Tag: news

Small Tail In Today’s Auction Of $35 Billion In 5 Year Paper

Hardly as memorable as yesterday’s historic launch of Floating Rate Notes, today’s 5 year auction in which the Treasury sold $35 billion in paper was a snoozer, and despite fears of a blow out following recent concerns about demand in the bucket following recent revulsion to 5 Years, priced at 1.572%, tailing the When Issued  1.57% modestly, however with a lower yield than last month’s 1.6. The Bid to Cover also posted a modest increase from December’s 2.42 up to 2.59, even if the general BTC trend continues to be one broadly lower. Within the internals the only notable item was the spike in Indirects, which took down 44.6% of the allocation, up from 24.8%, leaving 10.7% to the Directs and 44.7% to Dealers. Overall, nothing to write home about.


    



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Small Tail In Today's Auction Of $35 Billion In 5 Year Paper

Hardly as memorable as yesterday’s historic launch of Floating Rate Notes, today’s 5 year auction in which the Treasury sold $35 billion in paper was a snoozer, and despite fears of a blow out following recent concerns about demand in the bucket following recent revulsion to 5 Years, priced at 1.572%, tailing the When Issued  1.57% modestly, however with a lower yield than last month’s 1.6. The Bid to Cover also posted a modest increase from December’s 2.42 up to 2.59, even if the general BTC trend continues to be one broadly lower. Within the internals the only notable item was the spike in Indirects, which took down 44.6% of the allocation, up from 24.8%, leaving 10.7% to the Directs and 44.7% to Dealers. Overall, nothing to write home about.


    



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Steve Chapman Says the No-Fly List Took a Hit

AirlinerAmericans
have always treasured the freedom to pick up and go anywhere they
please. Our forebears had to travel to get here, often had to
travel more after they arrived and sometimes moved on to uncharted
territories out West only to return East. No one stopped them,
whatever direction they were going. They had the good fortune to
live and migrate before the creation of the all-encompassing
national security state. After the 9/11 attacks, Americans woke up
to find that their freedom to travel was not a fundamental right
but a vaporous privilege, bestowed by the government and revocable
at its whim. For more than a decade, writes Steve Chapman, the
federal government assumed it could consign thousands of Americans
to travel purgatory without justifying itself to anyone. But the
no-fly list as currently administered may be headed for its final
approach.

View this article.

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Dear Twitter-Based Newsletter Sellers: The SEC Is After You

Now that Twitter is officially the second coming of Yahoo Finance message boards, the inundation with offers from clueless hacks who have nothing better to do than sell you $29.95 newsletters with guaranteed get rich quick schemes (one has to be so grateful for this boundless supply of noble humanitarians who would rather see you get rich than follow their own advice, and invest with their own capital), even more guaranteed than Obama’s MyRA ponzi scheme, has hit off the charts levels. However, there is some hope this is ending, and the regulators, as usual 3-5 years behind the curve – are finally be cracking down on these self-acclaimed financial Nostradami following an announcement today that the SEC “charged a New York-based money manager and his firm with making false claims through Twitter, newsletters, and other communications about the success of their investment advice and a mutual fund they manage.”

And while this description would fit roughly half the people who can’t wait to share their copious financial “advise” on the social network (for a modest fee) in this specific case, the SEC was targeting Mark A. Grimaldi and Navigator Money Management (NMM), whom it found that they “selectively touted the past performance of the Sector Rotation Fund (NAVFX) and specific securities recommendations they made to clients.  They cherry-picked highlights but ignored less favorable recommendations and other data that would have made the facts complete.”

The SEC’s order finds that Grimaldi also made misleading statements on Twitter.  He claimed responsibility for model portfolios in his newsletters that “doubled the S&P 500 the last 10 years.”  However, Grimaldi made the claim even though he had no involvement in the model portfolio performance for the first three years.

Once again: a description that covers pretty much everyone seeking to retain new clients on “we-only-win-here” Twitter.

Grimaldi agreed to pay a penalty of $100,000, and he and the firm agreed to be censured and comply with certain undertakings including the retention of an independent compliance consultant for three years.  Without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings, NMM and Grimaldi are required to cease and desist from future violations of these sections of the securities laws.

No more Twitter-touting for him. But the worst news for all newsletter peddlers: “SEC exam staff notified NMM that the newsletters could be considered advertisements under Rule 206(4)-1, which generally prohibits false or misleading advertisements by investment advisers.” This supposedly also includes his false and misleading tweets, which considering Twitter is a public venue, pretty much guarantee anyone who has been touting their performance is now SEC-fodder.

From the full SEC charge:

“The securities laws require investment advisers to be honest and fully forthcoming in their advertising to give investors the full picture,” said Sanjay Wadhwa, senior associate director for enforcement in the SEC’s New York Regional Office.  “Grimaldi and his firm are being held accountable for using social media and widely disseminated newsletters to cherry-pick information and make misleading claims about their success in an effort to attract more business.”

 

According to the SEC’s order, Grimaldi is majority owner, president, and chief compliance officer at NMM, which is based in Wappingers Falls, N.Y.  Grimaldi particularly used a newsletter called The Money Navigator to solicit clients for NMM and investors for the Sector Rotation Fund.  The Money Navigator had more than 60,000 subscribers.  In 2008, the SEC conducted an examination of NMM and a fund it managed.  SEC exam staff notified NMM that the newsletters could be considered advertisements under Rule 206(4)-1, which generally prohibits false or misleading advertisements by investment advisers.  SEC staff also noted that the newsletters could be considered advertisements under Rule 482, which governs advertisements for mutual funds and other investment companies and has specific requirements for ads containing performance data.

 

The SEC’s order details several misleading advertisements made by NMM and Grimaldi in newsletters following that SEC examination.  For example, they misleadingly claimed in a December 2011 newsletter that Sector Rotation Fund was “ranked number 1 out of 375 World Allocation funds tracked by Morningstar.”  However, a time period of Oct. 13, 2010 to Oct. 12, 2011 was cherry-picked to broadly acclaim that ranking, and Sector Rotation Fund had a poorer relative performance during other time periods.  From Jan. 1 to Nov. 30, 2011, the day before Grimaldi published the ad, at least 100 other mutual funds in that same Morningstar category outperformed Sector Rotation Fund.

And the full filing:


    



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LAPD Framed 24-Year-Old For Murder, Lawsuit Alleges

new professionalism, hthThe LAPD is facing a lawsuit from Roy
Galvan, a 24-year-old father who spent more than a year in jail
before being tried and acquitted for a murder he says the LAPD
tried to frame him for.
Via NBC Los Angeles:

[The lawsuit] accuses LAPD Officers Miguel Terrazas,
David Nunn and Richard Arciniega of destroying evidence in the
case, falsifying reports and bribing witnesses for statements,
false arrest and malicious prosecution, among other claims of
misconduct and civil rights violations…

Galvan claims the officers who took him to trial strong-armed,
bribed and refused to investigate “several” potential witnesses,
including two homeless people – Mark Loving and Syrella Carpenter,
who had paranoid schizophrenia – living in a tent near the shooting
scene.

The lawsuit alleges Loving and Carpenter were paid nearly
$10,000 for their false testimony, and that the police requests for
city checks for the two were submitted into evidence during
Galvan’s trial. Other witnesses were allegedly promised they would
not face deportation if they provided false testimony. The lawsuit
also claims other eyewitnesses fingered a different suspect, but
that cops did not interview him.

The police officers named in the lawsuit appear to remain with
the LAPD. You can read the entire complaint here
(pdf), via NBC.

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The “Meaning of Cory Remsburg” Isn’t What Obama and His Supporters Think It Is.

In a
response to the State of the Union Address published at
Time.com, I concluded that Barack Obama’s invocation of injured
soldier Cory Remsburg was “morally dubious” because the president
elided “any responsibility for placing the young man in
harm’s way.”

“Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings,” Bob
Dylan once
sang, updating Samuel Johnson’s dark maxim. Obama’s gesture in
the State of the Union will only accelerate the cynicism that
already understandably dominates public opinion. There is no more
serious decision that a government makes than to send its citizens
a war. And there is nothing more disturbing than a president using
soldiers’ sacrifices as a way of selling a grab-bag of domestic
policy agenda items.


Read the whole thing.

Over the past couple of days, reactions to the use of Remsburg
in the speech has emerged as something of a litmus test toward
Obama, the military, and foreign policy. At Time.com’s
comments
section, this is very much on display, where responses from
Obama supporters and boosters of the military responded favorably
and libertarians reacted negatively to the invocation of
Remsburg.

For sheer moral obtuseness in the service of Obama fanboyism,
check out The New Yorker’s John Cassidy
who writes,

Obama’s underlying message has been that too much of what
happens in Washington is an insiders’ game that ignores, and often
tramples upon, the wishes and interests of ordinary
Americans….

By inviting Remsburg…Obama was taking part in what’s now a
traditional ritual for speech-givers. But he was also trying to
bridge the gaping chasm between politics and political
decision-making as experienced by its practitioners in the nation’s
capital and by the grunts out there in the factories, offices, and
Army battalions.

He was also invoking the concept of public service, which, in
Washington these days, is routinely subjugated to partisan
advantage. And, finally, he was saying that we can do better, and
we know we can—just look at this young man.

This, Cassidy argues, is “the
meaning of Cory Remsburg.” Equating sending men and women to
war with “grunts out there in the factories” and offices?” Or
public service more broadly? Are you freaking kidding, man? That’s
a pretty weird interpretation. Given that Obama has failed at every
turn to explain precisely what the U.S.’s goals were in Iraq and
Afghanistan especially (where Remsburg was injured and where Obama
tripled troops during his first year in office), I’d like to offer
a different and I think more accurate interpretation, one
unburdened with trying to constantly say good things about the
president.

Obama, just like Bush before him, sends a guy – hundreds of
thousands, actually – to war where they put their bodies and lives
on the line. Obama, just like Bush before him, doesn’t bother to
articulate the pressing national security interest in sending
soldiers to the far corners of the globe. He doesn’t give
yardsticks for success or failure or anything. Instead, he stumbles
along: War is war, you know, and it’s hell – just look at this guy
in the balcony. Now please clap for him – me, really – and good
night America. The meaning of Cory Remsburg? It’s that Obama and
Washington is more than happy to use citizens for whatever
political purpose they deem worthy of pursuing. And then when those
same citizens return from a tour of duty, politicians are still
ready, willing, and able to use them again, without serious regard
for their well-being. Contra Cassidy, “the meaning” here isn’t
about public service, it’s about the government’s grotesque
exploitation of its citizens.

What a disturbing moment and what a way to end a speech
otherwise dedicated to forgettable gestures such as the
“MyRa.” Obama should be ashamed of himself, especially
when you factor in that Obama’s Veterans Administration is
currently backlogged on 63 percent of benefits claims made by
returning soldiers:

Among talking heads, one of the most interesting discussions
came on Fox News’ The Five, where the hosts grappled with their
conflicting feelings about Obama (generally negative) and the
military (generally positive). Along the way, Greg Gutfeld
mentioned my piece in passing and averred (in
Mediaite’s gloss):

“This heroic man was somewhat disconnected from the limp litany
of grad school garbage that came before, and it felt like it was
placed at the end of the speech to armor against scrutiny.” He
added, “Everyone walks away thinking about this amazing hero and
not how lame the president’s speech was.”

“It was really moving at the end, but I felt like I was being
used,” Gutfeld said.

I suspect that more and more people, especially upon a couple of
days’ reflection will feel that way.

Watch the segment below:

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The "Meaning of Cory Remsburg" Isn't What Obama and His Supporters Think It Is.

In a
response to the State of the Union Address published at
Time.com, I concluded that Barack Obama’s invocation of injured
soldier Cory Remsburg was “morally dubious” because the president
elided “any responsibility for placing the young man in
harm’s way.”

“Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings,” Bob
Dylan once
sang, updating Samuel Johnson’s dark maxim. Obama’s gesture in
the State of the Union will only accelerate the cynicism that
already understandably dominates public opinion. There is no more
serious decision that a government makes than to send its citizens
a war. And there is nothing more disturbing than a president using
soldiers’ sacrifices as a way of selling a grab-bag of domestic
policy agenda items.


Read the whole thing.

Over the past couple of days, reactions to the use of Remsburg
in the speech has emerged as something of a litmus test toward
Obama, the military, and foreign policy. At Time.com’s
comments
section, this is very much on display, where responses from
Obama supporters and boosters of the military responded favorably
and libertarians reacted negatively to the invocation of
Remsburg.

For sheer moral obtuseness in the service of Obama fanboyism,
check out The New Yorker’s John Cassidy
who writes,

Obama’s underlying message has been that too much of what
happens in Washington is an insiders’ game that ignores, and often
tramples upon, the wishes and interests of ordinary
Americans….

By inviting Remsburg…Obama was taking part in what’s now a
traditional ritual for speech-givers. But he was also trying to
bridge the gaping chasm between politics and political
decision-making as experienced by its practitioners in the nation’s
capital and by the grunts out there in the factories, offices, and
Army battalions.

He was also invoking the concept of public service, which, in
Washington these days, is routinely subjugated to partisan
advantage. And, finally, he was saying that we can do better, and
we know we can—just look at this young man.

This, Cassidy argues, is “the
meaning of Cory Remsburg.” Equating sending men and women to
war with “grunts out there in the factories” and offices?” Or
public service more broadly? Are you freaking kidding, man? That’s
a pretty weird interpretation. Given that Obama has failed at every
turn to explain precisely what the U.S.’s goals were in Iraq and
Afghanistan especially (where Remsburg was injured and where Obama
tripled troops during his first year in office), I’d like to offer
a different and I think more accurate interpretation, one
unburdened with trying to constantly say good things about the
president.

Obama, just like Bush before him, sends a guy – hundreds of
thousands, actually – to war where they put their bodies and lives
on the line. Obama, just like Bush before him, doesn’t bother to
articulate the pressing national security interest in sending
soldiers to the far corners of the globe. He doesn’t give
yardsticks for success or failure or anything. Instead, he stumbles
along: War is war, you know, and it’s hell – just look at this guy
in the balcony. Now please clap for him – me, really – and good
night America. The meaning of Cory Remsburg? It’s that Obama and
Washington is more than happy to use citizens for whatever
political purpose they deem worthy of pursuing. And then when those
same citizens return from a tour of duty, politicians are still
ready, willing, and able to use them again, without serious regard
for their well-being. Contra Cassidy, “the meaning” here isn’t
about public service, it’s about the government’s grotesque
exploitation of its citizens.

What a disturbing moment and what a way to end a speech
otherwise dedicated to forgettable gestures such as the
“MyRa.” Obama should be ashamed of himself, especially
when you factor in that Obama’s Veterans Administration is
currently backlogged on 63 percent of benefits claims made by
returning soldiers:

Among talking heads, one of the most interesting discussions
came on Fox News’ The Five, where the hosts grappled with their
conflicting feelings about Obama (generally negative) and the
military (generally positive). Along the way, Greg Gutfeld
mentioned my piece in passing and averred (in
Mediaite’s gloss):

“This heroic man was somewhat disconnected from the limp litany
of grad school garbage that came before, and it felt like it was
placed at the end of the speech to armor against scrutiny.” He
added, “Everyone walks away thinking about this amazing hero and
not how lame the president’s speech was.”

“It was really moving at the end, but I felt like I was being
used,” Gutfeld said.

I suspect that more and more people, especially upon a couple of
days’ reflection will feel that way.

Watch the segment below:

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via IFTTT

Housing Bubble 2.0: “More Flipping, Bigger Profits, In Less Time” As 156,862 Homes Flipped In 2013

Late 2013 pending home sales may have been horrible, and were blamed on the weather (though as even Goldman notes “The broad-based declines by region suggest that colder-than-average weather was likely not the primary driver, given slightly warmer-than-average temperatures on the Pacific coast in December”) , but it appears the weather had zero adverse impact on that other, most pernicious home “selling” activity: flipping.

The topic of home flipping is not new here (“Flip That House” In These Bubbling Cities, Housing Bubble 2.0 Edition: “25 Markets Where Flipping Homes Is Most Profitable“, etc) – indeed that best-known flashback of the last housing bubble is easily one of the best indications just how fragile the current housing bubble truly is as investors gobble up real estate not with the intention of keeping it but merely to sell to the next greater fool, in the process setting marginal prices based purely on the availability of cheap money, money which has now been tapered by $20 billion in the past two months. However, to get the full picture on just how pervasive “house flipping” has become, we go to the source, RealtyTrac, which has just released its 2013 summary of this troubling trend.

In summary:

  • 156,862 single family home flips — where a home is purchased and subsequently sold again within six months — in 2013, up 16 percent from 2012 and up 114 percent from 2011.
  • Homes flipped in 2013 accounted for 4.6 percent of all U.S. single family home sales during the year, up from 4.2 percent in 2012 and up from 2.6 percent in 2011

Why are flippers flipping? Simple: they make a killing:

The average gross profit for a home flip — the difference between the flipped price and the price the flipper purchased the property for — was $58,081 for all U.S. homes flipped in 2013, up from an average gross profit of $45,759 in 2012. The average gross profit for homes flipped in the fourth quarter was $62,761, up from $52,746 in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Who is doing the flipping? Why the uber-rich of course, selling hot potatoes to each other, and betting the momentum continues:

  • The biggest increases in flipping nationwide occurred on homes with a flipped price of $400,000 or more. Although flipping increased across all price ranges, flips on homes with a flipped sale price above $400,000 increased 36 percent from 2012, while flips on homes with a flipped sale price at or below $400,000 increased 17 percent from 2012.

However, now that the bubble has likely burst, flipping is dlowing down:

  • Flips accounted for 3.8 percent of all sales in the fourth quarter, down slightly from 3.9 percent of all sales in the third quarter and down from 7.1 percent of all sales in the fourth quarter of 2012 — the highest percentage of sales represented by flips in a single quarter since RealtyTrac began tracking flipping data in the first quarter of 2011

And visually:

More from the full flipper report by RealtyTrac:

The average time to complete a flip nationwide was 84 days in 2013, down from 86 days in 2012 and down from 100 days in 2011.

“Strong home price appreciation in many markets boosted profits for flippers in 2013 despite a shrinking inventory of lower-priced foreclosure homes to purchase,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac. “For the year 21 percent of all properties flipped were purchased out of foreclosure, but that is down from 27 percent in 2012 and 32 percent in 2011. Meanwhile flipped homes were still purchased at an average discount of 13 percent below market value in 2013, the same average discount as 2012, indicating that investors are finding discounted buying opportunities outside of the public foreclosure process — particularly in those markets with the biggest increases in flipping for the year.”

Major metro areas with big increases in home flipping in 2013 compared to 2012 included Virginia Beach (up 141 percent), Jacksonville, Fla., (up 92 percent), Baltimore, Md. (up 88 percent), Atlanta (up 79 percent), Richmond, Va., (up 57 percent), Washington, D.C. (up 52 percent) and Detroit (up 51 percent).

Major markets with big decreases in home flipping in 2013 compared to 2012 included Philadelphia (down 43 percent), Phoenix (down 32 percent), Tampa (down 17 percent), Houston (down 17 percent), Denver (down 15 percent), Minneapolis (down 9 percent), and Sacramento (down 5 percent).

 

Broker perspectives

“Investors have not lost interest in purchasing and flipping homes. In fact, now that we are seeing home price appreciation they are more interested than ever,” said Sheldon Detrick, CEO of Prudential Detrick/Alliance Realty, covering the Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Okla., markets.  “The challenge for many would-be flippers in our markets is a shortage of available inventory to flip, as evidenced by the decrease in the number of homes flipped in both Tulsa and Oklahoma City in 2013 compared to 2012.”

“New Hampshire home prices did not depreciate as much as other sections of the country, so we never experienced a tremendous amount of distressed inventory, which makes it difficult for people to find inexpensive properties they can flip. So it follows that gross flipping profits have fallen in our market compared to a year ago,” said Steve McGuire, vice president of business development at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Verani Realty, covering the Manchester, N.H., market.  “When considering whether or not to flip a home it’s also important to note that house flipping is not for the faint of heart, because there are so many variables that could affect the sales transaction, price and profit.”

“The Denver housing market is still experiencing record-low inventory levels, which causes the best potential flip properties to be few and far between,” said Chad Ochsner, owner of RE/MAX Alliance covering the Denver and Boulder, Colo., markets.  “We have seen a resurgence of opportunities for fix-and-flips in the Boulder market due to a strong increase in home price appreciation, but the distressed home market has dropped by about half making it a challenge to find the right property.”

“February and March can be a great time to buy a fix and flip home to realize the spike in homes values that usually occurs during the spring and early summer buying season,” he added.


    



via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1bagvgn Tyler Durden

Housing Bubble 2.0: "More Flipping, Bigger Profits, In Less Time" As 156,862 Homes Flipped In 2013

Late 2013 pending home sales may have been horrible, and were blamed on the weather (though as even Goldman notes “The broad-based declines by region suggest that colder-than-average weather was likely not the primary driver, given slightly warmer-than-average temperatures on the Pacific coast in December”) , but it appears the weather had zero adverse impact on that other, most pernicious home “selling” activity: flipping.

The topic of home flipping is not new here (“Flip That House” In These Bubbling Cities, Housing Bubble 2.0 Edition: “25 Markets Where Flipping Homes Is Most Profitable“, etc) – indeed that best-known flashback of the last housing bubble is easily one of the best indications just how fragile the current housing bubble truly is as investors gobble up real estate not with the intention of keeping it but merely to sell to the next greater fool, in the process setting marginal prices based purely on the availability of cheap money, money which has now been tapered by $20 billion in the past two months. However, to get the full picture on just how pervasive “house flipping” has become, we go to the source, RealtyTrac, which has just released its 2013 summary of this troubling trend.

In summary:

  • 156,862 single family home flips — where a home is purchased and subsequently sold again within six months — in 2013, up 16 percent from 2012 and up 114 percent from 2011.
  • Homes flipped in 2013 accounted for 4.6 percent of all U.S. single family home sales during the year, up from 4.2 percent in 2012 and up from 2.6 percent in 2011

Why are flippers flipping? Simple: they make a killing:

The average gross profit for a home flip — the difference between the flipped price and the price the flipper purchased the property for — was $58,081 for all U.S. homes flipped in 2013, up from an average gross profit of $45,759 in 2012. The average gross profit for homes flipped in the fourth quarter was $62,761, up from $52,746 in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Who is doing the flipping? Why the uber-rich of course, selling hot potatoes to each other, and betting the momentum continues:

  • The biggest increases in flipping nationwide occurred on homes with a flipped price of $400,000 or more. Although flipping increased across all price ranges, flips on homes with a flipped sale price above $400,000 increased 36 percent from 2012, while flips on homes with a flipped sale price at or below $400,000 increased 17 percent from 2012.

However, now that the bubble has likely burst, flipping is dlowing down:

  • Flips accounted for 3.8 percent of all sales in the fourth quarter, down slightly from 3.9 percent of all sales in the third quarter and down from 7.1 percent of all sales in the fourth quarter of 2012 — the highest percentage of sales represented by flips in a single quarter since RealtyTrac began tracking flipping data in the first quarter of 2011

And visually:

More from the full flipper report by RealtyTrac:

The average time to complete a flip nationwide was 84 days in 2013, down from 86 days in 2012 and down from 100 days in 2011.

“Strong home price appreciation in many markets boosted profits for flippers in 2013 despite a shrinking inventory of lower-priced foreclosure homes to purchase,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac. “For the year 21 percent of all properties flipped were purchased out of foreclosure, but that is down from 27 percent in 2012 and 32 percent in 2011. Meanwhile flipped homes were still purchased at an average discount of 13 percent below market value in 2013, the same average discount as 2012, indicating that investors are finding discounted buying opportunities outside of the public foreclosure process — particularly in those markets with the biggest increases in flipping for the year.”

Major metro areas with big increases in home flipping in 2013 compared to 2012 included Virginia Beach (up 141 percent), Jacksonville, Fla., (up 92 percent), Baltimore, Md. (up 88 percent), Atlanta (up 79 percent), Richmond, Va., (up 57 percent), Washington, D.C. (up 52 percent) and Detroit (up 51 percent).

Major markets with big decreases in home flipping in 2013 compared to 2012 included Philadelphia (down 43 percent), Phoenix (down 32 percent), Tampa (down 17 percent), Houston (down 17 percent), Denver (down 15 percent), Minneapolis (down 9 percent), and Sacramento (down 5 percent).

 

Broker perspectives

“Investors have not lost interest in purchasing and flipping homes. In fact, now that we are seeing home price appreciation they are more interested than ever,” said Sheldon Detrick, CEO of Prudential Detrick/Alliance Realty, covering the Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Okla., markets.  “The challenge for many would-be flippers in our markets is a shortage of available inventory to flip, as evidenced by the decrease in the number of homes flipped in both Tulsa and Oklahoma City in 2013 compared to 2012.”

“New Hampshire home prices did not depreciate as much as other sections of the country, so we never experienced a tremendous amount of distressed inventory, which makes it difficult for people to find inexpensive properties they can flip. So it follows that gross flipping profits have fallen in our market compared to a year ago,” said Steve McGuire, vice president of business development at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Verani Realty, covering the Manchester, N.H., market.  “When considering whether or not to flip a home it’s also important to note that house flipping is not for the faint of heart, because there are so many variables that could affect the sales transaction, price and profit.”

“The Denver housing market is still experiencing record-low inventory levels, which causes the best potential flip properties to be few and far between,” said Chad Ochsner, owner of RE/MAX Alliance covering the Denver and Boulder, Colo., markets.  “We have seen a resurgence of opportunities for fix-and-flips in the Boulder market due to a strong increase in home price appreciation, but the distressed home market has dropped by about half making it a challenge to find the right property.”

“February and March can be a great time to buy a fix and flip home to realize the spike in homes values that usually occurs during the spring and early summer buying season,” he added.


    



via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1bagvgn Tyler Durden

It’s Not Just MSNBC Making Flip Assumptions About Non-Liberal Racism

Last night, the official Twitter feed of MSNBC used a Cheerios
Super Bowl commercial to make a crack about non-lefties being
uncomfortable with race-mixing:

Maybe! |||

After an eruption of outrage on Twitter, including a volley of
colorful family snapshots under the hashtag
#MyRightWingBiracialFamily, MSNBC online chief Richard Wolffe
withdrew
the Tweet:  

The Cheerios tweet from @msnbc was dumb, offensive and
we’ve taken it down. That’s not who we are at msnbc.

Sending out an S.O.S. |||The “that’s not who we are” claim generated a
flurry of
LOLs, and not just from conservatives. New York
magazine put the issue succinctly in a headline: “MSNBC
Is Very Sorry for Suggesting Conservatives Are Racist
(Again).“

But making broad and essentially pejorative generalizations
about giant swaths of non-Democrats is hardly the exclusive domain
of the racist-chasers at MSNBC and
Salon.com. Journalistic outlets at the highest levels have been
making non-jokey versions of the same accusation throughout the
Obama presidency, ever since the twin ascension in 2009
of the Tea Party and opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

For an example, check out this passage in New Yorker
Editor David Remnick’s extraordinarily long and often insightful
recent
profile of the president.

In the electoral realm, ironically, the country may be more
racially divided than it has been in a generation. Obama lost among
white voters in 2012 by a margin greater than any victor in
American history. The popular opposition to the Administration
comes largely from older whites who feel threatened,
underemployed, overlooked, and disdained in a globalized economy
and in an increasingly diverse country. Obama’s drop in the
polls in 2013 was especially grave among white voters.

Where's that confounded bridge? |||Italics mine, to underscore what one of the
nation’s most decorated journalists felt zero need to substantiate
in a 16,000-word article. Do older white voters really feel more
“threatened” and “disdained” by a “globalized economy” and
“increasingly diverse country” than other age and
ethnic/pigmentation cohorts? I’m sure there’s plenty of interesting

poll data out there, but Remnick (a 55-year-old white guy,
FWIW) doesn’t need to cite any: He knows it’s true, his readers
know it’s true, and the only real question is how much you can
respectably
pin opposition to this twice-elected
black president on racism.

This isn’t just bad journalism, it’s bad tolerance. Attributing
a single set of personality traits to scores of millions of people
whose only commonality is age and race is the opposite of judging
people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their
character. It’s also a cheap way to wave off the substance of
anti-Obama criticism—why bother figuring out why a majority of
Americans have
consistently disliked the flawed
Affordable Care Act when you can just roll your eyes and assert
that the real reason is
white anxiety and worse? There is nothing tolerant about
assuming that those who have different ideas than you about the
size and scope of government are motivated largely by base ethnic
tribalism.

MSNBC, on whose shows I have
happily participated, engages daily in the othering
business, of making conservatism itself (and sometimes
libertarianism, and other non-Progressive ideological strains) a
disreputable condition, explicable in terms of pathology. That this
is done in the name of tolerance and sensitivity to punitive
stereotypes is one of the ironies of our age.

To his credit, Barack Obama himself seems to have a more nuanced
understanding of race and his own popularity than many of his
supporters and interlocutors. Here he is in the Remnick piece:

“There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really
dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President,”
Obama said. “Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks
and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the
benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black President.”
[…]

“There is a historic connection between some of the arguments
that we have politically and the history of race in our country,
and sometimes it’s hard to disentangle those issues,” he went on.
“You can be somebody who, for very legitimate reasons, worries
about the power of the federal government—that it’s distant, that
it’s bureaucratic, that it’s not accountable—and as a consequence
you think that more power should reside in the hands of state
governments. But what’s also true, obviously, is that philosophy is
wrapped up in the history of states’ rights in the context of the
civil-rights movement and the Civil War and Calhoun. There’s a
pretty long history there. And so I think it’s important for
progressives not to dismiss out of hand arguments against my
Presidency or the Democratic Party or Bill Clinton or anybody just
because there’s some overlap between those criticisms and the
criticisms that traditionally were directed against those who were
trying to bring about greater equality for African-Americans. The
flip side is I think it’s important for conservatives to recognize
and answer some of the problems that are posed by that history, so
that they understand if I am concerned about leaving it up to
states to expand Medicaid that it may not simply be because I am
this power-hungry guy in Washington who wants to crush states’
rights but, rather, because we are one country and I think it is
going to be important for the entire country to make sure that poor
folks in Mississippi and not just Massachusetts are healthy.”

There is plenty to disagree with here—not least of which is
Obama’s asymmetrical desire to have federalists answer for racism
while
Progressivism’s nasty history of same gets a pass, and also his
inability to process the substance of anti-Medicaid complaints. But
the president’s broad framing offers the modern left a useful
alternative for talking about race in 2014 America. Namely, that
it’s complicated, and that reducing entire population
blocs to caricatures does not necessarily improve the
conversation.

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