I thought bunko was a term meaning bullshit. It's not.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia-edited by Ted
Bunco is a parlour game played in teams with three dice. A winning throw in Bunco is to throw three of a kind of a specified number.
According to the World Bunco Association[1], Bunco began as a progressive dice game in England, later being imported to the American West as a gambling activity. It was not until after the Civil War that it evolved to a popular parlor game.
The Association states that during Prohibition, Bunco, an illegal gambling game, was re-popularized and the term "Bunco-Squad" was used for the cops who raided the games. Senior citizens and young adults alike have found interest in the game.
Bunco fundraisers have become increasingly popular over the years, earning large sums for a wide variety of charities.
RULES: Players alternate turns. A turn consists of rolling 3 dice aiming to obtain the specified number. Players gain one point for each of the specified number. If the player gets three-of-a-kind of the specified number they get twenty-one points. The round stops when a player at the head table obtains twenty-one points. Then the next round starts. There are six rounds. They progress in order from one to six, inclusive. Note who wins each round. Whoever wins the most rounds is the total winner and receives the money bet.
A Press Release issued by Procter & Gamble who feature the game in a 2008 advertisement for their Anti-Heartburn medicine Prilosec OTC, stated in 2006 that over 29 million people play Bunco regularly.
And that's not bullshit!
Monday, November 2, 2009
How To Screw Your Schyster Bank
I am helping my friends negotiate with their lenders and get their mortgages mitigated so they can stay in their homes rather than lose them. However, this won't always work. Especially if they have a mortgage and also an equity loan; both with different lenders.
Well then, lenders are not gods just like doctors are not gods. Sometimes you have to push back. If you are interested in this subject, below is a summary of how you can attempt to give your lenders the same rear ending they may have given you.
(If you are just a little interested-your butt is sore but you can stand it-you may want to just skim the phrases I put in bold in order to see the new paradigm of lenders and their prey.)
Florida homeowners walking away from underwater mortgages
MIAMI – Oct. 26, 2009 – Andres Duque thought he got a real steal when he paid $125,000 for his Little Haiti condo. But four years later, similar units are selling for $35,000 and even less.
And so, faced with the prospect of being underwater on his mortgage – owing more than the unit is worth – for the next 20 years, Duque, 33, made what seemed to him like a rational choice: to cut and run.
He stopped paying the mortgage, basically forcing the lender to take the condo off his hands through foreclosure.
“I was able to pay off all my credit cards,” said Duque, who is biding his time in the condo, waiting until they come and evict him. “In a way, it was the best thing that happened to me because all my income is not being consumed by this freaking monster of a debt.”
Duque’s game plan is known as a strategic default – when borrowers walk away from loans, even if they can afford the payments. Here is a look at the benefits, the risks and the ethics of such a move.
As property values have plummeted by an average of 50 percent, such strategic defaults now make up a sizable chunk of South Florida’s foreclosures. In the fourth quarter of last year, they accounted for an estimated 28 percent of all defaults in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, according to recent research from the credit bureau Experian and Oliver Wyman, a New York-based international consulting firm.
With the social stigma of foreclosure eroding, experts say it is becoming easier for discouraged borrowers to justify throwing in the towel.
“People are saying, ‘Everyone is doing this, and I do not feel any compunction in fashioning my own bailout,’” said Roy Oppenheim, a Weston real-estate and foreclosure defense attorney who conducts weekly seminars that discuss strategic defaults and other financial options for distressed borrowers.
“I wouldn’t blame borrowers who knew they were facing significant losses even if they could afford to stay,” said Andrea Heuson, a finance professor at the University of Miami. “Every day you wake up, you are reminded how much you paid for something, and then you read every day in the newspaper how much prices have fallen.”
Walking away, however, is fraught with financial, legal and ethical dilemmas. Lenders, government and the credit industry are starting to pay more attention to how strategic defaulters think and behave – in an effort to convince them to tough it out.
“It’s really a social change in the way debtors think, and it’s taking creditors some time to absorb that,” said Mark King, an attorney with the Miami office of Jones Walker who represents banks in commercial foreclosures. Commercial property owners also have started walking away.
Tracking strategic defaults is an inexact science. Experian researchers identified possible strategic defaulters as homeowners who have gone straight from current on their payments to not paying at all, but remained in good standing on other credit obligations. Nationally, Experian estimated 588,000 borrowers defaulted on purpose in 2008.
Also fueling the phenomenon has been a shift from viewing a home as a place to live to an investment, valued insofar as its potential resale price goes up.
Frustration with the tax-funded bailout of banks and Wall Street may have also emboldened depressed borrowers to default out of anger and a desire to stick it to the banks. Duque’s resolve, for example, hardened after watching Michael Moore’s movie Capitalism: A Love Story. In the movie, Moore makes a case that corporations preying on consumers led to the housing crisis and recession.
“In the movie, there were Congress people telling the American public to stay in their homes, to squat and do what you have to do to fight. A lot of it struck home in many, many, many ways, and I am going to stay here until [my bank] comes to get me out,” Duque said.
Aside from the new philosophical justification for stopping his payments, Duque said his decision was fundamentally an economic one. “My mortgage was killing me, even before things went to hell. I was being choked by the property,” said Duque, who works at the Mondrian Hotel in Miami Beach.
Most strategic defaulters find themselves weighing whether the hit to their credit scores is easier to bear than paying underwater mortgages for years to come.
The most optimistic analysts say it could be three years before prices begin to appreciate. Others say prices have another 30 percent-plus to fall before flat-lining.
Prepared for the worst, Duque has been surprised by the seemingly minimal consequences so far. His credit limits on two cards were slashed by a few thousand dollars, but they were not canceled.
“I went to BrandsMart and applied for a card, and they denied me, so my credit score must be pretty low,” he said. “That’s fine with me, as long as I have a couple of credit cards.”
Surprisingly, strategic defaulters with good credit scores who remain current on their other credit lines can quickly rehabilitate their credit scores after foreclosure – faster than many realize, according to Sarah Davies, a senior vice president at VantageScore, a credit scoring and consumer analytics firm owned jointly by the nation’s three major credit reporting agencies. “You can pull yourself out of any major impact from foreclosure in 24 months,” she said.
And five years down the road?
“A foreclosure is going to be very easy to explain, seeing there are thousands of others who have also defaulted. So, there is a safety-in-numbers issue there,” Heuson said, referring to a possible borrower rationale.
Consumers are essentially putting a price on their credit score, said Piyush Tantia, a partner in the retail and business banking practice of Oliver Wyman.
Jim Angleton, senior vice president of Miami-based Republic Federal Bank, estimated lenders are going after borrowers 15 percent of the time. “You know they are not being forthright with you about their assets when they are keeping their credit cards, their very fine cars and other assets current.”
Defaulting, though, is not for everybody whose mortgage is underwater, and plenty of people stick with their homes out of a sense of financial responsibility, integrity and faith that prices will recover eventually. There are also people who forked over tens of thousands of dollars in down payments and face a real financial loss by walking away.
Analia Vence, who is renting her underwater town house in Homestead to a tenant for less than the monthly mortgage payment, said she has no intention of walking away. She paid $170,000 in 2006, and now nearby foreclosed homes are selling for $80,000.
“We bought the property as an investment, and we never thought to sell it immediately. We’re only paying $200 or $300 for the mortgage, so it doesn’t make sense to hurt our credit for that much,” Vence said.
Copyright © 2009 The Miami Herald, Monica Hatcher. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4...MORE STUFF
Here is an exerpt from an article I just read on Active Rain that supports my employment as a guru who gets paid for helping someone find and buy a house:
With the amount of offers coming in on REO properties(Bank Owned Properties), there has been a new trend among buyers. The trend is to just offer as high as possible to get the property under contract. After the contract is accepted by the bank, they have to get an appraisal for the loan.
The appraisal comes in quite a bit lower then their original offer price, which means the buyers won't be able to get the financing. These buyers then have the right to withdraw from the contract based on the appraisal contingency. The deal is dead right?
Not so fast. The buyers agent has been planning this all along. The agent and the buyers will submit an addendum to the price to meet the appraisal, and will re-submit to the bank.
Now, the bank wants to get this deal done, and knows the same thing will happen with any other buyer. The appraisal has already been done. So, the bank just accepts the lower price, and the buyers get away with it. They knew the appraisal would not meet the original offering price, and they get a great deal.
With the new appraisal guidelines, this is happening more and more. Appraisals are coming in low, buyers are aware this is what's happening, they are offering high to get the property over the competition, and just wait out the appraisal to get a great deal.
Well then, lenders are not gods just like doctors are not gods. Sometimes you have to push back. If you are interested in this subject, below is a summary of how you can attempt to give your lenders the same rear ending they may have given you.
(If you are just a little interested-your butt is sore but you can stand it-you may want to just skim the phrases I put in bold in order to see the new paradigm of lenders and their prey.)
Florida homeowners walking away from underwater mortgages
MIAMI – Oct. 26, 2009 – Andres Duque thought he got a real steal when he paid $125,000 for his Little Haiti condo. But four years later, similar units are selling for $35,000 and even less.
And so, faced with the prospect of being underwater on his mortgage – owing more than the unit is worth – for the next 20 years, Duque, 33, made what seemed to him like a rational choice: to cut and run.
He stopped paying the mortgage, basically forcing the lender to take the condo off his hands through foreclosure.
“I was able to pay off all my credit cards,” said Duque, who is biding his time in the condo, waiting until they come and evict him. “In a way, it was the best thing that happened to me because all my income is not being consumed by this freaking monster of a debt.”
Duque’s game plan is known as a strategic default – when borrowers walk away from loans, even if they can afford the payments. Here is a look at the benefits, the risks and the ethics of such a move.
As property values have plummeted by an average of 50 percent, such strategic defaults now make up a sizable chunk of South Florida’s foreclosures. In the fourth quarter of last year, they accounted for an estimated 28 percent of all defaults in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, according to recent research from the credit bureau Experian and Oliver Wyman, a New York-based international consulting firm.
With the social stigma of foreclosure eroding, experts say it is becoming easier for discouraged borrowers to justify throwing in the towel.
“People are saying, ‘Everyone is doing this, and I do not feel any compunction in fashioning my own bailout,’” said Roy Oppenheim, a Weston real-estate and foreclosure defense attorney who conducts weekly seminars that discuss strategic defaults and other financial options for distressed borrowers.
“I wouldn’t blame borrowers who knew they were facing significant losses even if they could afford to stay,” said Andrea Heuson, a finance professor at the University of Miami. “Every day you wake up, you are reminded how much you paid for something, and then you read every day in the newspaper how much prices have fallen.”
Walking away, however, is fraught with financial, legal and ethical dilemmas. Lenders, government and the credit industry are starting to pay more attention to how strategic defaulters think and behave – in an effort to convince them to tough it out.
“It’s really a social change in the way debtors think, and it’s taking creditors some time to absorb that,” said Mark King, an attorney with the Miami office of Jones Walker who represents banks in commercial foreclosures. Commercial property owners also have started walking away.
Tracking strategic defaults is an inexact science. Experian researchers identified possible strategic defaulters as homeowners who have gone straight from current on their payments to not paying at all, but remained in good standing on other credit obligations. Nationally, Experian estimated 588,000 borrowers defaulted on purpose in 2008.
Also fueling the phenomenon has been a shift from viewing a home as a place to live to an investment, valued insofar as its potential resale price goes up.
Frustration with the tax-funded bailout of banks and Wall Street may have also emboldened depressed borrowers to default out of anger and a desire to stick it to the banks. Duque’s resolve, for example, hardened after watching Michael Moore’s movie Capitalism: A Love Story. In the movie, Moore makes a case that corporations preying on consumers led to the housing crisis and recession.
“In the movie, there were Congress people telling the American public to stay in their homes, to squat and do what you have to do to fight. A lot of it struck home in many, many, many ways, and I am going to stay here until [my bank] comes to get me out,” Duque said.
Aside from the new philosophical justification for stopping his payments, Duque said his decision was fundamentally an economic one. “My mortgage was killing me, even before things went to hell. I was being choked by the property,” said Duque, who works at the Mondrian Hotel in Miami Beach.
Most strategic defaulters find themselves weighing whether the hit to their credit scores is easier to bear than paying underwater mortgages for years to come.
The most optimistic analysts say it could be three years before prices begin to appreciate. Others say prices have another 30 percent-plus to fall before flat-lining.
Prepared for the worst, Duque has been surprised by the seemingly minimal consequences so far. His credit limits on two cards were slashed by a few thousand dollars, but they were not canceled.
“I went to BrandsMart and applied for a card, and they denied me, so my credit score must be pretty low,” he said. “That’s fine with me, as long as I have a couple of credit cards.”
Surprisingly, strategic defaulters with good credit scores who remain current on their other credit lines can quickly rehabilitate their credit scores after foreclosure – faster than many realize, according to Sarah Davies, a senior vice president at VantageScore, a credit scoring and consumer analytics firm owned jointly by the nation’s three major credit reporting agencies. “You can pull yourself out of any major impact from foreclosure in 24 months,” she said.
And five years down the road?
“A foreclosure is going to be very easy to explain, seeing there are thousands of others who have also defaulted. So, there is a safety-in-numbers issue there,” Heuson said, referring to a possible borrower rationale.
Consumers are essentially putting a price on their credit score, said Piyush Tantia, a partner in the retail and business banking practice of Oliver Wyman.
Jim Angleton, senior vice president of Miami-based Republic Federal Bank, estimated lenders are going after borrowers 15 percent of the time. “You know they are not being forthright with you about their assets when they are keeping their credit cards, their very fine cars and other assets current.”
Defaulting, though, is not for everybody whose mortgage is underwater, and plenty of people stick with their homes out of a sense of financial responsibility, integrity and faith that prices will recover eventually. There are also people who forked over tens of thousands of dollars in down payments and face a real financial loss by walking away.
Analia Vence, who is renting her underwater town house in Homestead to a tenant for less than the monthly mortgage payment, said she has no intention of walking away. She paid $170,000 in 2006, and now nearby foreclosed homes are selling for $80,000.
“We bought the property as an investment, and we never thought to sell it immediately. We’re only paying $200 or $300 for the mortgage, so it doesn’t make sense to hurt our credit for that much,” Vence said.
Copyright © 2009 The Miami Herald, Monica Hatcher. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4...MORE STUFF
Here is an exerpt from an article I just read on Active Rain that supports my employment as a guru who gets paid for helping someone find and buy a house:
With the amount of offers coming in on REO properties(Bank Owned Properties), there has been a new trend among buyers. The trend is to just offer as high as possible to get the property under contract. After the contract is accepted by the bank, they have to get an appraisal for the loan.
The appraisal comes in quite a bit lower then their original offer price, which means the buyers won't be able to get the financing. These buyers then have the right to withdraw from the contract based on the appraisal contingency. The deal is dead right?
Not so fast. The buyers agent has been planning this all along. The agent and the buyers will submit an addendum to the price to meet the appraisal, and will re-submit to the bank.
Now, the bank wants to get this deal done, and knows the same thing will happen with any other buyer. The appraisal has already been done. So, the bank just accepts the lower price, and the buyers get away with it. They knew the appraisal would not meet the original offering price, and they get a great deal.
With the new appraisal guidelines, this is happening more and more. Appraisals are coming in low, buyers are aware this is what's happening, they are offering high to get the property over the competition, and just wait out the appraisal to get a great deal.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Forclosures In Palm Coast-The Buzzards
Heartless, excited folks are out there buying forclosed properties from greedy banks and covering their losses with our stimulus money.
Stop them! Let the government take care of things! Sure. For a comparison think of what Palm Coast would look and smell like if we had no turkey buzzards. If we had only our government to rid us of our road kill.
Following some innovative Green program regulations. And what would that cost us?
I was reading Toby Tobin’s newsletter yesterday. It listed the scheduled courthouse foreclosure auctions for November: hl=en&zx=167b63pj6xo4j&shva=1#inbox/124ac64b518e5761
Bargain hunters who wait for these ‘Bank Owned’ listing to appear on their Multiple Listing Service are way behind the curve.
Yours truly is a Buyers Agent with SunBurst Realty. I’m full of local knowledge and interesting BS about our town. And of course I am exceptional and know how to research and find the right property for a qualified buyer.
So here is the poop on forclosures:
I have to work like crazy to even find out the addresses of the Lis Pendens properties (Lein Pending=pre forclosure). Then I have to go see what they look like. (I take photos and videos of good ones).
When I have a client who is interested in purchasing a property at the forclosure auction; I work together with a good, economical real estate attorney (I use my friend Steve Sapienza) and the group of us all go to the auction to bid.
For prospective Buyers who want to take less risk than buying at a forclosure auction; I help them try to find and buy a foreclosed property before it ever gets listed.
Banks (lenders) must wait ten days before they get title to the property they purchase at auction. They then make a strategic decision as to whether to list it immediately with their real estate third party company or hold it off the market to save the cash needed for maintenance, taxes, condo fees, etc.
They ooze their ‘Lender Owned’ properties gradually onto local Multiple Listing Services so they don’t flood the market and reduce their possible sale price.
The time that lapses between when properties are bought at the courthouse and when these properties finally work their way onto a multiple listing service is the time to buy.
It takes work. Tallk To Ted!
Andy Rice of creativepages.net is currently revising my real estate website, AboutPalmCoast.com to show my forclosure photos and videos and recommendation. Stay Tuned.
Stop them! Let the government take care of things! Sure. For a comparison think of what Palm Coast would look and smell like if we had no turkey buzzards. If we had only our government to rid us of our road kill.
Following some innovative Green program regulations. And what would that cost us?
I was reading Toby Tobin’s newsletter yesterday. It listed the scheduled courthouse foreclosure auctions for November: hl=en&zx=167b63pj6xo4j&shva=1#inbox/124ac64b518e5761
Bargain hunters who wait for these ‘Bank Owned’ listing to appear on their Multiple Listing Service are way behind the curve.
Yours truly is a Buyers Agent with SunBurst Realty. I’m full of local knowledge and interesting BS about our town. And of course I am exceptional and know how to research and find the right property for a qualified buyer.
So here is the poop on forclosures:
I have to work like crazy to even find out the addresses of the Lis Pendens properties (Lein Pending=pre forclosure). Then I have to go see what they look like. (I take photos and videos of good ones).
When I have a client who is interested in purchasing a property at the forclosure auction; I work together with a good, economical real estate attorney (I use my friend Steve Sapienza) and the group of us all go to the auction to bid.
For prospective Buyers who want to take less risk than buying at a forclosure auction; I help them try to find and buy a foreclosed property before it ever gets listed.
Banks (lenders) must wait ten days before they get title to the property they purchase at auction. They then make a strategic decision as to whether to list it immediately with their real estate third party company or hold it off the market to save the cash needed for maintenance, taxes, condo fees, etc.
They ooze their ‘Lender Owned’ properties gradually onto local Multiple Listing Services so they don’t flood the market and reduce their possible sale price.
The time that lapses between when properties are bought at the courthouse and when these properties finally work their way onto a multiple listing service is the time to buy.
It takes work. Tallk To Ted!
Andy Rice of creativepages.net is currently revising my real estate website, AboutPalmCoast.com to show my forclosure photos and videos and recommendation. Stay Tuned.
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