 Homeownership in a transient society Owning a home or renting a home is fundamentally a major financial decision. A home is a immovable liability in any area of that does not have an increasing population and job opportunities. The psychological and cultural importance of owning a home is exaggerated, knowingly and unknowingly. The cliche is that you can’t put a price on it; the fact is that homeowners do place a price on home ownership through the home mortgage.
Real estate agents ridicule renters by saying that “they are throwing away money”, this notion from overpaid sales professionals should to be taken with a truck load of salt. Renting is analogous to the modular design concept, the important advantage is flexibility. Non-modular design is analogous to homeownership, it ties into obsoletism.
→ continue reading Homeownership is a ball and chain in a transient nation
 We do not inherit the land from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children-Native American proverb Kermit Baker, Chief Economist of The American Institute of Architecture confirms that the fat McMansion lady has indeed started singing. → continue reading McMansions, Starter Castles, Garage Mahals are dead
The closed loop
“For decades, the real estate industry has operated under the principle that the less information buyers and sellers have, the better it is for agents, lenders, title companies, and all the other folks who eat from the trough. But the real estate tide seems to be turning, as the housing . . . → Read More: Real estate industry is a closed information loop
Urban Institute’s publication titled, Reforming the Mortgage Interest Deduction by Eric Toder, Margery Austin Turner, Katherine Lim, Liza Getsinger suggests that
Only individuals who itemize deductions can benefit from the Mortgage Interest Deduction (MID), and the value of the deduction increases with the marginal tax rate. If the government wishes to promote home ownership, a refundable tax credit available to all taxpayers would be more effective.
Henry Paulson, former US Treasury Secretary, recommends that → continue reading Reduced Mortgage Interest Deduction (MID) coming?
The City of Solon Planning Commission is discussing an ordinance proposal which will require that owners or agents obtain Occupancy Permit for rental units.
 Signature of Solon Golf Community Subdivision A Signature of Solon resident approached City of Solon Planning Commission and stated that she believes there have been builders in the Signature of Solon neighborhood who have built homes and rented them prior to obtaining an occupancy permit. Additionally, many Signature of Solon model homes were built but not sold and have become rental properties. Many of these Signature of Solon rental homes are neglected and improperly maintained which is damaging to the Signature of Solon community. → continue reading Signature of Solon rental properties cause concern
 Mammon, the God of Subprime Lending The following is the testimony of Patricia Lindsay for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Hearing on April 7, 2010:
Credit, Collateral, Capacity and Character
Thank you for inviting me to speak this afternoon. My hope for today’s session is that I give you a unique perspective into Subprime lending. I know I was not alone in not understanding the steadily increasing risks taken in the years before my employer New Century Financial Corp. stopped making loans in March of 2007. I grew up in the real estate business where my father was a Broker and a hard money lender. A hard money loan is a short term loan to a borrower who has a significant amount of equity in the property and cannot qualify for a traditional bank loan. I became an Account Executive at Beneficial Mortgage the end of 1996. Beneficial was one of the original subprime lenders who held their loans in their portfolio rather than selling them. There were a lot of similarities between Beneficial and my experience with hard money lending, Beneficial and the various hard money lenders with whom I worked were very aligned in their thought process on how to evaluate a loan. We had three things that we used to evaluate a loan; Credit, Collateral and Capacity. We would look at these three C’s and if any were lacking, like credit, a borrower better have some compensating factors, like great collateral. There was a fourth C, character, that went missing when → continue reading The nature of subprime mortgage lending
 A real estate player and a naive home buyer They might tell you that “you don’t need a real estate attorney”. They might tell you that “its a waste of money” to hire a real estate attorney because the home buying process uses standardized forms. They might tell you that its not the practice to hire a real estate attorney in your town, city, area or state. They might tell you that most people do not hire a real estate attorney.
One or more of the following parties may have a vested interested (they eat from the same trough) in a home buyer, buying a home, any home: → continue reading Be naive, don’t hire a real estate attorney
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About  I am a Civil Engineer from Louisiana State University. The compound word, Americaneer, is a combination of the words, American and Engineer. |
