with 90% income tax.
But boy or boy, you Weasels just can’t bear pay your share and plan to dump all your filthy excrement on our generation behind.
If this sounds like the beginning of a generational war, let it be, you Weasel Geesers might run the show another 15 yrs, but after that, hope for armagedon because we have nothing, owe a lot, and will be angry. I just can picture a modified Logan’s Run end of life program being advertise like the Ameriprise commercial.
I don’t hold much hope, as you Weasel Geezers so far have brought us a intellectually retard and a ethically challenged prez.
So just remember, the clock is ticking. Pay up or expect future generations to get very medieval on your wrinkled Weasely heiny.
Does anyone know what the treatment is for ligament damage and will it heal itself?
I have dyshidrosis (a form of excema, but I use yahoo support groups for that (-:
KL
x (11)-
People conveniently forget that Christie Whitman had more than a small role in racking up huge debts and playing fast-and-loose with accounting for her massive borrowing.
No political party is perfect, but right now NJ needs someone who will CUT SPENDING. The democrats refuse to do that, time to give the republicans a chance.
Kill the Weasel boomers Geezers:
Forget it man…we are screwed forever. The boomers VOTE, and there are a lot of them. Their moron kids are going to kill us since there are more of them than us. You are going to get it on both ends.
Save for yourself, you are going to need it.
Following up on yesterday’s WaMu earnings; interesting to note the increase in loss reserves for credit cards was up to $323mil from $229mil.
Are we finally beginning to see the US consumer weakening?
http://www.247wallst.com/2007/10/washington-mutu.html
P.S. – #48 Bob – Erm, could you please add a little to the SocGen statement? I’m curious, `cause I really kind of like 1221.
Chifi,
I am not saying it’s fraud. They are clearly paying by the rules. Rules established to keep the expansion of the fiat money system continuing. Problem is when there is a retraction the chickens are going to come home to roost. When they do I sure wouldn’t want to be shareholder of any of the major banks.
Ps. do not listen to me I have no financial acumen.
Kill the Weasel boomers Geezers:
Never before hath a generation wrought more problems on the world all the while claiming their greatness and moral superiority with every breath of their overweight consumer addled bodies.
“People conveniently forget that Christie Whitman had more than a small role in racking up huge debts and playing fast-and-loose with accounting for her massive borrowing.”
I don’t. We’ll be paying for her idiocy for many years to come. And whatever Dem gets elected in ’08 is going to be left holding the bag of excrement that is the American fiscal situation created by the massive disaster that was George Bush aided and abetted by a Republican Congress. Local NJ pols are a crew of small time criminals, but to think that electing Republicans leads to balanced budgets is to be unaware of the existence of such an animal as the Federal deficit.
Chifi (54)-
So true. The retardocracy of govt at all levels- married to the sheer numbers of AARP voters- has ensured that American gubmint is a completely, vertically broken system that has no hope of redemption short of armed insurrection. When people start talking in numbers about storming the ramparts, I’ll get interested in politics again. Nothing short of that will fix anything, IMO.
The only defense the individual or family has against the gubmint that would enslave us is to become part of the investor class. The only power counterbalancing gubmint is Wall St/corporate America. Fortunately, one can still hitch a ride on their coattails…at least, periodically.
You x-box playing I-Pod zombies still living with Mommy and playing video games in your bedroom at the age of 30 should not diss the greatest generation.
Let alone fight in a war at 18 you pansies have to meet your chicks on the internet cause you are too scared to talk to a live girl in a bar let alone fight a nazi.
“You x-box playing I-Pod zombies still living with Mommy and playing video games in your bedroom at the age of 30 should not diss the greatest generation. ”
Dont forget, the boomers created these x-box playing zombies…
NEWS FROM REUTERS THIS WEEK ALONE!!!
Wachovia Profit Falls 10 Pct on Big Write-Down
Bear Stearns in Massachusetts Probe Over Funds – WSJ
Fifth Third Third-Quarter Profit Little Changed
India’s ICICI Bank Second-Quarter Net Up 33 Pct, Beats Forecast
Bank of America Profit Falls 32 Pct, Losses Mount
Citigroup Won’t Have Asset Fire Sale – WSJ
Fed’s Bank Merger Rule Changes May Come by Year-End
Bank of New York Mellon Profit Up 11 Pct
SunTrust Third-Quarter Profit Falls 23 Pct
BB&T Third-Quarter Profit Rises 6.5 Pct, Helped by Fees
PNC Financial Third-Quarter Net Income Falls
Capital One Posts Third-Quarter Net Loss
Zions Bancorp Posts Lower Third-Quarter Earnings
JPMorgan Third-Quarter Net Rises Despite Write-Downs
WaMu Profit Sinks 72 Percent, Sees More Housing Slump
Comerica Profit Down 10 Pct, Hurt by Soured Loans
Wachovia to Participate in Bail-Out Fund
U.S. SEC Probing Countrywide CEO Stock Sales – WSJ
BBVA Sees 10 Percent of Profits Soon Coming From U.S.A.
Marshall & Ilsley Third-Quarter Profit Falls 8 Pct
Dutch Business Seen Most Risky in ABN Break-Up
China Construction Bank Eyes U.S. Expansion
Wells Fargo Profit Hurt by Credit Pressures
State Street Earnings Jump; Outlook Is Raised
U.S. Bancorp Profit Down 2 Pct, Cites Housing Stress
Mercantile Bancorp to Merge Unit Into Its Flagship Bank
N. Rock Bosses Say Crisis Could not Be Predicted
Mortgage Bankers Oppose Fannie, Freddie Jumbo Bid
Countrywide Sees $125 Million-$150 Million Charge Over Job Cuts
Regions Financial Profit Up 12 Pct, Misses Views
KeyCorp Third-Quarter Profit Falls 33 Pct
U.S. Banks Plan Fund to Bail Out Investment Vehicles
Citigroup Third-Quarter Profit Falls 57 Pct
Northern Rock Says Approaches Preliminary, Shares Sag
HSBC Says Has not Joined Talks for U.S. Mortgage Fund
Schwab Posts Higher Third-Quarter Profit
FHA Has ‘Huge’ Role in Housing Recovery – Bank Execs
Nomura to Exit U.S. Residential Mortgage Securities
Europe Sidelined in U.S. Credit Crunch Fund Plan
Credit Suisse Sees Big Mergers After Crisis – Paper
55,
Back in the late 80’s the govt, Chirac, privatized Soc Gen.
People conveniently forget that Christie Whitman had more than a small role in racking up huge debts
True. But are we now saying because 1 republican 7 years ago ran up the state credit card that all republicans are now permanently banned from being in-power in NJ?
I wish we had more than 2 choices, but realistically it’s the Reps or the Dems. The Dems have had full control of the state and have taken us nowhere. It’s time to give the other team a try.
what gets me the most is the boomers’ constant self-aggrandizing. what have they really contributed to society? a few good classic rock bands?
Let alone fight in a war at 18 you pansies have to meet your chicks on the internet cause you are too scared to talk to a live girl in a bar let alone fight a nazi.
John, You’re the guy that was the impetus behind decent chicks stopping going to bars so they didn’t have to get hit on by the likes of you
63 – Bob
Ah, I thought you were hinting at something else.
toshiro,
Can you explain to me what Bob is saying ’cause I think I’m a little slow here. lol!
x-underwriter: If what is written on this blog for the past two years is true, prices will be coming back down to more affordable levels. NJ will always be one of the most expensive places to live in, but if prices come down to acceptable levels people will be less inclined to leave.
I think that is wishful thinking. I do think recent lack of demand and increase in supply will cause prices to moderate but I don’t think you will have affordability back to golden years like (1994 to 2002). The prices may come down at max to 03 level or so in next 2 to 5 years but I will not bet any money on it though. I have lived in areas where affordability much worse then NNJ, where free market has not helped, and yes people do spend lifetime living in small substandard place and pay fortune for it.
I feel there are structural issues in NNJ/CNJ housing market that will not get addressed by Market alone. I feel in NJ you have lot of grass root efforts such as NIMBY and Local School districts etc… that market can not solve.
http://www.geocities.com/skgala/affordability.htm
I have the solution to NJ property tax and deficit. Most people that live in Bergen county commute to NYC to work. So if we sell Bergen county to NYC and make it the 6th boro of NYC and we sell it to them for 50B we can pay off our Deficit have money in the bank and be able to lower property taxes. Whose with me…..
Homer Simpson: LOL. I have even simpler solution.
Just increase NJTransit/Path tickets to pay for the State deficit. Infact, it should say that on Tickets, extract Tax to pay for NYC Arbitrage!!!
And hey I think we should trade from Ocean and Burlington county and below with PA for Bucks and Montgomery county I kinda like those parts of PA. It would give a whole new look to NJ
x-underwriter (#11) says:
“…Can you tell me what the Republicans could realistically accomplish? I don’t think having a picture or an elephant or donkey on the front door in Trenton would really make that much of a difference. This is a state with very Strong political lobbies and changes that involve reductions to some one’s budget are very difficult. I don’t care who you are…”
Commanderbob sez:
Right you are, x !–Both political parties in this state lack what is necessary to truly represent the ‘little-people’ who pay the majority of the taxes…80%-to-90% of these so-called leaders are NEVER going to ‘Take the bull by the horns’ and do WHAT IS RIGHT TO TURN THIS TITANIC AROUND !!—They are going to continue to put ‘band-aids’ on these out-of-control fiscal problems and find ways to nickel-and-dime tax us until more and more people (middle class) pack up and leave !—As our Industrial/Commercial tax base collapses—WE the PROPERTY TAXPAYERS (and renters-via-the landlord) are picking up the increasing percentage of this OUT-OF-CONTROL TAX BURDEN !–Thanks to the courts/legislators/governors–The “POOR” cities and their citizens benefit greatly from the increased flow of our tax dollars to support their almost FREE Lifestyle…
What are the answers you ask ?—-Start by getting involved in the Republican party-[Local County organizations]-. (The democrats are TOO far to the LEFT to change- [IMHO])
—-The ‘Old Guarde’liberal (Whitman types) and the Neocons (former liberals) have to ‘go’–NEW (Young and Old)true Conservative leaders have to emerge with ideas to give to the electorate. If you give the middle class (and upper class) hope in grass-roots LEADERSHIP, then there is a chance to save this State from bankruptcy——IF the old ways of Special interest and de facto Union control of the State house continue —Then, The New Jersey of the present will continue to slide as says–Into a WELFARE STATE…..
I guess that we will have to wait until the election to know if the Republicans ‘take back’ the Assembly/Senate—-If they do,well maybe some good will come of it–(this time around) :(i.e.) True budget cuts, removal of special interest programs, etc..———If they lose-and do not regain control, Then I am seriously considering to do what I suggest others to do above….and join others to ‘take back’ and rebuild the Republican Party…
Bob
55…Following up on yesterday’s WaMu earnings; interesting to note the increase in loss reserves for credit cards was up to $323mil from $229mil.
Are we finally beginning to see the US consumer weakening?
http://www.247wallst.com/2007/10/washington-mutu.html
___________________________________________
No you are seeing the acquisiton of PROVIDIAN paying off in spades for these greedy bastards…..let’s charge 30% interest rates and see if the customer pays off the tab. Then we’ll market mortgages to these same clients…..that oughta work.
commanderbobnj (73)
I think the one and only thing that scares the $hit out of politicians is when people get up and leave their jurisdictions, which is now apparently happening. As people leave, they take tax revenue with them. As long as the tax revenue keeps rolling in, the crack habit continues to be supported even if the constituents are grumbling. I actually think it would do North Jersey some good to lose a bunch of people, not that that would help the fiscal crisis.
#75. Yes but to where? If you are rooted and/or in the highly skilled competitive arenas that are only to be found in NJ and NYC….(please don’t bring up NC again, please)…then you are here and can’t simply ‘leave’….
#54, #57, #59, #61, #65 etc…this is a good read on boomers: “Generation Debt: How Our Future Was Sold Out for Student Loans, Bad Jobs, NoBenefits, and Tax Cuts for Rich Geezers–And How to Fight Back by Anya Kamenetz”
Here is another novel idea.
Spend less than what you take in!
And as to the Dem/Rep argument. DiFrancesco stepped in for a few months and caused more damage than Whitman did in a much shorter time span.
The problem is not partisanship, but the complete lack of ethics shown by ALL of our elected officials. The system has gotten so systemically bastardized that it has created mass public empathy (we are all sick of it), which has lead to the acceptance of what I consider to be blatant immoral behavior. It has actually become politically acceptable to lie (WMD), to pardon criminals (GWB), to deceive (Corzine’s monetization plan as well as fake property tax relief) and to abuse (Congress and Senate).
This country is headed into the toilet. In 15 years I will have obtained enough wealth to leave this corrupt pit known as the USA and will retire somewhere in Central America where there is no electric grid, little taxes, great beaches and cheap beer.
Essex (76)
Highly skilled competitive arenas that are only to be found in NJ and NYC.
The only ones I can think of is the Financial sector and maybe entertainment. Let’s face it, if you work for some corporation in computers, accounting, or whatever, you can really find a decent job in a lot of places. NC, in my opinion, doesn’t even have that great of a job market based on my searches on Monster.com and so forth.
There are plenty of rich people out there who make their money in states that aren’t spelled NY or NJ.
By the way…there are 5 homes in my area that just sold in the last year, and they are already back on the market. Looks like they are asking about $25,000 above what they paid last year or less than what they paid (guess they have to get out) Also, three other empty homes, estates or older couples that moved out…. Prices came down $125,000 off of asking and still no buyers.
#68 – Gary
Actually, I’m going to have to plead ignorance as well. I thought he might be hinting to much SocGen being in a much more dire situation than I know of.
-All disclaimers of course.
x-underwriter: I think the one and only thing that scares the $hit out of politicians is when people get up and leave their jurisdictions, which is now apparently happening.
I do not agree. If they left already, they are not voters anymore. Why try stopping them? Giving lip service on Property Tax seems to be working, why change? During my Lobbying days, the only thing that make things happen is VOTES.
Its gross leadership issues within Republican party that will make all of us poor.
#78: I hear Peru is nice
“…Essex Says:
October 19th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
#75. Yes but to where? If you are rooted and/or in the highly skilled competitive arenas that are only to be found in NJ and NYC….(please don’t bring up NC again, please)…then you are here and can’t simply ‘leave’……”
Commanderbob sez: And that is the ‘point’-Essex-There are enough of the middle-class people here to join-in and take back the leadership positions in the (Republican [IMHO]) party–Maybe even the democrats-(But I personally doubt it)—The key is “GRASS ROOTS”——The present party leadership is TOO entrenched in ‘muddled’ thinking—-call it what you will–IT IS NOT WORKING–IT IS A FAILURE !!
How much frustration is written here on this blog about how this state is mismanaged ? Yet, most would want to stay for a variety of reasons : mainly good paying jobs and opportunities to advance–Right ?—-Others talk about (some) good NJ public schools, close to most everything (minus [sometimes] horrendous traffic), Jersey Shore, Catskill Mts, Skiing etc…etc…BUT we have this LOUSEY STATE LEADERSHIP !!!———–So, you and the others here (especially Grim and Clotpoll) should join in—–Whatta-you-say ???
Bob
Thank you, Kill the Weasel boomers Geezers
That was refreshing and needed to be said.
But to this:
“intellectually retard and a ethically challenged prez”
I must disagree. I believe psychopath best describes our president
“A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse”
KL
http://homes.realtor.com/search/listingdetail.aspx?mlslid=2420916&ml=3&typ=7&sid=021db9e9e4b64730a093ac79a38f224a&lid=1084150441&lsn=1&srcnt=1#Detail
LP – $540
OLP – $699
DOM – 114
Peru does have the best-performing stock market trailing five years. Nothing like a nice trek in the Andes under Peruvian skies…..
clayton,
Not a great location, right on Kinnelon Road. $699 was an outrageous price. There were nicer homes in Smoke Rise for that price.
1850’s Farm House is a non-starter as well. Should have priced more realistically instead of wasting 4 months in a declining market.
houses in westfield are sitting. most are priced at or a bit below 2005 prices so not surprising. still some are moving. one around the block from me sold in 8 days. goes to show the best protection in any market including this one is prime location. you pay the premium but get the cushion.
#12,
No… people that don’t know what “looser” is are losers.
around the block from me sold in 8 days.
This phenomenon isn’t constrained to “top-towns”, Richard, it is occurring all across Northern NJ. Price it well and it’ll move, no secrets there.
Gary [68],
Nomura and joint ventures with BOJ. Soc Gen privatized by the French govt. Now Paulson and Citigroup. Is the window large enough for Citi? You bet it is.
Grim, how do I post an image? It is a grab from Bloomberg.
BC Bob,
gotcha.
Look at this one!
House itself is beautiful! Too bad it’s right cross over the fire station! But I heard they got three offers already after they dropped price.
MLS#: 2385977 CO: Somerset* TOWN: Watchung Boro* (2721)
AD: 2 SCOTT DRIVE LP: $699,000
OLP: $995,900
can someone tell me what 92 meadowbrook road, short hills, sold for a few months back?
pre,
You’ll need to save it to your local PC and email me a copy. I’ve got to save it on the webserver and I can give you the link.
You can post a link directly, but there is always a chance that the link might change, or they might remove the image.
tcm,
$750k on 6/21/07
jb,
what about 240 paramus rd ridgewood?
sell yet? price?
sl
xiaolu,
I believe that house is a short sale. Surpising since they paid $385k for it in 1996. Perhaps they refi’d themselves into foreclosure.
Grim, I sent you the file.
Can someone please give a history on
MLS Number: 2436986
OLP, DOM, redutions etc.
Still Looking,
It’s STILL listed as Under Contract…
Problem with wetlands?
Rich
There were 28 published sales in Westfield in Thursday’s Star Ledger. Most of these sales date to July, mid-June I’d guess. Of the 28, only 2 SFHs were $500k or less. 50% or more were $1 million +. This is probably just before the effects of August/Sept. credit crunch were felt. Even so, this looks like a healthy high-end market to me, an uneducated observer (except for what I’ve been able to glean from this blog). For now at least, Westfield’s reputation as the fabled Brigadoon is still intact. A millions bucks will get you a starter castle here, no problem. You might be saving a $100k or $200k off asking, so you can get yourself a real bargain.
pre,
https://njrereport.com/images/sg438277.gif
Rich — WOW…. amazing…
i wonder if the $126,000 DEP fine is the issue?
I took this clip from
http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/16/real_estate/October_resets/index.htm?postversion=2007101714
According to a survey conducted last month for the AFL-CIO by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, three quarters of borrowers have little clue about how much their payments will increase when their loans adjust. Nearly half don’t know how their loans actually reset.
How can you not know what and an adjustable rate mortage is?
I don’t care if they are not explained to you how it works, if you do not know the definition of the word adjustable is you should not own a home. If you don’t have enough common sense to do some research before you buy a home on what an arm is
visit my good friend Mr Wiki Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjustable_rate_mortgage
he is full of all sort of good info.
People keep whining because they can’t take responsibility for stupid choices they make.
They assumed prices would increase so they would be safe and be able to sell up in a year or 2.
Now as all this stupidness unwinds the market will come back down to where it should be. And I am still sticking with my original prediction, prices will drop right around where they were in 1999-2000.
Not many people make 6 figure salaries unless the work in NY and many of them do not.
There needs to be balance in NJ to come back from loony land
There needs to be lower class areas, middle class areas and yuppie areas. We cannot have rich, super rich and uba rich areas.
Where do people think most of the 2 and 3 family homes came from???? They came from build an over supply of big house and people not being able to afford them unless they were converted into a multi family house.
Thanks Grim.
The chart in #107 highlights the contrast between NJ, NYC, and the country. CLI is Mack-Cali, a NJ-focused office landlord. SLG is SL Green and they own an office portfolio concentrated in Manhattan. BBREOFPY is an index of publicly-traded office building owners. These companies own buildings across the United States.
The market is making a clear statement about the NJ’s prospects, relative to NYC and the country.
Renting,
MLS# 2307132
Listed: 8/6/2006
OLP: $479,900
List Price: $459,900
DOM: 206
Expired
MLS# 2380226
Listed: 10/1/2006
OLP: $439,900
LP: $409,000
DOM: 172
Withdrawn
MLS# 2436986
Listed: 8/20/2007
OLP: $409,900
LP: $399,900
DOM: 60
#1, #19, #25
If NJ politicians have done anything right recently, it is building smart public transit projects. The two most important ones are the Midtown direct and the Montclair connection.
These enhanced transit links into Manhattan have expanded the employment options of NJans. This is timely because NYC’s economy has been booming while NJ’s economy has slowed, leading Manhattan office to fill up while NJ office buildings remain 20% empty. NJ Transit has done well to accommodate this shifting employment pattern.
Also, without these transit links, $200k people considering a move to the suburbs wouldn’t consider towns like Montclair and South Orange. They would move to Westchester instead.
Was purchased in 2004 for $275k
thanks grim.
the reason i asked is that i was in that house when it was for sale.
i was recently in another house on that street, 12 meadowbrook.
inside, the houses seem to be in similar condition, and the size seems similar also. they are both on the same side of the street, which backs up to millburn ave. i would argue that the location of 12 is slightlty better than 92, but 92 is a nicer looking house, in my opinion.
anyway, the asking price for 12 is 669 (just reduced). 80K difference for pretty comparable houses.
by the way, the asking price of 92 was 739, so there must have been several bidders for it to go for 750. what a difference a few months made. in short hills no less.
Regarding SS. No link.
“I should be in this business,” the reader continues. “Send me your money and I will spend it now, put IOUs in the kitty, backed by future forced contributions of ignorant saps, with an interest rate that guarantees that the value of those IOUs will rise at perhaps half the real rate of inflation (if you’re lucky), and eventually when you do start collecting your retirement benefits, I guarantee that I will pay you back considerably less than you contributed with worthless paper dollars (probably worthless yuan by that time).
pre#111
“Also, without these transit links, $200k people considering a move to the suburbs wouldn’t consider towns like Montclair and South Orange. They would move to Westchester instead.”
Why do you say this?
“Why do you say this?”
Because people living in the suburbs are willing to pay a lot of $ to live in a town that offers a quick, one-seat train ride into Midtown.
10 years ago, people commuting from Montclair and South Orange to Midtown needed to go to Hoboken then transfer to the Path or ferry. Basically, the commute sucked. These towns weren’t on the map of $200k Manhattan people making a move to the suburbs.
NJ Transit’s investments have made the Hoboken transfer unnecessary. The commute time from Montclair and South Orange was reduced by 10 to 30 minutes and the transfer hassle was eliminated. Now these towns, along with many others in North Jersey, are on the map of this $200k crowd.
#116 –
“The commute time from Montclair and South Orange was reduced by 10 to 30 minutes and the transfer hassle was eliminated.”
agree – but, along the midtown direct, njtransit is too unreliable to brag about.
To the realtors on this board:
What does “shows like a cream puff” mean in realtor parlance?
I find it an odd phrase when describing a house.
“you pay the premium but get the cushion.”
Isn’t it the same as saying you paid for the depreciation upfront instead of deferring it to when you sell?
T C M,
NJ Transit doesn’t offer a perfect service. But a lot of delays and crowding stem from the strong ridership increase they’ve experienced.
I prefer to judge the quality of the system by the number of people using it. The fact that ridership is rising suggests that the system is working, even if whiny riders complain about it.
If the system was that bad, then people would use one of the alternatives that are available. They would drive into Manhattan, or drive part of the way and take the ferry.
#120
I agree. There are definitely kinks and the need for a second tunnel is absolutely critical but the service works and it works well. I take Midtown Direct into either Hoboken or Penn Station. The Penn Station train home (6:16 in particular) gets delayed a bunch but usually by 10-15 minutes because of Amtrak Delays.
I can definitely speak for myself and my wife when I say we would have never considered our town without the direct train into manhattan.
Given how tiny the 200K+ crowd is, why do we spend so much energy talking about them?
#2
I dont know why anyone would vote Democrat after Florio in NJ but I certainly feel that the Democratic party is bankrupting the people of NJ. Kick em when their down and kick em some more.
Syncmaster,
There are hundreds of thousands of $200k households in the NY metro area. They are a huge component of demand for homes in NJ’s nicer suburbs.
John Phelan
Then chairman of the New York Stock Exchange
The market had been strong all through the summer of ’87, and everyone was talking about their stock portfolios. Even the painters on Long Island were talking about their real estate deals. You parked your car in the garage, and the guy had ten tips for you.
Back about two years before, in a survey we found that firms were doing something called program trading, or portfolio insurance. Based on that, we accelerated our capacity so that we would be able to trade 600 million shares a day by ’89 or ’90. So all that was in place.
The Friday before Black Monday, the market did a lot of volume. I called around over the weekend, and Monday morning we called all the major firms in at 8 A.M. and told them we were in for some heavy weather and that we were opening all the switches early so they could route their orders in. No matter what, we were determined to stay open. After that meeting we sent our people to all the other firms to say heavy volume was coming and the switches were open to take orders. The morning was relatively uneventful. But when I returned from lunch around one o’clock, the market was off 180 points, and between then and four o’clock it melted down. The volume was 600 million shares – 200 million more than the theoretical estimated capacity of the industry.
On the 20th we had huge volume again, and at about 11 o’clock I went to the floor. It was reasonably quiet, but it looked like the stuffing was knocked out. Our way of handling the huge imbalance was not to shut down the market but to shut down individual stocks and re-indicate them, and when we got a decent indication, open them again. We did that with about 100 stocks. I went back to the office, and sometime between 12:30 and 1:30 the market was off another 125 points but then began to rally.
I’m not sure what I learned from it, other than there will always be excesses in the market. This could not have been prevented. When new products develop, like index arbitrage and portfolio insurance, I call it a mental oligopoly. There are a small number of people and firms doing it, and they had a monopoly on it for a certain period of time, and they certainly weren’t going to tell the regulators. The market has to get some light and transparency, and it’s very difficult with new products – like the whole subprime problem we see today.
pre,
How do you feel about transit arbitrage as a long-term investment strategy? Specifically, with regards to the new trans-Hudson tunnel.
If the new tunnel gets built, Raritan Valley Line, Main Line/Bergen County Line and Pascack Valley Line will all have “single seat” access to Manhattan.
#122. Because they are the only ones who can afford to live in NJ.
All this speak of the boomers and the taxes and the pensions reminds me of a High School teacher I had back in the 80s. He attempted during the length of an entire semester to try and educate my generation about how we would never do as well as our parents, and how the boomer generation would overwhelm the retirement systems and social services etc.
One particluar lesson ended with a morbid realization that it would not be too long before people started sending the elderly boomers to the after life by placing a pillow over their head as they sleep, simply
because they could not afford to keep dear old mom and dad.
Read that book to get some insight into why Gen X was dead broke, was laughable. Author was some rich chick from the South whose daddy paid her way through college and set up up in NYC. Love when she said she was suprised that people go to state schools or live at home during college as she thought everyone went to a private four year college on Dad’s dime.
All the walmart bozos credit card loving video game playing idiots she interviewed were lazy asses.
It is annoying that just 15 years ago Kids out of school started on their MBA and certifications right away and there were a lot of good candidates to hire at 28. Todays 28 yo if he made it through college is some MBA and CFA/CPA less bum and has no solid work experience as that can only be earned by taking a job at a blue chip company in a department where you need to work 50+ a week. These modern day slackards still are blaming mommy for their problems at the age of 30. Their resumes could fit on a match book.
Funny how the first generation Asians who grew up in a walk-up in flushing with parents who can barely speak English can land top jobs at 25 while the North Bergan slackard is whining how he can’t get ahead even though he has mastered gameboy, xbox and hallo and really has a cool myspace page.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
#54, #57, #59, #61, #65 etc…this is a good read on boomers: “Generation Debt: How Our Future Was Sold Out for Student Loans, Bad Jobs, NoBenefits, and Tax Cuts for Rich Geezers–And How to Fight Back by Anya Kamenetz”
Anyone else enjoying the irony of subprime SIVs defaulting on their loans?
Cheyne, IKB SIVs Default on Commercial Paper as Assets Fall
Cheyne Finance Plc and IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG’s Rhinebridge Plc, two structured investment vehicles that bought securities backed by home loans, defaulted on more than $7 billion of debt as the value of their holdings fell.
The companies borrow in the short-term debt market and use the proceeds for buying mortgage-backed bonds and collateralized debt obligations. Falling market prices for assets forced the companies to declare all of their debt due this week.
Concern about losses from the companies drove two-year Treasury notes to their biggest weekly gain in five years. Credit-default swaps rose the most in three months this week after the companies warned they faced difficulties.
“The fallout from the credit crisis is far from over,” said Jim Reid, head of fundamental credit strategy at Deutsche Bank AG in London. “There are probably more skeletons in the closet. The problem is knowing when and where they are going to emerge.”
Rhinebridge, set up and run by a unit of Dusseldorf-based IKB, missed payment on $65 million of commercial paper yesterday after revaluing collateralized debt obligations, Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor’s said.
Rhinebridge has $791 million of commercial paper and a portfolio with a face value of $1.1 billion, S&P said. The market value of the assets is now 63 percent of face value, having fallen $69 million since Oct. 16 alone, S&P said. Revaluations of CDOs of asset-backed securities have caused a “dramatic” fall in value, the rating company said.
“The proceeds from assets if they were to be sold in the short-term would be below the amount required to make payment on senior liabilities,” S&P said in a note about Rhinebridge today.
#121 –
agree – the delays are due to sharing tracks with amtrak, not because of high demand (at least that’s what i’ve been told by the njtransit people)
the problem is, you alway have to factor in a 15 minute delay when going into nyc – adding 15 minutes to commute. coming home seems to work better.
85…..So, you and the others here (especially Grim and Clotpoll) should join in—–Whatta-you-say ???
—————————————–
I dunno — I am the genX crowd….not much of a joiner…..a rather obtuse leader….no anthems to call my own…..but a certain skepticism about all things government.
Whoa! Almost half a million NY metro households brought home $200k+ in 2006.
http://tinyurl.com/2qhprg
>>Price it well and it’ll move, no secrets there.
it was priced above comps. actually a few of them that recently sold in the immediate area were and still sold. contrary to your assertion top towns do hold certain advantages over other areas.
which translates to 7.07% of the entire population
132….yeah, and ‘we’ paid out $9k a year for pre-school…..$23k for private school…..$10-15k in taxes…..$400-500k min for a home…….get the picture?
re: (132) sure but fully 1/3 or 2.2 million households only brought in 50-100k.
Explain how that justifies all those 500k POS cape cods?
“which translates to 7.07% of the entire population”
But the $200k crowd makes up a much larger % of people who buy homes in nice suburbs.
“Isn’t it the same as saying you paid for the depreciation upfront instead of deferring it to when you sell?”
Dream,
Call it a staggering up front load. In conjunction with this, a massive expense ratio.
136…..The high consumption towns are oversold…over valued….
>>or now at least, Westfield’s reputation as the fabled Brigadoon is still intact. A millions bucks will get you a starter castle here, no problem.
true though sales and inventory have slowed since then you can see it in the MLS. i don’t see what the big deal is but that’s not the point the most important point is many do.
On topic, in a general way….
An interesting debate that i have only heard a couple of times is what comes after democracy???
A successful democracy depends on an interactive, educated population. I think that the current state of both the USA and the UK show that democracy is not the end game of government. In both the UK and USA, the general population knows more about the regional celebrities and their love lives then they do about current events both local and international. The problems in NJ Government have the same basis. The general public is not educated enough n current /local events and does not participate in their own government.
What government system allows for personal freedom but is resistant to the apathy of the people? is there such a system?
If you were to take out the people who live in Westfield, there wouldn’t be anyone who makes over $200,000
“we’ paid out $9k a year for pre-school”
The going rate in somerset,nj is about 15K!
Jersey Gal,
Are you alive out there?
I got my fav, Jungeland and my wife got her fav, Meeting Across the River. Hard to believe but they were back to back. Did you see the set list? Last night was Bruce # 55. I thought I had a chance to catch up to crude with the 2008 schedule. Doesn’t seem feasible at this time.
pre,
“How do you feel about transit arbitrage as a long-term investment strategy? Specifically, with regards to the new trans-Hudson tunnel.
If the new tunnel gets built, Raritan Valley Line, Main Line/Bergen County Line and Pascack Valley Line will all have “single seat” access to Manhattan.”
I’d rather bet on underappreciated places that could appeal to Gen-y and already have a one-seat ride to Manhattan. In other words, find the next Hoboken or downtown Jersey City.
Or find deep values in the suburbs, which I expect to appear in townhouse communities.
I said it yesterday, and I’ll say it again today. If you want political change, you have to work for it. This means doing more than just showing up at the polling place on election day.
It might be a boomer statement, but it is true: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
pretorius,
Your initial references to the 200K+ crowd were in posts about NJ Transit and general infrastructure. IOW, bread and butter issues that impact the entire population, not just the 5-10% of the population that lives in what you call “nicer suburbs”.
My point? If all NJ Transit is doing is accommodating the 200+ crowd, they are doing the taxpayers of this state a great disservice. You know, the other 90-05% of us.
pre,
Re 146 Considering stocks are a better ROI long term than real estate and RE has more to fall why the heck would you invest in RE right now?
“
Or find deep values in the suburbs, which I expect to appear in townhouse communities.
Why do you expect that?
200K – You do realize that is only reportable income, it is way higher
“Whoa! Almost half a million NY metro households brought home $200k+ in 2006.”
Like a bucket of sand in the desert.
re: (145) The new manhattan rail tunnels are long overdue, and there is talk of reopening the northwest passage. Factor in if they use the newer cars that go 100+ MPH you could actually live in Manhattan and commute to Dundler Mifflin in Scranton for work via train. :)
John, good point about the reportable part.
NY metro is a prosperous place with lots of entrepreneurial spirit. I’m sure there are a many $200k+ small biz owners reporting a lot less than this.
Down 374
Factor in if they use the newer cars that go 100+ MPH
Is that just a hypothetical or is that actually in the works?
I’m trying to imagine 100MPH cars on my local line, the RARV. Would be hilarious (and dangerous).
143….counting summer….Yep.
————————————-
Point is that after the house and cars….and occassional meal out and concert…that $200k becomes a ‘living wage’….but damn….what about the poor s.o.b trying to make ends meet on $100k household….or GASP….less???
Thank god for stop limits, yikes
Syncmaster #149,
Higher price volatility. Prices skyrocket at the top of the cycle.
I’d like to get one cheap and rent it out. Then sell it near the top of the next cycle.
and how the boomer generation would overwhelm the retirement systems and social services etc.
We had a mandatory seminar at my company about “managing change” about a year ago.
One of the people at my table (a boomer) expressed how he was worried about paying for health care in retirement. A person from HR (note: her opinion, not the company’s) piped up with a reassuring smile, “Oh, you don’t need to worry about that. So many people are retiring that the government is going to take care of it. Us boomers have so many votes that they will have to do something, so I wouldn’t worry about it”.
#120 pre
my experience matches your comment
I’d like to get one cheap …
Should be easy. Prices are dropping like a rock in some developments.
Speaking of boomers…
I’ve heard a theory that suggests contributing to your 401k after tax, instead of pre tax (giving up the tax deferral benefit). The theory goes that tax rates are at historic lows. With boomers retiring and massive debt that needs to be repaid, taxes will be going up. So, one should pay the lower taxes now to avoid the higher taxes later.
Any thoughts on this?
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that. So many people are retiring that the government is going to take care of it. Us boomers have so many votes that they will have to do something, so I wouldn’t worry about it”.
She’s probably right. The boomers, by sheer weight of their numbers, have changed so much in this country. No reason to think they won’t continue to do so till they finally start dying.
Dunder Mifflin. LOL!!! I want to work there.
OK, that census data was helpful, but again the issue is how many of the $200k+ crowd are in the market to buy homes? I would guess a fairly small percentage (1 in 5? 1 in 10?). Take a look around– there is a HUGE amount of inventory in the $1.5M+ area. Even though the number of high earners is high in this region, expectations of the demand were greatly overestimated.
John #148,
I agree that stocks outperform real estate, long term. But real estate has several advantages.
– More financable. I can get 90% financing to buy an investment property, but only 50% to buy stocks. Real estate investments can produce higher IRRs, even when the underlying real estate underperforms stocks.
– Can legally use material nonpublic info to make real estate investments. Can’t do that with stocks. Can get tons of info buy visiting real estate, talking with brokers, and getting market data. Much harder to do that with most stock market sectors.
“which translates to 7.07% of the entire population”
I came up with 3.4%
I’d rather bet on underappreciated places that could appeal to Gen-y and already have a one-seat ride to Manhattan. In other words, find the next Hoboken or downtown Jersey City.
Newark? Might be a long shot, but logistically, nothing gets more convenient than living near Penn Station. The Ironbound is already decent and if the new arena works, it will supposedly attract retail, hotels and new restaurants etc.. There is plenty of crap that can be torn down (or refurbished) for redevelopment.
I got 7% too.
100 * 474597/6709151
RentinginNJ 168-
How about New Brunswick? Single seat ride into the city, tons of redevelopment under way as we speak. It looks a LOT better than it did in my RU days.
474,597 households in not a “tiny crowd.” That is a million people living in $200k+ households!
“Point is that after the house and cars….and occassional meal out and concert…that $200k becomes a ‘living wage’….but damn….what about the poor s.o.b trying to make ends meet on $100k household….or GASP….less???”
Essex my friend, it’s all relative. It depends on whether you need a $300 pair of jeans when a $30 pair suffices. Extrapolate that to most purchases….
pretorius,
‘Tiny’ is relative. The denominator matters.
dream #172,
Agreed. I and most of my peers are in 80-140k households and all of us own, have paid off non-luxury cars and eat out at least once a week. And we manage to save money.
Only thing in common? We don’t live in the foo-foo suburbs of Bergen county. We in ‘da hood’ of middlesex county.
“syncmaster Says:
October 19th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
I got 7% too.
100 * 474597/6709151”
oops. I see what I did wrong. And I won’t tell you. Because it’s embarrassing. :)
7% is a great deal higher than I would have guessed.
Essex Says:
October 19th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
I dunno — I am the genX crowd….not much of a joiner…..a rather obtuse leader….no anthems to call my own…..but a certain skepticism about all things government.
SX: Anthems? “here we are now; entertain us….” “Jeremy spoke in…..class….todaaaaaay…”
SX: they are anthems because they speak to the GenX reality…..selfish boomers destroyed everything and left latchkey kids to fend for themselves……
njpatient #175,
7% surprised me as well.
I went into the same data set and got the numbers by county. Exported to excel, converted to percentages. Here it is, percentage of “total” households with more than 200k household income, by county, in descending order. Bergen ain’t even in the top three.
Hunterdon County-15.0215726
Somerset County-13.6312673
Morris County-13.04173171
Bergen County-10.52991432
Monmouth County-9.329036523
Union County-7.606330419
Essex County-7.325460889
Mercer County-6.803389511
Sussex County-5.705059203
Middlesex County-4.918014592
Hudson County-4.138714976
Burlington County-3.9497384
Gloucester County-3.649458575
Camden County-3.577874173
Passaic County-3.49314295
Cape May County-3.165263043
Ocean County-3.145332311
Warren County-2.959963362
Atlantic County-2.299428041
Salem County-1.315949799
Cumberland County-0.649389574
http://tinyurl.com/yr2yqo
the above link is to a table I created on the census site (thanks pretorious) to try to determine how many high income people might actually be in the market for homes in the NYC-area. somewhat of a crude proxy (married women with graduate degrees who had children in past 12 months), but it may be somewhat revealing.
the number is quite small
vodka (141)-
We’re already living the aftermath of participatory democracy.
It’s a kind of neo-Fascism, based on neutralizing the middle classes with a steady diet of fat, sugar and empty entertainments. Sated- but never satisfied- the middle millions have become a sort of narcoticized workforce, able to soldier on…as long as they’re given regular doses of filling, yet unnourishing, food & experiences.
Within this generation, millions of Americans will begin to think of their lives as an unrelated chain of events, rather than a continuous whole. At that point, no amount of family, literature, arts or religion will ever be able to bring them back.
Had the pleasure of visting Newark and seeing the new Prudential Center this week, Nice looking place with little parking. Might have a Garden feel to it on a concert or game night. I then took a drive around the neighborhood and low and behold there there were LUXURY CONDOS for sale, right there DA Hood!
skep 179,
How much does that number change when you take out the grad degree?
The NYT’s Residential Sales around the Region in This Sundays paper features a sale in Weehawken for the “More than 1.2 million” category.
3 Carlyle Court, Port Imperial
4000 sq ft Townhouse
listed at $2,498,000
sold for $1,970,000
Is that 22% off?
ChiFi (176)-
Here we are now entertain us; I feel stupid and contagious.
AAA Downgraded!
From PR Newswire:
S&P Lowers Ratings on 1,413 U.S. RMBS Classes Backed by Subprime Mortgage Loans from the 4Q 2005 – 4Q 2006
Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services
announced today that it has downgraded 1,413 of U.S. residential mortgage-
backed securities (RMBS) backed by first-lien subprime mortgage loans that
were issued from the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2005 through the
fourth quarter of 2006. These downgraded securities had an original par
value of $22.02 billion, which represents 4% of the $554.4 billion of U.S.
RMBS backed by first-lien subprime mortgage loans rated by S&P during this
period. These actions, combined with downgrades previously announced by
S&P, impact a total of 1,671 securities of U.S. RMBS backed by first-lien
subprime mortgage loans issued during this period, representing $24.8
billion, or 4.5% of the $554.4 billion mentioned above. S&P also affirmed
its ratings on securities representing $531.6 billion original par value of
U.S. RMBS backed by first- lien subprime mortgage loans from this same
period.
Of the 1,413 securities downgraded today, approximately 47% were rated
in the ‘BBB’ category and below. Fifteen ‘AAA’ rated securities were
downgraded, accounting for roughly 0.01% of all downgraded securities and
1.1% of the total dollar amount downgraded. No ‘AAA’ rating was lowered
below ‘AA’.
It was 20 years ago today, Sgt. Peppers witnessed Black Monday……
Essex my friend, it’s all relative. It depends on whether you need a $300 pair of jeans when a $30 pair suffices. Extrapolate that to most purchases….
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I’m an eBay powerseller…..and been able to get what I (think) need and dump what I don’t–at a profit mostly….(tax free–whew)
those are some interesting numbers, sync.
Thanks
#182
sync– here is the table filtered by bachelor’s degree (no graduate degree). the number does not change much
http://tinyurl.com/2u2cjg
“I can get 90% financing to buy an investment property, but only 50% to buy stocks.”
Pre,
You are not considering futures, approx 6% margin to buy S&P 500 [based on the contract size]. Approx 20k controls 375K of S&P futures.
Clotpoll Says:
October 19th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
ChiFi (176)-
Here we are now entertain us; I feel stupid and contagious.
))))))))))))))))))))))))(((((((((((((((((((((((
So cool….and so correct, I saw him play in Miami — went with my wife — right before he offed himself….it was thanksgiving in 93….OK, so we got anthems!
God, what a mess, on the ladder of success
Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung
Dreams unfulfilled, graduate unskilled
It beats pickin’ cotton and waitin’ to be forgotten
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
The daughters and the sons
Clean your baby womb, trash that baby boom
Elvis in the ground, there’ll ain’t no beer tonight
Income tax deduction, what a hell of a function
It beats pickin’ cotton and waitin’ to be forgotten
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
The daughters and the sons
Unwillingness to claim us, ya got no word (war?) to name us
The ones who love us best are the ones we’ll lay to rest
And visit their graves on holidays at best
The ones who love us least are the ones we’ll die to please
If it’s any consolation, I don’t begin to understand them
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
The daughters and the sons
Young…take it, it’s yours…
“Might have a Garden feel to it on a concert or game night.”
Sean,
And the new Red Bulls stadium in Harrison may have a feel of Wembley.
BC (193)-
Except for the hacks on the pitch, playing the game.
God, they suck.
BC Bob,
The Wembley surroundings suck. Reminds me a little of going Shea.
HE (192)-
First time I’ve seen The Replacements on this board!
The new Wembley looks like the new Soldier Field.
Westerberg still sounds amazing!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcS5E_Mi4Uo
To the Boomer Bashers: Oh quit whining and get out there and DO something. If you’re so worried that the boomers will suck all the air out of the economy when they retire, then start saving more, or better yet, start a company that caters to taking care of the geezers. After all, they have all the money that you feel should rightly be yours, so go earn it away from them.
Aren’t you guys TRADERS? Don’t you always say that there is money to be made on both sides of a trade? Aren’t there opportunities to be had in this situation? So go grab them and quit complaining that you were born into a world you didn’t create.
None of us can save our own entire generation but we can take care of ourselves and our families.
Oh, and a lot of boomers actually did put their kids ahead of cash and lived on one income. You don’t go out to eat and you don’t take trips and you pay cash for used cars but your kids always come home from school to milk and cookies and a mom or a dad. Try it.
$30 jeans!!??!! That makes me crazy, I am stuck thinking levis should be $17! Thankfully I do not have to pay too much more for the speciials at Costco!
pre [195],
I was alluding to game atmosphere and electricity in the city.
Can we please get together at a place with an 80’s-90’s jukebox/dj so we can reminisce?
Gotta love the ‘mats.
!!!!!!FOR DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY!!!!
hubba…hubba….hubba…..the CA’ the CA’
“Right now financial stocks are like radioactive waste,” said Michael James, senior equity trader at Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles. “People just do not want to touch them.”
BC Bob,
I hear you. I lived in London for a little bit. You could feel the electricity in the city on FA Cup final day and days when England were playing.
Never felt that in New York when Yankees world in World Series though.
Can we please get together at a place with an 80’s-90’s jukebox/dj so we can reminisce?
******************************************
+1
Essex is that your rsvp or you +1?
$30 jeans!!??!! That makes me crazy, I am stuck thinking levis should be $17! Thankfully I do not have to pay too much more for the speciials at Costco!
Yes, Russians will be wearing levis and we’ll be wearing no-name jeans. Funny how things come around, isn’t it?
Clotpoll (180)
I believe the term is ‘Bread and Circuses’
+1…just seconding that very cogent thought….RSVP? Sure.
Aaron (208)-
Bread and circuses, exactly. That’s what we vote for ourselves.
“lostinny Says:
October 19th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Can we please get together at a place with an 80’s-90’s jukebox/dj so we can reminisce?”
Yes – we really need to get the next meetup organized.
JB? Maybe you could come up with a list of four places and four dates and take a vote? Or just be a dictator and say “fellas, meet at X on [date]!”
patient (211)-
I say let JB be the dictator. He’s much too busy to be giving us choices and doing the cat herding thing. We should also let him know that we pick up the tab.
Unless, that is, he picks Per Se. :)
BTW, Paulson’s on CNBC after the G7 meeting, saying the words “strong dollar” with a straight face.
“I say let JB be the dictator. He’s much too busy to be giving us choices and doing the cat herding thing. We should also let him know that we pick up the tab.”
I’m perfectly happy with the dictator option, and he certainly wouldn’t be buying his own.
“Unless, that is, he picks Per Se. :)”
Mrs. Patient is still mad at me for going without her.
So, it’s the boomers’ faults for the country’s woes? Do I got it right?
gary (214)-
An enigmatic generation, to be sure. Just too damn many of them to hang a single tag on it.
Maybe that’s the problem. Every previous American generation had to come together- in a real, tangible way- to meet a challenge of some type. The Boomers have yet to come together…so much so, that they seem to have adopted the collective attitude that the massive problems the country does face are someone else’s responsibility to solve.
Clotpoll,
You know, I must have erased the first line of this follow-up post about a dozen times… not because I necessarily disagree with you but because I feel like I’ll p*ss off a lot of people here if I post what I’m truely feeling.
I’m a baby, baby boomer myself which means I was born at the tail end of the range and I must say, I’m da*n happy I was. If my parents’ were from the greatest generation (and they were), then the boomers were the coolest generation. Woodstock, Vietnam, tie-dyes, 20 minute jams, peace, love and happiness followed by MBAs, the Tech boom and the invention of the yuppie.
Hey, nobody can acuse them for being dull. When they weren’t protesting, they were getting high; and after they got high, they went to the candidates debate… and then made love to Mrs. Robinson… and then ran away with her daughter. LOL!
My point is, when they were good, they were bad and when they were bad, they were still good. They didn’t ask anybody what to do and when to do it, they just did it. I know a lot here are going to think I’m arrogant and frankly, I don’t give a sh*t.
When I got married, we had $1200 to our name. We went to work and saved every penny we could for the next ten years. We didn’t whine, didn’t cry, didn’t blame anyone… we just cut our own path. It never even crossed our minds to point a finger.
I’m sorry if gen x and gen “why” feel slighted but it’s not my problem. I guess if all my generation had to show for it was Paris Hilton and text messaging, I’d be p*ssed, too. Anyway, I’m proud to be part of the hippie generation, even though I was just in my wonder years when Woodstock happened. Just my 2 cents.
By the way, I heard The Pusher by Steppenwolf this morning and still have chills. Yeah…. compare that to Korn Biscuit or whatever passes for coolness these days.
215–
So, now you’re a sociologist?
I think you’re making a big mistake characterizing–blaming–the boomer geeration for a failure to come together. What generation does? Bear in mind, I ask this in a country that had a civil war….
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Gary, Gary, Gary…..nobody ever said the music wasn’t great. I’m a musician in my spare time and I know the whole range…..and love all of it. I spent part of yesterday explaining to someone how appreciating Neil Young is just common sense……but try picking up a Ryan Adams album or perhaps going to a Pearl Jam concert….You’ll feel it too.
My guess is that the Boomer Gen is so vast and wide that your position at the tail end means you are cleaning up messes started by your front loaded generational compadres.
….as a side note….we also had a front row seat for all of the mass layoffs in the corporate world….we were young enough to have that make an impression on us….so we are the last generation ( i hope ) to get duped into thinking that employers really give a crap about you.
spam at 218.
nice.
As far as I am concerned the current market situation is a direct result of the ME generation that thinks that if its legal its ethical.
I don’t know a single person my age who doesn’t agree that their boomer parents were self involved pricks… mind you we have all had kids of our own.
What bothers me is that the banks clearly raped their customers here and the government simply stood by and looked….and now it is coming back to bite those same banks in the ass….but they write down the profit, reduce head count and move on. I can’t tell you how pathetic that sounds to me. And so completely unenlightened. Now some would justify that by saying either, “caveat emptor” or “hey we put people in homes and some can stay”…….but I see it as a typical act by arrogant, greedy, no good scumbags who pretty much run things in this country.
Essex,
Been playing guitar many years myself. I heard Alvin Lee do “I’m Going Home” and after I picked my jaw up from the ground, I bought a crappy, little guitar in a local junk shop for 10 or 15 bucks (which Mom screamed at me for doing) and the rest is history.
223 Essex
Borrowers do have responsibility to protect themselves, but I just can’t disagree with your last sentence there. Scumbags, lines of them, as far as the eye can see, and damn if I’m not a fan of the “don’t hate the player, get in the game” response. It’s simply not ok to be a scumbag, even if the other guy “had it coming.”
Gary…..check me out….played in a great cover band in college (the 80s) just a hobby now….but a pretty consuming one:
http://www.youtube.com/lofisounds
it is funny that many folks here think it is bubble RE ran up 70% in 7 years but justify 500% run up of oil price in 5 years. as i stated here many times, recent commodity price is a real bubble if there is a bubble.
from today’s stats by pret and others, at least 10% of NJ household taking home over 200K, and many others have accumulated wealth in house and stocks. This can explain why desirable towns will be fine even we have another credit crunch.
one weak ago, i said in this blog that i would sell anything but my home in this market. the market is factoring another rate cut at the end of this month.
now (217)-
I’m no sociologist; and, I’m not pointing my finger at any group of people just because of their age. I’m not ready to indict whole generations for offenses I can’t even articulate.
Certain generations of Americans have had to take on collective burdens because cataclysmic events dictated it. It’s no knock on Boomers, Xs or Ys that those defining cataclysms never materialized.
If you’re of the belief that hard times don’t form character but reveal character, the worst that can be said is that the collective character of the Boomers hasn’t- and may never be- tested.
essex, is that really you? Pretty damn good – particularly liked Mystery Train. You’ve got a good voice too – you should belt with the same confidence that you pick, ’cause you have the chops.
(Disclosure, I have a BA and MA in music, but then I had to get a job).
216# this post is great!
Disclaimer: i am not a boomer or Xer or Yer.
Essex, that was great.
Essex,
Cool!! I have a Les Paul studio and a Telecaster… no videos of me, though.
Yeah man…..thanks! When my daughter was born she liked to hear me play her to sleep. The first video that I ever posted was one that I recorded doing that….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrxmoxx81aI
After a while I started to get my chops back and got really obsessive about buying and selling gear and searching for ‘tone’…I think I found some.
Oh, I meant the cute white dog. ;)
great stuff.
It’s a big deal for kids to go to sleep to mom or dad’s live music. My brother and I did, and now all my little girls do.
I think it’s really healthy for the mind, heart and soul, and it’s pretty darn good for dad, too.
Essex, excellent!
finanlly i am with majority.
The generational finger pointing is a nice way to avoid behavioral changes, isn’t it?
“Oh, I meant the cute white dog. ;)”
I was enjoying the Outfield in his favorites.
an underrated band.
This thread became pretty musical today…and I felt like it was a like-minded group in terms of the whole tone of that — music is amazingly universal…..it can save the world.
agree
now I just wish I were home with a bottle of vin rather than trapped in my cage.
At least, at this hour, I can blast my music. I’m the only fellow at the firm with a giant subwoofer under his desk.
Essex,
You’ve calmed the savage beast in all of us. :)
I’m gonna pour a glass of Cragganmore and toast the forum.
Cheers
You know, I don’t think I’ve ever tried Cragganmore. I tend to stick to Macallan, Lagavulin and Laphroaig.
But with a name like that, it has to be good.
“When I got married, we had $1200 to our name. We went to work and saved every penny we could for the next ten years. We didn’t whine, didn’t cry, didn’t blame anyone… we just cut our own path. It never even crossed our minds to point a finger.”
Gary,
A tail ender here also. Amen. You brought back many pleasant memories.
Beatlemania, Vietnam, Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming, Ali and the draft, Woodstosk/drugs, one small step for man, one giant step for mankind, revolution, riots, sexual freedom, gas lines, raging inflation, 16% mortgage rates with 20% down, Paul Volcker, the Hunt’s, assasinations, civil rights, etc… My parents and their friends were seriously thinking of moving out of Bergen during the Newark riots. The fear that it would spill into the burbs.
There was nothing materialistic at the time. Mom was home taking care of the kids. The treat of the week, pizza on Friday and watching Leave it to Beaver with the family. My treat, sneaking my transistor radio to bed and listening to Marv Albert; “And here comes Willis”. Fran Tarkenton to Homer Jones and speedy Bob Hayes for The Boys, before they somehow became God’s team?. Malls? Clothes shopping consisted of going to my older brothers closet.
No cable, no remote, no espn [how did I survive] and no blogs. You were taught to work hard and give it your best, nothing came easy. You fought and forged, sorry no hand outs, no bailouts, AG just came on board in 1987. We were the get generation. We could not sit around and take/consume, there was nobody giving. I delivered papers and saved most of what I earned. I rolled that little bit [big at that time] into some stocks, after college, and they appreciated greatly. I had no clue what I was doing. I was smart enough to recognize that I was clueless and sold. It afforded me the opportunity to come up with 20% dp for a condo shack [booyaaa, it sticks with you]. After that, I realized that I better develop an approach/system to trading/investing.
Our heroes were President’s, world leaders, sports stars and astronauts. Today’s heroes, Paris Hilton, Britney, movie stars and rappers. Now tell me who is f#$@*% up?
There was no extra money then but no debt. Presently, maybe everybody should stop spinning their life out of control, like hamsters, to keep up with your debt ridden neighbors. Come to think of it, sing along with Essex, just buy the world a Coke[drink, not powder].
“Our heroes were President’s, world leaders, sports stars and astronauts. Today’s heroes, Paris Hilton, Britney, movie stars and rappers. Now tell me who is f#$@*% up?”
Your generation didn’t make heroes of John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe? Balderdash. And how different, really, was Marilyn than Britney Spears?
Have you heard anyone say “Paris Hilton is my hero”? Of course not. Today we follow her exploits for the same reason that in previous generations a kid might have chased a fire engine. It’s a comedic tragedy of a high order!
Don’t extrapolate your personal experience on your whole generation, either. I don’t on mine, otherwise I’d claim that Gen-X was the hardest working crew to ever walk the earth.
My father duct-taped his shoes together, because my folks had to make do to make ends meet. I’m Gen-X, but I held down three jobs throughout college. I got my first job washing dishes in a restaurant when I was 13, and was never unemployed at any time after that. I had the dishwashing gig, I worked in a plastics packaging plant, sonic welding, blister packaging, die-cutting from 15 through 18 years old, worked as a security guard, a piano mover, a librarian, an undergrad english teacher, retail sales, borrowed my way through grad school and law school, working the whole time – you name it, I’ve done it, and began my current job the day after I graduated from law school.
BC – I hang on your every word on this board – really, I do. I always want to hear your opinion, because it’s ALWAYS sharp. And I realize you had to read some mildly offensive bs slandering your generation. But I get tired of hearing how mine is lazy and crappy.
One of the reasons I’m on this board is that I’ve worked my tail off my whole life to get ahead, and no I AM ahead, and I find that even with all that work, and the extremely rewarding pay I get, if I by a million dollar house I’ll still wind up living in a place that a plumber lived in in 1955. Not to denigrate plumbers, but 1955 was an easier time.
The younger generations have higher hurdles: housing costs, education costs – the basics.
Getting through undergrad and law school on loans put me almost 200K in the hole. That’s something that folks in 1955 didn’t have on their backs when the started their family.
It’s a different world, and I guess what it comes down to is that I don’t think we can really compare.
I’m bleary – that’s a rate of about 10 words per typo. Liberally sprinkle in some extra letters in all the right spots….
Some great GenX’isms:
http://www.scn.org/~jonny/genx.html
Some personal favorites:
Café Minimalism: (page 107)To espouse a philosophy of minimalism without actually putting into practice any of its tenets.
McJob: (page 5) A low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one.
Squires: (page 135) The most common X generation subgroup and the only subgroup given to breeding. Squires exist almost exclusively in couples and are recognizable by their frantic attempts to recreate a semblance of Eisenhower-era plenitude and their daily lives in the face of exorbitant housing prices and two-job life-styles. Squires tend to be continually exhausted from voraciously acquisitive pursuit of furniture and knickknacks.
Firefox has spell check built in. My (perceived)internet IQ has doubled since then-
Essex Says:
October 19th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
This thread became pretty musical today…and I felt like it was a like-minded group in terms of the whole tone of that — music is amazingly universal…..it can save the world.
Music is amazingly universal. How the hell can one explain someone uprooting themself from one corner of the world into another? I did that.
I grew up in India and all I heard were bootlegged cassettes of Beatles and Elvis as a kid. I remember being all of five years old and listening to the Saturday Night Fever LP while having porridge dribbling out of my mouth and watching that fancy turntable go round and round and play music, ruining everything in the process.
I grew up to all of the 80s and 90s rock…even if it meant borrowing a few (Indian) cents to get hold of a bootlegged Metallica cassette overdubbed 4 times being peddled by a pimp in some street corner. I was heavily influenced by British heavy metal in my rebel teen years, which gave way to trying to comprehend Dark Side of the Moon in my high school years and beyond.
There is quite a bit of talk of what the US is/was and the direction it’s heading in. I wouldn’t want to comment on that. What I will say is that it is still a dream for people all over the world to come here. And I also think immigrants are the best ambassadors of the US. When I talk to friends from back home, I don’t tell them NJ sucks coz it has high property taxes! No, I tell them all the great things about the US because I see it through a different lens, i.e. the bigger picture.
The opportunity to actually live my dreams -of coming 40,000 miles across land and ocean to listen to the amazing music of many artists…. from Crosby Stills Nash to Allman Brothers, from Chicago to Dave Matthews, from Metallica to Dream Theater, from Joe Satriani to Al Di Meola. Or listening to some random guy play amazing saxophone on the NYC subway.
Every time I go for a live concert, I cherish the moment like it’s my last day on Earth. And a sense of achievement that I made it to this great country to see these artists live. Because I left behind so much just to be able to enjoy this truly universal gift of music.
“Some great GenX’isms:”
Funny
bookmark
“boomer” is the greatest racial epitaph evvver.
Talking about bubble, 20 cents on the $1 please.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/realestate/21cov.html?ref=realestate
I could not help but to notice that many houses in Detroit are selling for $1 (one dollar). How long before Newark and Camden start selling for those prices?
From the WSJ:
Countrywide CEO Ripped
By Advisory Group
By JAMES R. HAGERTY and JOANN S. LUBLIN
October 20, 2007; Page A2
CtW Investment Group, a pension-fund advisory group affiliated with seven big labor unions, said it sent a letter to the board of Countrywide Financial Corp. urging it to ask for the immediate resignation of Angelo Mozilo, chairman and chief executive of the nation’s largest home-mortgage lender in terms of loan volume.
draft of the letter, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, cited questions raised by the Securities and Exchange Commission over heavy selling by Mr. Mozilo of shares that he acquired through stock options. The letter also said that an apparent “culture of non-compliance” exposed Countrywide to litigation and increased regulatory scrutiny. Brishen Rogers, legal counsel for CtW, said criticism reflects news reports alleging that Countrywide steered borrowers into high-cost loans, a charge the company has denied.
Mr. Mozilo couldn’t be reached to comment. Countrywide didn’t comment.
Various shareholder groups have sued the Calabasas, Calif., lender, alleging that it misled them about the company’s prospects. Shares of Countrywide have plunged about 60% this year amid a surge in defaults. The company has drastically cut lending in the past two months and is slashing its work force by as many as 12,000 jobs, or 20%.
The SEC’s request for information related to questions about Mr. Mozilo’s heavy sales of shares through prearranged programs that trigger sales at regular intervals. Mr. Mozilo sold $130.6 million in company stock in the first half of the year through such sales plans, up from $60.4 million in the year-earlier half, according to securities filings. Mr. Mozilo, 68 years old, has said he increased the pace of selling through these plans late last year to reduce his stake in the company and diversify his personal investments in an orderly way ahead of his retirement, scheduled for December 2009.
Inventory stuck at 100K this week, no one is buying or selling.
The only place generational characteristics matter is in the voting booth. Boomers take the heat, because there’s more of them than anyone else. I have no bone to pick with any individual of any generation. I like the Who, Nirvana, Alice in Chains and The Killers, so no generation even has a claim on my IPod.
The current healthcare/entitlement system is broken. Will the Boomers allow as much as a conversation to take place as to how this can be fixed? Or, as Reagan cynically exhorted, will they just continue to “vote for themselves”?
“Countrywide CEO Ripped”
Instead of foreclosing on others, CFC should foreclose on itself.
Great Post 252 Dreamtheater,
Thanks for the reminder. I think we all need a reminder of what we have, when were complaining about what we don’t have. However we can’t forget that our right to complain, b@tch and moan causes changes for the better, or sometimes not, but the power to change change things is what we take for granted.
KL
BC Bob #247,
Wow, you said it so much better than I can. It sounds so similar to what I’ve experienced growing up. So many great memories.
And the Marv Albert thing on the radio, pizza on Friday and Tarkenton to Homer Jones….. HOLY CRAP!! It sounds like we grew up in the same house.
“In the face of such a tough employment environment, recruiters say they’re being bombarded by calls from executives who are desperate for new jobs. But they often have nowhere to place them, with the exception of a few hedge fund managers and other investment shops that have been hiring.”
In the face of such a grim market place, check out the expected bonuses. Nice…
http://www.securitization.net/article.asp?id=1&aid=7674
“Your generation didn’t make heroes of John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe? Balderdash. And how different, really, was Marilyn than Britney Spears?”
patient,
Before my time. I was just a toddler when MM died.
I never looked up to a movie star, we didn’t go to the movies often. It was The Sound of Music and summer drive ins for me.
You’re right, I was generalizing. I realize that there are many Gen-X’s that are busting their tails, especially on this blog. I didn’t purposely mean to criticize the group as a whole. I should have been clearer, it was more a statement regarding the culture of today.
Back then a house was a necessity, a place of shelter, raise a family, be part of a community. I don’t know how you can say it was easier back then. Moms were working at home, raising the kids, not earning a check. It wasn’t easy bringing up six kids, all in private schools on 30-40k per year, that was a white collar job[my father]. The trick was to get to the dinner table before your brothers and sisters, the pickings were slim. There were also school loans to pay, it’s all relative.
I started, out of school in a sales job, salary plus commission. I was guaranteed 12K per year. After Beantown, I lived back at home. My parents charged me rent. I was f*#*&#* livid. I had a guaranteed salary of $220 per week, school loans to pay and now rent to my parents. Thankfully, I was lucky with some trades and moved into my own shack. In addition to this, when I got married my parents returned all the rent paid with interest. I then bought another shack and rented it out. My parents taught me a great lesson by charging me rent.
Today, many want it all for doing nothing. Again, just generalizing, many boomers are guilty of this also. Today, a house is seen as a means to retire rich, one up your friends, a status symbol. An entertainment room? Why not go out to the streets and play stick ball. A jacuzzi? I had a jacuzzi growing up, it was called farting in the bath tub.
Many are about to be taught a tough, cold, cruel lesson. They just don’t realize it yet.
Gary [263],
It’s the JC thing. Everybody in town grew up together.
By the way, speaking of the old Giants. The best football name ever, Spider Lockhart.
Yes, the JC thing!! And when the Giants game was blacked out, you had Marty Glickman and Chip Cippola on the radio.
“Gogolak kicks… IT’S HIGH ENOUGH… IT’S DEEP ENOUGH…. IT’S GOOD!!”
259–
“The current healthcare/entitlement system is broken. Will the Boomers allow as much as a conversation to take place as to how this can be fixed? Or, as Reagan cynically exhorted, will they just continue to “vote for themselves”?”
You’ve got that wrong. It is not “the boomers” who won’t allow a conversation about fixing health care. (And why are you linking healthcare to “entitlement”?) It’s drug and insurance companies who won’t allow the conversation to take place, because shareholder profits have become the bottom line of every decision made. This was the legacy of Ronald Reagan, and he was not a boomer.
Does anybody have any thoughts on this, (Clot in particular):
thanks in advance,
A San Francisco firm called Rex & Co. (the name stands for “real estate equity exchange”) is offering a new option, known as a Rex agreement, that can be used both to draw on a home’s equity and to hedge against declining property values.
Rex gives homeowners, interest-free, a portion of their house’s market price in cash – up to 15 percent of the appraised value of the home, topping out at $300,000. In exchange, Rex gets the right to share in up to half of the future increase in the home’s value. The more homeowners are willing to let Rex cash in on future profit, the more money they get up front. If a home declines in value – and many homeowners nowadays are worried about just that – Rex shares in the loss. “It’s a way to make the equity you’ve earned more liquid,” says Rex CEO Thomas Sponholtz.
A homeowner and Rex agree on how much money the property owner is to receive, as well as the percentage of the future change in the value of the home he or she is willing to share. (The homeowner also pays back the cash advance when the property is sold.) The home’s value is assessed by a third-party appraiser.
To discourage flipping, Rex charges a hefty early-exit fee of up to 25 percent of the cash advance for homes that are sold within five years. And Rex can take control of the property if the homeowner is late paying the mortgage, insurance, or property taxes. Only owner-occupied detached single-family homes qualify, and those valued in the top or bottom 10 percent of their local markets are not eligible. Rex agreements are available in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington.
A Rex agreement may be a good solution for homeowners who think their house will stay flat or decrease in value and who are planning to own it for many more years. Homeowners who invest their Rex cash in, say, a stock that rises in value would come out ahead in a stagnant housing market. Conversely, owners who put their Rex money into high-risk investments, and whose homes lose value, could find themselves in an even deeper hole. Rex buyer beware.
REX ROULETTE
Here’s what could happen with a $90,000 payout on a $600,000 house with a 50/50 split on its future value.
Scenario 1: The house sells for $720,000. Rex gets its $90,000 back and $60,000 in profit.
Scenario 2: The home’s value stays flat. Rex gets only the original $90,000.
Scenario 3: The home’s value falls to $480,000. The homeowner returns only $30,000 to Rex.
Gary,
LOL!! Go-Go-Gogolak.
One difference, you grew up on eggplant parmigiana with real sauce. I grew up on meat and potatoes. Pasta night, in our household, was served with Ragu.
Our parents/grandparents were ruled by the same dictator, Frank Hague. I mean President Frank Hague.
That was Frank Hague, Ruler!! And we did have meat and potatoes, too….. like once every six years. LOL!!
Hi JB/KL et all,
Could you please provide some details on GSMLS#: 2385977.
Address, dom, prior listing history etc.
thanks in advance.
AT.
njpatient – thanks for sticking up for us.
I too am Gen X (1968) and have worked my tail off my whole life, from high school and right through college, cashiering, frying food, you name it. Never been unemployed, never taken a cent of government money, never bought a pair of $300 jeans or Manolo Blahniks. Counting pennies so that I can stay home with the kids. In fact, the number of stay-at-home parents (GenX) is on the rise, it dropped during the boomer parenting years. I actually caught an Oprah episode (sorry) where a boomer mother was berating her daughter for choosing to stay home with the reasoning that “We struggled so you could have a choice, you’re wasting your education and all MY hard work”.
From what I have seen, most boomers have mythologized other generations achievements. Beatles – not boomers, Rolling Stones – not boomers, Bob Dylan wasn’t a boomer either. Most of the performers at Woodstock – Hendrix, Joplin et al weren’t boomers. In politics, Kennedy – not only not a boomer, but no boomer was old enough to ever vote for him. Martin Luther King was no boomer either.
I don’t get the idolization of Vietnam, unless those with the sweet memories never served there, or have based their ideas on Apocalypse Now. Yes, boomers got to watch the moonwalk, but it wasn’t a boomer up there, nor did boomers or their technology actually get them up there. My dad worked on that stuff during the glory years – Bell Labs, Calteck, JPL and he wasn’t a boomer but from the “Silent Generation”, the war time babies, who actually appeared to have achieved the most, without giving themselves pats on the back.
I hear boomers reminiscing about their own stay-at-home moms but statistically they were far less likely to return the favor for their own kids. The teenagers driving off of lots today in BMW’s and Porche Cayennes, their parents aren’t Gen X, their parents are boomers. You can’t blame Gen Y for being spoiled. Their parents did that to them.
The Presidents the boomers did vote for: Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bushes and Clinton. Boomer presidents: Bush 2 and Clinton, the moron and the self absorbed.
Which musicians were actually boomers? Well, you do have Springsteen and Bowie, Robert Plant, Billy Joel, Mick Fleetwood and Sting. You also have Michael Jackson, Madonna and those musical geniuses DURAN DURAN. Boomers have produced Oprah and Howard Stern. On the political side, Karl Rove, Al Gore, Condoleeza Rice and Alberto Gonzales are all boomers. As were huge padded shoulders in the eighties.
Bit of a mixed bag there. Not sure the arrogance has a place in reality.
I was just driving back from Dunkin’ Donuts and then I heard this on the radio; “The Phoenix Police department is coming to New York!” beats pumping through the speakers “Do you want a career with the Phoenix Police Department? Do you want a make a difference while providing for your family? Do you want quality of life? Well if so, come work for us, bla bla bla bla beautiful bla bla warm bla bla bla rewarding bla bla safe….yeah right!
It’s funny to observe all the fallout from the bubble that is now just starting to appear…of course the average joe wouldn’t connect the dots but someones gotta protect all those desert bound dopes from the native gangs.
Lisoosh
“My dad worked on that stuff during the glory years – Bell Labs, Calteck, JPL and he wasn’t a boomer but from the “Silent Generation”, the war time babies”
We should get a beer together for sure, lisoosh. My dad is used to design missiles with Bristol Aircraft in the late 50s/early 60s. He grew up during the war, hiding under the dining room table when the bombers would come (they were on the south coast of England near a major defense installation). When I was a kid, I could always tell if he’d made my peanut butter and jelly sandwich rather than my mom, because it would be two slices of bread lightly flavored with PB&J.
Have you ever read Richard Feynman’s book “Surely Your Joking”?
265 BC
All of that I agree with
NJ – It took me years to work out how storied my dads early career actually was, ask any American aerospace or electronic engineer of the early 50’s and 60’s about the places he worked and they salivate. Unfortunately when we moved to the UK, he had to switch industries as it was impossible for him to get a high enough level of security clearance. Otherwise our parents might have been workmates.
My mom grew up in the North of Scotland in a town called Fraserburgh. It had the unfortunate distinction of being the place where the German airforce used to drop unused ordinance after bombing runs. I heard lots of stories about blackouts and gas masks and rationing. A lot of people died. When I used to visit in the summer, decades after the war, the beach still had enormous concrete blocks on it whose purpose was to make a land invasion more difficult.
My mom moved to California in the fifties; it was quite a culture shock, down to the food, cars and color TV’s in every room just to name a couple of things.
Mines a heavy by the way.
Healthcare maybe broken, but anything remotely close to the WAR industry is thriving.
“CNN reports that 88% in their online poll say Rep. Pete Stark should not apologize for telling Republicans, “You don’t have money to fund the war or children. But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people, if we could get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their head’s blow off for the president’s amusement.”
AT,
2 Scott Drive in Watchung. We were talking about this property earlier in the week, it’s a short-sale.
It was reduced from $995,900 to $699,000, approximately 219 days on market. It did, however, go into Attorney Review today.
thanks JB. I am in no hurry. We are going to see more of these puppies come on the market over the next few months.
Excerpts from an Interview with Sam Zell in the WSJ today:
_____________________________________________
He’s hoping I’ll catch the broader point, which is about managing risk — the subject we’re actually here to talk about. In his three-plus decades in the business, Mr. Zell has built a fortune doing deals in industries and business cycles where few were keen to tread. He’s come out with levels of success that left others wondering how they failed to see the opportunities that were there, plain as day.
The most recent of these high-wire acts was his sale in February of Equity Office Properties, the real estate investment trust he had built over decades, to Blackstone for $39 billion. At the time, business publications were unconvinced. “Is he cashing out too early?” one headline asked.
Instead, as we now know, the sale was at the top of the market, and only months before the credit meltdown that has shaken up a financial system. So was he seeing portents of a tightening last winter that others weren’t yet ready to acknowledge?
“Obviously, the deal that was done on Feb. 7 could not be done on Sept. 7,” Mr. Zell says, while insisting that he’s told everyone he didn’t try to deliberately pick a market top so much as weigh the offer against what his own instincts told him was the right price. “Somebody made an offer that was wide by a significant margin of my own valuation. So I’m looking in the mirror, and any day you don’t sell, you buy, and I wasn’t willing to buy at the price they were willing to pay, so I sold it.”
“We haven’t even begun to see the fraud that went on here,” he continues, pausing to put on his best Professor Risk face. Imagine you’re a broker on a starter home in California and it’s a $500,000 loan to a guy who makes maybe $45,000 a year, he says, and someone just changes the numbers and the loan goes through. “Two days later, some investor in Poland owns it. You’re out. You got your money . . . What disciplines you?”
So did we get carried away with the notion of homeownership as part of the American dream? “If you need to come up with some kind of a really sophisticated journalistic approach, I think what you could basically conclude is that the country can’t afford more than 65% homeownership, and that when we start pushing . . . you create a disaster. You push a bunch of people who can’t afford it into the homeownership dream, you have builders overbuilding, you have brokers overselling and it always ends up badly.”
ADA (269)-
Check the the housing derivatives markets at the Chicago Merc.
Volatile, thinly-traded and about as close to gambling as you can get. Hell, it is gambling.
My kind of fun.
Rising Seas Threaten 21 Mega-Cities
Oct 20 02:18 PM US/Eastern
By The Associated Press
BANGKOK, Thailand
Cities around the world are facing the danger of rising seas and other disasters related to climate change.
Of the 33 cities predicted to have at least 8 million people by 2015, at least 21 are highly vulnerable, says the Worldwatch Institute.
They include Dhaka in Bangladesh; Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro; Shanghai and Tianjin in China; Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt; Mumbai and Kolkata in India; Jakarta in Indonesia; Tokyo and Osaka-Kobe in Japan; Lagos in Nigeria; Karachi in Pakistan; Bangkok in Thailand, and New York and Los Angeles in the United States, according to studies by the United Nations and others.
More than one-tenth of the world’s population, or 643 million people, live in low-lying areas at risk from climate change, say U.S. and European experts. Most imperiled, in descending order, are China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Egypt, the U.S., Thailand and the Philippines.
____________________________________________
So it looks like Essex county is about the become waterfront property….I wonder if it will take out Newark as well?
http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2007/10/sivs-explained.html
Yep, eastern and southern Newark are just a few feet over , but starting with Irvington and East Orange, elevations are over 150 feet, according to Google Earth. Montclair and farther out are over 300 feet above sea level. manhattan is at or just above sea level (5 feet)
Observations that have been made the gen-x, gen-y, and boomers have been entertaining to say the least.
My parents were from the silent generation. I can tell you they have a very low opinion of the boomers. So I guess it’s no surprise that the boomers have a low opinion of the generations that followed them.
Ballot box opinions are what really matters. Our future depends on it.
BTW, I’ve worked really hard getting here….
That house in Watchung is almost worth the money.
Because of global warming I can use my pool in October. I love global warming.
284….there should be an awesome tide pool that runs up to the Wachtchung mountains…the houses in Montclair will have the best views at sunset over what was once Newark…..The island of Manhattan will relocate to Long Island….and so it goes.
Clot,
Glad to see you kicking some butt over at housing panic. While I always read the postings, its a good blog, but they have terrible commentors, so I rarely bother to read them, but I happened to look at the comments to the realtor posting and saw your comments. They do not have the diversity, intelligence, wit, or humor of our regular commentors here.
KL
kl (289)-
I go over to HP every once in a while to toss bombs. The moderator is a complete dumbass, though. He deletes 90% of my comments, but I think I’ve shamed him into letting more of my stuff through.
Of course, he has no problem with bitter invective from 15 different guys named “anonymous”.
No one who posts there keeps it moving like the guys here. They’re AA-ball, at best.
#275
Richard Feynman!! OMIGOD what a throwback… so sad that he died. I always wished I could have met him. That book was awesome!
He had some personality.
help with an address please??
gsmls# 2454766??
Thanks.
anti (281)-
Sam Zell is the smartest guy in the room…wherever he goes.
Thanks for that article.
Pretorius – did you see Trump’s post at 281? This was the Blackstone deal you alerted JB to a couple of months ago. What do you think of this take:
“The most recent of these high-wire acts was his sale in February of Equity Office Properties, the real estate investment trust he had built over decades, to Blackstone for $39 billion. At the time, business publications were unconvinced. “Is he cashing out too early?” one headline asked.
Instead, as we now know, the sale was at the top of the market, and only months before the credit meltdown that has shaken up a financial system. So was he seeing portents of a tightening last winter that others weren’t yet ready to acknowledge?
“Obviously, the deal that was done on Feb. 7 could not be done on Sept. 7,” Mr. Zell says, while insisting that he’s told everyone he didn’t try to deliberately pick a market top so much as weigh the offer against what his own instincts told him was the right price. “Somebody made an offer that was wide by a significant margin of my own valuation. So I’m looking in the mirror, and any day you don’t sell, you buy, and I wasn’t willing to buy at the price they were willing to pay, so I sold it.””
so much for THE tunnel
“J Transit executives responsible for developing plans for the proposed Trans-Hudson Express Tunnel and rail advocates disagree over whether recent changes to the plans for the $7.5 billion project are a step forward or backward.
NJ Transit officials last week detailed some recent changes in plans for the tunnel, which is in a preliminary engineering phase in which decisions are made about things like construction techniques. That also allows for refining cost estimates. ”
http://www.nj.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/business-3/1192680762172180.xml&coll=5
more tunnel news
http://www.thestreet.com/s/developers-vie-for-manhattan-footprint/newsanalysis/realestate/10383926.html?puc=googlefi
http://www.cpnonline.com/cpn/content_display/regions/northeast/new-york/e3ia3615def51405dc31e621734912a38fa
&
http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3MjAyMjM1JnlyaXJ5N2Y3MTdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5Mg==
btw & more OT, anyone remember the great club by the same name, Tunnel? … which for some reason makes me rethink limelight & the last great hurrah with DJ Keoki… man, what was I doing! driving stoned from there to go see Jr. Vasquez at 4am… good times :-) meh, now I’m old looking for a house with you people while listening to TKK in the background.
rhymingrealtor Says:
October 20th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
They do not have the diversity, intelligence, wit, or humor of our regular commentors here. KL
Karen: I’m just so excited!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDwODbl3muE
me,
22 Van Fleet
From the Courier Post Online:
State should revise farmland assessment
Farm products should be worth more than $500 a year to qualify for a property-tax break.
With developers eager to make money on turning farmland into housing tracts, the state should support working farmers. Reducing the state’s onerous tax burden on working farms helps make it financially possible for owners to stay on their land.
Although farmland assessments shift the tax burden onto other property owners, most realize the importance of protecting New Jersey’s dwindling open space, including its farms. Yet, taxpayers shouldn’t be turned into mules for gentlemen farmers or the well heeled who can buy huge plots, but then only farm a few acres, lease the property to real farmers or otherwise do as little as possible to earn a reduced tax rate.
Some residents in Moorestown — which is scheduled for a property revaluation — are understandably concerned about a farmland assessment Commerce Bank founder Vernon W. Hill II receives on 43 wooded acres surrounding his estate.
Hill pays just $295.98 in property taxes a year on the acreage because he harvests seven cords of wood. That’s enough to earn him a $60,000 tax break on this land under the farmland assessment program.
…
Many states make an effort to target working farms with tax breaks. New Jersey should continue to do so, too. But property owners should be required to earn more than $500 a year to qualify for the state’s farmland assessment. That’s too low. New York requires farmers to earn at least $10,000 in order to receive a tax break.
It is time for New Jersey officials to reassess its farmland tax abatement program to ensure it is not misused as a tax haven that leaves other property owners picking up the tab.
think (297)-
If you remember Tunnel, you must remember Save the Robots. A proper den of iniquity.
She traded the Upper East Side for Edgewater
Jennifer Lincoln had been renting on the Upper East Side and commuting to midtown for her job at Coach, the designer leather goods company, where she has worked for almost seven years.
Last year, she began house-hunting.
“Buying a place is a good investment,” she said. “It was time for me to buy. I had saved a little bit of money.”
She looked in New York City and Long Island City. She considered Hoboken and elsewhere along New Jersey’s Gold Coast.
Ultimately, her hunt brought her to Edgewater and The Peninsula at City Place, a complex of 201 apartments converted into luxury condominiums by the New York-based developer Savanna Partners, known for its luxury developments in Manhattan.
Homes range from 837 to 1,698 square feet, and prices range from the low $400,000s to almost $1.3 million. The complex is 35 percent sold.
The condos are situated above a village of such premium retail outlets as Ann Taylor Loft and Sharper Image. There’s fine dining, a gym and spa next door and a multiplex cinema.
Lincoln, a single woman in her 30s, moved into her south-facing one-bedroom, one-bath unit in April.
As a single woman, she represents one of the two emerging home buyer categories, according to real estate analyst Jeffrey Otteau. Immigrants make up the other such category.
Single women account for 22 percent of home sales in New Jersey, compared with 9 percent for single men. Forty percent of condominium buyers are single women.
According to Otteau, single women are particularly drawn to condominiums because the cluster-type housing offers the security and comfort of having other people nearby, and owners don’t have to deal with exterior maintenance.
Both those points were important to Lincoln.
“The Peninsula is beautiful, modern and all brand-new, so it’s easy to maintain. It’s a good first home,” she said. “Having the stores there is nice. I can easily run errands and easily pick up things. And, with the 24-hour concierge, I felt I could be taken care of if I need directions or need somebody to receive packages.”
Moving up from the close-in suburbs to farther out? Downsizing? Moving from one part of town to another? E-mail Mary Amoroso at MaryAmo@aol.com.
Inventory in Northern NJ is up big time, I think those dumb yuppies are running out of dumb money.
‘“boomer” is the greatest racial epitaph evvver.’
My vote for stupidest post ever.
Chifi??
You confused me, I liked it better backwards.
Clot,
I understand your point, about the moderator, but the doctored pictures & articles, make me laugh everyday. Hint hint- grim, we need some more humor. (-:
KL
a little off the topic, to all the gamblers here: with dow down 565 points, what is your prediction on monday’s market?
btw, i am going to cover my dug before losing my wagers
#301 and the The Pyramid Club and King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut.
Some firms replace offshoring with onshoring
I guess pretty soon NYC jobs outsourcing will increase as well.
308#, this is good trend. the quality of service from india sucks.
Yan:
Mumbai gumbo……
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21397966/
comp breakers occurring all over.
hehehhehehe
More humor? OK….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UyxR9g7xi4&mode=related&search=
Lennar has a full page ad in today’s Bergen Record RE section. Deals, deals and more deals. Feeling the pinch, are we?
Here’s a tip for those fat, drunk and stupid homeowners (and there are still many) “demanding” their price: forget it.
And for the realtors: get out of that 3 series lease quick, you’ll be hard pressed to keep up payments on a ’95 Escort let alone anything that says “import”. Since you’re so used to commissions, perhaps a job at the Tick Tock Diner will suffice now that you realize you have to work for a living.
…and now something for Gen-Y (a.k.a. grim polska slackonska)….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUEI7mm8M7Q&mode=related&search=
chicagofinance 314,
Like….. I don’t get it…… is that like…. a game or something??
anyone paying near asking is a moron.
Clotpoll Says:
October 21st, 2007 at 8:16 am
think (297)-If you remember Tunnel, you must remember Save the Robots. A proper den of iniquity.
clot: back when Union Square was full of hypodermic needles, and 14th Street east of 4th Ave was nasty, you had the Palladium.
So getting in for my type was hit and miss. If you got nixed because you were underage, skinny, ugly, without girls, and no money, you ended up having to walk over to the shot&beer pool hall Julians, which is were I think the PC Richards is now across from ConEd headquarters off Irving Place. Anyway, two guys I knew from high school were using the Julian’s back-up plan, and on the next table over from them were Bono and the Edge (1983/84)….
We knew it was over when Downtown Julie Brown started Club MTV and then they opened up the Coffee Shop on 16th & USqW.
Personally, I really miss Dan Lynch’s which was on 2nd Avenue right below 14th. A hole in the wall with a floor level stage. Starting at 4PM on Saturday’s they just had open mike and then they collected cover at 9PM. $1.50 Prior’s went down like water…..
According to realtor Bob Lindsay, if you wait to buy, the price might be less but your mortgage rates might be higher. See, and you guys thought all realtors were the same and didn’t care.
The Palladium!! Yeah baby!! The Allman Brothers!! Played for 4 hours!! No A/C in the place, it broke!! Soaking wet when it was all over!!
“A large pension plan that owns shares of struggling Countrywide Financial Corp. has asked the board of the United States’ largest mortgage lender to oust Chairman and CEO Angelo Mozilo.”
“The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which counts 1.4 million members, made the request in a letter sent to the company’s board late Thursday.”
http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/20/news/companies/bc.na.fin.com.us.countrywide.ap/index.htm?postversion=2007102018
Paris Sheraton Says:
October 21st, 2007 at 12:08 pm
chicagofinance 314,
Like….. I don’t get it…… is that like…. a game or something??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_(game_show)
William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy both guested on the ABC Pyramid in the 1970s, on a week which was billed as Kirk vs. Spock. Shatner became infamous in 1977 for throwing a chair across the stage after giving an illegal clue on the final subject (“Things That Are Blessed”; Shatner inadvertently gave a clue containing the word “blessed”), which cost his partner $20,000. (Interestingly, Shatner — an occasional Pyramid panelist — rarely appeared as a semi-regular on the daytime show after that.) On one episode two years earlier, Shatner played the Winner’s Circle by himself (giving the clues in one chair then racing to the other and guessing the subject), but yet he still failed by not clearing the top box subject “Men Named William (Bill)”. Then the producers decided that since he played by himself, they gave him the prize anyway.
Chifi 314
Now that one I got (-: -as soon as I saw space invaders my fingers started twitching.
KL
Giants 16 – 49ers 13
It’ll be one of those games.
no mention of “The Limelight”?
Njpatient #295,
Equity Office Properties sales timing was impeccable, price was very good.
EOP sold itself at the peak, and board did a super job managing the sales process.
However, Blackstone quickly flipped a lot of the properties for a lot more EOP sold them for only a few weeks earlier. So one could make the argument that EOP should’ve captured that pricing for itself.
I believe Zell and the EOP did right by the shareholders, which isn’t always the case when a REIT sells itself. If I was an EOP shareholder, I would’ve been satisfied with the process and the outcome.
Should have added to the above post that I would’ve been satisfied with the price back in February. In retrospect, everybody thinks EOP sold at the right time and the right price.
English Humor on SIVs.
George Par on Subprime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ_qK4g6ntM
re 299
thanks jb!
sl
Sean [327],
Great stuff!!
“Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan says a multibillion-dollar fund that top banks are assembling to settle jittery financial markets may hurt rather than help.”
“Rather than a “super fund” to prop up prices of distressed securities, Greenspan argued the prices of these assets should be allowed to fall until speculative excesses are wrung out and bargain-hunters emerge.”
“If you intervene in the system, the vultures stay away,” he said. “The vultures sometimes are very useful.”
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Business/New-fund-may-hurt-markets-Greenspan/2007/10/20/1192301077067.html
297, 302 and every other post about nightclubs in NYC-
I knew I must have run across you people in the past. FYI, the Tunnel is having a reunion and someone has a Limelight page.
http://www.myspace.com/limelightclub
http://www.myspace.com/thetunnelnightclub
I am debating on whether or not to go to Limelight on NYE this year. I’m old but I’m not that old.
Clot re: Save the Robots- several nights there I cannot remember- which is probably a good thing. Did you know Reese by any chance?
I think I’m being moderated.
Raid the 401k?
COLEMAN INTRODUCES BILL TO HELP HOMEOWNERS FACING FORECLOSURE
Legislation would allow for tax-free retirement savings withdrawals
October 19th, 2007 – Washington DC – In an effort to provide relief to homeowners who are facing foreclosure due to difficulty with their mortgage payments, Senator Norm Coleman yesterday introduced the Home Ownership Mortgage Emergency Act (HOME Act). The HOME Act would allow homeowners who are 60 days late in their mortgage payments to withdraw penalty-free up to $100,000 from their retirement accounts through 2009 for the purpose of refinancing into an affordable mortgage or avoid foreclosure. Except for very limited cases, a 10% penalty is currently applied to early retirement distributions, although the tax code waives this penalty for distributions from Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) for first-time home purchases. The HOME Act would make withdrawals for the purpose of refinancing or avoiding foreclosure penalty-free as well, as long as they are paid back within three years. Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL), former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is a cosponsor.
Coleman is also an original cosponsor of Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Modernization Act of 2007, which would allow more homeowners to refinance with Federal Housing Administration-backed loans, increase penalties for fraud, and ensure pre-purchase counseling demonstrations are available for first time home buyers. Additionally, he is a cosponsor of the Mortgage Cancellation Relief Act of 2007, which will make mortgage debt forgiveness tax-free.
S. 2201 would allow borrowers to access up to $100,000 of their retirement account in order to bring their mortgage current. The borrower will be allowed to repay the amount back into his or her retirement account over three years without incurring a penalty. The bill requires that the delinquent mortgage must be on a principal residence and that the borrower must have an adjusted gross income of $114,000 or less ($166,000 or less for joint filers). The borrower must be at least 60 days behind on his or her mortgage to qualify. The option would be available through December 31, 2009.
Kempner stressed that, if this were enacted into law, it would be crucial that consumers fully understand how this allowance would work.
“It is essential that borrowers completely understand the repayment requirements so as to avoid future tax penalties and to ensure replenishment of retirement savings,” warned Kempner. “We need to make sure that borrowers who decide to use this approach in order to catch up on their mortgage are able to save their home and also pay back their retirement account.”
My take would be that this loan from your 401K penalty free for the first three years, isn’t just to let you catch up on your payments. It is designed to allow you to refinance your mortgage since you need to come up with allot of cash to do so.
Seems to me, the first mortgage holder and the new lender come out the winners here. Could also be bad for the stock market since if there were a major shift of 401K asset allocation from Stocks the market would tank.
“Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin said inflation measures that exclude food and energy costs are a “better guide” to underlying changes in prices.”
“Changes in price indexes without food and energy “provide a clearer picture of underlying inflation pressures,” Mishkin said in the text of remarks to the HEC Montreal Macroeconomics and Monetary Policy Conference today. “If the monetary authorities react to headline inflation numbers, they run the risk of responding to merely temporary fluctuations.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aohaOKFSvu.I
Temporary fluctuations? Ever consider a 90 day or 180 day moving average to smooth out those “temporary” moves? What is the fed’s definition of temporary? I guesss it’s all relative. The CRB has experienced a steady, low vol, staircase climb for almost 6 “temporary” years.
http://charts3.barchart.com/chart.asp?jav=adv&vol=Y&grid=Y&divd=Y&org=stk&sym=CIX7&data=H&code=BSTK&evnt=adv
#331,
This is the dumbest solution yet, how about foreclosing instead and saving your 401K?
#329,
How come he did not have this wisdom when he was the Fed Chairman? Maybe he was busy banging his young wife.
Frank [334],
I want to know why he is speaking in plain Eng now?
Clot
Do you cover Matawan at all? If so, can you get my email from Grim?
#331.
Can’t believe these morons in the senate run our country.
JB or others,
could you look up the history of mls 2396290 in Warren?
Much thanks,
afe
331#, the impact to 401k will be minimum since most homeowners do not need this kind of rescue. it helps only those who are in deperate situation if it helps.
Contrarying to what most folks here think, Colemen and many law makers still believe home ownership is a good thing to the community.
#334,
Now that he has a kid and has to make real money like the rest of us, he needs to worry about a paycheck. They should lack up Greenspan with Kozlowski, Ebbers and O.J. they are perfect for each other.
I sincerely doubt that subprimer’s that have problems paying their mortgage (let alone understanding the terms of their mortgage) have 401k’s.
-R
“Greenspan Says Dollar Drop May Reflect Falling U.S. Debt Demand”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axFICu7XqPXI&refer=home
Another dumb statement, if demand has fallen how come rates took a dive this week? Just shut up 8 million dollar man!!
“Mortgage Security Bondholders Facing a Cutoff of Interest Payments”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/business/22market.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Opps no soup for you…
Weeee, weeeeeeee, I wont get my interest payment, weeeeeeeeeeeee……
Afe
2396290
32 Valley view road DOM 190
Original List Price 829,900
Current list price 699,900
KL
Frank [342],
The printing press and that mysterious trading office in the Caribbean were working overtime.
holding out wait for the tap out.
Do you really think most subprime borrowers put anything into their 401-Ks?
Someone who has bad credit and can’t afford a downpayment most likely didn’t save towards retirement. It does not take much research to prove this one. I’m pretty certain that most would have already depleted what little 401K cash they had paying off the credit cards which is probably what put them into subprime mode.
pret (325)-
Sam Zell was the REIT investor’s best friend…ever. You point a finger at that guy…you point a finger at the best RE investor in American history. Zell is- and was- everything a guy like Trump could only hope to be.
He caught a bid at a price he knew he wouldn’t pay for his own company, were he on the outside looking in. That’s all he needed to know it was time to sell.
Simplicity and genius met in that moment.
And, Sam Zell has had 5-6 of those moments in his career.
346, but the bill did not limit to only subprime borrowers. some over leveraged alt-A folks may use it for temporary relief as they wished.
lost (335)-
Where’s Matawan?
Clot always the wiseguy.
BC (344)-
I think the Carribbean trading office might be having some Red Stripes tonight and watching John Henry’s 103M bet come in.
DiceK just pounding the strike zone.
$hit. Dice-K’s whole package equals about a morning’s worth of bad trading for Henry.
Clotpoll Says:
October 21st, 2007 at 9:30 pm
lost (335)- Where’s Matawan?
clot: the area northwest of the PNC Art Center – probably one of the first livable towns on the NJ Coast line unless you want to count Woodbridge or South Amboy.
Thanks, ChiFi. I’ve heard about Matawan, but I truly didn’t know where it was.
Rhyming:
I thought I’d seen this house before
But then I thought, oh, I don’t know
Price drops make me think before I shop
Hey don’t sign that contract, stop stop stop!!
Thank-you!
I know lame, but I tried!! :)
“On international issues, McCain said he was concerned about Russia’s recent moves. He said when he looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes, he didn’t see his soul, he only saw three letters: K-G-B.”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303827,00.html
304…
http://www.randomimage.us/21134.html
Clotpoll,
RU saying that I disrespected Zell?!
This is what I wrote:
“I believe Zell and the EOP did right by the shareholders, which isn’t always the case when a REIT sells itself. If I was an EOP shareholder, I would’ve been satisfied with the process and the outcome.”
Blatantly, I think the guy did a great job.
smellz like teen spirit – cobain rules!
narcassistic boomers got off easy via Jimmy, Janis & Jim.
we’re just dying to reap the grim boomer revolution
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/opinion/21rich.html?em&ex=1193198400&en=c90b9129680b2905&ei=5087
p.s. we’re quite aware it wouldn’t be televised.
i meant ‘grim’ reaper, not prophet
cool!
http://e.egoisci.pl/eg1700/1d9bad920001ed104569f6ba
Suzanne rocked this!
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/us/22auction.html?_r=1&ref=realestate&oref=slogin
Buyers Pounce as Homes Go on the Block
Nathan Harris, 23, bought lot 8A, a four-bedroom house near the University of Minnesota, for $80,000. He had been willing to bid as high as $150,000.
Since he is still a part-time student, Mr. Harris chose an interest-only mortgage, which will convert to a 25-year adjustable rate mortgage after five years, the type of exotic mortgage many critics and lawmakers blame for the foreclosure crisis. But he said he was not worried: in five years, when his mortgage adjusts, it will still be on a principal of only $80,000.
load up on reits, its’ fun to do, well whatever nevermind, hello, hello, hello.
…
…
sorry, i just saw iggy pop’s (bowie?) passenger on a kohl’s commercial & well, nevermind.
I’ll tell you Gen-X and Gen-Y-ers a secret: Us boomers thought our parents were self-involved pricks too. If you think that by being YOUR kids’ “best buddy” you’re going to spare yourselves from this, guess again.
We hated our parents because when the FICA tax was doubled, it was so THEY could work at the same secure job till they were 65, retire with a gold watch and a company-paid pension and company-paid medical benefits — on our nickel.
We hated our parents because they insisted that Glenn Miller made the greatest music ever made by a human being and every other type of music was crap.
We hated our parents because they thought that since they fought World War II, the world owed them a living.
I was born in 1955. I didn’t own a house till I was 41. We rented inexpensive apartments, didn’t go out for expensive dinners, bought subcompact cars and ran them into the ground. And we got socked on income taxes because we didn’t have kids.
When I look around at the kids living in the McMansions now, the ones who never, ever have to share a bathroom, their parents aren’t boomers (the youngest of whom are 41). They are largely in their early to mid-30’s. The boomers on my block are the ones in the POS ranches and capes, while the young families buy the bash ‘n’ builds.
The boomers are hardly monolithic. Yes, there are some who are like George W. Bush. They are the ones who waved flags in the late 1960’s and supported the Vietnam War but did whatever they had to to make sure THEY didn’t have to fight. Others of us worked hard to try to create a more just society for everyone. And we’re still doing it. You can laugh at the “old hippies” that show up at progressive Meetups and antiwar marches and such, but who the hell do you think we’re still doing it for?
Are there boomers who sold out? Absolutely. Did we not achieve what we’d hoped to? Absolutely. But what the hell are YOU doing, other than whining and blaming the boomers? Most of us got over blaming the World War II generation for giving us a quagmire in Vietnam and Nixon. It’s time for you guys to get over it too and start living your life. We’re still out here trying to get this country back to what it was when we were growing up — a place we could be proud of, where there was opportunity for every generation. Now are you going to sit and whine, or step away from your internet porn long enough to join us?
pret (360)-
Not pointing the finger at you. My comment was rhetorical.