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Brian Brady at Bloodhound Blog

Banks will have Bernanke kill this off. The last thing they want is even more fiduciary responsibility to ignore.

All those pension plans they stuffed with MBS’s, CDO’s, SIV’s and all that other alphabet soup are governed by the Employee Retirement Security Act. Those pesky trustees are fiduciaries for the plan participants. This last round they got the rating agencies to slap AAA ratings on this stuff so that the trustee “fiduciaries” could buy it. Any other misgivings on the part of the trustees are handled by center court tickets or nice new sets of Callaway irons. The last thing the bankers want is a bunch of bank tellers putting their stock options at risk by not sending enough loan originations.

Thanks a lot Brian, for shoveling more risk on my buyer side e&o. Plaintiff attorneys already want to make us liable for inspectors and even construction quality, now we have to analyze every loan product to give the buyer a green light? Only if your industry stops insisting that the seller compensate the buyer agent! If you want to shift fiduciary liability to the Realtor, well and good, but the lending industry has to start accepting buyer agent compensation on the HUD. And for this kind of risk, I do not think we are talking about a piddly little 3%. An Obstetrician carries liability for his work at birth for 18 years-to the age of majority for the baby. Realtors will be carrying that liability until the loan is paid off- 40 years in some cases. The buyers will not have the cash to compensate their buyer agent Realtor, so the lender will have to finance my compensation and assumption of fiduciary liability ABOVE the appraisal value. I am thinking 6-10% off the top of my head to insure myself against Wall Street MBA’s latest Mortgage Backed Magical Mystery tranche loans. And that may be low. I will have to run every possible loan through some kind of risk modeling program the same way the pension fund buyer of the loan does. But the key is: these additional costs will have to be built into the loan layered on top of the mortgage profits for the lender. Any guesses how that is going to effect the liquidity of real estate?

I am sure that there will evolve Buyer Agents that will do transactions bare back with no liability coverage, but that is kind of like having unprotected sex in Haiti. Not a good idea for a long career.

Kiplinger just figured out what we knew all along!

As Houstonians, we’ve known this all along. A certain quality of life requires an environment that permits a living to be made. Nobody comes to Houston to live. They come here to work and somewhere along the way they figure out that this magnificent, diverse metropolis is a pretty darn good place to be.

Remember, that this is the city that threw open its doors to our neighbors in New Orleans when they were having a little wet spell. While FEMA was trying to figure out how to get it’s poison trailers to where they could do some good, Houstonians were putting the 8th wonder of the world, the Astrodome to good use as a staging and rallying point for families who had been displaced by Katrina. I remember sitting in a long line of traffic, car stuffed to the headliner with diapers, with folks just like me who had stopped by the store an filled up cars with anything that the relief volunteers might need for the large number of guests we had taken in. This town has a Texas sized heart.

Real estate in Houston, TX is in ample supply so we have the lowest housing costs of any major city in the USA. Texas has no income tax, so you can make as much money as you want and only render unto the the Feds. We have some of the strongest homestead protections in the nation, so an entrepreneur can take a risk and not lose his house-and around here we do take big risks-for big rewards.

Oh, and in the current market, with the energy sector and health care robust home values in ERAHouston are stable to rising. We are creating good paying jobs.
Around here, we tend to live in our houses, not day trade them. So, we buy a house, live in it, make friends, say howdy to our neighbors and then when opportunity knocks, we sell the house, take our home equity and we move on. Or, if you prefer, ride off into the sunset to our next adventure.

You know, we sure as heck aren’t trying to keep our city a secret, and you sure are welcome to come here any time you like. You are just our friends that we haven’t met yet. It sure is nice that some one noticed.

h/t Kevin Whited

Jay Lee, the Bald Heretic, and host of Technology Bytes blogged about the crazy Raspberry ants in a juicy post today.  Since we office in Pearland, Texas,  this is news.  Brazoria County is being invaded.  Apparently these ants devour electronics and have destroyed many thousands of dollars of electronic gear.  According the Texas A&M website, there are no “over the counter” pesticides that are effective. So, if you suspect you have them, have your pest control folks take a look.

This is another consequence of globalization.  Critters escape their natural habitat and end up somewhere in the world where they have a similar climate but no natural predators. Like the walking catfish in Florida, kudzu vines in the Southeast US, the tree frogs in Hawaii, African killer bees, and of course, our favorite invader, fire ants.  Apparently, crazy Raspberry ants eat fire ants! 

Here is the question I am posting to the blogosphere: which is more worrisome to you: fire ant bites or Raspberry ants eating your Apple?

As I am incredibly allergic to fire ant kisses, I think we root for the crazy ants and then import aardvarks to eat the Raspberries before they eat all the Apples. 

I’ve just sold a Single-family property at 1314 N Halfmoon Drive in Wharton. Come and visit my site to see other properties in that area. If you are interested in looking for or selling your home, please Contact Me.

Blanche Evans at Realty Times wrote a thought provoking article today about gas prices hurting the suburbs. My $.02 follows:

Blanche: Another point which I think is putting pressure on the ‘burbs is the outrageous greed of the school systems and their demands for more and more cash as they perpetrate ever worsening results in government education. Time was when parents would drive extra minutes to work to give their kids an education, trading commute time for education quality. In this huge demographic shift, the boomers’ kids have all grown up and with sky high school taxes in the suburbs, a move close in is now a viable economic decision. City school taxes are lower, but city public schools are little more than juvi daycare and gangster training camps. The empty nesters could care less. They can shorten their commutes, lower their school taxes and get out of the ‘burbs while the gettin’ is good. This is not a one size fits all trend, but prices move at the margins and it doesn’t take many sellers/buyers to move prices in any given area. Two questions: “Who will buy all those Mc Mansions the boomers are leaving?” and “Are the suburbs destined to be the new slums?”

This has unbelievable ramifications for the sprawl cities as the folks who can afford it move inward, the folks who get gentrified out of the cities get pushed outward forcing them into old polluting cars as there is no way to travel other than cars, or into ever more dense downtrodden areas.

The ring cities will try to keep their tax base by giving every possible incentive away to developers for more houses putting pressure on infrastructure with no money to fix it. Remember that road projects require tax increases and construction lasts longer than a politician’s term, so there are no votes to be had for upgrading the quality of life-the next guy will get the credit when construction is finished.
This is all happening with the overlay of the credit crisis where fewer families can get the financing they need to enter into home ownership. The market is speaking and these are truly interesting times.

I invite my readers to add to this discussion.

Greg Swan is one smart web enabled broker. This dispatch from the epicenter of the bubble aftermath, Phoenix, AZ has valuable advice for sellers in any market, including our Houston, TX real estate market.

Sellers in Phoenix are dealing with the aftermath of a 5 year speculative bubble.  They have about 2 years of inventory which must sell before a semblance of normalcy can return. The Phoenix market is clearing huge numbers of foreclosures which are putting downward pressure on prices. As a dynamic Sunbelt city, demand should clear this inventory in the next 18-24 months.

The point is this: Greg’s advice applies to all markets, including our balanced Houston, TX market. If you are selling, you are in competition with other houses in your neighborhood and new construction in the area. Doesn’t it make sense to give yourself every advantage to get the strongest offers from the strongest buyers?

If you must sell so that you can move to you next home, remember that at ERA we have a guaranteed buyout program which will ensure that you get full market value for your home. Read Greg’s article. It is sage advice from a very smart broker battling a foreclosure oversupplied market on his clients’ behalf.

We just listed this incredible value in SilverLake in Pearland, TX 77584

I’ve just sold a Rental property at 2401 Shorebrook in Pearland. Come and visit my site to see other properties in that area. If you are interested in looking for or selling your home, please Contact Me.

Check out this new Single-family property that I just posted on my Web site. It is at 3515 Paigewood in Pearland. This Single-family property has 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. For your private showing, call Tom Johnson at 832-661-9989 or email him at tom.johnson@era.com.

I’ve just sold a Rental property at 4604 Buescher Ct in Pearland. Come and visit my site to see other properties in that area. If you are interested in looking for or selling your home, please Contact Me.