Sin never goes out of style, no matter what the economic conditions, no matter what the location. Leave it to Las Vegas, Nevada, Sin City USA, to have the temerity to propose an homage to sin in the form of a “Mob Museum” commemorating the history of organized crime in America.
More on A Las Vegas Mob Museum on the U.S. Government’s Dime? Maybe!
The city of Cleveland, located right in the center of the midwest “rust belt”, was hit very hard by the housing crisis. Entire suburban neighborhoods are now ghost towns, with boarded up, decaying once-pricey homes littering upscale outlying areas while the few people who have managed to hang on cannot sell their own homes at any price.
More on Cleveland Homeowner Sees Water Bill Go From $40 to $740
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Wednesday that the city will use $24 million in federal funds to fix up and sell 115 foreclosed properties in and around Manhattan. The properties, which have all failed to sell at foreclosure auction, are being marked for rehab in order to prevent them from becoming a blight on NYC neighborhoods and driving down property values all around.
Although the American real estate market is seeing an avalanche of foreclosures, and although American banks and mortgage companies are hungry for capital, it isn’t as easy to buy a property on short sale as you might imagine. Some experts estimate that out of every 20 signed short sale offers made on American real estate, only one ever makes it to closing. Doing a bit of homework before you get involved can save you a lot of time and headache.
Until recently New York City real estate has been fairly impervious to the U.S. housing meltdown, with most properties in and around New York continuing to appreciate (although more slowly than in recent years) in the midst of the biggest real estate mess to hit the country since the Great Depression. All of that changed, however, after September 7 of 2008 when the U.S. government seized the quasi-governmental mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
According to a January 11th article by New York Times reporter Bob Tedeschi, if you are looking at buying real estate in a traditionally high-priced area of the United States, it might make sense to wait a few weeks before making your move. Some members of Congress are reportedly urging Barack Obama to include a clause in the pending $800 billion economic stimulus package which would raise the dollar limit on “conforming loans.”
More on Congress Considers Increasing Conforming Loan Limits
According to a January 6, 2009 article at Bloomberg.com entitled No Recovery for Real Estate as Speculators Dominate Sales, the recent rise in sales of homes in the United States is due almost entirely real estate speculators who scoop up the properties at tax and foreclosure sales. Because these speculators do not plan to hold the homes any longer than they have to, this increase in sales is expected to delay a true recovery.
More on Speculators Account for Bulk of U.S. Real Estate Sales
A
ll successful scams and cons have two things in common:
1) All scams involve a ‘hook’ designed to play on our natural greed and opportunism by asking us to do something that seems only slightly unethical (on the surface) in exchange for a huge monetary pay off. 2) All scams then count on our shame at accepting illicit terms to make sure we don’t report the crime or pursue justice.
As if Hurricane Ike wasn’t enough to contend with, now the residents of the state of Texas are starting another battle – trying to get insurance claims fulfilled and to get the Federal Hazard Mitigation Grant to buy their flood prone homes…
More on Gone with the Wind – Property Owners in Texas Battle With Insurance Woes After Hurricane Ike
Coming towards the end of 2008, news from property markets around the world seems to be more of the same. So what is end-2008 looking like, and what to look forward to in 2009?
More on Property Market News and a look forward to 2009 for British Property Investors
