From Marketplace:
Young people dip into housing market
The housing industry appears to finally be in broad recovery mode after years of struggle following the official end of the recession in 2009. Housing starts and sales are rising, home prices are increasing steadily, mortgage rates remain low, and fewer people are stuck in underwater mortgages, locking them in place and making it difficult to sell.
And one key demographic group that could fuel the housing recovery now shows signs of re-entering the market as well: people under 35. This group’s homeownership rate peaked in 2006 and has been declining ever since, falling to just below 35 percent in the second quarter of 2015. But that rate may have bottomed out and started to rebound. Household formation has begun rising after falling during and after the recession. The birthrate also appears to be inching up after declining for nearly a decade.
…
Fannie Mae recently surveyed young renters and found that the steep fall in homeownership among people under 35 might be more a matter of personal finances and the overall economy than a lifestyle choice. The survey found that 90 percent plan to own a home eventually. But many think it will be difficult for them to save for a down payment or get a mortgage (73 percent of young renters say it would be very difficult to get a mortgage, compared to 50 percent of the general population). The two most often cited obstacles to saving and qualifying for a mortgage are credit standards (which have tightened dramatically since the early 2000s housing boom), and student loan debt.Another obstacle to homeownership for many young individuals and families — even if they have good jobs and incomes — is rising rents, which make it harder to save for a down payment, especially in hot urban markets.
Taco Bell thinks selling beer will attract millennials?
I predict a 10:1 ratio of homeless to millennial.
Millennials too critical, Boomers and Silents too self-aggrandizing, from Pew:
http://www.people-press.org/2015/09/03/most-millennials-resist-the-millennial-label/
[2] This made me think. I wonder what the age demographics are for our “not in the workforce” population?
Millennials will soon become the nation’s largest living generation. They already have surpassed Generation X to make up the largest share of the U.S. workforce.
[3] I guess we know they are over age 16:
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS15000000
Good morning America.
If you didn’t know…I can make deals.
More Republicans See Donald Trump as a Winner, Poll Finds
Republicans increasingly think that Donald J. Trump has the best chance of winning the 2016 presidential election as their nominee as confidence fades in traditional politicians like Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
Although Republicans have reservations about Mr. Trump and voters often end up embracing candidates who lagged in early polls, the billionaire businessman appears to be gaining acceptance as a possible nominee.
The poll found that 39 percent of Republican primary and caucus voters viewed Mr. Trump as their best shot at winning the presidency, compared with 26 percent in a CBS survey in August. Only 15 percent said they would not back him as the party’s standard-bearer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/us/politics/gop-support-for-donald-trump-rising-as-ben-carson-gains-poll-finds.html?_r=0
[breaking news]
Officials Cover Up Housing Bubble’s Scummy Residue: Fraudulent Foreclosure Documents
https://theintercept.com/2015/09/14/officials-cover-housing-bubbles-scummy-residue-fraudulent-foreclosure-document/
I label you a slacker scumbag who uses his Honda EV plug charger as a human cattle prod for pleasure……..
grim says:
September 16, 2015 at 7:42 am
Millennials too critical, Boomers and Silents too self-aggrandizing, from Pew:
http://www.people-press.org/2015/09/03/most-millennials-resist-the-millennial-label/
Yo Quiero Taco Bell
It’s beer AND wine Grim. Get it right man. Taco Bell has class.
So I can have a Gewurtztraminer with my firey ass blaster tacos?
One in five Americans who bought a home in the past two years said they had made an offer on a home they had never visited, based on a poll of 2,100 recent buyers conducted for Redfin by SurveyMonkey. People who paid more than $750,000 for their homes were particularly likely to make a blind bid, with 53 percent of them submitting an offer sight unseen. So were millennials, 30 percent of whom made such an offer.
Realtor = Token Booth Clerk
Burger King for awhile was owned by Guinness. I actually once had a nice Pint of Beer with my whopper many years ago.
[10] grim
“So I can have a Gewurtztraminer with my firey ass blaster tacos?”
Uncouth boor. A less trocken german white with tacos? Unthinkable. I recommend a pinot noir.
I recommend Sisko.
Proof of Ongoing Foreclosure Fraud and Mortgage Document Fabrication, in Five Emails
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/09/proof-of-ongoing-foreclosure-fraud-and-mortgage-document-fabrication-in-five-emails.html
Taco Bell calls for a glass of your finest Night Train, Thunderbird, or Ripple is what is called for. In a pinch MD20 will do fine as well.
Is this the same person?
http://www.falgundharia.com/
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/09/nj_man_admits_13m_insurance_fraud_in_wyoming_hotel_fire_reports_say.html#incart_river
Serious question guys. And a caution.
Discovered this morning that for the last three days I’ve been receiving very high quality malicious emails from parties I actually use (eg, Total Rewards, Caesars’ frequent play card).
Almost indistinguishable from legitimate emails. To my email alone, directly. Graphics are absolutely outstanding. No spelling, syntax, or formatting errors in the text. Has legitimate footers the companies use down to the unsubscribe button with the correct email address. In the case of Total rewards had my correct player ID number.
Only tip is the sender is “email@[correct domain]-email.com”
Picked it up this morning on one activity I have, because the timing was weird (out of season). Looked at prior days’ emails and discovered more.
I’m concerned because it feels like someone has hacked my email, basically getting my emails like Total Rewards with my info and then reversing it back to me. Too many different activities of mine affected for the outside companies to be hacked concurrently. Doesn’t appear any password compromise, just things that may be public in an existing email to me like the player ID number.
Anyone else experience something similar?
How do I even start to correct it? Obviously email password change and virus scan but then what?
Joyce [7];
Fraudulent documents? You mean the deadbeat homedebtors didn’t actually believe that they were buying the house they still occupy with OPM? They were walking down the street just minding their own business and tripped and fell over a closing table?
*YAWN* The only ‘fraudulent documents’ I’m aware of were created to paper over transfers that actually happened, between banks that bought and sold the paper AFTER THE LOANS WERE MADE. I recall reading accounts of BK court judges facing an endless parade of defaulting debtors crying “PRODUCE THE NOTE [M’Fer]!” – the judge asked each of them two simple questions: Are you still in the house? Have you made the payments as agreed? The only answers that got anyone further consideration were YES/YES. The next question was canceled checks. No? NEXT!
19 and others
Agree with you and my limited experience is courts won’t throw out a case with otherwise undisputed facts and supporting documentation based on a technicality that had nothing to do with nor impacted the documentation and transaction, like standing to do business in a jurisdiction.
However, that one article seems to state that the State Supreme Court did just that.
Resident attorneys?
If so, wouldn’t the floodgates just pour open? You could contract for any service or good and then effectively not pay if the vendor’s corporate papers weren’t in order.
lefty,
What is the malicious intent here? Do links take you to a different website than TR?
I could go through life for free like that. I am sure I can find landscapers, car dealers, restaurants, etc all over New Jersey that haven’t filed Annual Reports for two years and have been revoked.
I think the info is public.
He11, I may look up the top dozen restaurants and find one that hasn’t filed. Lafite, filet, five courses. Check comes, write in “sorry, no payment as you are not properly registered to do business in the State of NJ”. Then take Uber home and stiff them.
21. Afraid to click through.
Still dealing with this. Have confirmation the original email that spurred this was fraudulent from the real corporation.
Looked through a ton of my recent emails and it seems many corporations seem to use emails close to but not their domain.
Okemo mountain is “info@e.okemo.com”. Hilton is “HiltonHHonors@h1.hilton.com”.
Assuming the above are legit – again, I don’t feel like clicking through on my computer to see – what the heck are they thinking in this day and age? Especially Hilton. If that sender doesn’t look suspect I don’t know what does.
I got a credit card activation one last week from Citi that was so perfect I called Citi – what was curious was that we activated new cards two weeks prior.
Grim, was the Citi email legit?
Lib, malicious may be too strong since I didn’t click thru, fake may be better description?
The most recent TR email came from “email@email.caesars-marketing.com”
Yours?
Nope, they asked me to forward it to a Citi email address. The rep said there were many reports the day I called.
Use gmail, but I can easily review access by IP and didn’t see any odd usage.
email-at-email.caesars-marketing.com seems to be the common address I receive most of my mail from.
McGreevey brought “unique experience” and “intense commitment”
Four months for lifetime bennies, yeah, that was super unique and super intense.
Four months on Hudson County payroll gets Jim McGreevey lifetime benefits
Kennelly said he could not provide the monetary value of McGreevey’s health benefits package.
“Since the county has no cap on service time in exchange for lifetime benefits, we accepted that his employment to spearhead the creation of (a county) CRC and the positive change caused by it outweighed the cost of ending up as his final government employer,” Kennelly said.
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2015/09/mcgreevey_pension_benefits_hudson_county.html#incart_river
Cutting Edge Technology (jj Edition):
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/15/sex-robots-campaign.html
Grim, Lib, thx.
Maybe it’s me. That Caesars sender address is a real headscratcher. Talk about looking fake…..
Wasn’t ManGravy going to become a priest?
From CEPR
The Wall Street Journal decided to take Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign seriously enough to calculate the cost of the programs that he proposed. Their price tag was $18 trillion over the next decade. This is presumably supposed to scare people because, let’s face it $18 trillion is a really big number.
Much of the fright factor disappears when we realize that $15 trillion of this $18 trillion comes from the WSJ’s estimate of the cost of Sanders’ universal Medicare program. That is a considerable chunk of change, but as Kevin Drum and others have pointed out this will not be new money out of people’s pockets. For the most part this is money that employers are now paying for their workers’ health care insurance. Instead, under a universal Medicare system the government would get this money in tax revenue. Since Canada and the other wealthy countries with universal Medicare-type systems all have much lower per capita health care costs than the United States (the average is less than half the cost), in all probability we would be paying less for our health care under the Sanders’ system than we do now.
This still leaves $3 trillion for us to get frightened over, and this still looks like a really big number. As a point of reference, GDP over the next decade is projected at roughly $240 trillion. This makes the cost of the rest of Sanders’ plans equal to less than 1.3 percent of GDP.
Should we worry about that? The increase in annual military spending from 2000 to the peaks of Iraq/Afghanistan wars was roughly 1.8 percent of GDP. This was also the size of military buildup that took place under President Reagan. Jeb Bush is proposing to cut taxes by roughly this amount if he gets elected.
In short, the additional spending that Senator Sanders has proposed is not trivial, but we have seen comparable increases in the past for other purposes. We can clearly afford the tab, the question is whether free college, rebuilding the infrastructure, early childhood education and the other items on the list are worth the price.
Moose,
Is it okay for someone to commit perjury in order to help convict someone they “know” is guilty?
I don’t understand how some people will use random nanny state laws to justify at best aggressive at worst illegal police behavior … similarly, I don’t understand how some people will excuse blatant illegal behavior by others because they think other types of laws are immaterial.
(I’m not just referring to regulars here, people in general)
Moose,
Do you realize your entire position rests on the logic of two wrongs make a right?
I do not recall “countless” people saying show me the note. I do recall it potentially gaining steam and then being stymied by judges blatantly ignoring the law (as in the cases described in the link). Again, not something to be proud of.
I wonder if I open a joint with sex robots is that prostitution? Could be a good opportunity
Sex robots? Wouldn’t rust become an issue?
Again, guilty of practicing law without a degree here but I can’t see how legally (or ethically) if a violation had no impact on the underlying facts of the case why such violation would be cause for actual dismissal.
If I am caught speeding and the facts of the actual crime are undisputed should I get off because the officer did not sign his patrol car out properly and therefore should not have been on the road?
No, I’m still accountable. The offending party gets sanctioned. The police officer gets told to follow procedure. The mortgage company gets a boatload of fine. In both instances the underlying case (foreclosure/speeding) stands.
Lib, heading down in about an hour. Wish me luck (although in your paradigm I know that it is irrelevant).
LW,
I expected Moose to basically copy/paste his two wrongs make a right (in this case) comment that we’ve seen multiple times, but I didn’t expect you to say something similar. I have never advocated that the individuals in default be giving a free house. I have never said they shouldn’t be a foreclosure.
I have merely said that the foreclosure should only be brought by the entity with legal standing and sometimes that has not been the case. Fraudulent documents have been used in court among other illegal practices and no one was punished. Token fines are nothing. We know this because apparently they’re still doing it. Govt officials are ignoring the law (shocking I know). Individuals need to be punished.
leftwing says:
September 16, 2015 at 1:46 pm
Again, guilty of practicing law without a degree here but I can’t see how legally (or ethically) if a violation had no impact on the underlying facts of the case why such violation would be cause for actual dismissal.
If I am caught speeding and the facts of the actual crime are undisputed should I get off because the officer did not sign his patrol car out properly and therefore should not have been on the road?
No, I’m still accountable. The offending party gets sanctioned. The police officer gets told to follow procedure. The mortgage company gets a boatload of fine. In both instances the underlying case (foreclosure/speeding) stands.
leftwing,
Good luck. I went down on Sunday night. Somehow came back up $7,300. I literally went down with $2 in my wallet. I had $500 in comp to convert to freeplay, plus $160 bounceback cash, plus $490 in various free play offers. Best part was at 5am, up about 5k, I decide to drop $100 in a dumb Fish in the Barrel video slot machine. When I have a good day, before turning it in, I sometimes drop a hundy in a slot for the entertainment value. I almost always lose. This time the credits kept growing all the way up to $400. So as I add more paylines, a message pops up on the screen that says bet more, improve your odds. So there’s a second row of buttons on the machine labeled 1,2,3,5 and 10. When I hit 1, it spins and adds a wild. When I hit 2, it spins and adds 2 wilds. So what the heck, I hit 10! Unbeknownst to tired me, I see I just bet some awful number of quarters to the tune of 500 of them or $125 for one spin. Here’s how this story ends…
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=1D20834422F58529!1224&authkey=!AJl6RZ155_A8H3M&v=3&ithint=photo%2cjpg
Up over $70K on the year. It’s unbelievably.
Expat, you guys are getting hammered today. What gives?
And 12-plus% bounce for TAP on an Ambev/SAB deal that is gonna get hammered inside the Beltway? I’m thinking short.
Speaking of Caesars….
Probe rips Stockton’s ‘unwise’ purchase of the Showboat
ATLANTIC CITY — A four-month probe into Stockton University’s purchase of the former Showboat casino pins blame on several parties for the failed transaction that left the southern New Jersey college saddled with a property it cannot use but has to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to maintain.
The southern New Jersey college purchased the shuttered boardwalk casino in December for $18 million with plans to turn the property into a satellite campus. But a decades-old legal restriction, which the investigation found then-President Herman Saatkamp was aware of prior to closing, halted those efforts.
A report detailing the findings of investigation by the law firm Gibbons P.C. concludes that Saatkamp, the school’s lead counsel on the deal — who was not admitted to practice law in New Jersey — and Caesars bear responsibility for the deal.
“Ultimately, the ill-fated purchase of the Showboat by Stockton, and the ensuing developments, were the result of a confluence of facts, risks and personalities that culminated in a transaction that, with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, was certainly unwise,” the report released by Stockton on Tuesday said.
The report said Saatkamp’s “leadership style, and haste to obtain approval of the deal, hampered debate,” which resulted in the board “not learning of critical facts.”
Saatkamp initially denied knowing about a 1988 agreement that prevented the Showboat property from being used as anything other than a casino, but the investigation found “he was well aware of that covenant, albeit satisfied that it ought not preclude the closing.”
Saatkamp found out after the board approved the purchase but before closing on the deal that Trump Taj Mahal was not going to waive the 1988 restriction but he did not tell the board, according the report.
Saatkamp said in a statement that nothing in the report changes his “fundamental, deeply rooted belief” that he “acted in the best interest of the University and the citizens of New Jersey.”
Saatkamp said he was “deeply disappointed” about the report’s “lack of emphasis on the failure of Stockton’s outside counsel, which the Board and I relied upon, to fully disclose significant legal problems with the real estate agreement.”
Stevan Sandberg of Florio Perrucci Steinhardt & Fader was the school’s lead counsel on the deal. The report said Sandberg did not believe it was unwise to close on the deal and did not advise Saatkamp not to do so. Also, the report said, Sandberg was not admitted to practice law in New Jersey and that wasn’t disclosed to Stockton.
Timothy White, a spokesman for the law firm, said “although our on-going representation of Stockton precludes us from commenting extensively, after a review of the Gibbons report, we disagree with some conclusions as they relate to our Firm and its services” but did not provide further details.
The report also says that it “certainly appears as if Caesars conveyed the impression to Stockton” that a waiver on the 1988 agreement was coming, though that was not consistent with statements from Trump Taj Mahal.
“If true, those misrepresentations represent the starting point for this episode: without them, the events described in this report would not have occurred,” the report said.
Caesars Entertainment spokeswoman Katie Dougherty issued a statement saying that “all parties to the Stockton-Showboat transaction and their counsel were operating with full knowledge of the status of title to the Showboat property.”
The statement said that “any suggestion” that Caesars Entertainment Operating Company, Inc. “or its operating subsidiaries were less than forthright in the course of the Stockton-Showboat transactions is simply false.”
Madeleine Deininger, chair of the Stockton Board of Trustees, said in a statement that “as a public institution, we owe these answers to faculty, staff, students, the general public and many others. And, as a Board of Trustees we need to understand this background so that we can put processes in place that will avoid mistakes of this nature going forward.”
A spokeswoman for the university said on Tuesday that nobody was available for further comment.
Stockton University’s has been trying to sell the Showboat but those efforts have been hampered by another legal restriction put on the property last year by Caesars. That restriction prevents the property from being used as a casino.
http://www.nj.com/atlantic/index.ssf/2015/09/probe_rips_stocktons_unwise_purchase_of_the_showboat.html
Speaking of Caesars…
Developer Blatstein poised to buy Showboat from Stockton
Developer Bart Blatstein is poised to buy the former Showboat c*sino property in Atlantic City from Stockton University, potentially ending a political and legal mess that has dogged the school for months.
The Philadelphia-based Blatstein is finalizing an agreement with Stockton for a price greater than the $18 million the school paid for it last December, a person with knowledge of the deal said.
Details of the agreement remained murky Monday evening, with Stockton’s president and Blatstein both declining comment. NJBIZ.com first reported Blatstein’s involvement Monday afternoon.
Harvey Kesselman, the interim president of the university, has said he is looking “for the right buyer” for the property.
Stockton’s board of trustees held a special meeting two weeks ago to discuss multiple purchase proposals for the Showboat property, following a New Jersey judge’s ruling that the university was free to market and sell the site.
Blatstein’s purchase could end a long roller-coaster ride for Stockton, which bought the property from Caesars Entertainment with the goal of turning it into a residential “Island Campus” in Atlantic City for thousands of students.
The move would have allowed for a major expansion of the university, whose main campus in Galloway is surrounded by the ecologically sensitive Pinelands. Amid steadily growing enrollment each year, Stockton has pushed into Atlantic City and other Shore towns.
Stockton’s president at the time, Herman Saatkamp, trumpeted the move. So did local and state officials, who said it would help diversify the region’s ailing, casino- and tourism-based economy.
But months after the deal was signed – as Stockton was registering students for summer classes in the Island Campus – Saatkamp announced that the university was being blocked by the parent company of the Trump Taj Mahal, which is next door to the Showboat property.
“You do not see a college on the Las Veg*s Strip,” Trump Entertainment Resorts said in a news release, saying it did not want to deal with underage college students trying to gamble.
The company made it clear it would invoke a 1988 legal covenant to block the opening of the Stockton satellite. The 1988 agreement, involving Trump and Caesars, said the Showboat property can only be used as a c*sino and hotel.
Some lawmakers and faculty members began to criticize the deal – and what they described as a lack of due diligence and transparency. How, they asked, could Stockton have bought Showboat, knowing about the 1988 agreement?
More questions and criticism ensued when it was discovered that Caesars had itself placed a competing deed restriction on the former Showboat property: The site can be used for anything except a c*sino.
And Caesars, which had guaranteed to protect Stockton financially in the event of the 1988 covenant’s being used, also declared bankruptcy, adding to the legal tangle surrounding the property.
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20150915_Developer_Blatstein_poised_to_buy_Showboat_from_Stockton.html#LpJXAwLGuOKkCl9M.99
Speaking of C*esars…
Developer Blatstein poised to buy Sh*wboat from Stockton
Developer Bart Blatstein is poised to buy the former Sh*wboat c*sino property in Atl*ntic C*ty from Stockton University, potentially ending a political and legal mess that has dogged the school for months.
The Philadelphia-based Blatstein is finalizing an agreement with Stockton for a price greater than the $18 million the school paid for it last December, a person with knowledge of the deal said.
Details of the agreement remained murky Monday evening, with Stockton’s president and Blatstein both declining comment. NJBIZ.com first reported Blatstein’s involvement Monday afternoon.
Harvey Kesselman, the interim president of the university, has said he is looking “for the right buyer” for the property.
Stockton’s board of trustees held a special meeting two weeks ago to discuss multiple purchase proposals for the Sh*wboat property, following a New Jersey judge’s ruling that the university was free to market and sell the site.
Blatstein’s purchase could end a long roller-coaster ride for Stockton, which bought the property from C*esars Entertainment with the goal of turning it into a residential “Island Campus” in Atl*ntic C*ty for thousands of students.
The move would have allowed for a major expansion of the university, whose main campus in Galloway is surrounded by the ecologically sensitive Pinelands. Amid steadily growing enrollment each year, Stockton has pushed into Atl*ntic C*ty and other Shore towns.
Stockton’s president at the time, Herman Saatkamp, trumpeted the move. So did local and state officials, who said it would help diversify the region’s ailing, c*sino- and tourism-based economy.
But months after the deal was signed – as Stockton was registering students for summer classes in the Island Campus – Saatkamp announced that the university was being blocked by the parent company of the Tr*mp Taj Mahal, which is next door to the Showboat property.
“You do not see a college on the Las Veg*s Strip,” Tr*mp Entertainment Resorts said in a news release, saying it did not want to deal with underage college students trying to gamble.
The company made it clear it would invoke a 1988 legal covenant to block the opening of the Stockton satellite. The 1988 agreement, involving Tr*mp and C*esars, said the Sh*wboat property can only be used as a c*sino and hotel.
Some lawmakers and faculty members began to criticize the deal – and what they described as a lack of due diligence and transparency. How, they asked, could Stockton have bought Sh*wboat, knowing about the 1988 agreement?
More questions and criticism ensued when it was discovered that C*esars had itself placed a competing deed restriction on the former Sh*wboat property: The site can be used for anything except a c*sino.
And C*esars, which had guaranteed to protect Stockton financially in the event of the 1988 covenant’s being used, also declared bankruptcy, adding to the legal tangle surrounding the property.
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20150915_Developer_Blatstein_poised_to_buy_Showboat_from_Stockton.html#LpJXAwLGuOKkCl9M.99
whoa…..
French telecom giant Altice to buy Cablevision in $9 billion sale