if you bought a house in Puna in the last 5 years

[David M]

I'm sure someone will correct my math.. I suspect for every buyer that paid an over inflated price for an over valued property there was a seller who received an over inflated amount of money for more than the property was truly worth.

Also been some outstanding points made - especially about personal responsibility versus blame.

David

Ninole Resident

[Jon]

I don't remember the realtor or the mortgage company being responsible for my signature on any agreement or contract.

I am pretty sure all the paper work I signed spelled out who was responsible for making payments and who was responsible for receiving them.

If you bought an over valued home, its not the banks fault or the realtors or the sellers... its yours. you signed the contract, you need to make good on it. If you can't there is always bankruptcy.



-----------------------------------------------------------
I do not believe that America is better than everybody else...
America "IS" everybody else.

[ric]

Carol has made some clear and excellent points.

Kathy, I don't see the difference is between what John Rabi apparently told you and what you wish he told you. You really have to come to peace with what is happening right now. We've ALL been hammered on the past few years.

Also, my comment was that rents go up when values go up, I didn't mention mortgages. It is a basic fundamental of business. Whether the landlord has a mortgage or not, when the property is worth more, he would desire more return on that asset. Maybe I should give an example: landlord buys a property for $100k, rents it out for $900. The identical house next door sells for $200k 3 years later, gets rented out for $1800. The first landlord would likely try to raise to something near $1800 (market rent) or sell at $200k (market value). Nothing to do with the mortgage. Same principle if the value goes down. Mortgage is irrelevant.

ALSO, I would like to know where one could get the idea that as a group, owners take better care of their properties than landlords. Typically, the rental properties that are trashed are done so by the tenants, NOT the fault of the landlord. If the tenant is civilized, usually the property stays pretty nice. Furthermore, due to the hordes of former renters who rushed out to buy houses, there are all kinds of 'homeowners' who have no idea how or perhaps resources available to maintain their properties. This is evidenced in the condition of nearly ALL foreclosures. Throws off that generalization, huh?

Buying real estate is a big deal, and it can be risky. The world has not conspired to single anyone out.

Buying within ones means would indicate that one had already accounted for the possibility that their life situation may have some ups and downs.

There are a great number of folks out there who have paid cash for their properties, or who are in properties that they have financed within their means, and they are getting dragged down by others in the market who are failing in their obligations. Perhaps they should be the ones complaining, huh?

[missydog1]

ric,
it is not your place to tell me what I have to come to peace with. That's just patronizing, and I don't appreciate it.

Reality is reality, but you don't get to tell me how I have to feel. You don't know me at all.

The lecture on rentals was unnecessary.

As for my lunch with John Rabi, the two of us were there; you weren't, not your business to try to understand what we talked about.

It was an interesting experiment sharing some personal information. Kind of a litmus test.
What I see is that some people are very comfortable with "they" and what "they" did, and lumping people into groups. I'm sure that's a good way to talk about trends.

However I think it shows an inability to understand individuals. It creates a world of people who are responsible (you the judgers) and irresponsible (everybody who makes mistakes). Great if it makes you feel good, but I dislike all this smugness, and righteousness, and I would dislike it whatever position I happened to be in. []

[anela1111]

I thought everyone knew what is going on in the world, but reading these posts I can see they do not. The world is bankrupt people! The economic systems of the world as in Banks, have over extended themselves to the tune of gazillions of bazillions of dollars, there is no cash its all funny paper money a delusion.
All based on a promise to pay in the future, its unsustainable. The banks have ripped off the people, they caused this mess for the little guy to bear, the world economic systems are a sham.
We are sold a good as in a mortgage and its a sham and you guys want to blame realtors and appraisers and buyers? Ha! Make a poor guy feel bad, tell him he made his bed now lie in it.
We were lied too, cheated on and screwed over by our banking system. The system has no integrity and our integrity is used against us, we are brainwashed.

So if you people wanna keep paying someone who ripped you off just cause you said you will, go ahead "a fool and his money are soon parted". p.s. run don't walk.

Wait till the REAL truth about oil comes out.

[bystander]

quote:

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Originally posted by PaulW

You can't really blame realtors for talking up the market, that's what they do. They say it so often they start to believe it themselves. And who knows, maybe it helps.

As the saying goes, don't ask a barber if you need a haircut.

---

This is true. It's their job to do it. But they can get very offended if you point out their bias to them and the prices keep going down. []

You should have been here back in 2006. Too bad I can't find the original "decline in realestate" thread in the archive. It was quite lively and continued for many pages. It was also quite damning for RE agents.

[ric]

I believe that everyone posting here has suffered huge losses recently. When some folks are trying to explain reality, and they are now called "judgers", I think the effort was wasted.

I don't know what happens in a conversation between 2 other people, . . . except when they post the conversation online (even though it has now been removed from the post). I just don't see the point in the complaint when the broker's advice was exactly right in that case, and someone didn't believe him.

If we could pay our financial obligations with sympathy, I guess some people would be loaded.

[Laughing_girl]

Since someone finally mentioned the issue witht the price run ups and rentals - here's something to think about - in 2003-05, rental prices in HPP, etc - even Ainaloa and Hi Acres, went through the roof so to speak. These were not the spec houses yet. Most of these were houses that had been around 5-25 years ago or more - nothing changed about the house itself - except an influx of population that was willing to pay an inflated price just to get a rental since rentals were scarce because of the incredible influx of population. These same houses plus all the new spec houses are now dropping back in price to 2001-02 pricing.

Who spoke for the renters when this happened? No one. A friend rented a HPP house - in good condition - for $850 in 2003. The landlord raised the price $50-75 every year since. In late 2008, my friend found a larger, better house for $1000 -- and the original landlord is crying oh poor me.

I truly understand exceptions to this foreclosure problem - illness, death of a spouse or partner, loss of income - but for those who are pointing fingers at real estate agents, or bankers... the rest point back at yourself. The housing market became a frenzied place to be - and as the frenzied place started to collapse - every one wants to blame, and not take personal responsibility. So now the government has to step in like a parent with a college kid who goes over budget and rescue them? All I can say is I guess we are lucky we live somewhere that this rescue is available. But how many times do you rescue your over budget college students? At what point do we let people, and also corporations - sink or swim?

I once stupidly traded my car at the dealership for something on the lot. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Whose fault was it that I got too low a price on my trade in and paid too high a price for the dealer car? No one but my self and for awhile every time I thought of it I wanted to blame the sales person for being too slick. It wasn't the sales person's just because he is trained to talk me into something, or my bank because they financed it. The fault was mine. I still live in America where I have a free choice to decide.

I believe that we really live in a society that truly believes it is our right to have everything we want, rather than our right to work hard to have everything we want. There is a difference.

[John S. Rabi]

quote:

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Originally posted by ric

...I just don't see the point in the complaint when the broker's advice was exactly right in that case, and someone didn't believe him.

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ric, my company did not represent Kathy in her purchase. My advice to her was as between friends.

Aloha,
John S. Rabi, GM,ARB,BFT,CM,CBR,FHS,PB,RB
808.989.1314
http://www.JohnRabi.com
Typically Tropical Properties
"The Next Level of Service!"

[peteadams]

quote:

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I don't remember the realtor or the mortgage company being responsible for my signature on any agreement or contract.

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As a standalone statement attempting to describe the housing crisis we are in, this is a piece of ideological claptrap. Personal responsibility is simply not the only metric of the integrity of a contract. Fraud in the contract, for instance, can negate the responsibility. You might sign a contract for the Brooklyn Bridge but you are unlikely to be responsible for paying for it. We now know that investment and commercial banks and hedge funds treated the millions of housing customers like ATMs in their consistent manipulation of the home sales process. The manipulation was fueled by the frantic flipping of whatever crappy piece of paper they could cobble together, full of obscure legal jargon and overlaid with the hopes and dreams of real people, that were then packaged into investment vehicles that, had the rating agencies not been paid off by those rated, would have been recognized as the junk they are.

We might not feel too sorry for people who overreached on their home purchases, but we have to realize that simply pointing the finger at the millions now stuck in the mortgage morass simply does not begin to describe the structure of the unregulated reality of housing finance of the Bush administration. This is not the same as one individual having buyer's remorse for buying high in HPP and watching it sink low.

quote:

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I believe that we really live in a society that truly believes it is our right to have everything we want, rather than our right to work hard to have everything we want. There is a difference.

---

Working hard for what you want is great and I'm sure the unearned income crowd, the creditors, will want you to maintain that attitude. We live in a nation that has been structured from the beginning for concentration of wealth for a few and debt as a way of life for most. The enforcement of credit has been central to our laws since the beginning. So much so that we can barely conceive of any alternative. Perhaps living in Hawai'i we might be able to understand different directions.