heather
how do you know that this is about to be in contact?

Posted by: dandel at November 10, 2009 10:34 PM in response to House of the Day: 615 2nd Street Revisited

Hannible,agreed. Bernanke is ruining our
economy by destroying the dollar through money printing.
He is
stealing money from the prudent savers
and giving it to the reckless and greedy.

He is clinically insane and needs to be
locked up

someone stop him before we become
the next zimbabwe

Posted by: dandel at November 8, 2009 6:15 AM in response to 85 State's Roller Coaster Ride

i agree with you; real estate brokers and bankers belong in the same category.

Real Estate are also parasites on society; they add little value but get paid a lot of money and they do whatever it takes to thwart the introduction of any system that brings transparency to the real estate market. I don't know why the Cuomo isn't investigating the anti-competitive nature of the new york real estate market. Moreover, real estate brokers were the enablers of the real estate bubble. They fabricated a sense of urgency and got many people to buy into the real estate mania/frenzy. Many people subsequently got hurt financially in a big way. These real estate brokers have blood on their hands. I hope their conscience prevents them from enjoying all the money they made from the real estate bubble.

Bankers that work at investment banks that received tax payers' money are getting paid big bonuses again. These same people were responsible for creating the financial crisis that the nation is facing today. The Washington-Wall street partnership is resulting in the rewarding of a lot of incompetent and undeserving bankers, while punishing the prudent and the savers with the trillions of dollars printed. These same bankers with their fat bonuses that are being paid with bailout money are continuing to buy houses in desirable neighborhoods in brooklyn and pricing hard working families out of places to raise their kids.

Hannible, it is time that the middle class stand up for the rights. The past 30 years have led to the widest gap between the rich and poor since the second world war, while real wages for the middle class have stagnated. It is time for us to let our government know that we are not going to stand for this injustice any more.

Posted by: dandel at November 7, 2009 10:19 PM in response to 85 State's Roller Coaster Ride

Looks like it cost a mil to fix up: http://www.horrigancompanies.com/85state.html
So developer had 4.5 into it + carrying costs for 3.5 years... Classic example of chasing the market down, but I think the buyers done good.

Posted by: tricks73 at November 6, 2009 9:02 PM

Love it!! The greedy developer-flipper lost a million dollars plus carrying cost from taking on $3.4Mil of debt for 3 years!! That is going to leave a mark.

Greedy developer flippers are the scum of the earth. They prey on hard working families looking for a good place to raise their kids by jacking up prices of houses.

Hopefully, this will serve as a lesson to these parasites of society. Karma is a bitch sometimes.

Posted by: dandel at November 7, 2009 2:25 PM in response to 85 State's Roller Coaster Ride

I agree with Miss Muffett. A vote for Thompson was a repudiation of bloomberg's policy of welfare for the rich bankers and screwing the middle class.

Posted by: dandel at November 4, 2009 8:58 PM in response to Election 2009: No Big Surprises in Brooklyn

Hey Bob Marvin,
Is that you? Not so crazy now to be buying a brownstone in 2008, is it? you old fool!

Posted by: dandel at October 30, 2009 9:21 PM in response to Open House Picks

I am really sorry I missed this calm and well reasoned discussion that happened on this thread.

Posted by: dandel at October 28, 2009 7:17 PM in response to NYT: Housing Not Out of the Woods Yet

I would just like to point out that renters with kids are the vast majority of people in Brooklyn. I guess that's pretty obvious. About two-thirds of my neighbors are renters with kids, and the other third own the building they live in. Most of them are plumbers, handymen, own laundromats or small stores, construction workers, movers, work for Verizon or National Grid, electricians, drive a car service, etc. Quite a bit of talent on my block, makes me feel safe

>>>>

Mopar, which brooklyn neighborhood do you live in?

Posted by: dandel at October 28, 2009 7:16 PM in response to NYT: Housing Not Out of the Woods Yet

Bill Thompson kicked ass in the debate that was on earlier tonight!

***Bill Thompson for Mayor***

Posted by: dandel at October 27, 2009 8:25 PM in response to Last Week's Biggest Sales

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aVlwYvRVsnL4

Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. paid top executives an average of $18.2 million each last year as the banks accepted a total of $90 billion in taxpayer funds to survive the financial crisis.

Posted by: dandel at October 26, 2009 9:51 AM in response to Open Thread

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125632433920204407.html

Federal investigators in the Galleon Group case have requested trading records from a hedge-fund manager who once worked for Steven A. Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors and who employed a cooperating witness in the insider-trading case announced last week, people familiar with the matter say.

The subpoena sent to the hedge-fund manager, Richard Grodin, doesn't suggest wrongdoing. Nor does it suggest that Mr. Cohen -- one of the nation's most well-known and successful hedge-fund managers -- has been implicated in any way, or that he knew about any trading by Mr. Grodin that the U.S. is seeking to examine as part of its continuing case.

Related

Essay: Learning to Love Insider Trading
Polycom Puts Executive on Leave
Rajaratnam: Relentless Pursuit of Data
Photos: The Galleon Case
The subpoena, sent in the past week, is the first indication that the circle of trading being examined in the case is broadening.

It also illustrates how traders engulfed in the alleged insider-trading ring had many personal and professional ties, and signals a potential avenue investigators may be following in the burgeoning case. In this instance, Mr. Grodin also employed a former employee of an investor-relations firm who prosecutors say passed along inside information in the case about Google Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Grodin didn't return calls for comment on Friday.

An SAC spokesman said Mr. Grodin left SAC in January 2004 and that Mr. Cohen didn't invest in Mr. Grodin's most-recent fund. Spokesmen for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department's U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan declined to comment.

In criminal and civil cases, the U.S. has alleged that Galleon hedge-fund founder Raj Rajaratnam was part of an insider-trading ring that also has ensnared a number of corporate executives and employees -- an alleged conspiracy in which Mr. Rajaratnam and executives at blue-chip firms including International Business Machines Corp. and Intel Corp. allegedly connived to profit on Google and other big-name stocks. Mr. Rajaratnam and others involved in the case have said they are innocent.

Mr. Cohen has claimed a special place in the $1.2 trillion hedge-fund industry. He has received $1 billion in pay in some years and he has gained a following for producing annual returns of roughly 15%.

Mr. Cohen runs SAC's main hedge fund and has invested money on behalf of his investors as well as his own money in funds run by former SAC managers. Over the years, Mr. Grodin has worked as a portfolio manager for SAC, as well as a division that invested SAC investors' money. He also ran a separate independent fund in which Mr. Cohen was an investor.

It is unclear which specific trades of Mr. Grodin's and their timing are being sought. The 6-foot-5 Mr. Grodin, 40 years old, took time away from his hedge fund this summer to play in a basketball tournament in Israel, a person familiar with the matter says.

View Full Image

Sipa Press
Raj Rajaratnam, shown with Asha Rajaratnam, is being investigated for his alleged involvement in one of the largest cases of insider trading.
Mr. Grodin and Choo Beng Lee, who has been identified as a cooperating witness in the government's case, have ties that stretch back to the late 1990s when the two worked for SAC, people familiar with the matter say. Mr. Grodin was a portfolio manager and Mr. Lee was an analyst that worked with him.

Several years later, Mr. Grodin broke away from the main SAC fund to work at Sigma, an SAC division, where Mr. Grodin continued to work as a portfolio manager and Mr. Lee continued to serve as an analyst for him. Mr. Lee's lawyer declined to comment.

Mr. Grodin later launched a hedge-fund named Stratix outside of SAC's sphere, in which Mr. Cohen was an investor. At Stratix, Mr. Lee worked for Mr. Grodin for several years, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Grodin closed Stratix in December 2007.

Mr. Lee formed his own fund, Spherix with Ali Far, who also has been identified by people close to the probe as another of the government's cooperating witnesses in the case. SAC never invested in Mr. Lee's and Mr. Far's fund.

Around the same time, Mr. Grodin opened another fund, Quadrum Capital. He closed that fund in recent weeks, people close to the situation say. Mr. Far didn't respond to requests for comment.

In March 2009, Messrs. Lee and Far closed their fund, which had posted returns of around 10% for the year, people familiar with the matter say. Some rival hedge-fund managers said shutting the fund amid such good returns aroused suspicions that something was amiss. In the weeks following the closure, Mr. Lee approached Mr. Cohen about rehiring him and was rejected, a person familiar with the matter says.

Another individual who worked as a low-level assistant for Mr. Grodin and with Mr. Lee at Stratix was an individual whom prosecutors now allege passed along inside information regarding Google.

That individual, identified by people familiar with the matter as Shammara Hussain, left Stratix in May 2007 to briefly work for Market Street, a small San Francisco investor-relations firm.

A lawyer for Ms. Hussain, 23, who hasn't been named or charged by prosecutors, said her client intends to cooperate and that she "didn't ask for or receive money in connection with conversations about Google. Whatever happened was a naive mistake," the lawyer says.

Posted by: dandel at October 26, 2009 9:18 AM in response to Open Thread

WOW!

Posted by: dandel at October 23, 2009 1:21 PM in response to Open House Picks: Six Months Later

WOW...my mother had me when she was 26. I never actually realized she was so young. Of course she had already been married so at least I'm not a bastard.
------------------------------------------------------

DIBS, you are a bastard for other reasons. LOL

Posted by: dandel at October 23, 2009 10:46 AM in response to Open Thread

11217, you are a low-life scum for digging up my old posts. Get a life, will ya?

Posted by: dandel at October 20, 2009 4:29 PM in response to House of the Day: 65 Prospect Park West, Reduced

Wow, dandel...you really know how to get me good, don't ya? Using my exact same dig at you on me a couple weeks later!
**************************************************

Thanks, 11217! It doesn't feel too good, does it?

Posted by: dandel at October 20, 2009 4:21 PM in response to House of the Day: 65 Prospect Park West, Reduced

I don't list reasons to people with multiple log in names.

And it doesn't matter, he doesn't have a chance in hell of beating Bloomberg.

****************************************************

11217, you have the reasoning ability of a 2 year old. Who are you accusing of having multiple logins?

You should shut the fuck up the next time or not make flippant statements without the ability to back them up. You act like a child otherwise.

Saying "it does not matter because...." is just plain weak. You are a disgrace.

***BILL THOMPSON FOR MAYOR***

Posted by: dandel at October 20, 2009 3:52 PM in response to House of the Day: 65 Prospect Park West, Reduced

11217, that is where you are wrong. Bill Thompson will be the best thing to happen to this city in decades.

**BILL THOMPSON FOR MAYOR**

Posted by: dandel at October 20, 2009 3:40 PM in response to House of the Day: 65 Prospect Park West, Reduced

Just found out the house on 2nd Street between 5th & 6th is asking $1.1M - that's a 3-story that needs TLC on a nice block in PS. So yeah, $1.4M seems high...

********************************************************

where did you find this?

Posted by: dandel at October 20, 2009 2:24 PM in response to House of the Day: 65 Prospect Park West, Reduced

In the prime area of Park Slope, 567 1st street sold for $439/sq feet while 383 1st street sold for $357/sq feet. These are amazing price cuts on a per sq feet basis.

***BILL THOMPSON FOR MAYOR***

Posted by: dandel at October 20, 2009 1:22 PM in response to Last Week's Biggest Sales

DIBS, you are speaking purely out of self interest rather than fairness. If the argument is that wall street banks that kept tax payers money are able to pay big bonuses and that is good for state and local governments' coffers, it seems to me a more efficient way to go about it is just give money to state and local governments directly and cut out the middlemen and avoid a big moral hazard problem.

Posted by: dandel at October 20, 2009 11:14 AM in response to Open Thread

DIBS, there is no need to be defensive. Your fund did not take any tax payer money and is not involved in any insider trading scandal. You make money because of your own trading skills. This is what capitalism should be about, and not the crony capitalism or "welfare for the rich wall street bankers" that currently exist.

Posted by: dandel at October 20, 2009 10:52 AM in response to Open Thread

DIBS, what is the name of your hedge fund? What is your role there?

Posted by: dandel at October 20, 2009 10:09 AM in response to Open Thread

While the rest of the country burns, these wall streeters are partying like 1999 with our money, tax-payer's money.
*******************************************************

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a25cbLmExCXs

Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- A 40 percent jump in Wall Street bonuses this year may bring relief to New York City and Albany as the state and its biggest metropolis struggle with a combined $14 billion in budget deficits this fiscal year and next.

New York investment houses will dole out $26 billion in bonus checks by the end of March, said Alan Johnson, president of compensation consultant Johnson Associates Inc. The money will probably boost sales of multimillion-dollar co-op apartments and generate extra income-tax revenue for state and city governments.

“I don’t think this is going to make everybody think, ‘Oh, good times are here again,’ but it may ease things a bit,” said Lawrence White, professor of economics at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

Before the financial meltdown slammed bank earnings and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of U.S. stocks dropped 38 percent last year, Wall Street’s compensation and corporate profits provided 20 percent of New York state tax revenue and 9 percent of the city’s taxes. New York banks lost $42.6 billion in 2008 and shed 30,000 jobs, according to the city’s Office of Management and Budget.

The city’s unemployment rate is 10.3 percent, the most since 1993, after the private sector cut 96,600 jobs since employment peaked in August 2008.

Bonuses in 2008 fell 44 percent from the prior year, to $18.4 billion, said New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The reduction cost the state $1 billion in personal income tax revenue and New York City $275 million, he said. State personal income tax collections in the current fiscal year’s first six months declined $4.4 billion, or 21.6 percent, from the same period a year earlier, DiNapoli’s September cash report said.

Too Soon

It’s too soon to estimate the impact of bigger bonuses, said DiNapoli spokesman Olayinka Fadahunsi and Mark LaVorgna, a spokesman for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. New York City will update its financial plan next month.

“New York was ground zero of this crisis,” Governor David Paterson said last week, announcing $5 billion in spending cuts and one-time revenue measures, including a tax-amnesty program, to preserve the state’s credit rating of Aa3 from Moody’s Investors Service and AA from Standard & Poor’s, three and two levels from the top, respectively.

This year, Wall Street’s banks are set to pay near-record bonuses after the U.S. injected $700 billion into financial- services companies, guaranteed their debt and lowered the Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rate to almost zero. The number of Wall Street competitors declined after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed, Bear Stearns Cos. was bought by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co. was taken over by Bank of America Corp.

Up 46 Percent

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Oct. 15 it had set aside $16.7 billion for compensation in 2009’s first three quarters, or $527,192 per worker, up 46 percent from the same period a year earlier and just under the record $16.9 billion set in 2007’s first nine months. JPMorgan set aside $353,834 per investment-bank employee, up from $210,854 last year.

Americans have a “limited tolerance” for Wall Street bonuses, said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, on ABC’s “This Week” on Oct. 18. “On the same day that you saw stories about these bonuses, you saw a story about how wages are at a 19-year low,” Axelrod said.

After Obama’s administration proposed capping executive pay at companies that accept government rescue funds, Mayor Bloomberg described bonuses as important to New York’s economy.

‘Enormous Amount’

“They may be an enormous amount of money for one person, but they are how our people in the city in all industries get paid, whether you drive a cab, work in a restaurant, work in a store, whether you are a municipal employee,” Bloomberg said Feb. 5 at City Hall.

“All of this gets filtered down through our economy,” he said. “No matter what you think about the propriety of any individual person’s bonus, we want companies in the city, and we are dependent on Wall Street finance, to do well.” The mayor is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News.

“Certainly, it’s good news for the city if Wall Street salaries and bonuses continue to be high,” said Doug Turetsky, a spokesman for New York City’s Independent Budget Office.

Limited Impact

Bonus increases will have a limited impact on revenue, said Matt Anderson, a spokesman for New York state’s Division of Budget. Many payments come in stock that isn’t taxed immediately, and companies that disappeared in the crisis won’t be paying any bonuses at all, he said.

“While Wall Street bonuses are an important component of state revenue, they are not the only component,” Anderson said in an e-mail. “We continue to see substantial declines in tax collections across the entire budget. There is little prospect, if any, for a rebound in receipts by the end of the fiscal year that would remove the need for difficult deficit reduction actions.”

The number of Manhattan apartment sales increased 46 percent in the third quarter from the previous period, the biggest such gain since 1996, according to an Oct. 2 report from Miller Samuel Inc., a New York appraiser. The median price of a luxury apartment in Manhattan in the third quarter was $3.9 million, up from $3.66 million.

Some homes are selling for more than their listing price.

Madoff’s Home

The former Montauk, New York, home of Bernard Madoff, who is serving a 150-year prison sentence for running the biggest Ponzi scheme in history out of his investment firm, sold for $9.41 million, the U.S. Marshals Service said last week. It had been listed for $8.75 million. Home prices in the Hamptons rose 4.7 percent in the third quarter amid a surge in sales of properties from $2 million to $5 million.

Public anger over Wall Street bonuses, and the need to rebuild savings and pay down debt, may limit how much bankers and traders spend once they get

Posted by: dandel at October 20, 2009 9:25 AM in response to Open Thread

318 1 st has been for a ride around the block.
gotta admit, the owner looks pretty adamant to sell for the july 05 purchase price.
need another metaphor as death by a thousand cuts won't work.

=======================================================

You can say the owner is suffering from the behavioral bias known as "anchoring". e.g. i bought Lehman at $150/share and am not going to sell it until I break even.

Posted by: dandel at October 16, 2009 2:03 PM in response to Open House Picks

where are 11217, fsrg, Nomi and DIBS to defend wall street crooks?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aEg0NamHdDVs

Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund firm Galleon Group, and ex-directors at a Bear Stearns Cos. hedge fund were among six people charged in a $20 million insider trading scheme by federal prosecutors.

Also accused were Rajiv Goel, who worked at Intel Capital as a director in strategic investments, Anil Kumar, who worked as a director at McKinsey & Co., and IBM Corp. executive Robert Moffat. The former officials at Bear Stearns Asset Management are Danielle Chiesi and Mark Kurland, who were affiliated with the firm’s New Castle Partners, which managed about $1 billion.

Federal prosecutors have been investigating the case since at least March 7, 2008, when they obtained court approval to intercept a cell phone Rajaratnam used, according to one of two criminal complaints in the case. Prosecutors said they’ve also been listening to two of Chiesi’s landlines since August 2008 and to the cell phone of a person they didn’t identify who is cooperating in the federal probe.

“A number of the calls intercepted over the wiretap consist of Rajaratnam either providing, receiving, or seeking material nonpublic information about various publicly traded companies,” the complaint says.

The six are charged with using insider information in 2008 and 2009 to trade in shares of companies including Google Inc., Polycom Inc., Hilton Hotels Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., according the complaints filed in Manhattan federal court today. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan will hold a press conference today at 1 p.m. to discuss the charges.

Arrests

Five of the defendants have been arrested in the New York City area and will appear in the Manhattan court today. Goel was arrested in California.

Rajaratnam, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, was identified this year by Forbes as the 559th richest person in the world, with a net worth of $1.3 billion. Galleon Partners is based in Manhattan.

Galleon said in a February 2009 press release that it has a “17-year track record in the alternative investment business specializing in long/short equity strategies.” It has offices in London, Singapore, Mumbai, and Menlo Park, California.

Phone calls to Galleon were referred to an executive, George Lau, who didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Secret Tips

According to one of the two complaints, Chiesi got secret tips from an unidentified person at Akamai Technologies Inc. and from Moffat, who passed along information about IBM, Sun Microsystems Inc., and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

“Chiesi shared certain of this inside information with Kurland,” and they bought securities in the companies, the complaint says.

Chiesi also passed along tips to Rajaratnam, “who in turn provided Chiesi with inside information regarding AMD and other publicly traded companies,” prosecutors said in the complaint. Authorities said that Chiesi made illegal insider trades with accounts affiliated with New Castle.

The cases are U.S. v. Rajaratnam, 09-02306, and U.S. v. Chiesi, 09-mag-2307, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

Posted by: dandel at October 16, 2009 12:39 PM in response to Open Thread

DOW8000SP800 was wrong, should have been DOW6600SP660 because that is how low we got to.

Jim "way wrong" rogers is a sack of shit; he was telling people not to sell oil last year when it got to $147.

Posted by: dandel at October 15, 2009 2:55 PM in response to Elliman Q3 Report: Better Than Q2

GS downgraded by Meredith Whitney this morning. In YO FACE, DIBS!

Posted by: dandel at October 13, 2009 10:42 AM in response to Open Thread

"
dandel, lots of TARP money has been repaid. GS is less than $11 from what I said it'd go to ....$200.00. Everybody here thought I was nuts. GS bonuses will be huge. So will others.

Posted by: daveinbedstuy at October 7, 2009 2:45 PM
"

Posted by: dandel at October 12, 2009 11:19 AM in response to Columbus Day Open Thread

DIBS, you said that TARP money has mostly been paid; where is the evidence?
GS has been able to pay back TARP because tax payers took over AIG at the cost of $190Bill and bailed out GS from the losses from the trades they did with AIG.
This is not capitalism, it is socialism for the wealthy.

Posted by: dandel at October 12, 2009 11:09 AM in response to Columbus Day Open Thread

http://walshal.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/good-billions-after-bad-where-did-the-tarp-money-go/

Gouging Needy Students
KeyBank of Cleveland is another institution that was given the nod by Treasury officials—and another bank whose lending practices prompt the question: What were they thinking?
Last fall KeyBank received $2.5 billion in tarp money. Its parent company is KeyCorp, a major bank holding company headquartered in Cleveland. With 989 full-service branches spread across 14 states, KeyCorp describes itself as “one of the nation’s largest bank-based financial services companies,” with assets of $98 billion. It also ranks as the nation’s seventh-largest education lender. In the summer of 2008, as banks and Wall Street firms were unraveling faster than they could count up their losses, KeyCorp delivered a decidedly upbeat report on its condition to investors. “Our costs are well controlled,” the company stated. “Our fee revenue is strong.…Our reserves are strong.…We remain well capitalized.”
What the report did not mention was a host of other problems. KeyCorp was in the midst of negotiations with the I.R.S. over questionable tax-leasing deals, and had had to deposit $2 billion in escrow with the government—forcing it to raise emergency capital and slash dividends after 43 consecutive years of annual growth. Meanwhile, consumer advocates had KeyBank in their sights because of the way it conducted its student-loan business, which they described as nakedly predatory. The Salt Lake Tribunereported that “KeyBank not only funds unscrupulous schools, it seeks them out, strikes up lucrative partnerships, and, in the process, suckers students into thinking the schools are legitimate.”
Over the years, thousands of students have secured education loans from KeyBank to attend a broad range of career-training schools—schools offering instruction in how to use or repair computers, how to become an electronics technician or even a nurse. One of the schools was Silver State Helicopters, which was based in Las Vegas and operated flight schools in a half-dozen states. During high-pressure sales pitches, people looking to change careers were encouraged to simultaneously sign up for flight school and complete a loan application that would be forwarded to KeyBank. Once approved, KeyBank, in keeping with long-standing practice, would give all the tuition money up front directly to Silver State. If a student dropped out, Silver State kept the tuition and the student remained on the hook for the full amount of the loan, at a hefty interest rate.

Posted by: dandel at October 12, 2009 11:06 AM in response to Columbus Day Open Thread

DIBS, great. maybe we could have a conversation about how TARP money has been supposedly mostly repaid so you could show me the evidence. Why is Bank of American still holding on to $45 Bill of TARP; Key bank also, and I can go on and on; their employees are expecting fat bonuses for this year. They are paying bonuses with taxes collected from ordinary hard working families struggling to make a living, and then using the bonuses to buy high priced brownstones and pricing them out of the reach of the same hardworking families.

Posted by: dandel at October 12, 2009 10:49 AM in response to Columbus Day Open Thread

Biff, i will go if DIBS, 11217, and fsrg all show up.

Posted by: dandel at October 12, 2009 10:33 AM in response to Columbus Day Open Thread

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125530360128479161.html#mod=todays_us_page_o
ne

***********************************************************
Wall street Journal today:

Foreclosures are rising in some of the market’s top tiers - About 30% of
foreclosures in June involved homes in the top third of local housing values, up from
16% when the foreclosure crisis began three years ago. Foreclosures are rising in more expensive markets as home values in those areas fall. WSJ.

Posted by: dandel at October 12, 2009 10:24 AM in response to Columbus Day Open Thread

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/unemployment_fuels_gotham_mortgage_Ve6OQNGzdhdHgqlpeVJxeK

*******************************************************
More New Yorkers than ever are falling seriously behind on their mortgage payments and a 57 percent spike in unemployment in the city last year makes it unusually tough for homeowners to dig back out of the delinquency ditch.

Add to this massive credit card debt loads and lower home equity levels and it adds up to a huge hike in metro area foreclosures over the coming months. They have already jumped 26 percent to 43,000 in August versus a year ago, according to metro New York mortgage data tracked by rating agency Fitch Ratings.

Alarmed at the growth of unemployment-related foreclosures, New York state's top banking official, Richard Neiman, is pushing for sustainable loan modifications and expanded outreach to troubled borrowers.

Posted by: dandel at October 12, 2009 10:04 AM in response to Columbus Day Open Thread

The NYC real estate market lagged the nation wide trend by a few years. Most people will agree that we peaked in August of 2008, one year before lehman's bankruptcy. Real estate cycles last 5 years on average and we just finished with year one of the process.

Posted by: dandel at October 12, 2009 9:17 AM in response to Open House Picks: Six Months Later

There is NO way in hell 11th street should be able to get anything north of $1.2mil. By comparison, 466 5th street, in the same school zone, sold for $1.841 in jan of this year, but it is 1.8x the size of the 11th street house (3600 sq ft), so its per square foot sale price was $512.

That being said, a sucker is born every minute. Right now, a lot of the banks that took and kept TARP money (Tax payer money) are looking to pay out record bonuses. I am sure one of these bankers will be able to spend money recklessly on a house; our tax dollars. Ordinary tax paying working families continue to get stiffed and priced out of desirable neighborhoods.

Posted by: dandel at October 11, 2009 4:14 PM in response to Open House Picks

"I would be surprised if areas in the city with top-rated public schools drop so much in price that owning costs the same as renting."
==========================================================

The problem is that rents are also dropping at the same time so you have two moving targets, one chasing the other's tail, or some would say "race to the bottom".

Posted by: dandel at October 10, 2009 9:25 AM in response to Open House Picks: Six Months Later

The buyers of the houses are not stupid, its just that they have TARP money delivered to them in the form of fat wall street bonuses, which by the way, comes out of the pockets of ordinary families who pay taxes. These families are unfortunately getting priced out of desirable neighborhoods where they are hoping to send their kids to a good public school and to raise a family.

Posted by: dandel at October 9, 2009 4:46 PM in response to Open House Picks: Six Months Later

hmmm, sounds like both 11217 and fsrq are in the finance industry. Figures.

Posted by: dandel at October 7, 2009 3:08 PM in response to House of the Day: 212 8th Avenue

"Looks like another wall street crook is getting a fat bonus this year. with money coming out of the tax payers' pocket. "

Yes and apparently going into the pockets of some horrible longtime PS Brownstone owner, who probably paid a few hundred thousand dollars for the place and having done nothing but sit on their ass for years is no going to walk away a millionaire.
============================================================

Good for them, but what about ordinary working families who pay taxes that get used to fund TARP? Why are they getting priced out of desirable neighborhoods by wall street crooks?

Posted by: dandel at October 7, 2009 2:56 PM in response to House of the Day: 212 8th Avenue

DIBS, GS got bailed out when the government took over AIG and assumed all their liabilities; without it, GS would have gone bankrupt because of their counter-party risk to AIG. And no, not lots of TARP money have been repaid. And yes, there will be big bonuses paid at banks that still hold TARP money; tax payers' money.

Posted by: dandel at October 7, 2009 2:49 PM in response to House of the Day: 212 8th Avenue

Just to compare, this beauty just entered contract on 9/17/09.

http://www.corcoran.com/property/listing.aspx?Region=NYC&listingid=1545546

======================================================

Looks like another wall street crook is getting a fat bonus this year. with money coming out of the tax payers' pocket.

Posted by: dandel at October 7, 2009 2:32 PM in response to House of the Day: 212 8th Avenue

the Asking price for 545 3rd street is just plain silly. You have to be crazy to pay this much for a brownstone in this day and age, unless you are a wall street crook.

Posted by: dandel at October 2, 2009 3:41 PM in response to Open House Picks

Where are the wall street crooks with their fat bonuses (that our tax dollars paid for through the TARP) to come in to drive prices further out of the reach of ordinary working families who pay taxes?
Obama sucks. I should not have voted for him. He is just George Bush light.

Posted by: dandel at October 2, 2009 10:55 AM in response to TRD Takes Brooklyn's Pulse

Benson, why is your condo building necessarily representative of the broader market? The sample size is too small.

Posted by: dandel at September 30, 2009 12:54 PM in response to Last Week's Biggest Sales

Correction: The 520 11th street south slope house was originally listed for $2.395 mill back in july 2008, not $2.25 mill, at least according to Street easy. So the discount from the ask, which may or may not be meaningful, is larger.

**********************************************************
07/08/2008
Listed in StreetEasy by Brown Harris Stevens at $2,395,000.
08/11/2008
Delisted temporarily.
09/09/2008
Re-listed by Brown Harris Stevens.
09/09/2008
Price decreased by 4% to $2,295,000.
10/29/2008
Delisted temporarily.
05/07/2009
Later Listed in StreetEasy by Prudential Elliman at $1,640,000.
09/01/2009
Prudential Elliman Listing is no longer available.

Posted by: dandel at September 30, 2009 11:41 AM in response to Last Week's Biggest Sales

Its a shame. Bankers are expecting big bonuses again because of all the TARP money that they received. They are using the money to buy houses and driving up NYC real estate prices farther beyond the reach of every day hard working families/tax payers in NY. These ordinary folks who pay taxes are basically subsidizing the bonuses of these bankers and the bankers are hurting the chances of (the ordinary tax payers) ever owning an affordable home.

Posted by: dandel at September 14, 2009 11:58 AM in response to Open House Picks: Six Months Later

The buyers of 6 3rd street in Carroll Gardens are friggin morons. They bought it from a flipper who paid 975K for the house at the height of the housing bubble and a month before the crash of Lehman, in August of 2008. The flipper then put it on the market 4 months later at a listed price of $1.895 mil, an increase of 94%? How much work could have been put into the house in just 4 months? At $1.69mil, I can't fathom how you could pay 715K above the price paid at the top peak point of the real estate bubble, even including the price for renovations put in. The old adage " A fool and his money shall soon part ways" holds true again.

Posted by: dandel at September 8, 2009 9:49 PM in response to Last Week's Biggest Sales

St james place brownstone: It sold for $815k in 2005. NYC is in a worse financial state than 2005 by far. How can they ask for a 100% increase in price even with the renovations they did? I will not pay $1.6mil for it to bail someone out of their mistake.

Posted by: dandel at February 8, 2009 9:37 AM in response to Open House Picks

Hats off to TheWhat for warning us about the upcoming financial and housing crisis a year ago. Looks like this weekend is going to be a Bear Stearns redux, where we are all going to be sitting around our computer on sunday night to find out who the buyer of lehman is going to be. This time is going to be a lot uglier, for the shareholders, bondholders and employees of lehman because of the unwillingness of the fed and treasury dept to backstop any deal. Leh's stock price is down 95% from the feb 2007 and their employees have lost more than $10 bill collectively. The wealth destruction we have witnessed is just horrific. We are not going to see the end to this crisis until two to three other financial institutions/investment banks/commercial banks follow suit. The run up in NYC real estate prices in the past 10 years has largely been due to the paper wealth created by investment banks and the economic stimulation that trickled down to other industries (legal, accounting, corporate events, etc) The reversal is starting with the destruction of all these institutions.
The short term implications of a possible lehman bankruptcy filing (some said it will get "taken care off" on here? yeah right, by who?) and its 24,000 employees (mostly in NY) is unimaginably horrible. The long term trend is NY is ceding its status as the financial center of the world to cities like London and Singapore.

Posted by: dandel at September 14, 2008 4:26 PM in response to Housing Crisis Will End on June 30, 2009