From MarketWatch:
5 states with the most (and fewest) foreclosures
There were 47,000 completed foreclosures nationally in May, down from 52,000 a year ago, which is a drop of 9.4%. But if you look at the month-over-month numbers from just April to May, completed foreclosures were up by 3.8%, according to mortgage-data firm CoreLogic. This is still more than double the amount of foreclosures that typically took place before the housing market crash in 2007: Completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006.
Completed foreclosures reflect the actual number of homes lost to foreclosure. Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, there have been around 5 million completed foreclosures in the U.S. In May, roughly 660,000 homes were still in some stage of foreclosure, down from 1 million in May 2013, a decline of 37%. The foreclosure inventory as of May 2014 represented 1.7% of all homes with a mortgage, compared with 2.6% in May 2013.
Foreclosures may also weigh on house prices in areas where they’re more common, experts say, and there’s still wide disparity between the foreclosure inventories in states. The five states with the highest foreclosure inventory in May were New Jersey (5.8% of all mortgaged homes), Florida (5.2%), New York (4.3%), Hawaii (3.1%) and Maine (2.8%). The five states with the lowest foreclosure inventory were Alaska (0.3%), Nebraska (0.4%), North Dakota (0.4%), Wyoming (0.4%) and Minnesota (0.5%).
Have we always lead or is this the pant up demand
Judiciary caught pants down is more accurate.
We’ve been at this level for quite some time now, the only change is the other states have been moving through backlog at a rate 10 to 20 times greater than we have.
[2] grim
Couldn’t properly wordsmith in pant up demand on just half a cup of coffee.
Still alot of homes under water as well, I know several people that could not sell their homes even if they wanted to, and I’ll say it for the millionth time, Property tax rates are not helping, Many Millenials can’t afford the $60k down and a mortgage on a 300K fixer upper with 10K property taxes while working 2 jobs at resturants and lowes. Some of the other states mentioned are moving through the backlog because “Middle class” people that still have something left & can afford to escape from the NY/NJ area are bailing out, the homes are cycling, flippers buy fixers, fix them and sell them to northerner’s for a nice profit, down South it”s called a yankee tax. Eastern PA has Jersey “like” slightly less, taxes to but you can buy a nice condition 4/2 for 160K-180K range if your willing to make the commute, the lower income tax rate in PA also helps alleviate some of the pain. Point is if your not busting 200K a year, or have a guarenteed public pension with lifetime benefits like the cops, teachers and politico’s, a middle class lifestyle is no longer a reality in the “peoples republic” of NY/NJ.
Was at friends house over weekend, neighbor turns out to be Cake Boss, $94,000 annual property tax!
6.
Does his house happen to be the size of a shopping mall?
funnelcloud [4],
Absolutely. Our area is fuct but it’ll never stop the cheerleaders. For those in denial, go out there yourself and see what it’s like. $60,000 was unthinkable for us 15 years ago. Now? With everything doubled, salaries stagnant and other insurmountable debts, I can’t imagine how painful it is to enter the market. It’s all a mess.
7.
Why are salaries stagnant?
Are we there yet?
Hong Kong’s housing at its worst
http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2014/07/08/hong-kong-micro-apartments-housing-china.cnnmoney/index.html?iid=HP_Highlight
60 sq ft at $5/sqft is $300/month for this crap
Phoenix (8),
Why are they stagnant? Because they can. Because corps can outsource. Because repetitive jobs are dying. Because skilled muppets are hard to find and pudgy muppets are a plenty; especially after stuffing themselves with cupcakes from the crumb shop.
Wait a minute,we are on our way
Tiny Houses Big With U.S. Owners Seeking Economic Freedom
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-09/tiny-houses-big-with-u-s-owners-seeking-economic-freedom.html
Phoenix
I can answer that one, It has very little to do with the economy and everything to do with out and out f#*king greed, I would venture to guess you may be in some kind of management position, Im sure your intelligent, & worked or was given a break to be in that particular position. point is not every one can be chiefs, & the vast majority of managers and executives are not creators of products, not creators of anything that anyone would want to buy, Todays managments thinking solely on what can I do next to steal from the worker to enrich themselves, and what has to be done to look good to the “shareholders” Most don’t create somthing new so they sit in their board rooms coming up with ways redistribute whats been accumulating for years to themselves, the other board members, shareholders. I’m all for the creators (bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg ect. But the sad truth is most managers are more like Bernie Madoffs. I worked 20 Plus years for a large corp before my pension was frozen because some jack-off found a “legal” loophole, I got 44 cents on the dollar, generally the small guy is helpless to do anything, The company cries the blues but the CEO gets a 68 million retirement package. So when I listen to the execu-class belly-aching about the little guy wanting to “redistribute the wealth” I don’t buy it anymore, The country would be in much better shape if all the little guys could afford to buy a home, rather than having 1 execu-asshole with 15 lamborginni’s in the garage Just for your info I’ve never been unemployed, never collected disability, Most of my life worked 2 jobs (one professional the other swinging a hammer) I’m a registered republican and believe in hard work, I also believe the little guy deserves a living wage, & believe that managers should have a duty to watch out for its employee’s well being as much as shareholders, I could rant on this subject for days but truth is most people in those positions simply do not care, they should but they don’t.
Home prices can absolutely stay high, or even increase, in the face of stagnant salaries … if the independent variable allowed to change is standard of living. This is the continued challenge we face from globalization, is it not? Reduced standard of living?
What makes you think that home prices will fall, and that we can eat the cake too?
Falling home prices and static incomes mean an increase in standard of living as disposable income is increased (shelter representing the greatest single outlay of income).
The end-game is reduced standard of living, so that means if you think home prices are going to fall, that means you’ll also need to believe that incomes will fall along with them.
funnel, none of this will stop until the people responsible start catching bullets in the head.
juggalo4eva!
Yeah, I agree with Chip, more greedy CEOs need to be murdered. I halfway hoped that the 99 percenters in Manhattan would descend on Park Ave like that scene from Gangs of New York, where they storm the robber barons.
I also believe the little guy deserves a living wage, & believe that managers should have a duty to watch out for its employee’s well being as much as shareholders…
Amen. I agree.
My brother is semi-retired and does executive recruiting. I’ll repeat again what he said: Salaries are at the same scale today as they were in the late 90s.
11. What would you suggest we do with the pudgy muppets?
13 Funnel,
Just for the record I am not in management, just a skilled worker bee.
Home prices are easily affordable. Trouble is young folks are lazy. They want to work a 9-5 job, buy a house that needs no work in a good neighborhood, dont buy a starter home and no little capes, or coops or condos. They want to go right to that four bedroom center home colonial. They also want lawn service, maid service and pay for home repairs. They also dont want tenants.
Years ago for example my inlaws they bought a house that needed some work, a cape. My father in law renovated it and prior own had two upstairs bedrooms rented to two older single men, widows. They bought house, fixed it them selves, kept tenants for a few years, turned dining room into a bedroom and by time tenants moved out 3-4 years later they could easily afford house.
Today same couple would want that house fully mint, put a low down payment, have no tenants and pay for lawn sevice, maid service, gutter cleaning, snow removal, child care and two cars. The house actually costs less compared to income than 40 years ago but the expectations of the couple has greatly increased.
That goes with rent too
“Home prices can absolutely stay high, or even increase, in the face of stagnant salaries “
grim – It’s the banks dragging their feet at both ends too. They are not filing LPFs for long delinquent mortgages on the front end and they are not completing sheriff sales on the back end for FC that have already made it through the courts either.
Judiciary caught pants down is more accurate.
22. I disagree, on a real basis homeowners and renters are tapped out. The markets can remain stagnant, but price will not rise and given the current state rising interest rates will only cause prices to soften if not fall.
Granted it is market dependent, some places have an abundance of buyers and are not too far off with regards to affordability, the high end will remain high.
[12] I just watched a doc on Netflix about this last weekend. Pretty interesting.
TINY: A Story About Living Small (2013)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2450264
Wait a minute,we are on our way
Tiny Houses Big With U.S. Owners Seeking Economic Freedom
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-09/tiny-houses-big-with-u-s-owners-seeking-economic-freedom.html
Gimme a break “tiny house” is just a marketing ploy for single and double wides.
http://tinyhouselistings.com/?s=New+Jersey&search=search&srch_type=&srch_location=New+Jersey&srch_area=&srch_price=&srch_keyword=&srch_bedrooms=&srch_bathroom=
[14] grim – it may be time to change the batteries in your thinking cap. The NY metro area offers a largely static supply of housing units. If all the SFH supply transitions to defacto Multis, sure houses can stay “high”, especially if you measure in deflating dollars. Like clot says, housing is dead money for many decades to come.
Home prices can absolutely stay high, or even increase, in the face of stagnant salaries …
14 Grim.
Not necessarily. If interest rates are raised (and the cost of debt increases), then prices will fall, even if incomes remain flat.
And I don’t subscribe to the theory that a “healthier economy” (presumably needed to justify an increase in rates) will necessarily translate into higher incomes across the board (further supporting high home prices). It will just result in a different brand of wealth distribution.
“Falling home prices and static incomes mean an increase in standard of living as disposable income is increased (shelter representing the greatest single outlay of income).
The end-game is reduced standard of living, so that means if you think home prices are going to fall, that means you’ll also need to believe that incomes will fall along with them.”
[27] Juice – The real deal is actually quite costly per square foot, much more expensive than a trailer home. In the movie the guy spent $26,000 on materials alone to build 100 square feet. The heating unit was wall mounted running on propane, the same unit that is used on sailboats.
Expat – you can buy one for allot less, here in one in the Pineys. Good luck finding a place to park it in NJ.
http://tinyhouselistings.com/tiny-house-for-sale-2/
My largest client, a big too big to fail bank is repairing almost all of their foreclosure inventory prior to listing in MLS. They also cap their brokers at a limited inventory of homes. The inventory is just sitting and growing old waiting for the repair process to be instituted and completed. New brokers with limited experience are being added to the network as inventory increases rapidly. All in all it is a bad recipe and in my opinion it will be changed within the foreseeable future.
I expect this client to become much more selective about which properties are repaired and to begin raising their inventory limit for their most competent brokers. Their current model for handling their inventory is not working.
Ex-pat – for those that really want “financial freedom” go into the hills and kick a bear out of his abode.
There are more people living in caves today than 5,000 years ago.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/30-million-people-china-live-underground-caves-article-1.1046872
This is why our media sucks.
All over the news yesterday was the sad old Brazilian holding his replica if the World Cup trophy yesterday after their loss.
No where was this story of him handing his trophy to a German fan. He was quoted as saying “Take it to the final! As you can see, it is not easy, but you deserve it, congratulations”.
http://i.imgur.com/OzDvvaw.png
I am solidly mid manager at a firm with about 5,500 employees. When it comes to making decisions, I work my buns off to try to keep as many of my employees employed as possible, though there are times when automation and advances in workflow allows me reduce headcount. When it comes to salaries, my manager (3rd from the top) gives me a percentage and I divvy it up among my team. Those who work hard and are flexible get the lion’s share. Those who are lazy entitled b1tches get zero. Fortunately, I only have one of them left. The others have mostly left on their own. We pay fairly, but the best benefit is my flexibility. If you work hard, accurately and really put our clients in front of your own family when it’s necessary, then I’ll hook you up. I also don’t micro manage. You can f up once, but repeat the same mistake on a high profile account and you will be shown the door. Otherwise, I’ll leave you alone to learn at your speed. Not sure where Funnelcloud is coming from, but not all companies are run the same way. By the way, I’ve been with my current employ for 16 years.
RE life cycle of a Millenial:
1. Stay at home until you can’t.
2. Rent
“Generation Renter”
Millennials Delaying Milestone Life Events, Such As Homeownership, to Pursue Different
GoalsPhoneshttp://www.corelogic.com/blog/authors/sam-khater/2014/06/generation-renter.aspx
grim: did you review the article I posted yesterday about the reintroduction of alternative mortgage products to the mainstream?……….reducing lending standards are kindling, but the alt-products are basically Christmas trees in February ready to start the 4 alarm blaze…..
grim says:
July 9, 2014 at 9:53 am
Home prices can absolutely stay high, or even increase, in the face of stagnant salaries … if the independent variable allowed to change is standard of living. This is the continued challenge we face from globalization, is it not? Reduced standard of living?
What makes you think that home prices will fall, and that we can eat the cake too?
Falling home prices and static incomes mean an increase in standard of living as disposable income is increased (shelter representing the greatest single outlay of income).
The end-game is reduced standard of living, so that means if you think home prices are going to fall, that means you’ll also need to believe that incomes will fall along with them.
If we can only get them to buy property in Newark and Patterson http://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-cash-bearing-buyers-fuel-144752068.html
Seems as if this article fits today’s thread……………..
Work & Family
What Corporate Climbers Can Teach Us
‘Dark’ Personality Traits Can Help People Rise Through Ranks
By Sue Shellenbarger
Psychologists have identified personality traits that help some people rise through the ranks, but there is a cost to certain behaviors. WSJ’s Sue Shellenbarger and Seth Spain a professor from SUNY Binghamton University join Lunch Break with Tanya
Every office full of ambitious people has them. And we have all worked with at least one—the co-worker with an inexplicable ability to rise in the ranks.
“How do they do it?” we may ask ourselves or whisper to friends at work. They don’t have more experience. They don’t seem that brilliant.
But such co-workers may possess a dose of one of the personality traits that psychologists call the “dark triad”: manipulativeness, a tendency to influence others for selfish gain; narcissism, a profound self-centeredness; or an antisocial personality, lacking in empathy or concern for others. These traits are well-known for the bad behavior that they can cause when dominant in people’s personalities. At milder levels, however, they can actually foster skills that can help people rise through the ranks.
For instance, people with narcissism, who want to be the center of attention, often make a good first impression on clients and bosses, says a 2014 review of more than 140 studies on people with mild, or “subclinical,” levels of dark personality traits. They also can be persuasive when pitching their own ideas.
Manipulators influence others for their own gain, using flattery or deceit if necessary. But these personalities—also called Machiavellians—can also be charismatic leaders and forceful negotiators, says the study, in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. And while antisocial personalities lack empathy or concern for others, they can be creative because they often enjoy testing limits.
Researchers are increasingly studying the dark triad because it is “a well-organized framework for a big chunk of individual differences that are relatively unstudied, especially at work,” says Seth M. Spain, lead author of the 2014 research review, and an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Binghamton University, part of the State University of New York. Learning to spot the traits in employees can help employers improve their career paths through training and wise job assignments.
Also, “everybody can learn from” understanding how narcissistic or manipulative people use subtle skills to gain influence, Dr. Spain says. It can also help co-workers and bosses spot extreme cases early and rein them in before they cause grumbling and discontent.
Renee LeBouef cuts short any co-workers’ attempts to gossip with her since an experience with a Machiavellian manager on a previous job undermined her relationships at the office.
The manager used flattery to make friends with Ms. LeBouef and other subordinates, telling them how attractive or talented they were and pressuring them to reveal personal information about themselves. The manager then used gossip to drive a wedge between co-workers, tighten her control over the team and promote herself with higher-ups, says Ms. LeBouef, a New Orleans sales and marketing manager.
Ms. LeBouef now shares only superficial details about herself—that she has a boyfriend and likes natural foods and holistic remedies—with co-workers. “They don’t need to know anything further about my life outside the office,” she says. She appreciates her current boss, because he shows enough interest in employees’ lives to demonstrate that he cares about them, without meddling.
People with dark traits are often attractive job candidates because they display charm, assertiveness and apparent leadership ability, the research review says. Researchers believe narcissists tend to do well in training programs because they want to be seen at their best.
“It’s hard to go anywhere and not find such people,” says Toby Bishop of Toronto, past president of the 71,000-member Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and an independent antifraud strategy adviser. They are often skilled at making a good first impression, and “people who can talk a good talk and impress others will at least initially be respected and put in positions of authority and command by others,” he says.
The flattery often used by manipulative people is helpful in getting named to corporate boards, but only if it’s used skillfully, says a 2010 study. Managers who framed flattery as a request for advice, such as, “How were you able to pull off that strategy so successfully?” improved their chances of winning a director’s seat, the study found.
Those who were clumsy about it, however, stating flatly, “I really admire you,” or, “You’re the greatest,” hurt their chances, says the study of 1,822 managers, CEOs and directors in Administrative Science Quarterly.
Manipulators are also skilled at forming political alliances. “One of the reasons these people climb so high in the company is that they’re very forceful,” says James D. Ratley, president of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.
The careers of people with these characteristics tend to derail over time, in part because they tend to focus on short-term benefits for themselves rather than long-term results for their organizations. Colleagues may come to view them as hostile, harsh or arrogant, Dr. Spain says. And when present at extreme or clinical levels, these traits disrupt lives. One thing that trips people up, Mr. Ratley says: “They think the rules don’t apply to them.”
Mr. Ratley and other corporate accounting experts cite former HealthSouth Corp. CEO Richard Scrushy as an example of a manipulative personality who could also be forceful and persuasive. Mr. Scrushy used charisma and salesmanship to build the chain of outpatient surgery and rehab clinics he founded in 1984 into a $4 billion publicly traded giant.
“He’s a classic good salesman,” says Aaron Beam, a former chief financial officer at HealthSouth, and a speaker and author of a book on the experience. “He had this magical ability to get people to agree with him.”
Mr. Beam says Mr. Scrushy also made life hard for employees who disagreed with him. “He would literally scream at you,” belittling and berating employees at weekly staff meetings, says Mr. Beam, of Loxley, Ala. He also spent lavishly on a flamboyant lifestyle.
HealthSouth hit the rocks when regulators uncovered a $2.7 billion accounting fraud, and Mr. Scrushy was fired as CEO in 2003. Mr. Scrushy was acquitted of criminal charges in connection with the fraud, but a state court later imposed $2.88 billion in civil damages against him for fraud. Mr. Beam served three months in prison for bank fraud. Mr. Scrushy got out of prison in 2012 after serving five years in connection with a different scandal, for bribing a state official.
“I do accept responsibility that it [the accounting fraud] happened on my watch,” Mr. Scrushy says in an interview, but he admits no personal wrongdoing.
He says his style was effective with underlings. “You don’t manage 120 people by being a pansy,” he says of his direct reports at HealthSouth. “Any CEO worth his salt has to be a little bit strong … I don’t think it’s a ‘dark side.’ It’s a skill, to be able to build a business from scratch,” says Mr. Scrushy, who is speaking and advising businesses.
To spot dark traits among co-workers, watch for bullying behavior, says Gary Zeune, founder of The Pros & The Cons, a speakers’ bureau that enlists white-collar criminals to talk about preventing fraud.
Also, dark personalities often ingratiate themselves by appearing caring and competent. Beware of a colleague who “tries to be way too nice for what they’re asking you to do,” Mr. Zeune says.
The Manipulator
Influences others for own gain
Dark Side: Uses flattery to influence others. Deceives others to get desired results.
Silver Lining: Skilled in negotiating, enjoys combat. Good at forming political alliances.
Antisocial Personality
Unconcerned with others’ feelings or welfare
Dark Side: Impulsive and thrill-seeking, tends toward antagonism.
Silver Lining: Tends to think creatively, tests limits.
Narcissist
Dark Side: Wants to be the center of attention. Uses appearance, charm to seek prestige and status.
Silver Lining: Pitches own ideas with enthusiasm, makes a good first impression.
[18] gary – That is absolutely a fact in the NE corridor for tech and executive jobs. I think it may be even *lower* now for other jobs.
My brother is semi-retired and does executive recruiting. I’ll repeat again what he said: Salaries are at the same scale today as they were in the late 90s.
Those little houses might be neat, but the approach runs contrary to most building codes, making them illegal for occupancy.
There is a minimum reasonable size, under which it becomes cost prohibitive to build, and on a PSF basis, these houses are not at all inexpensive. I suspect most of these could be build significantly larger for the same cost. HVAC, for example, is not linear to zero with home size. You need a boiler, air handler, air conditioner. Building for 500 square feet costs 95% of the cost that building for 1000 square feet does, so what are you really saving? In almost every case, it’s the cost of the first square foot that is the most expensive, with the cost falling significantly for each additional square foot added.
^^^ And I paid Cobra a couple different times in the late 1990’s . About $113-$130/month medical AND dental (single). I used to laugh at how expensive family coverage was, about $250/month. That was 100% self-paid Cobra, $250/month for a family. The funny thing is I thought that was expensive as we had no outstanding debt and our rent was like $800/month.
[42] grim – in the movie they state that they are build on flatbed trailer chassis to make the structures “non-permanent”, therefore exempt from laws. In the movie the land the guy bought requires at least a 600 square foot house, but no problem to put a 100 sf tiny house so long as it is on wheels.
Buy an Airstream, it’s nicer and will hold value better. You could buy and remodel a nice 30 footer and still save a fortune over building a glorified mobile home. Get her polished up and any Dwell reading hipster would be sure to drool.
If I owned a mini-house, I would be worried that someone would tow my house to a different location when I was sleeping. Like in Meatballs, with the Camp Director’s bed. Good ol’ Morty Melnick.
Could be worse, somebody might tip you over.
Great post!!! I totally agree. Why can’t most of the people see this? Why? It’s really easy to understand what’s wrong with the american economy and world economy……greed. As simple as that. One thing for sure, greed destroys everything in its’ path. If things don’t change, revolutions will come.
funnelcloud says:
July 9, 2014 at 9:51 am
Phoenix
I can answer that one, It has very little to do with the economy and everything to do with out and out f#*king greed, I would venture to guess you may be in some kind of management position, Im sure your intelligent, & worked or was given a break to be in that particular position. point is not every one can be chiefs, & the vast majority of managers and executives are not creators of products, not creators of anything that anyone would want to buy, Todays managments thinking solely on what can I do next to steal from the worker to enrich themselves, and what has to be done to look good to the “shareholders” Most don’t create somthing new so they sit in their board rooms coming up with ways redistribute whats been accumulating for years to themselves, the other board members, shareholders. I’m all for the creators (bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg ect. But the sad truth is most managers are more like Bernie Madoffs. I worked 20 Plus years for a large corp before my pension was frozen because some jack-off found a “legal” loophole, I got 44 cents on the dollar, generally the small guy is helpless to do anything, The company cries the blues but the CEO gets a 68 million retirement package. So when I listen to the execu-class belly-aching about the little guy wanting to “redistribute the wealth” I don’t buy it anymore, The country would be in much better shape if all the little guys could afford to buy a home, rather than having 1 execu-asshole with 15 lamborginni’s in the garage Just for your info I’ve never been unemployed, never collected disability, Most of my life worked 2 jobs (one professional the other swinging a hammer) I’m a registered republican and believe in hard work, I also believe the little guy deserves a living wage, & believe that managers should have a duty to watch out for its employee’s well being as much as shareholders, I could rant on this subject for days but truth is most people in those positions simply do not care, they should but they don’t.
Expat [41],
[18] gary – That is absolutely a fact in the NE corridor for tech and executive jobs. I think it may be even *lower* now for other jobs.
Of course!! There’s no doubt! Everything else is just deception to keep the Ponzi scam from collapsing.
Maybe a “Tiny House” is the wrong marketing phrase. I think I would call mine a Love Shack.
Libtard #35 Maybe you do work hard not going toargue that point If you are a producer you deserve a piece of the pie, I work in a white collar Technical position and here is my experience with managment. I’ll take a little bit of what you said, your perception of yourself and how your employee’s view you may be very different, For instance, You “delegate” work
Translation to employee Youhand it to me and your job is done, success shared,blame goes one way.
Assignments (you let us run with it) If I succeed GO TEAM “we” did a great job,If it doesn’t turn out so well “my mistake” show me the door. no raise for me you still get your bonus though because that “incident” was no fault of yours
– great job this year but raises are going to be 1.4% I just saved the company money so my bonus will be 30%
-Management monday Friday absentee is the norm
Reality On monday We need this by Wed to bad the process take 4 days,
Just some of my experiences
In my company life is grand for anybody with your title, Hell for vertually everybody else Moving on is not always an option in todays market. Just some food for thought
I imagine a wood-framed house is easier to heat than an Airstream trailer, right? In the movie the 30 year old kid who was building his Tiny House wired it completely, then used a (soy based?) expandable foam to insulate the walls and only much later did he actually install electric fixtures and test his wiring. He got it right, but he was holding his breath when he first turned on the juice.
Don’t get it, if we are talking about a mobile home, why not just buy a repo’ed mobile home:
http://ocala4sale.com/real-estate/mobile-homes-dw.php
Doublewide too.
Airstream is insulated, but can be improved if you are rebuilding.
Also road worthy, don’t need to worry about losing half the house on the freeway.
Face it, Airstream will always have more street cred, you could probably even have a lady over and not be too embarrassed explaining why you live in your parents driveway. I could easily wing some kind of hipster mini house story about why I choose to live this way.
Nom would be happy too, easy to mount a turret on it and have one of the kids protect the flank when Mad Max comes and you need to move the homestead.
grim love the airstream idea so i went one further and looked
here is what I came back with for 10K
http://www.airstreamclassifieds.com/ads/1975-airstream-ambassador-29-arizona/
Funnel: I manage a Premedia and a Prepress department. In the past decade, my primary department has reduced it’s numbers from eighteen to six team members. Though, the quantity of work we produce has remained the same. Three of the six that remain are skilled in writing scripts (Java/Apple) to automate repetitive tasks. They all learned these skills on their own. We used to have a much lower overall skill level in the department as it was made mostly of robots with an excellent knowledge of print. Ten of the ‘terminated twelve’ were traditional table strippers (shut up JJ) who barely made the transition to the digital desktop. They were given the tools and the training to expand their personal skill sets, but they all chose to sit back and do the minimum to get by. They all squandered excellent opportunities to advance themselves on the company dime. The other two transferred into another department where they still seem to act as drones and complain daily about how crappy their proprietary software is. Good riddance to them.
So was it greed that eliminated all of those jobs? Should we not have set up a team in India where we can get the work of ten old Americans for the price of one young man in Chennai. And let me tell you. My small team in Chennai is much more driven and skilled than my American team. They are all self learners and self motivated. They would bring their families into the office to help out if the situation called for it. So who is to blame here? I’m sure the village idiot here believes that my company should have just kept paying the lazy entitled twelve to do what a little program could do for them. Or that we should not reach out to the third world for cheaper labor. Unfortunately, our competitors beat us to it and their skill level and work ethic (at least in my area) are fantastic. If I could move them all here, I would.
So when it’s all said and done, the six on my team who remain are in much better shape and being paid according to their skill set and effort. They have been freed of menial repetitive tasks so they can focus on other areas such as HTML/XML, etc. Keep in mind, these are former artisans who could work wonders with film and razorblades. It’s all a very good argument for being rewarded for hard work and self motivation. I would like to believe that there are as many examples of my department as there are of yours. As for greed, I have very rarely received an increase when my team did not. And in most cases, their increases were a higher percentage than mine. I am good with this. They make me look good, so I work hard to make sure they are treated fairly. I am sorry you have not found the right opportunity to reward your efforts. Perhaps it’s still out there. Or perhaps you are more like my terminated twelve and don’t realize this?
[34] juice
I saw that guy during the game and I wondered if he would hand it off to a German. Nice to see that’s what he did.
232 square feet for $9,900 – $43 a square foot.
You can’t beat it.
They spent $12k to get half that, and it would fall apart on a highway.
I don’t think the Tiny House people are about being mobile or lowest cost per square foot. I think some of them just want to force themselves into 100 square feet of wood as a means of force-ejecting all the Chinese plastic bought at Target from their lives.
^^^^Not to mention the Chinese plastic bins to store your Chinese plastic stuff.
They could have done it for less money, and with more style.
I’m sure there are plenty of nearly homeless people living similar lifestyles, they aren’t profiting from a documentary.
Library works both ways, not really , I direct report to 3 managers with 3 very distinct personalitys first there is the working trench manager, the individual is respected by the workers we will bend over backwards for this individual, this individual will never go any higher because this person looks out for the employees welfare
The second is the stronge arm ,in it for myself individual ,who will blame the workers for every wrong and takes credits for every success, only gets involved in the most visual of projects, spends the rest of the time networking, schmoozing or looking for the next promotion. Will do all the corp dirty work including dismantling a good employees career for personal gain. The third is almost incompetent enough to be a director, arrives at work hides in an office and plays electronic tic tac toe all day, has no idea as to what’s going on on day to day basis. If we keep the one good one we could very easily save the company a ton if we discarded this dead wood but their management a protected species, if managers started getting ris of managers what a shitstorm that would be,think of all the money that could be saved
Maybe we should outsource the management jobs to India I’m sure we could get some well educated fellow over their willing to work for a much lower salary than you think your worth as well
Ps this conversation is not a personal attack on you just a different perspective, an observation from my personal experience
grim – Are you not having a good day?
They could have done it for less money, and with more style.
I’m sure there are plenty of nearly homeless people living similar lifestyles, they aren’t profiting from a documentary.
Just enjoying playing counterpoint, and I really want to justify buying an airstream.
Sounds like a manufacturing environment and your approach is reasoned bc you perosnally know each employee. At big IBs and financial firms, they lop off whole depts. bc market changed (ie commodities desks recently). It has nothing to do with performance or skill-set. That comes with territory though. Hell, my current
IB is letting half of their financial reporting group leave bc they can’t provide raises and bonuses. No rehires for those leaving. I think vast majority of layoffs are not skill related but numbers game in head offices. Funny that those people never face reductions. In fact cubes are empty by me but empty offices are scarce.
I’m going to see the Red Sox at Fenway tonight on my company’s dime, but tomorrow my wife and I are going to the movies, courtesy of …AARP. And so it begins.
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#67, meant for Lib.
either way with an airstream that size grim you would probably need a minimum of a 3/4 ton pick up to move it
When I was single I once lived in a tiny house. But once I brought home a hot cheerleader and my errection was so big it wrecked the place.
Grim,
On your comment about Americans becoming poorer, what about the status of wealth on a global basis. Since globalization began, are nations not all trending toward the mean with a few cyclical swings along the way? Perhaps the global mean is less than what was once thought of as the American middle class and as a nation, we have not yet re-calibrated.
Anyone concerned about getting their rfid chipped data swiped off their CC? If so, how do you protect yourselves.
RFID will die once more card companies and retailers in the US move to chip cards.
Common in Europe, Canada, not so common here, probably because retailers are rallying against the hardware upgrade costs, and card companies are looking at having to reissue millions of cards.
I’ve already been asked twice here in the states to insert my chip card after first swiping it.
Once chip cards become popular, we’ll move to chip-n-pin, where you’ll also need to enter a pin code for a POS transaction, like debit.
Jersey Justice – no jail time and he gets to keep half of what he admitted to stealing.
Ex-Ridgewood inspector apologizes for stealing nearly half a million dollars in quarters
HACKENSACK — Ridgewood’s former public works inspector repeatedly apologized on Wednesday for stealing nearly half a million dollars in loose parking meter quarters from the village.
“I am sorry for what I have done,” Thomas Rica told Judge Patrick Roma moments before being sentenced to five years’ probation. “I am very sorry. I’m…I’m just sorry.”
Rica, who lives in Hawthorne, was employed by the village for 10 years before his arrest early last year.
As part of a plea deal accepted by Roma Wednesday, Rica plead to four counts of third-degree theft, and will pay back a little more than half of what he admits he stole from his former employers.
Rica admitted in March to taking the coins over more than two years from a storage room within Village Hall.
Defending the plea agreement Wednesday, Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Daniel Keitel said it took months to negotiate and will “get as much of the money back to the public as quickly as possible.”
Had the state tried Rica for second-degree theft, Keitel said he may have faced five years behind bars, but would not have been legally bound to return any of the stolen money
Rica’s lawyer, Robert Galuntucci, handed Keitel a check during Wednesday’s proceedings for $64,337.55 — his client’s initial downpayment.
The deal calls for Rica, who also forfeited his $30,000 pension, to pay the village $2,000 a month for five years, for a total of $120,000. Ridgewood will also keep $4,000 it seized during a search of Rica’s home following his arrest.
That puts Rica’s restitution at just under $250,000.
If Rica misses a payment or is charged with another crime within those five years, he could be sent directly to prison for a period of three to five years.
http://www.northjersey.com/news/ex-ridgewood-inspector-apologizes-for-stealing-nearly-half-a-million-dollars-in-quarters-1.1048475#sthash.MtSHsSNn.dpuf
Re: #73 – US banks have to reissue 1.2 billion credit cards and there are about 13 million card terminals to be upgraded too. Cost is in the billions.
Gator,
Why is it that the “authorities” use civil asset forfeiture all the time when they can’t make a criminal case… yet when they have a confession, that tactic is nowhere to be found?
Funnel,
Nothing personal. Quite honestly, nothing you say to a stranger online should be construed as so. I could be fired tomorrow. Don’t we all know it.
That Rica story really bothers me. Then again, the judge is really a coworker of the criminal. Pensions for all of the Public Worker fraternity. Collective bargaining my fat ass.
Grim,
The CC chip is all over Europe. Most places can’t take a card that doesn’t have one (or simply doesn’t know how). Gator and I had the Marriott Card with the chip when we went to Europe for free last year. My chip didn’t work so my card was useless. Thank goodness Gator did the credit card deal as well as hers worked and with crazy ATM fees, it was really the only way to purchase things without being robbed.
BTW – Go long potato salad indeed. Over $70K today.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/324283889/potato-salad
Lamenting the stagnate salaries, but applauding the death of collective bargaining is incongruous. Watching corporations outsource and choosing to sit by like lemmings as jobs evaporate makes Americans an easy mark.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2014/07/laughing-all-the-way-to-the-potato-salad.html?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=facebook&mbid=social_facebook
Joyce 76 – That’s right. And this guy gets to “pay back” the taxpayers with his pension.
Only the best and brightest.
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What I don’t get is how it takes a town so long to determine $500,000 is missing.
Lib, they are already on their way to taking your management job. Would love to see your thought process on this subject after they accuse you of being lazy and the village idiot, and hand your job over to some desperate Indian. This Indian will not only take a pay cut, but they will work 100 hrs a week and willingly give blow jobs to the boss in order to keep their job. This isn’t living, I would rather kill myself, then to throw away my only life, working to make someone else rich. I’m not going to bust my ass my entire life to pay overpriced rent and go nowhere in life. This is sadly what the top and people like you, want for lazy Americans. Every time you force an American to compete with an overpopulated crap hole like India, you are destroying America, one step at a time. Thank you!!! Thank you for doing your part.
Yes, most of the jobs available now are dead ends. There is no moving up. So why work so hard? What is the incentive? Please tell me. So before you call someone lazy, try to understand their situation first. They just might be lasy because they lost all hope of hard work paying off. Why work so hard, if odds are, you simply will not go anywhere, no matter how hard you work. You simply can not understand this for some reason.
“So was it greed that eliminated all of those jobs? Should we not have set up a team in India where we can get the work of ten old Americans for the price of one young man in Chennai. And let me tell you. My small team in Chennai is much more driven and skilled than my American team. They are all self learners and self motivated. They would bring their families into the office to help out if the situation called for it. So who is to blame here? I’m sure the village idiot here believes that my company should have just kept paying the lazy entitled twelve to do what a little program could do for them. Or that we should not reach out to the third world for cheaper labor. Unfortunately, our competitors beat us to it and their skill level and work ethic (at least in my area) are fantastic. If I could move them all here, I would.”
Well, looks like my neighbor is getting out of Dodge. Moving van pulled up yesterday. Moving into an apt. his uncle owns in the next town over until youngest graduates college next year. Then off to Colorado. Big biker, motorized and non-motorized varieties. $16k in taxes. Godspeed.
85. Lib,
When it’s “nobody’s” money, nobody pays attention. They should take the difference out of the pension fund. Guy would get shot.
Well said. Workers fight each other (public vs private), but sit idly by as the top sells them out. It’s simply mind-blowing. Do the people understand how much power they have? Instead they fight over scraps with their fellow workers, never daring to bite the hand throwing the crumbs. Simply amazing. I seriously can not understand this mindset.
Essex says:
July 9, 2014 at 3:45 pm
Lamenting the stagnate salaries, but applauding the death of collective bargaining is incongruous. Watching corporations outsource and choosing to sit by like lemmings as jobs evaporate makes Americans an easy mark.
ROFL…..guy took perhaps a few too many trips to the bank, and wasn’t supervised too well for sure.
“Authorities said Rica, who had worked at Ridgewood since 2004, frequently went into the parking meter collection room and filled his pockets with change, before depositing the stolen coins in his bank account.”
A pound of dimes and a pound of quarters are essentially worth the same amount of money $20.
Let’s say 30 lbs of coins in one’s pockets or backpack max on one trip. Deposit 30 lbs of dimes or quarters or about $600 a day is 833 trips to parking meter collection room and then then somewhere to roll the quarters and then to the bank?
Talk about lack of supervision.
Grim our corporate cards are chipped from BoA so we can function in Europe. I gave it a WTF look when I got it.
This is exactly why they let him off so easy. As simple as that.
Juice Box says:
July 9, 2014 at 4:28 pm
ROFL…..guy took perhaps a few too many trips to the bank, and wasn’t supervised too well for sure.
“Authorities said Rica, who had worked at Ridgewood since 2004, frequently went into the parking meter collection room and filled his pockets with change, before depositing the stolen coins in his bank account.”
A pound of dimes and a pound of quarters are essentially worth the same amount of money $20.
Let’s say 30 lbs of coins in one’s pockets or backpack max on one trip. Deposit 30 lbs of dimes or quarters or about $600 a day is 833 trips to parking meter collection room and then then somewhere to roll the quarters and then to the bank?
Talk about lack of supervision.
Libtard, with regards to the whole India offshoring thing. I have experienced it, the people usually want to please but often there is a skill and communication gap. The key thing is it isn’t a matter of being driven. I don’t find michael to be right often, but in this case he is right, they are desperate. An American cannot possibly compete on wage with an Indian, they basically still have slavery…if you feed someone they’ll do work for you. Everything is so cheap there your employees feel they are getting a kings ransom and probably have at least a servant. If their American compatriots were earning what is considered to be a huge salary by local standards they’d be motivated as well and fearful of losing their job. Your domestic staff is indifferent, I’ve seen it before when the majority of the staff is acting that way it is often the result of what management has done rather than the people themselves, usually 30% is the dead wood slackers, if it gets above 50% there is a different problem.
I just got my new personal BoA cards and both (2 accounts) are chipped. Never saw them before.
India? Outsourcing? Huh? You are like 10 years late, that ship has sailed onto other markets with a better labor pool and higher cultural compatibility. Nobody is moving new business into India, it’s almost a bad word.
Just found this on BoA’s site:
How does a chip card work?
The magnetic stripe on the back of the card can be swiped as you do today. If a retailer has a chip-enabled terminal, you can make purchases by inserting your chip card face-up in the terminal and providing your signature to complete the purchase. In some cases a PIN may be requested; you will need to communicate to the merchant that your card requires a signature only.
What’s the difference between chip & signature and chip & PIN? Does my card have a PIN?
Chip & PIN is a very similar technology, except that you use a PIN to complete a purchase instead of a signature. Both chip & PIN and chip & signature offer enhanced security against counterfeiting compared to traditional magnetic stripe-only cards. Bank of America does not currently offer chip & PIN technology.
grim, I work in software dev at an IB, everything is behind the times and offshoring to India is still in full swing. Everyone has offshored teams.
Do the chips offer a higher level of pure data security (like encryption) or is the form factor just more of a pain in the ass to clone than a mag stripe?
the chip is based on similar technology to SIM cards and has built in encryption. Theoretically the original claim was that they were unhackable and as of yet there have been few breaches.
Jcer…our India team is in it’s 6th year. We do fine staying off of the phone with them. All communication is through the written/typed word. As for cultural differences, I had a lot more success breaking through with them during their training than any other team before and afterwards. How did I do this? Well that’s a long story, but let me just say that honesty and a good sense of humor went a long way. It probably also helped that our team was not groomed to perform the call center/IT role which so many young Indians train to do. We only hired prepress people with real print shop experience. I chose the team. Where I screwed up, was bringing what I hoped would be the manager of the team over to the US prior to my training trip over there without finding out about which caste he was from. Though he’s my best worker and most skilled, his lineage makes it impossible for him to possibly manage the team. I’m still working to bring him and his family over, but it’s most likely not going to happen. Think things are f’ed up here? India’s civil rights movement is far from even being started. Heck, the unmarried members of the team never even kissed a girl. Every member of my Indian team has a degree in printing. I don’t have a single member of my American team that does. Heck, these guys are pretty close to programming their own imposition too. Why? Because they know that if we have to pay $10,000 per seat to upgrade to the latest version of ripoff version 10.5, there will be much less money to spend on their salaries.
I’m not sure if it’s cultural so much as the younger generations here just expect to get paid for doing the bare minimum. When I ask them to solve a problem, they ask me how? There is no lack of intelligence among them, it’s just that so few have had to work hard to get to where they are. I swear, when I was out protesting tuition increases back in college since I was paying my own way, it drove me crazy when I saw how many kids went to school as authorized users on their folks credit cards. I swear, there were nine of them to ever one of me. I am not surprised that most of my American hires could not hold a candle to their Indian counterparts. Heck. If the Indians cost the same as my local team, I would still offshore the work. Sorry if it sounds un-American Michael, but I’m speaking from my personal experience.
I’m not even trying to make an argument here. I’m sure it’s completely different in IT. I purposely did not go that route. As a matter of fact, IT is one are which is still run 100% by Americans out of Minnesota.
Post 100. You can go suck it!
Question, how can quality of life ever improve under globalization? I’m not only talking about America, but the world. Under globalization, there will always be someone to exploit, hence, a permanent damper on wages.
Truth be told, you seem to be all about efficiency. What is efficient about globalization? Wasting valuable resources to move around most products that could be made localized, if not for the search to exploit cheap labor (shipping of water bottles makes me sick). Think of the waste involved in taking raw materials from one source, making it there, and then shipping back to the original source. What an insane process. If there was not so much cheap fossil fuel available, this would have never came about. When fossil fuels are almost gone, I wonder what globalization will look like.
“So was it greed that eliminated all of those jobs? Should we not have set up a team in India where we can get the work of ten old Americans for the price of one young man in Chennai. And let me tell you. My small team in Chennai is much more driven and skilled than my American team. They are all self learners and self motivated. They would bring their families into the office to help out if the situation called for it. So who is to blame here? I’m sure the village idiot here believes that my company should have just kept paying the lazy entitled twelve to do what a little program could do for them. Or that we should not reach out to the third world for cheaper labor. Unfortunately, our competitors beat us to it and their skill level and work ethic (at least in my area) are fantastic. If I could move them all here, I would.”
30 year (32)-
The mf’ing banks don’t really want to sell the houses. That is all.
“I expect this client to become much more selective about which properties are repaired and to begin raising their inventory limit for their most competent brokers. Their current model for handling their inventory is not working.”
joyce (76)-
Easy answer: the gubmint is a criminal racket.
“Why is it that the “authorities” use civil asset forfeiture all the time when they can’t make a criminal case… yet when they have a confession, that tactic is nowhere to be found?”
On how many shitcan FKs and pre-FKs do you still think the lenders have the loans marked as “performing”?
It’s way more than any of us think.
There is a statute on the books that prohibits banks from owning REO for more than 60 months. How much REO is out there that has been owned for far longer? How many pre-foreclosures are not being foreclosed because the noteholders are trying to push off that 60 month period of ownership for as long as possible?
Kick the can. It’s the amerikan way. It’s the only way.
The banks know that the second shitstorm is coming. They also know that the next one will dwarf the first one.
Everyone would get their hair cut by a union guy charging $50 per cut with a mandatory 10 minute break between the front and back of your head, right? We can just all pay each other more and get rich and stick it to the man!
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