Flippers in trouble...

Someone posted this in the comments: http://flippersintrouble.blogspot.com/

They *seem* to be tracking houses that were recently bought and that are now selling for less than how much the person paid. Would be great if they made a table of these houses--as well as some of the ones that have sold--so you could see some trends.

I wish someone was doing this in Los Angeles... .maybe Curbed LA can start a feature?

I wish brokers would be more transparent and have this information out there on their blogs/websites. Like, why isn't there a list of the homes that have had the biggest price drops? I think more honesty and transparency in the marketplace would actually get some of the buyers off the sidelines. I know when I look at this inefficient market in flux I get the sense deep down inside that waiting is the best move.

Auctions would solve the problem for sure, but I don't think the sellers are brave enough to know what the market thinks of their houses. That truth will eventually come out, but it's just gonna take 6-18months--they might as well know now and be able to move on (if they need to).

Anyone know of someone doing this kind of stuff in LA?! I would pay someone to start a blog like this.

Update: JohnsJottings points to the Jumping of the Shark with TV shows about flipping like: Million Dollar Listing, Flip This House, and Flip That House. Nice one John!

Sep 10th 2006 1:47AM
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1. Jason -

I've read your blog for some time now. You're someone that goes for it.

You know there's a demand for a blog like this (or at least for for someone to track this information). We all know mortgage and real estate ads pay well. I'm sure if you posted this blog post on craig's list you'd have qualified applicants ready to start tomorrow morning.

And when you post the link to the new blog you/AOL/whoever have launched, I'll be the first to add it to my RSS feed.

Sid

Posted at 2:46PM on Sep 10th 2006 by Siddartha Savara

2. As a followup -

Don't you guys have a great resource for finding people interested in this sort of thing? It's public knowledge which people vote up which stories on netscape, right?

How about looking at http://realestate.netscape.com/ and contacting someone who has been active there? I'm sure there's someone at AOL who could query your backend database and ping those users via PMs (or other publicly available methods of contacting them). I wouldn't encourage using non-publicly available data, since we all know where that's got AOL before.

Sid

Posted at 3:30PM on Sep 10th 2006 by Sid Savara

3. The last time I refinanced my appraisal used comparables not of actual recent sales but of actual recent appraisals. That's a house of cards.

Posted at 8:04PM on Sep 10th 2006 by john

4. Per James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency,
The Geography of Nowhere, and other books:

http://www.kunstler.com/

"It was interesting to see the price of oil on the futures market plummet down into the mid $60 range last week. I take two conclusions from that. One is that the psychological stress of peak oil has increased the emotional dimension of the trade to a dangerous degree, i.e. driven the traders crazy. The intense wish to solve the energy problem has momentarily overcome the reality of it not being solved. The second is that the US economy may be in greater trouble than the news media realizes, especially the economic "engines" of "home" building, real estate sales, and the associated mortgage rackets, with their spin-offs in the financial markets. There may be a hell of a lot fewer 18-wheelers shlepping chipboard and sheetrock around the nation this fall, fewer family trips to the WalMart, fewer Di-tech Mortgage customers dredged out of the sub-prime muck, and fewer bundles of interest-only ARMS passed through to the hedge funds."

Prices on housing will have to fall to pre-inflationary levels (pre-housing bubble, post-internet bubble, because this is where the consumer investment money flowed in the 2000-2004+ period) before appreciation is seen again, and only at traditional or lower levels, due to the fact that the American middle class has been gutted...they are tapped out on the ARM Ditech HELOCS...

Are you sure they'll really want to see how much they have gotten fleeced by the "promise" of increasing real estate values, in any sort of "gee whiz" Web 2.0 tool?

Posted at 11:23AM on Sep 11th 2006 by Rob in NoVA

5. "honesty and transparency in the marketplace".

The only real keeper of this kind of data is the MLS. And the MLS is made to keep honest and transparency from entering the marketplace.

Posted at 3:18PM on Sep 11th 2006 by Rick

6. Sorry, a plug here... check out www.blockshopper.com.

Lincoln Park (Chicago) real estate blog. Tracks houses and condos, who's buying what, etc.

Posted at 3:22PM on Sep 11th 2006 by Rick

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