From the NY Times:
State Leads Nation in Down-Payment Size
BUYERS in New Jersey have the highest down-payment rate in the country, putting down an average 13.71 percent of the purchase price, according to a new report from LendingTree. That surpasses percentages in cities like Washington, and states like New York, Hawaii and California, though only by tenths of a point. In New York, the average down payment works out to 13.47 percent. The national average is 12.24 percent, for the year ending in November.
Of course, very few borrowers pay the average percentage, which is computed by figuring out the average down payment on conventional loans made by banks and government-insured Federal Housing Administration or Department of Veterans Affairs loans, which have down payment minimums of 3.5 percent.
Countrywide, about a quarter of all mortgage loans are government-backed, according to lending specialists.
State market experts offered various nuanced reasons for New Jersey’s unenviable top position on the list compiled by LendingTree, which tries to match borrowers and favorable mortgage deals. Most boiled down to this: There is more higher-priced housing in New Jersey than in most other states. The bigger a mortgage loan is, the greater the percentage that lenders now require in down payment.
…
Mortgage lenders have “definitely tightened loan requirements across the board in the last three years,” said Michael DiSalvio, the president of the Mortgage Bankers Association of New Jersey and an account manager for Genworth Financial. “We’ve learned our lesson.”But he also said all of the roughly 75 banks belonging to the association offered some loans to qualified buyers of midpriced homes with just 5 percent down.
“We are stricter with credit scores for buyers,” he said. “Our limit is 660 to 670 from FICO, while the F.H.A. will take lower, maybe down to 640. We also have tightened the debt-to-income ratio; we keep it at 45 percent of buyers’ projected income, and F.H.A. will keep it at 55 percent. But 5 percent money is out there, it is widely available” among banks.
…
Sounding the same note as LendingTree’s founder and chief executive, Douglas Lebda, who announced results of the down-payment study last month, Mr. DiSalvio opposed federal regulators’ idea for a 20 percent down payment on conventional loans carrying the lowest interest rates. He said such a move would “suffocate” the housing industry.
…
“It would destroy us,” said Edward Walters Jr., the founding partner of the Walters Group, a development company that is building on 370 acres of the Pinelands region in southern New Jersey. (The Ocean Acres development where the Gallaghers bought their house is a part of it.)Mr. Walters put it this way: “You don’t have to have a degree from Harvard to recognize that average people, making average salaries, paying normal utility and tax bills, figuring in the cost of food and gas, and considering loan interest rates of 5 or 6 percent, these people will not be able to afford a $350,000-to-$450,000 house — which is what about 80 percent of what our product is — if they have to come up with 20 percent down.”
From HousingWire:
Freddie extends mortgage forbearance for unemployed
Mortgage finance firm Freddie Mac will give unemployed borrowers a break on their mortgage for up to one year.
“These expanded forbearance periods will provide families facing prolonged periods of unemployment with a greater measure of security by giving them more time to find new employment and resolve their delinquencies,” said Tracy Mooney, senior vice president of single-family servicing and REO at Freddie Mac.
“We believe this will put more families back on track to successful long-term homeownership,” Mooney adds.
Freddie said the new deal expands the powers of mortgage servicers. The edict gives servicers the ability to forebear a mortgage for six months without prior approval from Freddie. Freddie Mac can approve an additional six months after that.
Previously, Freddie Mac allowed servicers to grant up to three months of forbearance with no payment, or six months at a reduced payment, without prior approval.
The new options go into effect on Feb. 1.
Longer forbearance times used to be restricted to events such as natural disasters, permanent disability or long-term medical emergencies — and required prior approval.
From Bloomberg:
Foreclosures Worsen in New York, New Jersey as Arizona, California Improve
The number of homes in the foreclosure (HOMFCLOS) pipeline is increasing in states including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, where the process is slowed by courts, as Arizona, California and Nevada digest their backlog.
Home loans that were delinquent or in foreclosure fell in three states hit hard by the housing market collapse, dropping 19 percent in Nevada, 21 percent in California and 25 percent in Arizona in the year through Nov. 30, Lender Processing Services Inc. reported today. At the same time, they rose 7.4 percent in New Jersey, 5.2 percent in Connecticut and 2 percent in New York, as mandatory judicial procedures delayed seizures.
It’s “a tale of two countries,” Herb Blecher, senior vice president at LPS Applied Analytics, a unit of the Jacksonville, Florida-based mortgage-services company, said in a telephone interview from Denver. “There are certainly two different scenarios that can play out.”
The pace of foreclosures slowed in the past year in so- called judicial states after banks and loan servicers faced investigations over documentation procedures used to seize property. Speedier foreclosures may allow housing markets to recover faster while not giving homeowners as much opportunity to stop the repossession of their properties, Blecher said.
The 24 judicial states include Florida, where 23 percent of homes with a mortgage were delinquent or in foreclosure, the most of any state, Lender Processing Services said. The state also took the longest to foreclose, with an average of 1,017 days of delinquency in November, followed by Maine, New York, Vermont and New Jersey, all judicial states.
Interesting!
Extinction before recovery.
It’s all hurtling off a cliff at 110 mph.
Degrees unemployment rate and salaries
http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/Unemployment.Final.pdf
WIFE: Good you’re early coming home
HUSBAND: Just followed my boss suggestion,”go to hell” :)
I can handle a truncheon. Methinks that sets me up for a jump in pay in the near future.
Good Morning New Jersey
yo 6 , like that one.
Ah articles on a saturday… Will Sunday be a day or rest for Grim???
Grim,,, you could never be a politician,,,, You work to hard,,,,
Thanks for the info and entertainment also
Almost forgot
Morning MIKE & New Jersey
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204331304577144934187722016.html?mod=rss_Heard_on_the_Street&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SECLAWWSJ+%28WSJ.com%3A+Heard+on+the+Street%29
Was just a matter of time . Principal Reductions. Vote pandering at its finest ,so many
people are upside down it was just a matter of time
I can fondly remember people having mortgage burning parties in Brooklyn, back in the day when mortgages were $10K – $20K and property taxes were @ $200 – $400. They truly owned their homes, when mortgage was paid off. Nowadays even if you pay off your $700K mortgage, the town still owns your house with your $30K taxes.
Sad part : Many homeowners in NJ still believe , its coming back , i’m not giving my
house away. After all its NNJ and everyone here has money. New Car(cheap lease),
nice rags, finest foods, best coffee,(nation runs on Dunking )
How long can this continue ?
Even the Lotto is broke
Lottery checks bounce for 85 winners in Illinois
#14 And when you ask many of them why it is coming back, the answer is ?? Because!! And I am serious.
How about riots to protest declining home prices? The Unicorns have arrived
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-faces-social-unrest-from-housing-woes-2012-01-05
Coast and grim gave me an idea. Ski weekend GTG in VT?
Mortgage lenders have “definitely tightened loan requirements across the board in the last three years,” said Michael DiSalvio, the president of the Mortgage Bankers Association of New Jersey and an account manager for Genworth Financial. “We’ve learned our lesson.”
Sell? Sell to whom? By the way, I’m starting to see some “liveable” houses in Graydon and Ellery type towns sniffing the low fours.
Tick… tick… tick… tick…
There is more higher-priced housing in New Jersey than in most other states. The bigger a mortgage loan is, the greater the percentage that lenders now require in down payment.
Kinda tough to keep up the image with the myriad of costs on top of the granite ball called a mortgage and taxes, don’t ya think? Compound that with a substantial decrease in job security and we’re talking…. top of the fifth inning. You think I’m kidding?
Mr. Walters put it this way: “You don’t have to have a degree from Harvard to recognize that average people, making average salaries, paying normal utility and tax bills, figuring in the cost of food and gas, and considering loan interest rates of 5 or 6 percent, these people will not be able to afford a $350,000-to-$450,000 house — which is what about 80 percent of what our product is — if they have to come up with 20 percent down.”
Hold on, let me go get my f*cking violin.
Judge grants and postpone Mayweather jail time to June 1.Fight on for May 5
Who are these people in NY and NY paying less than 20%? During our search periods in NYC and NJ, we were told nothing less than 20% would do, more would be better.
gary [21],
It’s an interesting quote nevertheless. You don’t need a degree from Harvard – indeed you don’t need much more than a sixth grade education – to recognize that a strict 20% DP requirement would reduce the average price of houses to $125k, because Mr. Walters’ “average people” couldn’t save $25k if their lives depended on it.
Since one can’t build a house for that anywhere in NJ, he’d be out of business, i.e. he’s talking his book. For once, I would like to see a journalist ask a hard question. Like “Mr. Walters, how about you hold the paper for the 3% buyers instead of putting the taxpayers on the hook?“
#23 correction – I meant NY and NJ, not NY and NY.
Listen here all you nancy boys. THIS is how a MAN dresses for a performance review.
http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/387968_3032465893603_1321575517_3250049_1112409129_n.jpg
the bosses secretary is so hot for you she eases any pain or dis apointment.
I’ve given up on NJ so focusing on CT as you get more land and pay less property taxes. Southern CT is impossible to touch (Greenwich, Darien, Westport). Sometimes you catch a surprise in those towns like a decent starter house drops from 650K to 550K but you have to be johnny on the spot. I love Wilton and Weston but impossible to commute to NYC. Stamford and Norwalk have bad public schools and city crime although some nice enclaves exist. I like Fairfield as I lived there years ago. Mixture of culture, good restaurants, not too snooty. Several universities and GE somewhat shield you tax-wise. Commute sucks at 75m to Grand Central but have to sacrifice something. I consider it a NYC exurb really. Still, there are so many stubborn-@ss sellers. I count 1 price reduction in the past month yet there are almost 500 homes for sale. Many of the listings have been there for months and 80% don’t sell. They are either pulled from the market (when sellers don’t get fantasy 2008 price), expire after 6-12 months or enter foreclosure. It is stunning really. This week – the first 6 “new” listings were foreclosures on homes I tracked previously. 3 others were yanked months back and appear magically as “new” listings. 1 is a legit brand new listing and asking 2008 price. How long can this sh%t go on? Home sales were down 30% YoY for christ’s sake. 5th inning indeed. 2012 will be a major capitulation year.
Good Morning Funnel
CT is the same kind of shitball NJ is. People there just have a few manners.
Extinction before recovery.
Bystander- You can live in Greenwich for less than you think. I spent Christmas at this home.
http://www.dwell.com/slideshows/pastoral-manner.html?slide=1&c=y&paused=true
Googled for most watched videos on You Tube and Justin Bieber has two in the top 10, one with 670,000,000 views and the other with 290,000,000 http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_youtube_videos_of_all_time.php HOW SCARY IS THAT?
Interesting living space. I like the master bath.
[30] coast
Wow. About 20 years ago, I knew a guy in Winchester, MA who did the same thing. He was still in the early stages of reno, so we played indoor street hockey in the main sanctuary. His kitchen area was underneath the loft bedroom and he papered it with wine labels soaked off of bottles.
For the Everton fans out there, I found an Everton bar in Philly. It’s called O’Neals, and it is on 3rd or 4th, near South. Got no grief for being Toon, and all agreed, anythings better than being a Gooner.
Clot,
I agree. CT is not necessarily better just somewhat chiller. The d-baggery level is pretty high in many Fairfield County towns (especially Greenwich, Darien,New Canaan) . Malloy is a shill and union panderer but at least there are not these little fiefdoms that crush the taxpayer.
Clot,
I agree. CT is not necessarily better just somewhat chiller. The d-baggery level is pretty high in many Fairfield County towns (especially Greenwich, Darien,New Canaan) . Malloy is a shill and union panderer but at least there are not these little fiefdoms that crush the taxpayer. CT public thievery is much more subtle and I appreciate that..
I’m a spur fan. Don’t hate me.
Power of prayer!
yo,
Spare me. They were talking about giving him the hook before the game even started. When he carries a team all year long like Manning did, then I’ll believe. I have nothing against the guy, he’s a good guy, just the endless nauseating hype.
gary: I was neutral on the subject, but I had the displeasure of watching my firts post-game press conference with Tebow. He’s an a-hole of the highest order. What is on the face a pious display of humbleness is actually arrogance and narcissism that defiles his believes.
Where’s pret?
BUSINESS
JANUARY 9, 2012
Wall Street Prepares to Take Big Pay Cut
By LIZ RAPPAPORT And COLIN BARR
A dismal year means Wall Street is about to take a big hit to its wallet.
As banks prepare to report fourth-quarter results and make final bonus decisions for 2011, total compensation is likely to be the lowest since 2008, when the financial crisis destroyed some firms and left many survivors on government life support.
While still lofty compared to the rest of the U.S., pay for some Wall Street workers will be the lowest in years, at a time when critics have been lashing out at what they deem excessive finance-industry compensation.
At Goldman Sachs Group Inc., many of the roughly 400 partners can expect to see their 2011 pay cut at least in half from 2010, according to people familiar with the situation. Pay for some employees in the New York company’s fixed-income trading business will shrink by 60%, with some workers getting no bonus, these people said.
Morgan Stanley is expected to shrink bonuses for some investment bankers and traders by 30% to 40% from 2010, said people familiar with the matter.
Pay worries have been mounting up and down Wall Street for months amid lower trading revenue, languid deal-making, new regulations and anxiety about the global economy. Other pressures include weak financial-company stock prices and sour public sentiment that culminated in the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York.
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., one of the biggest banks, is set to report earnings Friday, followed next week by Goldman and other major banking firms.
For most of 2011, Wall Street executives offered few specifics about how the lackluster year would affect compensation, especially the large portion that will be paid out as bonuses in the coming weeks.
Each quarter the banks set aside a percentage of revenue for benefit costs. Through the first three quarters of 2011, total compensation and benefit costs at 34 publicly traded financial firms tracked by The Wall Street Journal were on pace for a record-high $172 billion. The calculation is based on the companies’ reported results and projections by analysts.
But industry observers expect that when all is said and done for the year, many firms will adjust their benefits costs sharply downward, partly to appease shareholders frustrated by soft profits. If the companies apply the same ratio for 2011 as 2010, overall compensation and benefits for last year would be $159 billion for the 34 companies tracked by the Journal, the smallest total since 2008.
At Goldman, average compensation per employee would fall 10.7% to $385,000 for 2011 from $431,000 in 2010 if the New York company keeps its payout rate steady in the fourth quarter. In 2007, Goldman employees received an average of $661,000 each, and people throughout the firm are bracing for disappointment.
Analysts who follow Goldman expect the securities firm’s revenue to fall 23% for 2011 compared with 2010, according to a survey by FactSet Research Systems Inc. For the typical Goldman partner, pay for 2011, including base salary and bonus, is likely to range from $3 million to $6.5 million, according to people familiar with the matter. In better years, payouts have been at least twice as high, these people said.
On Friday, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Brad Hintz said he expects Goldman to earn just 77 cents a share for the fourth quarter, down from his previous estimate of $3.15 a share. “We do not expect a robust recovery in 2012,” Mr. Hintz wrote.
More ominously, executives at some financial firms foresee longer-term changes as a result of economic and regulatory shifts that will limit profitability.
“Companies definitely have to realize the party as they know it is over,” said Rose Marie Orens, a senior partner at Compensation Advisory Partners, a New York firm that works with compensation committees at public-company boards.
In many cases, pay cuts on Wall Street will come mostly at the top because that is where the largest bonuses are paid. Before the crisis, financial firms competed aggressively to attract and keep up-and-coming talent to groom for the future.
As a result of the looming cuts, though, some midlevel employees at investment banks might make more than their managing-director or executive bosses this year, said people familiar with the matter.
Wall Street has always reined in pay when times are tough, but competition for star traders and investment bankers discouraged firms from making big overall changes. In the wake of the financial crisis, some firms shrank bonuses and increased base salaries to bend to political pressure. Regulators argued that heavy reliance on bonuses encouraged excessive risk-taking.
A broader reckoning is under way now amid widespread cost-cutting. In the second half of 2011, two dozen major global banks and securities firms made plans for a total of 103,000 job cuts. For many Wall Street executives and staff, the new pay structures and cuts in company perks already have hampered their lifestyles. Instead of large cash payouts each year, bankers now are getting more and more of their own companies’ shares. Some cash-strapped employees have sold second homes or gotten loans from their companies to pay bills, said people familiar with the matter.
For now, companies are still using larger chunks of their revenue for employee pay. The Journal’s analysis projects that 36% of revenue will go toward compensation and benefits in 2011, up from 33% in 2010.
The analysis assumes that the banks, securities firms, asset managers, exchange operators and other companies for the fourth quarter will hold steady the percentage of revenue used for compensation as in the first three quarters.
They don’t always do this, however: In each of the past two years, Goldman has reduced its pay ratio in the fourth quarter, holding down compensation and boosting profits.
One bright spot this year could be bonuses given out in stock. The stock-price slide that battered most financial firms in 2011, wiping out $295 billion in market capitalization from the 34 companies in the Journal’s analysis, means that stock-based bonuses about to be doled out will be cheap compared with previous years. That could mean a big windfall down the road for employees if financial firms’ stocks climb.
—Aaron Lucchetti contributed to this article.
Some just more equal than others:
“Even the police are driving Porsches.
“Chinese officials love their cars — big, fancy, expensive cars. A chocolate-colored Bentley worth $560,000 is cruising the streets of Beijing with license plates indicating it is registered to Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party headquarters. The armed police, who handle riots and crowd control, have the same model of Bentley in blue.
“And just in case it needs to go racing off to war, the Chinese army has a black Maserati that sells in China for $330,000.”
snip
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-china-corruption-on-wheels-20120108,0,4555295.story?track=lat-pick
“For the typical Goldman partner, pay for 2011, including base salary and bonus, is likely to range from $3 million to $6.5 million, according to people familiar with the matter. In better years, payouts have been at least twice as high, these people said.”
I don’t know how they will have the strength to get up and go to work
Good ad. I don’t know how Satan-orium is considered a more serious candidate than this guy:
http://jon2012.com/tv-ad-fund
Go fatboy…go fatboy…go…
NY POLITICSJANUARY 9, 2012.Christie Pledges School Aid Battle
New Jersey Governor Seeks to Remake Supreme Court in Effort to Change Education Funding for Poor and Urban Districts.Article Comments more in New York | Find New $LINKTEXTFIND$ ».Email Print Save ↓ More .
.smaller Larger By HEATHER HADDON
TRENTON—Gov. Chris Christie plans a new challenge to a court-ordered state education funding formula that has provided billions of dollars in extra funding to poverty-stricken schools within the so-called Abbott districts.
While he didn’t discuss specifics of how he would continue the fight, Mr. Christie said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that he would nominate two state Supreme Court judges this spring who won’t “grossly” overstep their powers—as he argues the court has by ordering more school funding.
Christie’s To-Do List
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told The Wall Street Journal about his 2012 agenda:
Pass a package of education bills that address teacher tenure, merit pay and scholarships
Cut income taxes this year or next, if the fiscal situation allows
Provide more support for higher education.
.”Eventually, the court is going to admit it was wrong or I’m going to be able to change the court so that the new members are not as tethered to the Abbott decision,” Mr. Christie said during a 45-minute interview with the Journal ahead of his State of the State speech Tuesday. “They will be able to admit on behalf of their predecessors that they were wrong.”
Mr. Christie was referring to a 3-2 decision in May by the state Supreme Court that the governor’s cuts to education funding were unconstitutional. The court ordered him to send about $500 million more to 31 of New Jersey’s poorest and most underfunded school districts.
The Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Christie’s budget violated the state constitution by shortchanging the school funding plan adopted by the Legislature in 2008 and affirmed by the court in 2009. The case, Abbott v. Burke—a legal challenge filed more than three decades ago—has led to the state pouring billions of additional dollars into some of its poorest districts over the years.
Last year, Mr. Christie wasn’t shy in expressing his disappointment in the court ruling, but said he would comply with it. He said it was up to the state Legislature to fund the mandate.
Still, the issue has continued to simmer for Mr. Christie, and he told the Journal Friday that the ruling was “a bad decision.”
“I’m not going to back off,” he said. “This is going to be a continuing fight between me and the Supreme Court.”
Mr. Christie will have to address school funding again in his 2012-13 budget, which he will unveil in February.
Mr. Christie hinted Friday that some districts protected by the court could feel shortchanged again, even if it means another legal showdown. “I’m going to continue to look for ways to bring a greater sense of fairness to school funding, and if I wind up getting sued again, we’ll see what happens,” he said.
David Sciarra of the Education Law Center, the Newark-based advocacy group that brought the lawsuit against the state, said the court has already upheld the school spending plan, and Mr. Christie’s energies would be better directed toward providing “adequate and equitable funding” to all New Jersey public schools.
“We need to move past this kind of discussion about the courts. That’s over,” he said.
Still, Mr. Christie stands to have new power to shape future decisions made by the state’s highest court. Mr. Christie could nominate two new Republicans to the court in March to fill seats held by Democrats, potentially tipping the traditionally liberal-leaning court toward a GOP-majority.
The seven-member court currently has three Democrats, an Independent and two Republicans, one of whom Mr. Christie appointed last year. The seventh seat is vacant, but was previously held by a Democrat, former Justice John Wallace.
Mr. Christie has the power to change the direction of the judiciary for years to come with his two appointments, said Brigid Harrison, professor of political science and law at Montclair State University.
“The ramification of changing the composition of the court is enormous. It will be felt well beyond his tenure in office,” Ms. Harrison said.
Three of the current justices, for example, won’t have to retire until 2022.
A more conservative court could provide a check on the state Legislature—controlled by Democrats—on a broad array of issues, Ms. Harrison said. The state’s highest court routinely handles cases on sensitive issues such as abortion, the environment and labor law.
Mr. Christie said that, in addition to education funding, the Supreme Court overstepped its role in mandating that municipalities build affordable housing. The cost of the decision to taxpayers, he said, is almost “incalculable.”
“I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to appoint justices who understand their job is to interpret the law, not to make the law, and to interpret the constitution, and not amend the constitution from the bench. That’s what the Supreme Court has done over and over again,” he said, referring to education spending and affordable housing.
Mr. Christie’s judicial nominations must be approved by Senate Democrats, who have been in an escalating battle with the governor over other state appointments.
Asked about the governor’s future nominations, Sen. Raymond Lesniak, a Union County Democrat on the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, said the governor “doesn’t object to the Supreme Court making policy, as long as it’s his policy it’s making.”
A Papa John’s franchise renders an opinion on the matter…..
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/out_of_order_LbPvN7j2sn2xAHVLX3R47K
Shore Guy says:
January 8, 2012 at 11:22 pm
Some just more equal than others:
“Even the police are driving Porsches.
“Chinese officials love their cars — big, fancy, expensive cars. A chocolate-colored Bentley worth $560,000 is cruising the streets of Beijing with license plates indicating it is registered to Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party headquarters. The armed police, who handle riots and crowd control, have the same model of Bentley in blue.
“And just in case it needs to go racing off to war, the Chinese army has a black Maserati that sells in China for $330,000.”
snip