Blackstone

Subprime Mortgages are Back…This Time Marketed as “Second Chance Purchase Programs”

by

With interest rates up sharply from the lows and Blackstone and other private equity firms holding billions of dollars with of properties with no one to sell to, the time is ripe for a little muppet fleecing. Leading the charge to find new tax-payer backed subprime loans to take some properties off the hands of Mr. Schwarzman is none other than Wells Fargo. I previously forecasted this in my piece: Stage Two of the Housing Bubble Begins: Blackstone to Lend to Others for “Buy to Rent.”

They aren’t the only ones though. Citadel Servicing Corp, the country’s biggest subprime lender, is also getting in the action. The best and worst part of this story is the way these new loans are being marketed. Specifically, as “Low Credit Score Debt Consolidation Program” as well as a “Second Chance Purchase Program.”

This Central Bankster game isn’t complicated. Provide access to cheap funds to financial cronies, pump the bubble, fleece the serfs. Rinse. Repeat.

From Reuters:

(Reuters) – Wells Fargo & Co, the largest U.S. mortgage lender, is tiptoeing back into subprime home loans again.

The bank is looking for opportunities to stem its revenue decline as overall mortgage lending volume plunges. It believes it has worked through enough of its crisis-era mortgage problems, particularly with U.S. home loan agencies, to be comfortable extending credit to some borrowers with higher credit risks.

So far few other big banks seem poised to follow Wells Fargo’s lead, but some smaller companies outside the banking system, such as Citadel Servicing Corp, are already ramping up their subprime lending. To avoid the taint associated with the word “subprime,” lenders are calling their loans “another chance mortgages” or “alternative mortgage programs.”

It is looking at customers with credit scores as low as 600. Its prior limit was 640, which is often seen as the cutoff point between prime and subprime borrowers. U.S. credit scores range from 300 to 850.

Read more

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.

U.S. Banking Regulator Warns of a Credit Bubble Fueled by “Alternative Asset Managers”

by

This isn’t the first time in recent months we have heard serious warnings of a new and potentially quite dangerous credit bubble. Recall back in September, when Blackstone’s head of private equity proclaimed that “we are in the middle of an epic credit bubble.” Well they should know, because according to the article below from Reuters, Blackstone and many other private equity firms are the “alternative asset managers” directly responsible for its creation.

I don’t know about you, but I just can’t wait for another bankster bailout!

From Reuters:

(Reuters) – A U.S. bank regulator is warning about the dangers of banks and alternative asset managers working together to do risky deals and get around rules amid concerns about a possible bubble in junk-rated loans to companies.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has already told banks to avoid some of the riskiest junk loans to companies, but is alarmed that banks may still do such deals by sharing some of the risk with asset managers.

These clowns never learn, and why should they when society just bails them out from their stupidity.

“We do not see any benefit to banks working with alternative asset managers or shadow banks to skirt the regulation and continue to have weak deals flooding markets,” said Martin Pfinsgraff, senior deputy comptroller for large bank supervision at the OCC, in a statement in response to questions from Reuters.

Among the investors in alternative asset managers are pension funds that have funding issues of their own, he said.

“Transferring future losses from banks to pension funds does not aid long-term financial stability for the U.S. economy,” he added.

No, but it’s a great way to transfer risk to the muppets.

Read more

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.

Manhattan Apartment Rental Rates Drop for Third Month in a Row

by

Now this is interesting. Investors looking at real estate should be aware of two main things at the moment. Those two things relate to what is really driving this centrally planned, manufactured rebound in U.S. real estate. It’s really a tale of two distinct trends. In formerly hurting markets such as Arizona, Nevada and Florida, private equity investors have flooded into what is a now gigantically crowded to “buy-to-rent” trade. Meanwhile, in the prime markets such as New York City and San Francisco, we have seen the “money laundering trade,” where rich oligarchs move their often ill-gotten gains into trophy real estate assets abroad.

We have seen many signs all year that the first key pillar to the manufactured rise in housing was becoming strained, as rents continued to rise while incomes continued to fall. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that this can only last so long, and many of the early investors in “buy-to-rent” have already gotten out or are trying to.

As far as the second pillar, well at some point the oligarchs will have purchased enough homes in London and Manhattan and then what? Interestingly, the seemingly unstoppable rental market in Manhattan is showing signs of cracking. What this ultimately means is unknown, but it’s an interesting data point nonetheless.

From Bloomberg:

Manhattan apartment rents fell for a third month in November and the vacancy rate reached the highest in at least seven years, signs the market is weakening amid a spike in homebuying and the lure of leasing in Brooklyn.

The median monthly rent in Manhattan dropped 3 percent from a year earlier to $3,100, according to a report today by appraiserMiller Samuel Inc. and brokerageDouglas Elliman Real Estate. The vacancy rate climbed to 2.8 percent, the highest since the firms began tracking the data in August 2006.

“With the scare about rising mortgage rates, it poached a lot of demand from the rental market,”Jonathan Miller, president of New York-based Miller Samuel, said in an interview. “On top of that, what else is poaching demand from the Manhattan rental market is Brooklyn.”

Manhattan landlords agreed to offer concessions, such as a month’s free rent, on 7.2 percent of all new leases in November, up from 4.2 percent a year earlier.

Read more

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.

Peak Insanity: Retail Investors are Making Direct Subprime Loans in a Reach for Yield

by

It has come to this. Unable to save enough for retirement with traditional investments, baby boomers in search of yield are becoming their own private Countrywide Financials. They’re loaning cash from their deposit accounts and retirement plans and hoping for a big pay day: specifically large returns that will boost their income and maybe even allow them to pass an inheritance on to their children. 

It used to be that individual lenders were millionaires who could afford to loan cash and handle the risk of not being paid back. Now middle-income pre-retirees, ranging from chiropractors to professors, are joining their ranks. 

– From an excellent MarketWatch article:  Want 18% returns? Become a subprime lender

Being a somewhat conscious human being in a world in which our “leaders” have completely lost their minds can be challenging at times. One side effect of this condition is a certain emotional numbness when it comes to reacting to new events occurring in the world around you. It’s simply hard to shock me these days, but every now and then it does happen. The following article published by MarketWatch had me literally shaking my head the entire time. If this isn’t peak insanity, I do not want to know what is. We now have chiropractors and orchestral conductors competing with Blackstone in a crowded, insane trade.

Read it and weep:

Barry Jekowsky wanted to build “legacy wealth” to pass down to his children. But the 58-year-old orchestral conductor, who waved the baton for 24 years at the California Symphony, didn’t trust the stock market’s choppy returns to achieve his goals. And the tiny interest earned by his savings accounts were of no help. Instead, Jekowsky opted for an unlikely course: He became a subprime lender, providing his own cash to home buyers with poor credit and charging interest rates of 10% to 18%. It may sound risky, but “it helps me sleep better at night,” he says. “Where else can you find [these] returns?”

Go ahead and read that twice. Ok, now let’s move on, it gets worse.

It has come to this. Unable to save enough for retirement with traditional investments, baby boomers in search of yield are becoming their own private Countrywide Financials. They’re loaning cash from their deposit accounts and retirement plans and hoping for a big pay day: specifically large returns that will boost their income and maybe even allow them to pass an inheritance on to their children. There is no official data, though it’s estimated that at least 100,000 such lenders exist — and the trend is on the rise, says Larry Muck, chairman of the American Association of Private Lenders, which represents a range of lenders including private-equity firms and individuals who are lending their own cash. “We know the number of people who are doing this is increasing dramatically — over the last year it’s grown exponentially,” he says.

The baby boomers will not rest until they destroy the entire world.

It used to be that individual lenders were millionaires who could afford to loan cash and handle the risk of not being paid back. Now middle-income pre-retirees, ranging from chiropractors to professors, are joining their ranks. 

The move toward mom-and-pop lending comes in the wake of what experts say is the creation of a perfect storm: Banks are still skittish about lending to home buyers with poor credit. Meanwhile, investors who have endured years of low returns from plain-vanilla investment portfolios are itching for something more.

The operations often function like a game of telephone. Subprime home buyers, who know they have no shot at getting a mortgage from a bank, start spreading the word to friends and acquaintances that they are on the lookout for anyone who will lend to them. Eventually, the word reaches someone who is willing to lend his or her cash. Other times, a group of individuals pool their cash together to fund the loan.

A game of telephone…

What all these lenders have in common, however, is their willingness to lend to borrowers with low credit scores. In some cases, they do not even check their scores. They point to examples of otherwise reliable borrowers who fell on hard times during the recession and were unable to keep up with loans. Many say they work with borrowers who intentionally stopped paying mortgages (even though they could afford the payments) when they ended up owing more on the loans than the home was worth.

Read more

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.

A Closer Look at the Decrepit World of Wall Street Rental Homes

by

This new incursion by hedge funds and private equity groups into the American single-family home rental market is unprecedented, and is proving disastrous for many of the tens of thousands of families who are moving into these newly converted rental homes. In recent weeks, HuffPost spoke with more than a dozen current tenants, along with former employees who recently left the real estate companies. Though it’s not uncommon for tenants to complain about their landlords, many who had rented before described their current experience as the worst they’ve ever had.

A former inspector for American Homes 4 Rent who worked in the Dallas office said he routinely examined homes just prior to rental that were not habitable. Though it wasn’t his job to answer complaints, he said he fielded “hundreds of calls” from irate tenants.

– From the Huffington Post’s excellent article: Here’s What Happens When Wall Street Builds A Rental Empire

This is a topic that I have been writing extensively on since the beginning of the year. In fact, I don’t think there’s another topic I have focused so intently on in the whole of 2013, with the exception of the NSA revelations. It all started back in January with my post titled, America Meet Your New Slumlord: Wall Street, which received a huge amount of attention in the alternative media world.

I knew from the start that this whole “buy-to-rent” thing would be a disaster. Over the last decade or so, everything that Wall Street touched has turned into a scheme primarily focused on parasitically funneling wealth and resources away from society at large to itself. This is no different. They call it a “new asset class.” I call it Wall Street serfdom.

What makes this article even more interesting is that it’s not simply greed, it is also obvious that these Wall Street firms have no idea what the fuck they are doing. For example:

Former employees of the companies, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they worry about jeopardizing their careers, said their former colleagues can’t keep up with the volume of complaints. The rush to buy up as many homes as possible has stretched resources to the point of breaking, these people said. 

My advice to people out there in the rental market, is they should try to avoid Wall Street rentals. The three main companies highlighted in this article are: Invitation Homes (owned by Blackstone), Colony American and American Homes 4 Rent. Unfortunately, it appears these companies may try to hide their presence in certain markets so you may have to do additional digging. For example, WRI Property Management is the local agent of Colony American in Georgia.

More from the Huffington Post:

There’s no escaping the stench of raw sewage in Mindy Culpepper’s Atlanta-area rental home. The odor greets her before she turns into her driveway each evening as she returns from work. It’s there when she prepares dinner, and only diminishes when she and her husband hunker down in their bedroom, where they now eat their meals.

For the $1,225 a month she pays for the three-bedroom house in the quiet suburb of Lilburn, Culpepper thinks it isn’t too much to expect that her landlord, Colony American Homes, make the necessary plumbing repairs to eliminate the smell. But her complaints have gone unanswered, she said. Short of buying a plane ticket to visit the company’s office in Scottsdale, Ariz., she is out of ideas.

“You can not get in touch with them, you can’t get them on the phone, you can’t get them to respond to an email,” said Culpepper, whose family has lived with the problem since the day they moved in five months ago. “My certified letters, they don’t get answered.”

Most rental houses in the U.S. are owned by individuals, or small, local businesses. Culpepper’s landlord is part of a new breed: a Wall Street-backed investment company with billions of dollars at its disposal. Over the past two years, Colony American and its two biggest competitors, Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent, have spent more than $12 billion buying and renovating at least 75,000 homes in order to rent them out.

Most who spoke with HuffPost said they moved into their rental homes only to find that renovations they were assured were comprehensive amounted to little more than a fresh coat of paint and new carpeting. Tenants said they immediately discovered major mechanical and plumbing problems: broken water heaters and air conditioners, broken toilets and in some cases even vermin infestations, including fleas, silverfish and rodents.

Read more

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.

You’re Fired! American Homes 4 Rent Dismisses 15% of its Workforce

by

Earlier today, I published a piece discussing the ridiculousness of the latest centrally planned housing bubble, and I also described some of the things I have gotten wrong with regard to real estate in the past several years. Well here’s one thing I got right. In early May I wrote an article titled: Las Vegas Housing: … Read more

The Las Vegas Housing Market has Gone Full Chinese

by

Let’s face it, the Las Vegas real estate market has gone full Chinese.  By full Chinese I mean a centrally planned bubble has been created that is just asking to blow up.  I’ve covered the renewed insanity of the Las Vegas market before, but this article from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal provides even more detail.  In a nutshell, as a result of Assembly Bill 284, which essentially made foreclosures impossible in Nevada, extremely delinquent homes are not coming for sale, and this phony market signal is leading to rampant overbuilding and price speculation.

Here are some numbers. Utility data showed nearly 64,000 vacant homes in Las Vegas at the end of last September, only 8,000 of which are on the market. Meanwhile, new home sales are up 87% and new building permits are up 52% this year. What’s the end result? Another bubble, but this time one where Blackstone and other private equity firms are pricing out average citizens with elevated all cash bids.  USA! USA!  From the WSJ:

LAS VEGAS—In a city dotted with tens of thousands of vacant houses, Jericho Guarin figured it would be easy to buy his first home. But nearly a year after beginning a search late last summer, he has come up dry.

“It has been a nightmare,” says the 37-year-old U.S. Air Force officer. “There are plenty of empty houses, but they’re just not for sale.”

Thank you for your service Mr. Guarin, now go rent from Blackstone.

Many real-estate agents, home builders and consumer advocates argue that the law, intended to remedy foreclosure-processing abuses, has backfired. Some owners who are behind on payments aren’t maintaining their homes as banks refrain from eviction proceedings. The perverse outcome: Inventory shortages have spurred new developments despite a glut of properties stuck in foreclosure limbo.

“The people hurt most by this law are the middle class,” says Steve Hawks, a real-estate agent in Henderson, Nev. He refers to the phenomenon wrought by the foreclosure measure, Assembly Bill 284, as the “A.B. 284 bubble.”

The middle class…what’s that?

Mr. Guarin, the Air Force Captain, is preapproved for a mortgage backed by the Veterans Administration for up to $185,000. But like many buyers who need financing, he is at a severe disadvantage because sellers often prefer all-cash deals that won’t be tied up by a low appraisal or other red tape. “There’s no way I can match the cash offers,” says Mr. Guarin.

With investors in the game, more properties are commanding prices above asking—a phenomenon real-estate agent Bryan Lebo knows all too well. Recently, he listed a bank-owned property for $86,000. The home, which he said needed around $20,000 in repairs, drew 41 offers—39 of them all-cash—and sold to an investor for $135,000. “If you’re an honest working person, you pretty much don’t have a chance,” says Mr. Lebo of current market conditions.

Read more

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.

Carrington Bails: More Smart Money Leaves the “Buy to Rent” Game

by

“Buy to rent” has been one of my favorite topics to write about as of late, since the creation of this “asset class,” combined with the total madness that follows from money printing, has once again created a major housing bubble in many markets in these United States.  In recent months, I’ve noted how some of the earliest participants in this market have pulled back.  Most notably Och Ziff, but now Carrington as well.

The signs are everywhere that this market is not only overheated, but downright filled with insanity, and as Carrington’s head Bruce Rose states “stupid money.”  Las Vegas is a prime example of this, where 8% of single family homes are vacant, yet new construction permits are up 50%.  More from Bloomberg:

Hedge fund manager Bruce Rose was among the first investors to coax institutional money into the mom and pop business of single-family home rentals, raising $450 million last year from Oaktree Capital Group LLC. 

Now, with house prices climbing at the fastest pace in seven years and investors swamping the rental market, Rose says it no longer makes sense to be a buyer.

“We just don’t see the returns there that are adequate to incentivize us to continue to invest,” Rose, 55, chief executive officer of Carrington Holding Co. LLC, said in an interview at his Aliso Viejo, California office. “There’s a lot of — bluntly — stupid money that jumped into the trade without any infrastructure, without any real capabilities and a kind of build-it-as-you-go mentality that we think is somewhat irresponsible.”

No joke, I actually heard an ad on local Boulder radio that explained how you could “get in” on buy to rent schemes.

Read more

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.

Las Vegas Housing: 8% of Single Family Homes Vacant, Yet New Construction Permits Up 50%

by

If there is any market that demonstrates the complete and total misallocation of capital that results from Banana Ben Bernanke’s money printing and artificially low interest rate policy, it the latest phony American housing bubble. With a record numbers of citizens on the food stamp electronic breadline, with unemployment stubbornly high no matter what data you use, billionaire financial oligarchs are running around bidding up “homes for rent” and pricing out the random average person that actually has the capacity or desire to bid. I just read an excellent article that demonstrates the degree of insanity that has now been unleashed upon the streets of Las Vegas.

As the title of the post mentions, a study from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas show some 40,000 homes are vacant, or 8% of the metropolitan area’s single-family housing stock.  So it would seem that this would provide plenty of good deals for investors right?  Certainly there doesn’t seem to be a need for new home construction.  Well think again!  In their QE-forever induced delirium, homebuilders have gone Chinese and in Las Vegas “permits for new home construction are up 50 percent, twice the national average.”

My favorite line in the entire article comes at the end when a prospective buyer explains what happens when an actual citizen attempts to purchase a home to actually live in:

“We know there is a minute chance we get anything,” she says. “The most frustrating part of all this is how home prices keep going up and up, yet you have so many empty homes.”

Oh and it seems Oaktree has followed Och Ziff’s lead and pulled back from the “buy to rent” insanity.  Soon all that will be left are the dumb money and homebuilders, who should start thinking about what kind of bailout they will lobby for when this entire thing unravels.  From Reuters:

These big investors and a handful of others have bought at least 55,000 single-family homes across the U.S. in the past year. In the Vegas area alone, they have accounted for at least 10 percent of the homes sold since January 2012, according to a Reuters analysis of housing transactions.

That added firepower helps explain why home prices in this metropolitan area of 2 million people are up 30 percent over a year ago, far more than the national average of 10 percent. Permits for new home construction are up 50 percent, twice the national average.

Las Vegas would seem a highly unlikely locale for a new housing bubble. There are at least 20,000 homes in some stage of foreclosure, and the jobless rate hovers near 10 percent, some two points above the U.S. average. A healthy housing market depends on people having good-paying jobs so they can accumulate down payments and finance their mortgages.

Healthy markets?  That’s so last century!

Cracks are showing in Vegas and beyond. Here, rents on single-family homes were down an average of 1.9 percent in March from a year ago. In other regions targeted by institutional buyers, such as Phoenix, Southern California, Atlanta and Florida, rents are either falling or flat, according to online real estate service Trulia.

Industry insiders estimate that roughly half of the more than 55,000 homes acquired by institutions over the past year in the U.S. have yet to be rented.

In Oceania, that is a market signal for build more homes.

Read more

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.

Foreign Cash is Now Bidding for “Rat Infested” Homes in America’s Latest Housing Bubble

by

I’ve been following closely the recent attempts by the domestic oligarchy in charge of the corporatist-facist state we call America to create a new housing bubble for several years now.  For a little while, I was merely confused as to how prices were starting to rise when college graduates have no jobs and are six figures in debt, while at the same time real incomes are dropping for the rest of the populace.  Rather quickly, the pieces starting falling into place.  It became clear that the primary demand in the market was not from new families or recent college grads.  Nope, it was pretty much all financial oligarchs with private equity firms buying up properties in bulk as “investments.”  An entire asset class of “buy to rent” was born.  I tweeted the following a few days ago:

I can sum up the housing market like this. Rich baby boomers with PE firms outbidding each other as they enter the dementia phase of their lives.

I firmly believe that the above statement sums up what is now the primary backbone of the latest housing bubble.  Alas, there is more.  On top of these boomers that know nothing other than real estate and financial speculation, there is a flood of foreign money, in many cases criminal money, being laundered into U.S. real estate.  We discover that this foreign cash is now preventing regular citizens from buying or even renting in the San Francisco Bay Area.  From Mercury News:

Many homes that would be purchased in a normal market by average buyers are ending up in the hands of cash-paying absentee owners, typically investors, according to the real estate information company DataQuick. That’s especially true of foreclosures and lower-priced homes and condos.

David Yang, 36, who works in solar power, is moving into a home in South San Jose — the 10th one he bid on in five months of looking. “Every house in a good neighborhood probably will receive 20 to 30 offers,” he said. “It’s really crazy.”

His agent, Sharmila Banerjee, said that “cash is coming from China, India, Russia, but there can be difficulties transferring money from outside the country.” When one such deal fell through, another one of her clients had his offer accepted, she said.

In February, 1,044 houses and condos — 28 percent of the sales — in the counties of Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa were bought by absentee buyers. That is the highest percentage since DataQuick began tracking them in 2000. In Contra Costa County, absentee buyers were 35 percent of the sales.

Real estate agent Melissa Haugh said everyone in her office was stunned at the price, paid in cash, for a Santa Clara fixer-upper.

“The house had a rat infestation, there were holes in the walls, windows that leaked, mold around windows, water damage to floors. It needed $100,000 in work,” she said.

Read more

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.