
BTW its my Birthday today.
I turn 29 years old, the last "good" birthday to have.
By JACQUES BILLEAUD Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 8:56 PM MST
SURPRISE, Ariz. (AP) - Unable to sell his house in suburban Phoenix's anemic real estate market, Jason Winterholler rented to a couple who paid the deposit in cash and didn't haggle over price.
It was a deal he came to regret.
The renters were fronts for immigrant smugglers who used the house as a hiding place for illegal immigrants and trashed the home. In October, a SWAT team drove an armored personnel carrier onto the lawn and raided the house, rounding up nearly two dozen people.
“That was the biggest disappointment. I definitely felt violated,” said Winterholler, a high school athletic director now living in Pasadena, Calif. He said that whenever he spoke to the renters, “everything seemed OK.”Immigrant smugglers are seeing a business opportunity in the nation's mortgage crisis: They are renting vacant new homes in the Phoenix suburbs and using them as stash houses for the people they have slipped across the Mexican border, authorities say.
Stash houses are stopover points where smugglers collect their fees and make travel arrangements for immigrants headed to points throughout the country.
The homeowners, often out-of-state residents who bought the houses as investments, get suckered into renting to immigrant smugglers because they are desperate to generate income from properties that aren't selling, authorities say. The background checks they do on the prospective renters are not as rigorous as they might otherwise be.
Immigrant smugglers “are opportunistic,” said Troy Henley, deputy special agent in charge of investigations for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arizona. “They will go where it's easiest and where it gives them the most benefit.”
The Phoenix metropolitan area is believed to have about 1,000 immigrant stash houses. Exactly how many of them are new houses that languished on the market and were rented out in desperation is unclear. But authorities say they are seeing more and more such cases.
Immigration authorities elsewhere said they have no evidence the same thing is happening in other cities near the country's southern border.
Arizona is the busiest entry point for illegal immigrants coming through Mexico, and Phoenix's proximity to the border has make it the nation's busiest smuggling hub.
Smugglers started renting vacant new suburban homes in Phoenix a few months ago, and the practice is expected to increase during the peak smuggling season that begins in mid-January, authorities say.
Although knowingly renting homes to immigrant smugglers leaves properties open to seizure by the government, immigration agents said they don't believe the homeowners are intentionally helping the traffickers, because most people would not want their new properties to get trashed.
After getting a tip that smugglers were holding immigrants for ransom at Winterholler's home 25 miles from downtown Phoenix, police girded for a violent confrontation that never came. They entered by knocking down a door and punching holes in the ceiling so they could throw in tear gas canisters.
Twenty-two illegal immigrants were kept in an upstairs bedroom that had plywood nailed over its windows to prevent escapes and a milk jug that served as a toilet. Flies buzzed amid the empty beer cars and open bags of garbage that littered the house.
No smugglers were arrested; they may have given immigration agents the slip. The home had $11,000 in damage. The couple who acted as the front for the renters disappeared.
The housing glut here is blamed on the mortgage crisis along with overbuilding by developers who misjudged the appeal of homes a considerable commuting distance from Phoenix.
Homes like Winterholler's appeal to smugglers because of the privacy. They have garage doors that allow people to be brought in undetected. Subdivisions with lots of vacant homes have fewer neighbors who might call police. Unlike motels and apartments, which also are used as stash houses, houses don't share walls or courtyards with the neighbors.
And while smugglers have long used rental houses, these new suburban homes are in places where neighbors wouldn't expect to find illegal immigrants hiding.
Tyler Renner, who lives on the same block, said he and other neighbors never noticed people or sounds coming from the Winterholler house.
Police said homeowners should do credit and criminal background checks on prospective tenants. They also warned owners to be skeptical of overly favorable deals and resist the urge to skip background checks just because the prospective renters seem nice.
Winterholler, who moved into his roughly $260,000 house brand-new in 2006 and lived there until last August, said the man and woman who rented the place provided four references, all of which checked out.
As tenants for nearly three months, the couple always paid on time and answered Winterholler's calls, he said.
“I remember when they came over,” Winterholler said. “We gave them water. I shook his hand.”
Additionally, the company slashed its quarterly dividend 73 percent and said it plans a $2.5 billion offering of convertible preferred stock. Washington Mutual has not yet priced the offering, but increasing the total number of company shares will dilute their value for existing stockholders. In after-hours trading, shares fell $1.73, or nearly 9 percent, to $18.15 following the company's announcement.
Chairman Kerry Killinger said in a statement that "significant expense reductions" were needed "to further fortify" the bank's capital and liquidity.
The Seattle thrift dismantled much of its subprime mortgage business in September, cutting 1,000 jobs related to the sale of home loans to people with questionable credit. It folded the remaining subprime operations into its regular mortgage business.
The savings and loan will now get out of the subprime mortgage business entirely.
The company said it will close about 190 of its 335 home loan centers and sales offices, shut down nine call centers, and eliminate 2,600 home loan workers and 550 corporate and support jobs.
Locally, Washington Mutual spokeswoman Elizabeth Borrelli said 110 jobs would be eliminated with the closure of a retail home loan fulfillment center in Pleasanton. Another 20 jobs will be cut in San Francisco. Elsewhere in California, Washington Mutual will close home-loan-related offices in Downey (Los Angeles County), 35 jobs; Irwindale (Los Angeles County), 35 jobs; and Irvine, 230 jobs.
Spokesman Gary Kirshner said Washington Mutual will also shutter 31 home loan centers in Northern California. These will include 12 Bay Area locations: two each in San Francisco and San Jose, plus one center each in Dublin, Lafayette, Los Altos, Oakland, Pleasant Hill, San Bruno, San Rafael and Saratoga.
These changes, meant to address what the company called "unprecedented challenges in the mortgage and credit markets," will save the thrift $140 million in the fourth quarter. But the company still expects to post a loss, due in part to a $1.6 billion charge for the write-down of goodwill associated with the shrinking home loans business.
On top of that, Washington Mutual increased its loan loss provision to $1.5 billion to $1.6 billion for the fourth quarter, from the $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion predicted by executives in early November.
For the first quarter of 2008, the company said it expects loan losses to total $1.8 billion to $2 billion. Loan losses will remain high throughout the year, the thrift added.
The company also slashed its quarterly dividend to 15 cents per share from its most recent dividend of 56 cents per share, for savings of more than $1 billion.
Moody's Investors Service downgraded several long-term and short-term ratings for the company and said in a statement that the move "was based on its view that credit losses from WaMu's mortgage operations will be noticeably higher than previously estimated." The credit rating agency said it doesn't expect the company's profitability to begin to recover until 2010.
Fitch Ratings also downgraded the thrift's credit ratings.
Before the news, shares rose about 85 cents, or more than 4 percent, to close at $19.88 Monday.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- In a poll conducted Monday, Dec. 10, Channel 2 News asked which GOP presidential candidate Alaskan Republicans plan to support in the Super Tuesday caucus.
A slim majority of respondents support Ron Paul, a Texas congressman known for wanting to abolish the IRS and opposing the Iraq War.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who's surging in national polls as well as Iowa caucus polls, came in a close second.
Which Republican presidential candidate will you support in Alaska's caucus? Rudy Giuliani -- 14% |
All polls conducted by Channel 2 News and KTUU.com are unscientific.
Last year one of our sellers took care of the “empty refrigerator syndrome” by leaving things in it that made the home look lived in. In addition to her jars of condiments, she left yogurt containers, eggs, and a half full milk jug. I have no idea what was actually in that milk jug, but it looked like milk. The things she left made it look like her family was still living in the home. They moved to New York a few months before their home sold, but it never looked vacant, which helped us close a sale on the home.
Now I would recommend that any seller who is going to be away for an extended time try refrigerator staging. Clean out the refrigerator well first then put back items that you don’t have to worry about looking spoiled over a longer period of time. Nothing stinky or too perishable, please. You’ll throw those of us doing the refrigerator test right off the track.
The snow brings a new problem with the high number of foreclosures in the Twin Cities. All those empty homes mean no one is around to clear the sidewalks.
Kathy Nitschke shovels out her own property, but sees that no one is looking after the vacant home in her Minneapolis neighborhood.
"A lot of traffic through here, so it's unfortunate when they don't clean things up," said Nitschke.
In Minneapolis, there are 50 percent more homes in foreclosures this year than last. In St. Paul, there are four times more vacant homes than in 2006.
It means more work for the city--both Minneapolis and St. Paul have a rule, stating snow must be cleared within 24 hours.
If a sidewalk stays covered in snow for more than a day, a letter is mailed to the address. If nothing happens, city crews come and do the work. The city of St. Paul charges $160 an hour, while Minneapolis charges $300 an hour—plus a $103 citation.
"We only have limited resources to do the work," said Minneapolis city spokesman Mike Kennedy.
If there are no homeowners to pay the snow removal costs, it will be forwarded to the bank that owns the foreclosed home.
The city of Minneapolis told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS it answered more than 100 calls reporting snow-covered sidewalks on Monday alone.
SourceI love it. The city charges the banks $303 per hour, +$103 dollar fine per each foreclosed home, every single time it snows!
In Minnesota that is going to add up to some real money pretty quickly. I have a feeling now would be a great time to make a low ball offer on a Minneapolis foreclosed home. :)
"The collapse of the housing market has served as a catalyst for the economy's latest bust. Various federal mortgage programs through the FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac have distorted the normal workings of the housing market.
"The Federal Reserve's loose monetary policy and lowering of interest rates were a major spur to the housing boom. Low interest rates influence marginal buyers, those who are sitting on the fence, and encourage them to take on a mortgage that they otherwise would not.
"It is time for the federal government to get out of the housing business."
-Ron Paul
Falling home values and tighter lending are making it difficult for many people to finance their way out of trouble. More than $50 billion in adjustable-rate mortgages were reset last month, thus intensifying the financial crunch on homeowners, says the coalition's Executive Director Dennis Jay.
"The sub prime mortgage crisis is crushing untold thousands of homeowners under heavy mortgage payments they can't afford—especially as many monthly payments adjust upward sharply after introductory teaser periods of low-interest rates," he writes in an article in its publication, Fraud Focus.
Only a few suspected home torchings have surfaced so far. Samuel White allegedly burned down his Houston home for insurance money to dodge a scheduled foreclosure. An African-American, he allegedly spray-painted racial slurs around the interior to make the suspected crime appear to be a hate crime.
Suspected mortgage-related home arson's already have jumped 50 percent above the 2006 rate in California, though the numbers are still relatively small, the insurance department says.
The industry's Rocky Mountain Insurance Association also is watching its region closely. In fact, one Woodland Park owner allegedly torched his home just days before he was scheduled to evicted in a foreclosure.
"I don't believe that it's had time to ripple through the market yet to the point that many people have reached the point of desperation," EFI Global fire investigator Alex Ahart says. "But I absolutely think it's coming."
Can anyone explain how this would benefit the home debtor? If the house is burned to the ground won't the insurance company simply rebuild the house? It would seem The sub prime borrower would still owe the full mortgage amount, he would just get a new house. Am I missing something? How would a fire, assuming it were actually legitimate, relieve the mortgage holder of his obligations?
Dec. 7, there will be a pre-launch ceremony in Elizabeth City, NC.
Dec. 10, it will fly over Washinton D.C.
Dec. 12, it will make a flyover of Wall Street, in New York.
Dec. 14, it will arrive in Boston in time for the Tea Party moneybomb, which takes place Dec. 16.
From Dec. 18 on, it will be in New Hamshire.