Match the company with the
recent change:
a) Indy
Mac
b) Long Beach
The change:
1) No
longer
doing stated income loans, and mortgage brokers
are laughing at their reps when
they walk into the office.
2) Just
laid
off 400 Ops staff around the nation.
In Houston,
$225,000 will buy a three-bedroom house with a
game room, den, in-ground pool
and hot tub. In Manhattan,
it will buy a parking space.
Spaces are in such demand that there are waiting
lists of buyers, some of whom
don’t even own cars but just rent them out. Eight
people are hoping for
the chance to buy one of five private parking
spaces for $225,000 in the
basement of 246 West 17th Street,
a 34-unit condo development scheduled for
completion next January. Parking in
new developments is selling for twice what it was
five years ago, and it is
estimated that less than 1% of all co-op and
condominium buildings in the city
have private garages. In Boston,
they can sell
for as much as $175,000, and they go for as much
as $75,000 in Chicago. But
in other cities, like Los
Angeles and Dallas,
most condos include parking in their prices. For
developers in New York,
parking is the
highest and best use for below-grade space and
fetches about the same price per
square foot as actual living space, which costs
much more to develop. The
average parking space costs $165,019, or $1,100
per square foot, close to the
average apartment price of $1,107 per square foot.
This week is relatively light
in terms of economic news. In
fact, there are no announcements until Wednesday
(see below). So what is the
market doing with the 10-yr back down in the 5%
range? Not much, mortgages are
off about 1/8th from Fridays close, and
that market people call “stocks”,
continue to impress investors; opening this
morning to the up side by about 53
pts to 13,906.
While
watching a football game a
couple weeks back, my Mom and Dad were discussing
life and death. He told her,
"Just so you know, I never want to live in a
vegetative state,
dependent on some machine and fluids from a
bottle. If that ever happens,
just pull the plug."
She
promptly got up, unplugged the
TV and threw out all his beer.
Week
of July 23 - July 27
