Owner: Financial Ambition URL:http://www.financialambition.com Join Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 16:04:03 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: The purpose of this blog is to provide essential real estate and financial guidance to Bay Area homeowner’s whose ambitions are to live in the home that is right for their family while at the same time fully funding their retirement, their children’s coll Site statistics:Click here
Searching For An Island To Buy? 2007-08-02 11:47:50
Thanks PBO31 for this photo
Did you know that Red Rock Island
was recently for sale for? Do you know where red rock island is? Red Rock island is the 6 acre out cropping of rock that rises over 100 feet up out of the Bay on the South East side of the Richmond San Rafael bridge. It is the only privately owned island in the San Francisco Bay and it has quite a history.
Red Rock Island has been mined for Manganese. In the 1920’s it was privatley purchased. David Glickman bought the island in 1968 for $49,500. He was an attorney in San Francisco that appreciated special properties. He developed plans to cut the top 1/2 portion of the island off and sell the rock to companies that would use it to build highway roadbeds. The idea was then to develop the flat toped island into a hotel, casino and yacht harbor. The concept included getting power and water from the Richmond San Rafael bridge. The project never left the ground. If you want to learn more about the islands history there is
Have You Checked Your Walk Score? Did you Even Know You Had One? 2007-08-01 11:56:44
A client of mine just introduced me to http://www.walkscore.com/. Just enter your address or the address of the property you are looking to acquire and the site will assess the walkability of the home.
As stated on their web site, “Walk Score
helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc.”
It is interesting to think about how a walk score might help to assess a properties value. If a home has a better Walk Score is it more valuable? One of the features of the site is to check out celebrity Walk Scores. I checked out Bill Gates’s house and it gets a walk score of 6 out of 100. I wonder if Bill ever walks 2.03 miles to the Lincoln Square Cinema to catch a matinee. George Bush’s Texas Crawford ranch gets a walk score of 0 out of 100. My home got a 22 out of 100.
Maybe Walk Score has less to do with residential values and more to do with busin
Fantastic Home Resource Site 2007-07-30 20:18:26
Some great past clients of mine have just put the finishing touches on their new web 2.0 project. After taking a peek at Yellowbungalow.com I can say it is truly a fantastic social networking site for home owners.
My clients seem to always be updating, remodeling, and improving their homes and gardens. Now, through the new YellowBungalow site they have access to a network of people that have recently completed home improvement projects. This can help with the thousands of property improvement decisions you will need to make when considering renovations. I found the resources section of the site to be especially helpful. Here people can post reviews of resources they have used and would (or sometimes more important wouldn’t) recommend, along with photos of the work so you can see the quality and scope of the job. The ask a neighbor section provides a forum for homeowners to help each other solve many of the home related dilemmas that can occur.
As a real estate agent I ha Read more:Fantastic
, Resource
Discounts or the Power To Transact Effectively? 2007-07-26 20:01:06
Thanks to .A.A. for this great photo.
Recently, Redfin a discounted real estate brokerage firm has garnished much media attention. Partly because it just received an additional 12 million dollars in venture funding and partly because of their bold claims of changing the real estate industry. I am always interested in new real estate business models and like many other real estate agents this is one that has become fascinating to me over the last couple of years. All this hype made me want to look at the financial benefits of discounted brokerages compared to our full service model.
Redfin is a discount business model. Discounted business models offer real estate buying and selling services at reduced prices. There are many different discount models that all have different pricing strategies. Redfin offers to list your California home for flat fee of $4,000. Discount real estate businesses offer reductions in commision by making a reduction in service. Thus the ultimate consumer q Read more:Discounts
, Effectively
Stopping the Subprime Crisis 2007-07-26 07:36:19 The attached article tells us what is happening on the margin. The large institutional buyers are declining to buy the CDO’s that they used to buy because they cannot trust the ratings being given by the rating agencies. This will impact mortgage pricing meaning that the mortgage rates for “A” paper loans (as well as Alt-A and subprime) are rising and risk premiums are increasing significantly. Further, many of the loans at the margin are simply going away (100% stated, no ratio, no income-no asset loans). If you want to look a little deeper at what’s happening, follow the link.
Stopping the SubprimeCrisis
Stopping the Subprime Mess 2007-07-26 07:36:13 The attached article tells us what is happening on the margin. The large institutional buyers are declining to buy the CDO’s that they used to buy because they cannot trust the ratings being given by the rating agencies. This will impact mortgage pricing meaning that the mortgage rates for “A” paper loans (as well as Alt-A and subprime) are rising and risk premiums are increasing significantly. Further, many of the loans at the margin are simply going away (100% stated, no ratio, no income-no asset loans). If you want to look a little deeper at what’s happening, follow the link.
Stopping the Subprime
Mess
Spam and Scam Nation 2007-07-24 12:28:08 What has become of us? My inbox and my home mailbox are stuffed with spam, our blog gets 10-20 pieces of spam per day in our comments section. The messages are always ridiculous. My loan is pre-approved evidently at about 100 different places, my pharmacy orders are piling up somewhere and classmates keep sending me e-cards. I won the French lotto recently and a Nigerian woman needs to talk with me about depositing some money for a period of time in my bank account. Just this morning at home, I received a phone call with a recorded message that said, “Please hold, I have a call for you”. I hung up.
While I was writing this, I checked back to my email and here’s a new piece of spam, “Thanks for your Pharmacy order # 01096.” How ridiculous. Do people really fall for this?
Our company has been receiving calls from clients saying that someone is calling them and representing that they are with our company. I’m pretty sure it’s an attempt t
The Mole 2007-07-22 21:33:09 The Mole is an anonymous CFP giving us the inside scoop on the financial advisory business. Item #4 is perfect for mortgages too!
4 Always know what you are buying. As a general rule, the more complex it is, the worse it is for you.
This is so true. Option ARMS are complex and really are a poor choice for MOST borrowers. Yes, it may be appropriate for a few but for the majority of borrowers, it’s a bad idea. The mortgage industry pushed this product for its low start rate because they knew that borrowers would believe it was their actual rate. They also pushed 3 year pre-payment penalties because the loan broker made more money on that product even though it was not in the borrower’s interest to sign up for that. If it’s very complex, difficult to understand, etc., beware.
The Mole
Sub Prime Follies 2007-07-19 11:22:02 July 19, 2007, 8:33 am
By Floyd Norris, New York Times
Imagine how George Bailey — the Jimmy Stewart character in “It’s a Wonderful Life” — would react if he arrived via time travel to read Washington Mutual’s announcement of “new, industry leading subprime mortgage lending standards.” For that matter, what would Henry Potter, the mean banker, have had to say?From now on, WaMu tells us, it will not make sub-prime loans without checking to see whether the borrower is lying about his income. It will require that borrowers have escrow accounts to pay taxes and insurance. And “we will offer industry leading disclosures and enhanced outreach efforts, including pre-closing contact by WaMu with the borrower.”
The idea that it was news that a banker would actually meet with a borrower before sending the money would leave both Mr. Bailey and Mr. Potter wondering what had become of our financial system.
They would simply be perplexed by WaMu’s pledge not to make any more Read more:Follies
You Need a Powerful Agent with a Powerful Network 2007-08-06 21:07:59
Thanks mkreyness for this spider web photo.
Yesterday, I was having a conversation that made me realize how truly difficult it is to find a good real estate agent. Finding someone who performs many transactions for both buyers and sellers may be tough enough. Yet, a truly valuable and powerful agent is transacting regularly, knows the ins and outs of their local markets and has the ability to surround their clients with a network of other professionals that have uncommon knowledge and can act to care for their clients concerns.
A power full agent and their team of advisors must be competent to make valuable grounded assessments, which will end up saving their clients time energy and money. A year ago this idealist philosophy may have seemed trite, but being a powerful agent that truly takes care of their clients concerns, has become necessary. With our current market changes no longer can an agent just put a sign up in a client’s yard and 2 weeks later receive multiple offers th Read more:Agent
Landscape Smart 2007-08-08 20:10:50
A photo of Brett and Courtney’s yard after its HGTV LandscapeSmart
makeover.
My clients who have created the new social networking site for home owners, YellowBungalow, will also be on TV this Saturday. They were selected for a new HGTV show called Landscape Smart. It is a backyard makeover show on HGTV.
Last spring they submitted their back yard “before photos” to HGTV’s Landscape Smart show. The production company is local and they came by and decided their back yard was indeed in need of a makeover! The show completed their yard in a matter of days, despite a torrential rain! I have spent time in their yard, and since I sold them the house I can say that I have seen the full transformation from before to after. Thus, I can also say that their newly landscaped yard looks fantastic and is a lot of fun to spend time in.
So, tune in to HGTV August 11, 2007 9:30 AM ET/PT and see Brett and Courtney’s yard. If you have any questions as to what it wa
Countrywide Falls, Merrill Cites Bankruptcy Prospect (WOW!) 2007-08-15 13:21:00 Countrywide Falls
; Merrill
Cites Bankruptcy Prospect
(Update1)
By Elizabeth Hester
A Countrywide branch office Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) — Countrywide Financial Corp., the biggest U.S. mortgage lender, fell for the fifth consecutive day on the New York Stock Exchange after Merrill Lynch & Co. raised the possibility of bankruptcy.
“Effective insolvency'’ would result should creditors force Countrywide to sell assets at depressed prices or investors lose confidence in its ability to raise cash, Kenneth Bruce, a Merrill analyst in San Francisco, said in a research note today.
Shareholders shouldn’t “understate the importance of liquidity,'’ Bruce wrote. “If liquidations occur in a weak market, then it is possible for CFC to go bankrupt,'’ said Bruce, who downgraded Countrywide to “sell'’ from “buy.'’ The company trades under the ticker CFC.
Countrywide’s shares have lost almost half their value this year on c Read more:Countrywide
There is a big Architectural Review Frenzy in San Francisco 2007-08-15 12:40:06
Looks like San Francisco
’s new Trans Bay Transit Terminal (affectionately dubbed the Tranny Shack by Curbed SF) is getting a lot of attention in the media. Just driving from one appointment to another yesterday I caught a log segment on NPR radio that discussed and debated the merits of the proposed designs. Take a look at some of these designs in the YouTube video above.
The designs are interesting and you can see that the architectural firms involved in the pitch are spending some serious money to help decision makers visualize their concepts. One thing is clear, that SF will be replacing the current San Francisco
Tranny Shack with some kind of stunning architectural building.
There is interesting commentary surrounding the discussion of the different designs at: SocketSite, Curbed SF, Soompi Forums and SF Gate.
You can vote and see the results of the publics favorite designs on Sky Scraper Pages.
Cramer’s take on the credit crunch 2007-08-14 12:40:28 By Jim Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
8/13/2007 6:02 AM EDT
Click here for more stories by Jim Cramer
It’s time to look at what will happen now that the Fed has staked out a position that bails out neither the hedge funds, nor the mortgage companies, nor the 7 million homeowners I believe borrowed money between 2005 and 2006 that they can’t repay to take down houses that are worth less than they paid for them.
In other words, what’s Ben Bernanke’s plan? And why could it actually work and leave us, a year from now, a much stronger, better country? Or to put it succinctly, what happens if Bernanke’s right, and what could go awry if he is wrong?
Just for the record, I’m betting that the cost of Bernanke’s plan and the possible effects of it on the real economy and on real people are too great, and I have staked out the position that he’s going to hurt the country with it. But I have to admit that after the hurt we could end up being in Read more:credit
Finding Money in the Liquidity Crisis: Are Banks Running Scared? 2007-08-20 19:52:05
Thanks Mrs. Reed for this photo.
I just closed a home for a spectacular deal. The home was as we say in the industry, “real estate owned.” A better name might be bank owned, because the property was owned by a large bank which had acquired the property in a foreclosure.
What really made me think about this transaction was a call from a local appraiser who was looking for comparable properties in the neighborhood and said, “Why did this sell for so cheep!” This call coupled with my knowledge of the current liquidity crisis made me think. Are banks so worried that they are giving properties away for bargain basement prices or was the property just marketed poorly at a bad time in the market?
The property in question is located on Skyline Boulevard in the Oakland hills. It was sold just a year ago for $1,900,000. The lore behind the property is that both of the owners who bought the home in March of 2006 passed away shortly after acquiring the home and the prope Read more:Money
, Liquidity
, Crisis
, Scared
, Running Scared
New commonsense for today’s market 2007-08-17 14:43:20 From the front lines of working directly with Realtors® and with mortgage clients, I see there is a need to move to a new commonsense that fits the new situation. Our old commonsense doesn’t work in a new situation; in fact, it can be counterproductive to being successful. So we need to adjust our actions to the new situation so we can compete more effectively. By “we”, I mean home buyers, Realtors® and finance providers.
The old commonsense was that mortgages were a commodity to be priced off of a rate sheet and a borrower could call around and get quoted a rate and they could be sure that it would be available. As a strategy, for most people, I think this was flawed and we are now seeing much of the result of that in the foreclosure stories that are now abundant. That’s a different story to be written at a different time.
The old commonsense was that the home seller had all the power and the buyer had to give in to most demands that the seller had. The old comm
Living Homes 2007-08-16 18:17:45
I generally leave the real estate and cool house stuff for Mark to write about but with the mortgage market imploding at the moment, all I have to talk about is the subprime mess, foreclosures, bankruptcies, loan companies closing and I’m tired of this downer news so I wanted to post something cool.
A client told me about this site today and recommended that I take a look. It’s a cool modular housing design and the tour is actually an amazing piece of work. I’ve never seen a house tour quite like this one, it is beautiful and entertaining.
Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think.
http://www.livinghomes.net/tour.html
Read more:Living
, Homes
136 2007-08-23 17:33:07 136
Here’s where I go to watch the continued implosion of the mortgage market. There are many articles and explanations of what’s happening. If you have specific questions about your loan situation and I am sure that many of you do, give me a call and I’ll help you get settled.
Shameful 2007-08-25 19:40:40 Inside the Countrywide Lending Spree
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
Published: August 26, 2007 New York Times
ON its way to becoming the nation’s largest mortgage lender, the Countrywide Financial Corporation encouraged its sales force to court customers over the telephone with a seductive pitch that seldom varied. “I want to be sure you are getting the best loan possible,” the sales representatives would say.
Angelo R. Mozilo, chief executive of the Countrywide Financial Corporation, remains undaunted as the mortgage market has cooled.
But providing “the best loan possible” to customers wasn’t always the bank’s main goal, say some former employees. Instead, potential borrowers were often led to high-cost and sometimes unfavorable loans that resulted in richer commissions for Countrywide’s smooth-talking sales force, outsize fees to company affiliates providing services on the loans, and a roaring stock price that made Countrywide executives among the highest paid in America.
Co
7 Million Foreclosures? Folks, this is huge and something will be done about it 2007-08-24 13:31:24
Fed Has to See States on the Brink From Housing
By Jim Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
8/23/2007 2:51 PM EDT
Can we do without Florida, Arizona, California, Nevada and Michigan? Does it matter if we lose them? Do we care if the builders who dominate in those areas go under? Do we care if the homeowners who have home equity loans on top of regular loans who bought homes from 2005 become squatters?
These are the questions that you have to ask when you consider the Fed’s next move. You have to ask them because of the giant resets. We are in month one of a two-year cycle of resets that should drive 7 million homeowners out of their homes if the Fed doesn’t cut.
How do I get those projections? The spring selling season of 2005 is when our problems really began. That’s when 50% of the buyers started taking these mortgages that are so deadly, the ones with the teasers that often were soon after accompanied by home equity loans. These people bough Read more:Foreclosures
, something
Indymac Sells $590 million in mortgage bonds 2007-08-29 14:56:01 This is the kind of news that mortgage industry people are looking for to signal a loosening in the liquidity crisis. I am not reading too much into this as it’s a small amount relative to what’s currently at stake. Good borrowers are going to get loans. Anyone who you wouldn’t want to personally loan your money to probably isn’t going to get a loan. Those are the kinds of standards being put in place now, if it is your money, would you lend to them? Indymac Bancorp in Pasadena said that last Friday it traded $240 million
of AAA bonds backed by jumbo fixed-rate home loans and $350 million of AAA bonds backed by jumbo adjustable-rate loans — the first bonds it’s traded in 36 days.
The market for jumbo loans, which are prime loans greater than $417,000 in most states, has been rocked by a lack of investor confidence in all home loans except those with some kind of government guarantee.
Here’s more from Indymac’s blog:
While the trade p
Crocker Highlands Elementary School presents Shades of Green 2007-09-21 13:28:15
Come enjoy an exclusive opportunity to view eight very special Homes and Gardens in the charming, tree-lined CrockerHighlands
Neighborhood of Oakland. The self-guided walking tour takes place on Sunday, October 7, 2007 from 10 AM to 5 PM.
This year’s showcase will display the broad range of architectural styles that are the hallmark of this historic neighborhood, while also celebrating the diverse design approaches that homeowners have brought to the task of both modernizing and preserving homes that were built in the 1920s. This is a tour about education and inspiration.
In addition to the tour, there will be a Green
Design Expo held on the school grounds highlighting eco-friendly construction and landscaping techniques and giving the public access to professionals knowledgeable about sustainable products and design. Al fresco dining will be available throughout the day.
The tax-deductible admission tickets are $40 before October 7 and $45 at the door. Purchase your tickets Read more:Elementary
, School
, Shades
Navigating the real estate and financial market news. Where are we going? 2007-09-21 12:47:05
Thanks Hendo101 for this image of Northern California’s Point Arena Lighthouse
I just read an article posted on MSN about investing in real estate. It was entitled Real Estate Investors’ 10 Big Mistakes. Although the title sounds like another bubble bursting article, it was not. The article spoke about the philosophy of investing in real estate and how individual investors should act when making real estate investments. It made me think, have we begun to turn the corner on the current down real estate cycle?
I believe one of the signs that we have begun to cycle back towards a more robust market will be when buyers realize that there are good deals in the market. As I have posted in just the last couple of weeks, I have experienced many of qualified home buyers are getting good deals. I am seeing that qualified buyers are able to leverage their financial strength and are getting good value for their financial power in this market. This is very different from past marke
What the Rate Cut Means for You 2007-09-19 09:03:56 September 19, 2007
Wall Street Journal
What the Rate Cut Means
for You
Fed’s Half-Point Move Likely to Trim Payments on Credit Cards,
Home-Equity Lines, but Offer Scant Relief on Certain Mortgages
By JANE J. KIM and RUTH SIMON
September 19, 2007; Page D1
Consumers should soon start feeling the impact of yesterday’s Fed rate cut in the form of lower borrowing costs and stingier savings rates. But the rate cut doesn’t offer much help for the key problems bedeviling many mortgage borrowers.
The Federal Reserve said it lowered short-term interest rates by half a percentage point, to 4.75%, to combat the effects of a weaker housing market and tighter credit on the broader economy. The steep reduction in the Fed funds rate surprised many on Wall Street who expected a more modest rate cut. Stocks rose sharply after the Fed’s announcement, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average gaining 335.97 points, or 2.5%, to 13739.39.
The rate cut should reduce payments on many ho
UC Berkeley Has Job Growth Potential On the Horizon 2007-09-18 12:26:41
Thanks Thomas Hawk for this picure of UC Berkelely’s Campus
Last Monday, the University of California at Berkeley
received a gift of $113,000,000. The William and Flora Hewlett foundation has given UC Berkeley the largest single gift in the University’s history. The offer was given with the intent to keep UC Berkeley competitive with other private universities around the country.
Up until they received this gift, the public university struggled to compete with private universities that were receiving 20% per annum increases on their endowments. The state governments could just not keep up with the private money that other schools were receiving. The gift from the Hewlett Foundation is a challenge grant that will match other private donations dollar for dollar. This means once the challenge is met UC Berkeley will be infused with a total of $220,000,000 of capital for supporting new faculty positions. To fully understand the impact of this endowment, think about how it w Read more:Growth
, Potential
Taking a Bite Out of the Credit Crunch: How to get a great rate 2007-09-10 10:52:53
Thanks Roboppy for this tasty image.
I just finalized a transaction in Campbell, California. The property was put into contract post credit crunch so it is a good estimate of the type of rate you can get on a jumbo loan if you have good credit and a stable job. Through the process of selling this home and working with this buyer, I found something I have not heard often in this market. There is a lot of opportunity floating around in all of this volatility.
The client purchased an approximately $1,200,000 home from a developer. The property was the last home the developer had to sell in this community. In fact, the home was in contract with another buyer and fell out because of financing issues due to the credit crisis. We negotiated with the developer and knocked the price down by over $100,000. We also negotiated that the seller would pay 3 points (approximately $30,000) towards buying down our buyer’s loan interest rate. Negotiations like this did not exist in our previous ma Read more:Taking
, Crunch
Mind the Gap - more cool technology to make life easier 2007-09-07 11:23:37 Mind the Gap
New Programs Promise to Bridge
The Analog-to-Digital Divide
By Jeremy Wagstaff, Wall Street Journal
September 7, 2007
JAKARTA, Indonesia — If you’ve ever lost a receipt, tried to remember an important idea you had while driving, or pondered why people rattle off the vital information — their names and numbers — in voicemails so quickly you have to listen to them four times, then you’ve encountered something I’ll pompously call the Analog To Digital Gap. It’s when we can’t move something from atoms to bits as easily as we’d like.
And for some reason it’s still with us. We seem to have spent most of the past few years fiddling with what’s already digital. Web 2.0, the cutting edge of the online revolution, is mostly about sharing stuff that’s already in bit form: photos, videos, music, blogs — all that kind of thing. Very little effort, from what I can see, has been spent on actually getting stuff
149 and counting 2007-09-06 17:15:25 Good information at this site about the current market. We continue to look for more liquidity in the system and for certainty to return to the market and have seen some signs of this recently.
149
If your loan resets based on Libor, this isn’t what you want to hear 2007-09-06 15:29:03 September 6, 2007
Libor Pops Up
September 6, 2007; Page A16
In the game of international credit-market Whac-a-Mole, the Libor rate just popped up, literally. Libor, short for London Interbank Offered Rate, climbed to 5.72% Wednesday, the 10th day in a row it has tracked higher. Libor is the rate at which banks lend to each other for the short term, and the rate pop represents greater apprehension among banks about whom they are lending to.
In normal market conditions, Libor tracks the Federal Funds rate pretty closely, and as recently as July the two were just 13 basis points, or hundredths of a percent, apart. As of Wednesday’s close, that gap had grown to nearly 50 basis points, or half a percent. With exposure to the U.S. mortgage market cropping up in seemingly unlikely places, such as banks around Europe, banks that lend at Libor are expressing concern, through the rising rates, that borrowers who appear safe may prove to have something ugly hiding on their balance sheets.
T Read more:resets
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