Weekend Open Discussion – Part II

Posted on February 22, 2008 by grim

Now Open, Part II!

Prior weekend thread closed due to comment overflow.

Posted in General | 304 Comments

Relisting = Cheating

Posted on February 22, 2008 by grim

From CNBC:

Re-listing: I Think It’s Cheating–What Do You Think?

There’s been a lot of talk in the blogosphere lately about the phenomenon of “re-listing”, and so it behooves me to weigh in. “Re-listing” is when an agent takes a property that’s been sitting on the market a bit longer than one might like and removes it from the market, only to “re-list” it days or even minutes later as a “fresh” listing.

As homes sit on the market longer and longer these days, it’s a tactic that many real estate agents say is legal, helpful, and really a no-brainer.

The problem is that despite all the news of the housing downturn, for some reason buyers still like to see “days on market” under 30 before they’re willing to step in. Anything above that is a turn-off. There are ways to find out, if you know where to dig, what the total days on-market has been, but the average real e-surfer probably doesn’t know how.
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I beg to differ. Here’s my opinion (which I’m allowed to give here on the blog because it’s a blog, not my other job as a business journalist on CNBC): That’s rot. It is cheating. It’s one thing to change the perception of a home by staging it, dressing it up a bit, but fudging the numbers of “days on market” is just as bad as leaving out the fact that the basement floods periodically. There’s a reason that number is there, so people can gauge interest and understand if that home is correctly priced compared to its neighborhood comps.

Posted in Housing Bubble, National Real Estate | 13 Comments

Weekend Open Discussion

Posted on February 22, 2008 by grim

This is the time and place to post observations about your local areas, comments on news stories or the New Jersey housing market, open house reports, etc. If you have any questions you wanted to ask earlier in the week but never posted them up, let’s have them. Also a good place to post suggestions, requests for information, criticism, and praise.

For readers that have never commented, there is a link at the top of each message that is typically labelled “[#] Comments“. Go ahead and give that a click, you might be missing out on a world of information you didn’t know about. While you are there, introduce yourselves to everyone.

For new readers that have only read the messages displayed on the main page, take a look through the archives, a substantial amount of information has been put online in the past year. The archives can be accessed by using the links found in the menus on the right hand side of the page.

Posted in General | 318 Comments

Relisting – “It’s Got to Stop”

Posted on February 20, 2008 by grim

The morning after: I find myself in a familiar position. My inbox is filled with a mix of hate mail from Realtors and love(?) mail from consumers. Realtors all seem to think this practice is perfectly acceptable, some go so far as to say it is their responsibility. Consumers are angry as hell, and rightfully so.

Note to other Realtors: If you want to be treated with respect and trusted, act in a way that begets those traits. Attempting to salvage trust and respect with half-ass justifications for unethical behavior? Is it any wonder why real estate agents are lumped into the same category as used-car salesmen and ambulance chasers?

Note to New Jersey Realtors: Stopping this practice is now my personal mission. I will go to no end to have this practiced stopped. From the local boards, to the NJAR, the legislators, the real estate commission, the DOBI, etc. Hell hath no fury…

From ABC News/Nightline:

Buyer Beware: Unsold Homes Are Often ‘Re-listed’
By VICKI MABREY and MELIA PATRIA
Feb. 20, 2008

If you’re looking to sell your home fast, Minnesota realtor Joe Niece believes he’s your guy.

“I’m probably the most aggressive person in the entire state,” he said. “Maybe even the United States.”

Niece says he will sell your home 30 percent faster than average market time.

“I do probably ten times more than a good many of my competitors when it comes to marketing,” he said.

Niece sold one home in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, after just 27 days on the market, and another house after only 15 days. “I can tell every single seller that I have, that I did everything to sell their house that I would have done for my mom’s house or my house,” Niece said.

How does he do it? The problem is, the figures he cites are not technically accurate. The first house in Eden Prairie actually lingered on the slumping market for 99 days. And the one that sold in 15 days actually sat for 126 days.

It’s a tactic called “re-listing,” which is legal and more common than you think.
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Here’s how it works: Niece cancels house listings when they reach 70 days on the market, and then re-lists them as new, with 0 days on the market.

“So, when the buyer says, ‘Well, how long’s this one been on the market?’ And he looks at a report that normally an agent or a buyer would have when they’re showing houses, it only shows the current time on the market,” Niece said. “So a buyer’s going to be way more positive as they look through a home that says 25 days versus 125 days.”

Niece believes that re-listing is an important marketing tool in tough periods like this, because first impressions are crucial.
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But real estate blogger James Bednar says re-listing is simply unethical. “As a buyer, it does make me angry,” he said. “I need to know how long a home’s been on the market or what the original price is.”

“Hiding that market information from consumers is wrong, and it’s got to stop,” he added.

Bednar started blogging in 2005 after growing aggravated with realtors during his own house-hunting search.

“The issue here is that when a re-listed home is sold, it skews the market transaction data,” he said. “When an agent typically says they can sell a home in 30 or 60 days, is that really true? If they’ve re-listed a home, that might not necessarily be true.” In an effort to gain access to market data, he actually got a real estate license and a membership with his local listing service. With a few key strokes he can find the true history of any listing in his northern New Jersey neighborhood.

“The most common outcome is probably that a buyer overpays for a home,” he said. “I think it’s only a matter of time before a buyer who buys a home under these false pretenses realizes it and perhaps sues the real estate agent for misrepresenting a house.”
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Niece said most buyers don’t understand that more than 100 days on the market is actually average market time. “They perceive that 20 days is an average market time because for the last seven years that’s what they’ve heard,” he said. “It would only be cooking the numbers if buyers’ agents couldn’t easily get the numbers.”
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Across the country in Sacramento, California, the problem got so bad that Michael Lyon, CEO of Lyon Real Estate, blew the whistle after he noticed that one third of all “new” listings were re-listings.

“This is just silliness,” he said. “I’m sorry, but you can’t pull the wool over the buyer’s eyes.”

Lyon forced his regional listing service to set a new standard. “We let people see all the previous listings, period, there are no secrets,” he said. “We want the buyer to know everything about all the times it was listed, so we can allow them to truly investigate the home.”
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The National Association of Realtors says it hasn’t seen a need for regulation on re-listing because it is not aware of a problem. Lyon says buyers should ask their agents to get the entire listing history.

“You want to know all the times the house has been listed in the last two years,” he said, adding that days on the market are “very important” to buyers.

“It allows them to ask other questions,” he said. “If it has been on a long time, why? Why is this happening? And those answers will allow them to make a fair offer. ”

Posted in National Real Estate | 441 Comments

Zandi: Home prices to fall 20%

Posted on February 20, 2008 by grim

From Reuters:

Economy.com sees home prices down 20 percent

A rapidly deteriorating U.S. economy will cause home prices to drop by 20 percent peak-to-trough, a leading economist said on Wednesday.

Mark Zandi, chief economist and co-founder of Moody’s Economy.com, said he also expects a recession in the first half of this year.

Zandi, speaking at the Reuters Housing Summit in New York, said this is a “significant” change from the Moody’s Economy.com outlook published in December, which called for a 13 percent drop.

He expects home sales to hit bottom this spring, housing starts to reach a nadir this summer, and house prices to trough in the spring of 2009.

“Three months ago, I expected the economy to skirt a recession. Now, I expect it to suffer a recession (in the) first half of 2008,” he said.
…
Zandi said rapidly rising foreclosures is high on his list of significant problems facing the U.S. economy.

“The surge in foreclosures and delinquencies on mortgages is accelerating, not abating, and obviously we are at levels we have never seen before,” he said. “This is a significant problem for the economy.”

The surge in foreclosures is putting further downward pressure on the housing market because it adds to the inventory of homes for sale, which is already at a lofty level.

“This puts further pressure on house prices and therefore on the ability and willingness of consumers to spend,” he said.

Zandi said households that are going through foreclosures are also under tremendous pressure, having to rein in their spending very significantly.

“They are also having a measurable impact on spending, particularly areas of the country where foreclosure problems are more serious,” he said.

For each foreclosure on a street block, it reduces the value of all homes on that block by almost 1.5 percent, he said.

Posted in General | 44 Comments

“[Subprime] defaults are spiking well before resets come into play”

Posted on February 20, 2008 by grim

From CNN/Money:

Subprime loans defaulting even before resets

For months, we’ve fretted about the Armageddon that will hit when subprime adjustable rate mortgages start resetting to much higher interest rates.

What’s happening is even worse: Many of these loans are defaulting well before their rates increase.

Defaults for subprime loans issued in 2007 – none of which have reset yet – hit 11.2 percent in November. That represents perhaps 300,000 households, and is twice the default rate that 2006 loans had 10 months after being issued, according to Friedman, Billings Ramsey analyst Michael Youngblood.

Defaults are spiking well before resets come into play thanks to the lax lending environment of the past few years. Many borrowers were approved for mortgages that they had little chance of affording, even at the low-interest teaser rates .

“I was rather shocked by the characteristics of the 2007 loans,” said Youngblood.
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Originally, concerns about these loans focused on the fact that that most homeowners wouldn’t survive such pricey resets. In late 2006, the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), predicted that 2.2 million subprime ARM borrowers would lose their homes in the following two years due to reset shock.
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For instance, in both 2006 and 2007, well over 40 percent of subprime borrowers were awarded mortgages with either little or no documentation of their ability to pay. With these so-called “liar loans,” borrowers did not have to show proof of either earnings or assets.

And even when borrowers did go on the record about their earning power, it didn’t bode well. Both 2006 and 2007 ushered in a large proportion of loans with high debt-to-income ratios (DTI), which indicates the percentage of gross income required to pay debt. In 2007 subprime originations, the DTI hit 42.1 percent, up from 41.1 percent in 2006. Borrowers were simply taking on more debt that they could afford.

What’s more, many borrowers started out with low- or no-down payment loans, which left them with almost no equity in their home.

During the boom, rapid price appreciation meant borrowers built up home equity quickly. That minimized defaults, since owners could draw from that equity to pay their bills – including their mortgages – through home equity loans, lines of credit or cash-out refinancings.

But prices fell starting in 2006,leaving borrowers with less home equity to draw upon when they run into financial problems.
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Owners with mortgages worth more than their homes simply began walking away from their homes when costs become unmanageable.
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“Lenders felt they had to take the loans to preserve their access [to the rest of the loan pool],” he said. They were willing to accept some risky subprime loans so that the mortgage brokers would also send them safer prime and Alt-A loans.

Of course that’s a bet that went bad. And it’s likely to get worse as resets for ARMs issued in 2006 and 2007 kick in this year.

Posted in Housing Bubble, National Real Estate, Price Reduced | 231 Comments

Can the Fed prevent recession?

Posted on February 20, 2008 by grim

From the Wall Street Journal:

Our Economic Dilemma
By MARTIN FELDSTEIN
February 20, 2008; Page A15

Although it is too soon to tell whether the United States has entered a recession, there is mounting evidence that a recession has in fact begun. Key measures of economic activity stopped growing in December and January or actually began to decline. The collapse of house prices and the crisis in the credit markets continue to depress the real economy.

The sharp reduction in the federal funds interest rate and the new fiscal stimulus package may, of course, be enough to avert a downturn. Many forecasters still predict that the economy will just slow in the first part of this year and then rebound after the summer. But the hope that monetary and fiscal policies would prevent continued weakness by boosting consumer confidence was derailed by the recent report that consumer confidence in January collapsed to the lowest level since 1992.

If a recession does occur, it could last longer and be more painful than the past several downturns because of differences in its origin and character. The recessions that began in 1991 and 2001 lasted only eight months from the start of the downturn until the beginning of the recovery. Even the deeper recession of 1981 lasted only 16 months.

But these past recessions were caused by deliberate Federal Reserve policy aimed at reversing a rise in inflation. In those cases, the Fed increased real interest rates until it saw the economic slowdown that it thought would move us back toward price stability. It then reversed course, reducing interest rates and bringing the recession to an end.

In contrast, the real interest rate in 2006 and 2007 stayed at a relatively low level of less than 3%. A key cause of the present slowdown and potential recession was not a tightening of monetary policy but the bursting of the house-price bubble after six years of exceptionally rapid house-price increases. The Fed therefore will not be able to end the recession as it did previous ones by turning off a tight monetary policy.

The unprecedented national fall in house prices is reducing household wealth and therefore consumer spending. House prices are down 10% from the 2006 high and are likely to fall at least another 10%. Each 10% decline cuts household wealth by about $2 trillion, and this eventually reduces annual consumer spending by about $100 billion. No one can predict the extent to which the coming fall in house prices will lead to defaults and foreclosures, driving house prices and wealth down even further. Falling house prices also discourage home building, with housing starts down 38% over the past 12 months.

But the principle cause for concern today is the paralysis of the credit markets. Credit is always key to the expansion of the economy. The collapse of confidence in credit markets is now preventing that necessary extension of credit. The decline of credit creation includes not only the banks but also the bond markets, hedge funds, insurance companies and mutual funds. Securitization, leveraged buyouts and credit insurance have also atrophied.

The dysfunctional character of the credit markets means that a Fed policy of reducing interest rates cannot be as effective in stimulating the economy as it has been in the past. Monetary policy may simply lack traction in the current credit environment.

Posted in Economics, Housing Bubble, National Real Estate | 1 Comment

Corzine may cut 3,000 jobs

Posted on February 20, 2008 by grim

From the NY Times:

Corzine Is Said to Weigh Cutting 3,000 Jobs and One Department

Faced with a worsening economy, Gov. Jon S. Corzine is considering reducing the state’s work force by 3,000 employees and closing at least one department in the administration as part of his plan to slash up to $2.5 billion from next year’s budget, people who have been briefed on his plans said on Tuesday.

State Senator Barbara Buono, a Democrat from Middlesex County and the chairwoman of the budget committee, said that Mr. Corzine — who will unveil his budget for the new fiscal year next Tuesday — was weighing eliminating the Department of Personnel and pushing for an early retirement package — not layoffs — to save tens of millions of dollars.

“We need to end this longstanding bureaucratic inertia where departments and agencies refuse to face up to wasteful spending practices and a lack of oversight,” Ms. Buono said. “I think we really need to change the mindset of how government operates.”

Administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the plan, said that up to 3,000 workers could be affected, many of whom would presumably be older and have higher salaries. Some union leaders and lawmakers said, however, that they were wary of the governor’s plans.
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“There will probably be reductions in staff,” Mr. Corzine said at a town hall meeting in Atlantic County two weeks ago.

When asked on Tuesday about the possibility of early retirement and the elimination of the Department of Personnel, Mr. Corzine’s press secretary, Lilo Stainton, said that while it was premature to discuss details of the budget, the governor “has made clear that it will include severe cuts, and all options are now being weighed.”

Posted in Politics, Property Taxes | 5 Comments

Short-term memories

Posted on February 19, 2008 by grim

From the Wall Street Journal:

When Nerves Get Short, Credit Gets Tight
By JON HILSENRATH
February 19, 2008; Page C1

One aspect of this credit crisis has a familiar ring to it. All around, investors and lenders are getting squeezed because they depended on short-term borrowing to finance long-term holdings. When their lenders get nervous, once-cheap short-term borrowing becomes dangerously expensive or disappears altogether.

Think about the Americans with sketchy credit backgrounds who depended on adjustable-rate mortgages to finance home purchases. Many thought they would refinance into fixed-rate mortgages if their adjustable rates reset much higher. Instead, their rates shot up and their banks wouldn’t refinance. For many it suddenly becomes impossible to finance the most essential of long-term investments — a home. Nearly 16% of risky, subprime mortgages with adjustable rates were at least 90 days delinquent as of Sept. 30, compared with 6% for subprime mortgages with fixed rates.

Wall Street is getting trapped by short-term borrowing in different ways. Two prime examples from last year were investments known as asset-backed commercial paper and structured investment vehicles. In both cases, banks and their clients went to the short-term commercial-paper markets to raise money. They used the money to acquire long-term investments, such as mortgage debt, or to make long-term loans. When commercial-paper markets seized up, the short-term borrowing rates soured and the strategy imploded.

An old-fashioned bank run works the same way. Depositors put their money in a bank, understanding they can pull it out at a moment’s notice. Banks use the money to make long-term loans to businesses or homeowners. When depositors get skittish and demand their money back, the bank has a problem: the funds are tied up for decades with customers. That is what happened to a British mortgage lender called Northern Rock last year. Now, the bank has been nationalized.

Something with similar contours is happening in the auction-rate-securities market. Municipalities, museums, student lenders and others issue these securities, which have interest rates that reset every week to 35 days. They use the money to finance projects or make student loans with long repayment periods. Investors have fled the market, and the municipalities that issue the notes have had to digest soaring interest costs.

There is nothing new about any of this. It was an ingredient in the financial crises that plagued emerging markets in the 1990s. Countries that depended on short-term debt got squeezed when investors became skittish about the miracle stories of emerging-market growth. The savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s had its roots in a mismatch between the maturities of thrifts’ long-term assets and their short-term liabilities.
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The trouble is even the most sophisticated bankers have very short-term memories. Because when the strategy doesn’t work, the consequences can be dire.

Posted in Economics, National Real Estate, Risky Lending | 255 Comments

Eliminating the property tax “rebate”

Posted on February 19, 2008 by grim

From Newsday:

Democratic lawmakers: End most property tax rebates

Three Democratic lawmakers on Monday proposed axing property tax rebates for most homeowners to help control state spending and avoid Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s proposed toll increases.

Sen. Jeff Van Drew and Assemblymen Nelson Albano and Matt Milam said rebates should continue only for senior citizens and disabled homeowners.

The rebates averaged $1,051 last year _ up about $700 from 2006 _ and are meant to help homeowners suffering from America’s highest property taxes, which are twice the national average at $6,330 per homeowner.

The expanded rebates were the centerpiece of Democratic efforts last year to ease the property tax burden. They were sent to households earning less than $250,000 per year. For most, the rebates equated to 20 percent of their property taxes.

The three Democrats, all from South Jersey’s 1st District, said their plan would save $1.3 billion. It comes with Corzine promising about $2.5 billion in budget cuts and proposing higher highway tolls as he looks to revamp troubled state finances.

The rebates cost the state about $2.3 billion last year, some of which was funded by the 1 percent sales tax increase from 2006. Still, voters in November rejected permanently dedicating half of that increase to property tax relief.

“The state is increasing taxes to provide relief,” Van Drew said. “It doesn’t make any sense. The people of this state spoke loud and clear this past November when they voted no on dedicating the remaining half cent to property tax relief.”

The three Democrats also want to ask voters this fall whether to permanently eliminate the rebates to save money.

“If we are wrong, let the voters tell us,” Albano said.

Posted in New Jersey Real Estate, Property Taxes | 6 Comments

Always a great time to buy or sell!

Posted on February 19, 2008 by grim

From the New Jersey Association of Realtors:

Realtors say New Jersey home sales are healthy

Sales volume of existing single family homes, condominiums and co-ops in the fourth quarter of 2007 are stable.

According to statistics released by the National Association of Realtors last week,“New Jersey’s real-estate market continues to offer a number of tremendous opportunities,” said NJAR 2008 President Drew Fishman. “With extremely low mortgage interest rates and large selections of homes for sale, conditions are good right now for people to enter the housing market.”

Fishman noted that the fourth-quarter statistics show that home sales in New Jersey remain healthy and that New Jersey does not follow national housing trends. New Jersey’s seasonally adjusted annual rate of home sales equaled 128,400 in the fourth quarter of 2007.

“While other states have seen home sales plummet, New Jersey’s housing market remains stable,” added Fishman. “Some housing markets in New Jersey have even experienced a slight appreciation in home sales prices.”

After Binghamton, New York, fourth quarter median sales price of existing single-family homes in the Atlantic City area showed the largest increase in the entire Northeast region.

The median sales price grew from $251,900 in fourth quarter 2006 to $278,800 in 2007, an increase of 10.7 percent. The Trenton-Ewing market also experienced an increase in median sales price. The median sales price rose from $289,000 in the forth quarter 2006 to $306,800 in 2007, an increase of 6.2 percent. In the Newark-Union area the median sales price increased by 5.3 percent and in the metropolitan Philadelphia area prices rose by 1.1 percent.

“Looking at national statistics or even statewide statistics doesn’t paint the full picture,” Fishman said. “All real estate is local, and that it is why it is so vital to contact a Realtor. A Realtor can help explain local housing trends and give you better understanding of what is truly happening in your local market.”

Posted in Humor, New Jersey Real Estate | 4 Comments

A “good time for consumers to be especially wary”

Posted on February 18, 2008 by grim

From the New York Times:

No Lull in Mortgage Pitches

The mortgage market may be in a historic upheaval, but mortgage companies continue to pump out upbeat advertisements.

brags in its ads that “No one can do what Countrywide can” and that “Countrywide can show you the way home.” Wachovia ads feature an “Approved” stamp prominently at the top, and Bank of America says, “Homeownership is the best medicine.”

Also, the National Association of Realtors is running national television ads saying there has never been a better time to buy a home. Home values nearly double every 10 years, the commercial claims, showing a young couple walk up to their white colonial-style home.

Despite rising foreclosures, defaults, lawsuits and investigations by state and federal regulators, the mortgage industry has not reduced its ad spending.

Mortgage experts say spending will be strong into the spring, a prime buying time for the housing market. But consumer advocates say the ads continue to be misleading.

“There’s been huge scrutiny on these companies, but they are continuing to advertise,” said Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League, a nonprofit organization in Washington. “Many of these companies are bleeding, and these ads are a way to get more money into the door.”

Indeed, the Mortgage Bankers Association is predicting this will be a down year for the industry, and on Friday it said that the total value of mortgages produced would be down 16 percent from its level last year.

Mortgage companies spent nearly $409 million on ads in the third quarter of last year, the most recent period with available data, higher than the industry’s ad spending during the peak of the housing boom, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Mortgage ads can easily be found in all types of media outlets, and the ads cited in this article were found by Competitrack, a company in New York that tracks advertising.

“There may be some good, legitimate offers,” said Frank Dorman, a spokesman for the Federal Trade Commission, which monitors advertising for deception. “But it’s a good time for consumers to be especially wary.”

Posted in Housing Bubble, National Real Estate, Risky Lending | 177 Comments

“It started with mortgages, but it’s spilling over.”

Posted on February 18, 2008 by grim

From the Washington Post:

From Foreclosure Signs to Auto Repo Lots

Reina Bolanos got a loan for her used Honda Odyssey in 2006 on what appeared to be favorable terms: $16,000 without a down payment. Though the 8 percent rate was high, Bank of America offered to spread the loan over six years to keep the monthly payments down.

But the secretary from Silver Spring found that raising her young children cost more than she had expected, and she now worries about losing the car after missing her last two payments.

A growing number of Americans are buckling under the weight of debt as the troubles that started among homeowners with subprime mortgages last year spread to other consumers who rely on credit. Auto loan borrowers are having an especially hard time. The number of people more than 60 days late on their car payments has spiked to a 10-year high, according to Fitch Ratings.

Similar problems are brewing for credit card holders. Card balances written off as uncollectible by banks have jumped 24 percent, and late payments are up 16 percent from a year ago.

Like the mortgage market, consumer credit boomed in recent years as lending standards loosened. Unorthodox auto loans lured consumers to buy cars they otherwise couldn’t afford. Credit cards teased holders with introductory rates that soared after a few months. Now, more people are struggling to keep up with their bills under the strain of growing job losses and an economic downturn.
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Consumers borrow more money today than at any point in history, and they are increasingly using credit to pay for nearly everything, from cars to groceries to electricity. Consumer debt reached an all-time high of $2.55 trillion in December, nearly double from a decade ago, according to the Federal Reserve. Some economists say Americans are simply paying the price of their addiction to debt and are now more vulnerable than ever to credit downturns.

Behind the rising defaults is a tale of two Americas. Those with good credit will almost certainly see lower rates on cars and credit cards as the Fed continues to cut rates this year. But those with bad credit are facing rising rates and being forced to put more money down on cars. Some may not be able to get a credit card or auto loan as banks, spooked by the mortgage mess, have been reassessing the risk of making loans.

“It’s going to be much more difficult for those people who are already in credit distress than it is for those of us who are fortunate and have full-time jobs,” said Tony Cherin, a finance professor at San Diego State University.

But others worry that even those with good credit will share in the pain. The financial woes that started among homeowners with questionable credit histories — the “subprime” borrower — have sparked a downturn in the housing market.

“It’s not only people who are stuck with the subprime mortgages. It’s your average American,” said Todd Cook, president of Debt.com, which refers financially stressed people to firms that can help them. “It started with mortgages, but it’s spilling over. If it’s not their homes, it’s their credit cards. If it’s not their credit cards, it’s their autos.”

Posted in Economics, Housing Bubble, National Real Estate | 6 Comments

Weekend Open Discussion – Part II

Posted on February 16, 2008 by grim

Now Open, Part II!

Prior weekend thread closed due to comment overflow.

Posted in General | 234 Comments

Weekend Open Discussion

Posted on February 15, 2008 by grim

This is the time and place to post observations about your local areas, comments on news stories or the New Jersey housing market, open house reports, etc. If you have any questions you wanted to ask earlier in the week but never posted them up, let’s have them. Also a good place to post suggestions, requests for information, criticism, and praise.

For readers that have never commented, there is a link at the top of each message that is typically labelled “[#] Comments“. Go ahead and give that a click, you might be missing out on a world of information you didn’t know about. While you are there, introduce yourselves to everyone.

For new readers that have only read the messages displayed on the main page, take a look through the archives, a substantial amount of information has been put online in the past year. The archives can be accessed by using the links found in the menus on the right hand side of the page.

Posted in General | 400 Comments