I finally found out what happened to Miami Condo Fiasco.

A Condo Fiasco
Zack Preble auctions his contract for $355,000 condo in downtown Miami. The online reverse auction drops to $215,000 before he gives up. The developer takes his unit and the 70,000 deposit.


I guess not everything has a happy ending... If you are unfamiliar you can read my last article on this fascinating story here . It looks like Zack's last ditch effort, a reverse auction, failed. He could not even recover 5,000 dollars of his 70,000 dollar deposit and finally gave up turning his condo back over to the developer and forfeiting his $70,000 dollar deposit. That is a pretty expensive lesson to learn considering that amount of money would pay off the whole mortgage on my condo in Michigan, with enough left over for a years supply of beer.

The bright side is that it was only a contract with a developer so he still has his credit history in tact, and the $70,000 dollars came as profit from selling his first house during the boom. So it really was a case of easy come...easy go.

It is a shame he never made a final post on his blog Condofiasco.com, however, it is nice to finally see how this story ends.

Anyone been to the mall lately?

Talk about a total ghost town.

I never go to the mall, because I have been following the Dave Ramsey plan and getting out of debt. However, I did go last weekend because I really had a craving for a slice of Sbarro pizza. lol.

What really shocked me was just how many stores were closed. The Great Lakes Crossings mall in Auburn Hills, Michigan was once a pretty affluent area before Michigan's 20% unemployment rate started to transform SE Michigan into the post apocalyptic wasteland it is slowly becoming.

As I walked down the corridors I still saw a lot of people but about 1/3 of the stores were closed or covered up with paper. Even many of the restaurants in the food court were closed.

Once thing is for sure... When this economy does recover from the depression...SE Michigan will be one of the last places that comes out of it.

Its the price stupid...

Real estate used to be about location, location, location. Now it is about price, price, price.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - One in four U.S. homes for sale on August 1 had their prices marked down at least once since landing on the market, data compiled by real estate website Trulia.com showed on Friday.

A total of 24.4 percent of homes had their prices reduced in July, up from June's 23.6 percent. The average discount was 10 percent from the original price, or $40,173 of a median house value, Trulia.com said in its monthly price report obtained exclusively by Reuters prior to its release.

When will these home debtors get it? Your house is not worth what your neighbor sold his for in 2006. It is not worth what you paid for it in 2004, and it probably can't even sell for the amount needed to pay off your outstanding mortgage balance if you bought it in the last five years.

Welcome to the new reality folks. I paid $87,000 for my condo in 12/2005. Now it is worth about $47,000. In fact my whole 20% down payment has been eaten through and I am still underwater.

Buyers don't care what you paid during the bubble. They don't care that you have had your house staged, or that you have granite counter tops. They simply want a house for as cheap as possible and with foreclosures everywhere they will not be looking at your house until the stream of foreclosures has dried up which will not be anytime soon.

Its the price...stupid.

Google Maps now shows Foreclosures

Check it out!

It would be really interesting if Google could start making some headway into the real estate market and put Realtors out of business forever. Think what happened to travel agents after the internet became popular....I guess we can only hope...

House prices still falling...

I love the NAR. I love how they will try to make horrible news sound better in order to advance whatever agenda they have. House prices are falling, however, it is time to celebrate because they are falling at a much slower rate than last quarter!!!

The industry group's chief economist, Lawrence Yun, called the second-quarter sales figures, which are based on a survey of its members, "a hopeful sign for the economy" because sales were up compared with the first quarter.

This is as ridiculous as a doctor telling someone that they are still going to die from a horrible disease, but worry not, you are dying at a much slower rate then you were a few months ago. Somehow I have a hard time seeing the brighter side of that situation. Here are the numbers from Reuters...

*U.S. home values posted their 10th consecutive quarterly decline, falling to $186,500 on the Zillow Home Value Index.

*Home values in the first quarter had fallen by 12.4 percent from the prior-year.

*In the second quarter, 23 percent of all owners of single-family homes with mortgages were "underwater"

*Sales of previously foreclosed homes accounted for 22 percent of all home sales nationally in June

*Nationally, the number of home sales in June fell 23.7 percent versus a year earlier Regionally, price drops were sharpest in the West (-26.6 percent), followed by the South (-10.3 percent), the Northeast (-9.7 percent) and the Midwest (-8.6 percent).

Top 10 decliners, year-over-year
1. Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla., down 52.8 to $84,000

2. Las Vegas-Paradise, Nev., down 39.7 percent to $141,000

3. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif., down 39.1 percent to $161,000

4. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Ariz., down 36.1 percent to $131,100

5. Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice, Fla., down 34 percent to $175,800

6. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif., down 33.8 percent to $500,000

7. Orlando, Fla., down 33.2 percent to $149,200

8. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach, Fla., down 33.1 percent to $207,400

9. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif., down 31 percent to $472,900

10. Saginaw-Saginaw Township North, Mich., down 30.6 percent to $55,700


Don't break out the champagne just yet... the housing crash is still not over.

The people who makes these video's really have a gift.

Its hard not to get filled with a lot of adreniline and maybe even a little bit of hope when you watch this.

PETER SCHIFF MONEY BOMB TODAY!!!!

How far will Americans be pushed before they fight back?

Stick with this video until the end... It gets better and better. A little out dated but the message rings true