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…
Off-Topic Friday: A Hedge Fund Roach Motel?
Since this blog is dedicated to the pursuit of commercial and residential cash flow properties, I want to introduce a new feature this week that will let me stray and post my observations on various things that have happened throughout the week that don’t relate to real estate. I’m calling it Off-Topic Friday, although because of the holiday I’m posting a day early. Today there are a couple of items to review: Item #1: Rush…
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…
Screw It – Because Fear Sucks
I think that we’d all agree that the last couple of weeks have been brutal ones for our various markets: the stock market closed Friday at 2004 levels, Oil is at an all-time high, and the real estate market here in Michigan continues to plunge to new lows. And all I keep hearing is doom and gloom from the chicken-littles here. And it’s not just the media that’s perpetuating and worse yet – AMPLIFYING these…
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…