Tag: Real Estate

Closing Thought–16Dec20

Back in the 1980s the Reagan admin had this enormous hard on for Qaddafi…..he even got one of his top generals to sign on as a CIA asset in the covert war with the Libyan leader…..that did not work so well…..Haftar, the general, and his men were sent to the US to live off the government tit for 30+ years…..and then the revolution in 2011 in Libya gave the CIA their chance to put their man to work.

Qaddifi dies and the country slides into chaos, a typical condition when the West intervenes where they do not belong, after a decade of fighting Haftar has control over the Eastern part of Libya and all its oil wealth……and what does Haftar do with the cash? Does he make the lives of his fellow Libyans better?

Nope…he goes on a real estate shopping spree in the US…..

Libyan Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar owns real estate assets worth millions of dollars in the United States, reported the Arabic language service of Anadolu Agency.

Haftar fell out with Muammar Gaddafi in the late 1980s and lived in Virginia, before returning to Libya during the 2011 revolution.

He has bought 17 properties registered in his name in the US state, using funds he smuggled out of Libya, according to the agency’s sources.

Among Haftar’s assets in Virginia is a home and a farm in Falls Church. He also paid $8m in cash to purchase one of the other alleged assets and a 5,600 sq m house worth $2.5m in Great Falls, Montana.

Last July, Haftar bought a horse farm worth $700,000 in Boise City, Oklahoma, said Anadolu Agency.

(middleeasteye.net)

Here’s a thought…..should not this Haftar parasite be repaying the US for the free ride that lasted 30+ years?

Just A Thought

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

NIMBY!

This weekend will be quiet…my granddaughter has gone to DC to play for the Memorial Day celebrations…her and her high school band…..I will miss her as always when she is not around….but it is for a good cause.

I read a piece that talks about how hypocritical wealthy “liberals” are these days…..

California is suffering from an “emergency that feels like a dystopian showcase of American inequality.” That’s the take of Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times, who writes that the Golden State is weighed down by a “livability” problem, plagued with a lack of affordable housing, unbearable traffic, steep education and child care costs, homelessness issues, even streets strewn with garbage and feces. And he’s pointing the finger at one specific group for exacerbating things in not just his home state, but in “America’s increasingly unlivable cities”: the progressive left, including Democrats in power. Citing “NIMBY urban mismanagement” across the nation, Manjoo complains that “where progressives argue for openness and inclusion as a cudgel against President Trump, they abandon it on Nob Hill and in Beverly Hills.”

A key sticking point for Manjoo is how Democrats don’t walk the walk on affordable housing, often pushing back on legislation (he uses California’s SB 50 initiative as an example) that would provide for more apartment buildings and duplexes in neighborhoods that traditionally contain single-family homes. He even muses over an “unsettling thought” on this type of housing resistance—that “what Republicans want to do with ICE and border walls, wealthy progressive Democrats are doing with zoning and NIMBYism,” which is “keep people out.” How Manjoo ultimately frames it: as a “refusal on the part of wealthy progressives to live by the values they profess to support at the national level.” Read the full column here.

Having money does not make one a ‘liberal’….and besides…I would like mental midgets stop calling liberals progressive…they are NOT progressive……they are traitors to a progressive agenda of bringing society in line with the people’s needs and wants.

I have seen first hand what a mess these people have made of Harlem……the area has lost its original character in favor trendy shops and eateries.

MoMo and I have a big day in the yard……garden needs some attention and I need a beer, some cheese and a smile…..a she needs a new approach on getting even with that damn squirrel.

Not The Perfect Way To Wealth

(Heavy sigh)…….the weekend and my brain needs a break…….battling gun nuts, immigration toads and foreign affairs novices is just too tiring…..so today I can step back and breathe……

We are always looking for ways to increase our wealth……and I recently read a report, an old report, that is just spooky……..

Sure, nuclear attacks on the US could level populated areas—but two papers conclude that Americans would see an economic upside, Medium reports. The first, a 1969 report by the Institute for Defense Analyses, looks at a possible nuclear strike on Houston, Texas. It says that Americans would be “relatively” wealthier after a nuclear strike. How so? Buildings would be vaporized at a lower rate than people, so survivors would have their choice of domicile. “In a macabre sense, the surviving population would be individually ‘wealthier’ than before the attack,” says the report.

And the bigger the bomb, the bigger the boom: A 10-megaton blast would nearly double property values, while a nuclear strike ten times that size would multiply values by four. A 1979 report by the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment came to another morbid conclusion, that a limited Soviet nuclear strike on America’s petroleum reserves and oil refineries would decimate transportation industries and force people to live in dense cities—thereby boosting urban real estate prices. Both papers note, however, that cities might not be too livable after such an attack. And not all such reports have rosy upsides: one by the Cato Institute in 1987 notes that a nuclear strike would send painful ripples across the economy at the same time people tapped the government for disaster loans. “Business insurance would certainly not cover this type of catastrophe,” it notes.

Would that be the Big bang that everybody is always going on about?

As Seen On EBay

And now for something completely different (thank you Monty Python)

Have you heard about the CEO or something from Oracle that is buying a Hawaiian Island?  How about good old Sir Branson that owns an Island in the Bahamas? Or wiz kid Ted Turner who is the largest land owner in the US?  Have you ever wanted one of those chic Italian villas?

Years ago actress Kim Basinger bought a town in Georgia…yep the whole damn town….then I thought it was crazy to own a town but Hell it seems that it is almost common place nowadays……

Ever go on Ebay looking for that special thing to bid on and then go into cardiac arrest waiting to see if it is yours or if some low life sniper beat you out of your desired item?  If so, then here is an auction for you!

A screenshot from the listing.

(Newser) – Ever dreamed of a Tuscan home? How about an entire town? If you’ve got $3.1 million to spare, you could score one on eBay, the Telegraph reports. The 800-year-old village of Pratariccia is for sale on the auction site; the buyer will get 25 run-down houses among scenic hills not far from Florence. You won’t be purchasing any new friends, though: Pratariccia has been empty since the 1960s.

“It’s a unique once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own your very own Tuscan hamlet, and the price is a complete bargain,” says the agent in charge of the sale. The property is currently owned by a monastic order. Posted in the classified section of the site rather than the bidding section, the village had been listed for $6.3 million, but the price has since dropped; two offers have fallen through. Local officials say it’s an incredible development opportunity—but the buyer will have his work cut out for him, notes Business Insider: The stone homes are collapsing and plants are taking over.

You too could be a land owner and a squire about town…….

A Sucker Born Every Minute

As my regular readers will know…I try to take a break from politics and such on Sundays and find something happening in society or culture that just begs to be commented on….and I found a good one!

Or whatever the quote is……it applies in these reports….This truly is a case of more money than brains….

Jon Jacobs has just sold a virtual asteroid for a very real $635,000. Jacobs bought the asteroid near Planet Calypso in the online world Entropia Universe back in 2005 for an unheard of $100,000. Turns out it was a good investment, because Jacobs just made more than a half-million dollars in the sale.

Okay, this dude made some cash off the sell….but who buys something that has absolutely no foot in reality?  As I read this, I thought this guy was a bit loonie tunes….but as I looked at the phenom I found more……

But he is NOT alone…this from USA Today…..

Rising interest rates have yet to cool white-hot real estate prices. Perhaps that’s why the concept of virtual home ownership has captured the imagination of a growing number of online gamers, who are plunking down real cash for their own slice of the digital frontier.Large swathes of undeveloped online property, some bearing an uncanny resemblance to a palm-studded West Coast beachfront idyll, are selling for up to $550 an acre.

That amount is but a song compared with real world real estate, but these are computerized representations of property — pretty pictures, if you will — in an online graphic role-playing game known as Second Life.

Is it just me or do these people way too much time sitting with a controller in their hand?  JUst where is the logic here?  I realize I am an old fart and may not get it…..but to piss away money on something so intangible as virtual real estate sounds just a bit silly…..but then I am no techno geek…..so what do I know?

A Commercial Loan Crisis?

I was surfing this morning and found this piece of information on CNN/Money:

A congressional watchdog panel warned on Thursday that mounting commercial real estate losses could endanger the banking system and thwart economic recovery.A total of $1.4 trillion in commercial real estate loans will require refinancing in the next four years, the Congressional Oversight Panel said in a report. More than half of those loans are underwater, written for properties whose value has dropped like a rock.

The expected losses when loans go bad could hit between $200 billion to $300 billion and threaten 3,000 small and mid-size banks with a disproportionate share of commercial real estate assets on their books, according to the panel.

The panel’s research found that 2,988 banks are heavily invested — with more than three times their assets tied up — in commercial real estate loans. Of that number, 2,500 banks each have less than $1 billion in assets.

The first thought that comes to mind is…”YA THINK?”

Gee if only we had more informed people that could have seen this coming….WAIT!……we DO!

On 6 January 2010 the great blog, “Info Ink” (okay I am biased), had a good post along these lines, but yet it took over a  month for the Washington insiders to come up with this conclusion…check it out:

The Next Economic Tsunami?

My point is….apparently, we bloggers are a bit more perceptive than our counterparts that work for corporate media or the Washington machine…..maybe instead of putting all yoiur faith in the “media” you should read more and then you would NOT be so surprised when stuff bites you in the ass….Just a thought….

The Next Economic Tsunami?

We have had our economic crisis…the financial system all but totally collapsed and thanks to the good will of the American tax payer….they survived….unfortunately the taxpayer is not as lucky…they are having an economic crisis of their own….loss of jobs, benefits, housing and retirement……and that is not the only problem….this one the government is trying to avert….but their efforts are a bit late and a bit impotent….

If you believe the hype, especially the hype that is spun by CNBC and WSJ among others, thenb we are slowly finding our way out of the economic nightmare of the past year….by the way…it is a LIE….all spin and HYPE!

allbusiness.com is reporting:

Rising losses on commercial real estate loans will continue to hurt U.S. banks in coming months and pose the biggest challenge for many financial institutions and their overseers, regulators said Wednesday.

Real estate loans will continue to be “the most prominent area of risk”

for banks over the next several quarters, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chairman Sheila Bair told lawmakers at a Senate hearing.

With more than 7 million jobs lost in the recession, office space has sat empty and developers have defaulted on their loans. The $6.2 billion in loans backed by commercial properties that banks wrote off as lost in the past two years will likely grow sharply as more loans come due, Bair said.

Nearly $500 billion of the loans are expected to come due annually over the next few years.

This will be the next nervous breakdown for the financial biggies……

look around at your area….check out Malls and office buildings…are they doing well?  Are they filled to maximum?  The jobless rate will fuel this wildfire that is at this time smoldering….but before long will burst into the flames of economic crisis….yet again…..but will this squeaky wheel get government grease?  Will the American taxpayer be on board with another bail-out?  If you think that there is anger in the heartland now….just try to bail out more corporations……

Housing Recovering?

Recently the good news was that the home industry was coming out of the slide it has been in for a couple of years….at least that is what the pundits would have us believe but there is more to this story than the good news that has been reported.

U.S. mortgage applications slid last week even as mortgage rates edged lower, with requests for loans to buy homes declining for the first time since early July, an industry group said on Wednesday.The Mortgage Bankers Association’s applications index fell by a seasonally adjusted 2.2 percent in the week ended August 28, as demand for both purchase and refinance loans slipped.

Economic stimulus that has boosted consumer optimism, signs that home prices have neared a bottom, and federal programs such as a soon-expiring first-time home buyers tax credit have turned more fence-sitters into house purchasers, industry experts said.

The big question is what will happen to the housing market when the incentive to buy fades?   The first-time buyer’s market has been robust, but not the move-up market — or the market for existing homeowners looking to trade up to a larger home. It will take consistent news of rising home prices to lure the move-up buyer, most realtors agree.

According to Reuters:

The U.S. Mortgage Bankers Association will call on Congress to transform U.S. government-controlled mortgage lenders Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac into several smaller privately held companies that would issue mortgage securities with a government guarantee, the Wall Street Journal reported.The proposed framework, to be released Wednesday by the industry group, would give successor entities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac authority to create securities backed by certain types of mortgage, the paper said.

According to the paper, the new companies would guarantee the securities against defaults on underlying mortgages and pay fees into a federal insurance fund, which would guarantee interest and principal payments to bondholders if the companies were unable to make them.

The WSJ said the MBA’s plan called for government agencies, rather than the new companies, to assume the “mission” of promoting affordable housing that Congress has long assigned to Fannie and Freddie.

The new companies also would not be allowed to hold large amounts of mortgages and securities under the proposal, the paper said.

Okay, this smells like yet another attempt for these parasites to find another way to use the homeowners to further their rape of the economy.  Yes, they would be limited on what they could hold…but how long would it take for them to change that with a new president?  The regulation that could be put into place…could be dissolved with the appearance of new blood in the White House and Congress…it has happened before and it will most assuredly happen again.

Rust Belt Is Dying

Where’s it worst? Ohio, according to our analysis, which racked up four of the 10 cities on our list: Youngstown, Canton, Dayton and Cleveland. The runner-up is Michigan, with two cities–Detroit and Flint–making the ranking.

These, and four other metropolitan statistical areas, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, face fleeing populations, painful waves of unemployment and barely growing economies. By our measure, they’ve struggled the worst of any areas in the nation in the 21st century. And they face even bleaker futures.

Another brutal statistic all the cities share is a diminishing population. So far this decade, 115,000 people have left Cleveland, for other climes. Smaller changes in other regions can be just as painful. Nearly 30,000 people have left Youngstown, Ohio, and they aren’t being replaced by either new babies or new immigrants.

Still, the cities we found to be struggling don’t vary widely by age, and this factor had little influence in the rankings. The oldest city in our top 10, Scranton, Penn., had 45% of its population over 45; the youngest, Flint had 38% over 45.

The worst news is, of course, economic. When we looked at the most recent gross domestic product estimates for 155 metropolitan statistical areas estimated to have $10 billion or more GDP in 2005–economies about the size of Asheville, N.C., or Tallahassee, Fla.–the news was predictably terrible for the Rust Belt.

But yet, the voters in these areas latch onto the candidate that promises the best scenario and yet nothing has changed.  Go figure!