GREAT. I wrote a blog post a couple of days ago about Indymac shutting down it’s lending operations. Something about a Pig Through a Snake. Perhaps you read it – about capitalization issues taking down another lender – blah blah blah blah. It was mildly interesting but not earth shattering because, hey, it didn’t affect me! Then late yesterday afternoon I finally received a call back from my intrepid commercial mortgage broker. I had called…
Category: Real Estate
I’m Fuzzy On the Whole Good/Bad Thing.
Be careful what you believe. The home sales numbers for June are out – and Hooray! Sales of homes were UP last month in the metro area over June last year! And not just UP – but up almost 12%! Let’s throw a parade a celebrate the bottom of the real estate market here in Metro Detroit!! The days of Mai-Tais and Yahtzee are back! Not so fast. Sure the numbers are up in the…
A Pig Through a Snake
The carnage and destruction of the mortgage industry continues – with no end in sight. Just days after Countrywide became part of Bank of America on July 1, Indymac Bancorp, the 11th largest producer of US home mortgages, suspended their lending operations yesterday and immediately stopped accepting any new retail or wholesale mortgage applications.  The company posted the first annual loss in it’s 23-year history last year, and it’s stock price, having been as…
Brass Tacks, Brass Balls, Whatever. It’s Time to Decide
It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update to my Apartment Quest series.  It hasn’t been due to any lack of motivation or activity on my part. Nope. Our lack of progress has been due to Mr. Seller. It seems that he’s been hitting the crack pipe lately – hard!  He somehow got the idea that he can call all the shots and sell a $1 million building on his own terms…
These Market Returns Suck
Captain Obvious reporting. I was reading the Wall Street Journal yesterday and saw how bad things are right now in terms of available returns on investment. You can tell the bad news by just reading the headlines and some of the charts: Steep Fall for High-Flyers (China and India stock markets are down over 50%) Even Defensive Names Take Hits (Merck and Pfizer at multi-year lows) The Dow is down 10.7% this year and 11.7%…
The Credit Crunch is Hurting Commercial Real Estate
Thomson financial published a good article** on this this morning. Commercial real estate is (and has been) dead here in southeastern Michigan now for a while, except for apartments, which keep going strong. I’m seeing low vacancies, strong rental demand, and healthy rents. This combined with fantastic cap rates and upside potential make this a great time to own apartment buildings here – if you can get them financed or buy them on a land contract. (You can…