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15 Feb ’12
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quick example how bad the real estate market is here
To start our business we needed collateral
My wife and I started buying every apartment building we could using creative financing and bought 6 different buildings in two years. Once we opened our business we sold them all off.
One was a 4 unit with a double detached garage that we had bought for 109,000 ended up selling it for 110,000. Didn't matter, we got what we wanted out of it.
The new owner lost everything and it went up for auction, there is now a huge sign on the side of it. $49,900.
I am seriously debating making an offer, I hate being a landlord but our rent rolls when we owned it 10 years ago was $2100 a month. Even at 75% vacancy it still pays for itself. Mortgage would be under $400 for 30 years at 8%
my wife is REALLY not happy right now
15 Feb ’12
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not very encouraging
Ford to lay off 700 at Michigan Assembly plant in Wayne
Ford said today that it is planning to cut a shift at its Michigan Assembly Plant where it makes the Ford Focus compact car and C-Max crossover because of declining sales of small cars, hybrids and electric vehicles.
The automaker told workers and notified the state of Michigan that it will lay off 700 workers, starting June 22. The decision affects 675 hourly workers and 25 salaried employees who make the Focus, Focus ST, Focus Electric, C-Max hybrid and C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid at the Wayne plant.
The first 200 workers will be laid off in June, another 200 at the end of July and the remainder at the end of September.
Ford expects that the first 200 laid-off workers will be redeployed quickly across the roughly 15 assembly, stamping, engine and transmission plants in southeast Michigan, filling in for workers on vacation, said Ford spokesman Kristina Adamski. Salaried workers will also be transferred to other locations.
The automaker has had 10 weeks of downtime in the past year to try to reduce the growing inventory of cars made at Michigan Assembly. Other alternatives such as keeping all the full 4,700 hourly and 250 salaried workers and implementing rotating layoffs were ruled out because the expectation is that all the laid off workers will be redeployed over the next year, Adamski said.
"All our other plants are doing well," Adamski said. "We can't build enough trucks or SUVs."
But consumers are not buying what Michigan Assembly is making.
Sales of the Focus fell 14.5% in March while sales of the C-Max Hybrid fell 22%. For the quarter, the C-Max hybrid is down a whopping 31%.
12 Oct ’12
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Scary times indeed. I don't know that we will ever see a collapse like began in 1929 but as long as our overseers keep meddling in the natural flow of the economy (printing money, stimulus, etc.) there will continue to be dips and recessions every so often - it's the markets attempt to reestablish an equilibrium.
I have talked to the wife a few times about buying a rental or two here in Flint near the U of M campus or Kettering University (formerly the General Motors Institute); the deals are simply amazing. The icy cold death stares from the Mrs. have stopped me.... so far.
15 Feb ’12
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my wife noped right out of the conversation last night about buying it, so it ain't happening 
12 Oct ’12
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KVR said
my wife noped right out of the conversation last night about buying it, so it ain't happening
My wife's typical response to anything that requires me to work on projects off our own homestead:
15 Feb ’12
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This should be interesting
The Federal Reserve is sketching out plans to prevent an abrupt contraction in its massive balance sheet next year, when some $500 billion in bonds expire and risk disrupting markets and the U.S. economic recovery.
Though it ended a stimulative asset-purchase program last October, the Fed is still buying mortgage and Treasury bonds to replenish its $4.5-trillion portfolio as holdings mature. The central bank has said it will keep reinvesting until some time after it begins raising interest rates later this year.
Asked publicly and privately about the longer-term strategy, Fed policymakers say they are in no rush to shrink the portfolio, suggesting they will seek to avoid a "cliff" - a disruptive end to reinvestments that might come if bonds are simply allowed to run off through maturity or prepayment.
Economic analysis shows that shifting the end of reinvestments by several months in either direction would have "essentially no effect on the economic outlook," San Francisco Fed President John Williams told reporters last Friday.
"My view is this would happen organically," he added. But to avoid confusing investors with too many changes at once, he said, the Fed should give investors time to get used to rate increases before allowing the balance sheet to shrink. "You want enough separation in time just so that, once we get the (rate) normalization process going ... then this would be a decision that would be of second-order."
Six years of crisis-era purchases meant to boost economic growth quintupled the size of the Fed's balance sheet. The Fed predicts it will take until 2020 to shrink the portfolio back to normal.
The central bank can always sell bonds, but it said in September it will rely primarily on run-off to reduce holdings in a "gradual and predictable manner."
12 Oct ’12
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Six years of crisis-era purchases meant to boost economic growth quintupled the size of the Fed's balance sheet. The Fed predicts it will take until 2020 to shrink the portfolio back to normal.
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