Would You Buy a Short Sale?

Well, I have no idea how this is going to turn out, but we made an offer on a house today – a short sale property that has many of the things that we’ve been looking for, the most important being a recently reduced price that was just too attractive to pass by.

That’s one of the things that has been distracting me in recent days (a sore back and sore fingers are two more) as I’ve tried to get back into the swing of things with the blog, writing from what we have been told will soon be a sunny 70 degree Bozeman, Montana.

We had no idea we’d be making an offer on a property after having moved here just ten days ago, but, with the gold price soaring and home prices in our range continuing to tumble, the timing seemed about right.

We submitted our offer this afternoon and it will soon enter what some people describe as the “black hole” of lender review. The fact that there are two lenders involved here makes things much more complicated than they would otherwise be – we’ll see how it goes.

Rumor has it that the government’s new short sale program has streamlined the process, but, with two banks involved, we’re not sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring. The fact that it’s an all-cash offer should help move things along but we’re not out shopping for new furniture yet.

It’s been more than half a decade since we could last call ourselves homeowners and we’re ready to do so again – mowing the lawn and picking out knick-knacks. Besides, with our recent track record of relocating regularly, maybe it’s better to fully commit this time before we find something wrong with the place and decide to move on (just kidding … mostly).

Anyway, I’ll provide particulars and updates as the situation warrants.

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Really. Does anyone seriously think that the Federal Reserve is going to be selling any part of their $1.25 trillion stash of mortgage backed securities anytime soon? With home prices already embarking on another leg down (due largely to the absence of $8,000 incentive checks from the U.S. government) and the possibility of the European debt crisis crossing the Atlantic, maybe they should be talking about buying mortgage debt that few others want, not selling it. MarketWatch has the latest details of Fed rumblings in this story today.

There is a vocal minority on the Fed keen to start MBS sales soon, said Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP. However, “most FOMC members think that is a boat they would rather not rock,” Crandall said.

Fed officials have made it clear in the minutes of their meetings this year that they want to get back to a Treasury-only portfolio.

“The sooner we get started on that path, the better off we’ll be,” said Philadelphia Fed Bank President Charles Plosser in a television interview this week.Jeffrey Lacker, the president of the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank, said in a speech that the time was right for MBS sales.

“It may make sense….to begin normalizing our balance sheet in advance of raising rates. Normalizing our balance sheet means reducing its size, but also returning to our traditional Treasury-only asset holdings,” Lacker said.

In another few months – as home sales stall, mortgage rates rise, and the foreclosure pipeline continues to dump its contents into an already saturated market – comments like these will look even sillier, that is, right along with the idea that the central bank will begin raising short-term interest rates anytime soon.

Despite all the hoopla about a new all-time high in U.S. dollar terms, the 2009-2010 version of the recurring gold bubble is still quite modest by historical measure, a point that should be clear to see in the graphic below that was in dire need of updating.

Surely, the current move up would be much more impressive than the last two if the metal were priced in euros. It now seems to be only a matter of time before the important €1,000 an ounce milestone is reached – with spot gold now trading at €977 an ounce, it looks to be just a matter of just days, if not hours.

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Rogers and Roubini on the Euro Bailout

Bloomberg reports that famed investor Jim Rogers and NYU professor Nouriel Roubini are none-too-pleased with the $1 trillion bailout aimed at rescuing wayward European nations.

Investor Jim Rogers said Europe’s bailout of indebted nations to overcome the sovereign-debt crisis is just “another nail in the coffin” for the euro as higher spending increases the region’s debt.

“I was stunned,” Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Singapore. “This means that they’ve given up on the euro, they don’t particularly care if they have a sound currency, you have all these countries spending money they don’t have and it’s now going to continue.”

New York University professor Nouriel Roubini said Greece and other “laggards” in the euro area may be forced to abandon the common currency in the next few years to spur their economies. The euro will remain the currency for a smaller number of countries that have “stronger fiscal and economic fundamentals,” he said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.

All paper currencies are being “debased,” with the euro currency union at risk of being “dissolved,” Rogers said, adding that he continues to own the dollar, the Swiss franc, the Japanese yen and the euro.“It’s a political currency and nobody is minding the economics behind the necessities to have a strong currency,” Rogers said. “I’m afraid it’s going to dissolve. They’re throwing more money at the problem and it’s going to make things worse down the road.”

Not long ago, Rogers praised efforts by euro zone leaders to enforce budget restraint that is otherwise unheard of in the West. Now, it appears as though the ECB and the EU are no different than the U.K. and the U.S. in that more easy money is viewed as the solution to problems caused by easy money.

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Weakened “Audit the Fed” Bill Passes

It falls well short of the more thorough audit bill passed in the House of Representatives last year, but Senate lawmakers voted 96-0 on Tuesday for a one-time audit of the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending  programs as detailed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

Well, it’s a start…

Apparently Sanders was pressured to modify the bill to replace regular audits by the Government Accounting Office with just a one-time peek at their books and to exclude monetary policy deliberations from the process. Rep. Ron Paul suggested the Senate bill should be called a disclosure, rather than an audit.

 
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