FACTS ARE SO INCONVENIENT FOR LIARS

The beat goes on. The lying pricks trying to convince you that we are in the midst of an economic recovery keep having the rug pulled out from beneath their feet. So let me get this straight. The reason, housing, retail, and manufacturing have been in the toilet for the last six months was supposedly cold and snowy weather during the WINTER.

We were assured by highly educated Ivy League Wall Street economists and millionaire CNBC talking heads that there would be a dramatic rebound in the Spring. Well, Summer is only three days away. Home sales always surge in the Spring. Everyone knows that. Here is today’s announcement from the Mortgage Bankers Association:

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 9.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 10 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index decreased 13 percent from the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 5 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 6 percent compared with the previous week and was 15 percent lower than the same week one year ago.

So let me get this straight. We have 30 year mortgages available at near record low interest rates of 4.35%, we supposedly have a record number of Americans employed as the Obama recovery blossoms, and people are rolling in dough because household net worth is also at an all-time high, but the number of people applying for mortgages is 15% BELOW last year, 30% below levels of 2010, 60% below levels of 2004/2005, and at the same levels of 1997. How can you have a real housing recovery when mortgage applications are at 17 year lows?

The schmuck who generates the chart below continues to blather about a phantom housing recovery because it is clear he was bought off by the industry. Housing starts are in the toilet. New homes sales are at recession levels. The Wall Street Rent to REO scam has run its course. Housing is headed back into the toilet, along with home prices. Housing bust 2.0 is underway and all the propaganda in the world won’t change the facts.

17
Leave a Reply

avatar
  Subscribe  
Notify of
Stucky

Yet, our realtor is telling us homes in our town are selling on average within 90 days. She’s probably a fucking liar. This nearby home sold for $410,000 …. about $30k OVER the estimated value.

comment image

Yes, I know all real estate is local, and that we’re 25 miles from NYC, and all that. But, those cocksucker chart makers are probably cherry picking data just before they manipulate the shit out of it.

Maddie's Mom
Maddie's Mom

roflmao…..

Exactly when did “bad” weather become an excuse for lousy economic stats?

I can’t remember it before the Obamination was elected. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention?

TE
TE

My hub just tried to do a refi on our home.

His credit was near 800, he holds NO revolving (non-business) debt and our appraisal came in nearly 40% higher than the amount being asked for.

He was denied. I’m still chuckling.

Meanwhile, our appraisal lists this POS at $25k higher than when we bought at the previous peak. I told hub we should sell it, he won’t hear of it.

We bought it, watched it plunge in value, sunk $30k (or more) into getting it livable and now are going to watch it plunge again.

This country is so messed up on so many levels that nothing is not corrupted, nor based in reality.

flash
flash
Sensetti
Sensetti

Damn Stucky for 400k you can buy a nice Farm in my State. Where do poor working class people live under a fucking Bridge?

ThePessimisticChemist

Sometimes my wife and I are embarrassed of our home. Despite being the “richest” of all of our social group, we have the smallest house, also the most in need of fixing.

It really drove home when we visited some friends in Oklahoma City. Their home was much nicer than ours, even though they live in a large city (we are in a small town) and make less than half of what we did.

I could see it in my wife’s eyes, the depression as she saw yet another friend, and a brand new public school teacher at that, who had a home better than ours!

So, I waited for the wine to flow a little more freely (we brought Mead) and then casually mentioned “Shoot man, how high is it to live in an area like this?”

Thats when we found out damn near every cent went towards just the house payment. Their payment alone (not including PMI) was more than our total house payment, both car payments, and all utilities combined.

We felt much better. Too many young people think that they should live the lives of their parents, not realizing that we will not be afforded that luxury, that frugality and humbleness are virtues to be cherished and cultivated, not derided and discarded.

They will learn that lesson soon enough though, when the collapse hits they will have no safety net to catch them, no parachute to slow their fall, and the impact will certainly crush their hopes and dreams.

My house might not look like much, but its home to me, and will remain so in the foreseeable future.

Stucky

“We felt much better.” ——– ThePessimisticChemist

Schadenfreude — a German word meaning pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune. It’s fun! And, I see you have mastered it. :mrgreen:

.
Sensetti — the poor working class rent (at exorbitant rates), have 3 families buy a one-family house, live in a shithole like Newark or Camden when you can still buy cheap houses with drug stores on every corner and I mean DRUG stores, buy foreclosures cuz there’s tons of them, live with their grandparents, or the smart ones move to South Jersey, and the really smart ones just get the fuck outta this shit pile.

the tumbleweed
the tumbleweed

“Damn Stucky for 400k you can buy a nice Farm in my State. Where do poor working class people live under a fucking Bridge?”

Close, but come on, this is the land of plenty. They live IN the fucking bridge.

From the New York Post:

Crafty hobos are turning the Manhattan Bridge into a veritable shantytown, complete with elaborate plywood shacks that are truly “must see to believe.”
One of the coffin-sized living spaces — which have been built into the bridge frame near the Manhattan entrance — is secured with a flimsy bike lock and bolted to a metal beam by its inhabitant. The pods are built into the underside of the upper deck, below car traffic but above the subway and bike lanes. To reach his makeshift studio, the bridge dweller — a stocky, neatly dressed Chinese man in his 40s — climbs a chain-link fence to a nook above the bike lane, witnesses said. He unlocks the red bike lock with a key, slides a plank of wood back like a door and crawls in.
The 10-by-1¹/?-foot shacks are cramped, but the rent-free homes sure beat the cost of living legit in neighborhoods nearby — like Brooklyn’s trendy DUMBO, so named for its location “down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-15/new-york-disneyland-wall-street-coffin-sized-living-spaces

ThePessimisticChemist

@Stucky – More like perspective gained than schadenfreude. We view others through the lens of our own experience, so when we see an amazing house we automatically assume they are doing everything we are, and somehow are doing it better.

Its painful. I’m 28, and have literally spent the last 11 years of my life planning solely for the future, frequently at the expense of the present.

A person can’t live that way. What is life without some joy?

Desertrat
Desertrat

I guess that I’ve had maybe a half-dozen years of no joy. Which ain’t bad, considering that next month I’ll hit 80. 🙂

ThePessimisticChemist

@Desertrat – A large part of mine is because I don’t really have a family. Even the poorest and hardworking of folk can still eke out some joy from their lives with the simple joys you can derive from family connections.

Stucky

“Its painful. I’m 28, and have literally spent the last 11 years of my life planning solely for the future, frequently at the expense of the present. A person can’t live that way. What is life without some joy?” ———— ThePessimisticChemist

You’re young enough to realize there’s a better way …. not that there’s anything wrong with planning ahead, but you don’t want to be consumed by it.

Quite a while ago I think I started a thread about interviewing very old people at their deathbed and what they would do if they could live life over again.

One of the most common remarks was they would take more chances, and live … REALLY LIVE.

That’s the guy you want to be.

Llpoh
Llpoh

Tpc – quit whining. Keep your head on straight. You are still a baby – your balls will not drop for another few years.

If you keep doing the right thing (BTW two car payments is not the right thing, dumbass), when you are forty you will have the world by the balls. If you have kids you will be able to raise them without too much financial stress. When you are fifty you will be on a roll.

It may seem hard now, but I guarantee the cherry at the end will be worth it.

Stop worrying about this stuff and just do it. Take joy in your wife, and have a cheap hobby. Gardening is one I suggest. Relaxing and it generally pays well when you sell your home.

Llpoh
Llpoh

Stuck – I agree with the takechances, just not financial chances. Take chances with where you live and what you do. Be smart financially, and avoid all debt save a house mortgage.

Desertrat
Desertrat

Seems like I always had a somewhat vague plan for the future–but it wasn’t ever worrisome. Just steady. I used debt as a working tool. Buy a car with a bad motor, cheap-cheap, do an overhaul, debug it, drive it six months and then sell at a profit. Borrow money to buy a coin or gun collection at wholesale and piece it out at retail All that while having a sorta-mediocre full-time 8-5 job.

Left plenty of time to drink beer and “take Ol’ Mama dancing”. 🙂

I guess my deal was to minimize the overhead, so more of my money was actually mine. I never had to hire anybody to do anything for me, since I did it all myself.

ThePessimisticChemist

@LLPOH – I appreciate the words of encouragement. Rest assured, you guys are the only ones who get to here those particular complaints, even my wife doesn’t get to hear about those feelings.

RE: Car payments – I weighed the options, and in our current position in life we needed a 4WD. Her dad has a great ford retirement plan, and we get a lot of money off of their products.

For the last 5 years I have been cobbling together a 2003 ford focus that turned out to be a lemon. Aside from a complete engine seize up, I have fixed every problem known to man.

This winter I had to change the tumblers in the ignition. It had decided to lock up at work on the north side of the building, right before a major snowstorm. Got that fixed, and the thermostat housing decided to melt and blow (5th time).

I finally said fuck it, went and bought an entry level 2014 ford focus. It gets 36mpg city / 41mpg highway.

Given all the driving I have to do to visit people, the new car makes up about a third of its payment each month in gas savings alone. Not having to constantly fix it is a big plus.

I’m only in it for 10 grand….I’m trying to balance home repairs vs. other bills. Sometimes, when you are just starting out, debts gonna happen.

I can promise you this, when my student loans are gone so will be my debt. But right now I’m paying $1200/mo total in student loan repayments so yeah…..

MuckAbout

I haven’t owed $0.10 in debt since 1973.

When I retired (late ’96) we could have afforded most anything for a retirement home.. I retired from an overseas contract and I had long known that when you look for a place to retire, you drive South until you see and orange tree. Then keep going 45 minutes.

I also learned in 1980 that the only way to insure a capital gains on a house was to build it yourself to the highest standards you can afford (paying for it out of savings and cash flow). Put all your eggs in one basket and then live in it.

Built 5 homes that way – N. Idaho and Maui. No debt on any of them. The last home I built was 4000 sq. feet under the roof at 2500 ft. up the West side of Mt. Haleakala with views forever, a climate to die for and no debt. But it was on almost 3 acres (which is a farm in Hawaii) and when it got to much for my sweetie to manage the farm and B&B’s and me working every night atop Haleakala at the observatories, we agreed to sell and retire. (With the cost of living in HI, we were land and house rich and money poor).

So we did. But instead of getting the biggest fanciest home we could find with an oceanfront lot, we bought a modest manufactured (prefab of excellent quality) dead center in the peninsula of Florida (i.e. 65 miles from either coast) in a super nice community (best in central Florida). We paid only a small fraction of what we made from the sale of the Hawaii property, paid cash for what we have now —- and still owe no one a thin pre-1964 dime.

It was really hard work (I hired hammer swingers when I was trying to put up a beam I couldn’t get to both ends of!) but by building these homes myself (being my own engineer, contractor, laborer, plumber, electrician, farmer, inn keeper (plus work for a living as well) I’ve been retired 18 years now and intend to stay that way.

We are beyond the point of pain and agony in this society were the majority of people suck handouts from those who work, one way or the other. The point being, it takes hard work — years of hard work — to be a success at anything. Yet now, between the Government blood suckers and the FSA the opportunity for doing this hard work has not been eliminated but they are all doing their best to make citizens dependent on handouts, workfree slugs who are accomplishment free, responsibility free and will never be worth shit.

Stay out of my way….

MA

Discover more from The Burning Platform

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading