Here is a collection of posts I have read recently at other places on the web.  It is called speedlinking because it makes it fast and easy to read some of the best at other blogs.

     The first is a link to Mortgage News Daily.  The post entitled:  House Committee Approves FHA "Short Pay" Loan.  It is about HR5830, which allows a consumer in danger of foreclosure to be refinanced by an FHA loan, if the servicer will allow a short pay off of the loan to be refinanced.

     The next two are from Bigger Pockets.  The first is by Joshua Dorkin, (the founder of the site), entitled: 

The Longest Real Estate Closing Ever?!?! Finally - Resolution!

and: A Real Estate Investor's Nightmare: The Rat House  by Jim Watkins
I recently had a mini rat house in my investing portfolio.  But nothing like his.

     Also, on another note, my blog has been entered into a contest at FHA Mortgage Center.  The contest is run on a simple concept of popularity vote.  They have provided a widget to make voting easy.  So, vote for me!

     In surfing the web, I found a series of 8 recorded tele seminars, on explaining, and giving "how to" information on processing a short sale.  These are not brief overviews, but contain detailed information, and interviews with experts on doing a short sale.  You will find these at the www.theshortsaleblog by Gina Clifford.  Gina is called the "short sale queen".  She has done over 100 short sales, and participated in many other real estate techniques.  She has started the blog to give valuable free training in short sale techniques.  It will take a while to listen to these podcasts, so this is for someone who is serious about learning.

If you are not interested in doing short sale negotiations, with lenders yourself, but need one done, contact me.  I work with agents, and investors to negotiate the needed short sale.  The  best contact is by using the email link here, or in the side column.

# 1~This Old House Originally uploaded by robert lz That's the question I used to ponder, when someone that rehabbed and sold, or bought and held houses, had a property they were selling as a wholesale deal. What's wrong with the house? Is there some big hidden defect they aren't telling me about? If I am told it only needs a little TLC, and it looks like this one in the picture...then I have a right ...<< MORE >>

In previous posts I have explained what a short sale in real estate is, and how to negotiate one.  Today I want to point out the perfect opportunity for someone who wants to build a rental property portfolio.  With all the foreclosures in the nation, the rental market is in demand, and rents are up.

      Hurry, REDUCED $30K!  The bank has approved a short sale. Now priced at $139,900. The home is 4 bedroom, 3 bath, with fireplace, dining room, large patio, and wooden play set.  Very nice home.  Close in March, rent in April.  Other ...<< MORE >>

                                         

This is a fabulous offer from JP Vaughan of www.creonline.com.  FREE education in real estate investing.  This is not just an online course, it is an entire convention with experts teaching in the field of real estate investing.  This is not limited to veterans, anyone who wants to learn more about real estate investing can attend, but again, it is FREE for veterans.


            
                                                
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Today I would like to welcome John Bougearel as a guest blogger at Real Estate Investor Girl.  He has written a post based on one that he recently ran on his blog, Successful Trading Tips With John Bougearel.  John is an expert in the field of financial futures and equity marketing.  His article today gives real insight on the credit crisis and the possible effect on the economy.  In advance, I would like to thank John for his contribution.





     The housing market has been complicated with over-levered homeowners with more debt than they can handle.  The situation is gripping the US economy in a manner similar to the Great Depression during the early 1930's.

    What is at stake here are the risks of another debt-deflation spiral like we had in the 1930's.  Even if the Fed won't speak of these risks in more than an opaque sense, others are beginning to sound the alarms.

     Consider this:  "In the fourth quarter of 2007, new foreclosures averaged 2,939 a day, double the pace of a year earlier. 

     US mortgage foreclosures are set to top 1 million this year and home prices are falling at the fastest pace since the Great Depression.  Bloomberg reported that the median home prices peaked in July 2006 at $230,000, and as of January 2008, the median home  has fallen to 9.5% to to $208.400 eighteen months later.

     Economist David Rosenberg sees "potential for another 25% to 30% downside over the next two years", in home prices on top of the already 9% drop.  A 35% drop from the peak median home price of $230.000, essentially  reprices to $151,000 in 2010.  Many homeowners at risk have no money down in their home."

     Amidst soaring debt burdens, financial institutions are starting to liquidate these unwanted assets at firesale prices.  Deutsche Bank sold a house in Virginia for $150,000 in December, less than half its last sale price of $315,000 in the spring of 2005.

     If the median home price declines anywhere near 25%, this could spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E for the U.S. economy.  "Keep in mind, says Merrill's, Rosenberg, that the relatively puny price decline to date has already pushed home loan delinquencies to their highest level in 20 years."

     Lehman Brothers, Thomas Russo said "The direction we are heading isn't a good one.  We need significant fiscal and monetary intervention.  The measures being taken by the "Hope Now" program to freeze ARM resets being advocated by everyone from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, to GS, JP Morgan, "just aren't enough" says Russo.  Nor is Project Lifeline, which delays the foreclosure proceedings by 30 days for some consumers.

     "About $550 billion of subprime loans will reset before 2009 and most borrowers will have no option except to walk away because the drop in home prices and an increase in lending standards will prevent them from refinancing or selling."

     State agencies already offering help homeowners are finding that "more than 50% of subprime borrowers are rejected by state programs because their homes have lost too much value or they have accumulated too much debt. Often the borrower just has too much debt and the home does not have the value to support the refinancing" said Geoffrey Copper at MGIC.

     It is for reasons like this that Alex Pollock, former president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, is urging "the creation of a federal lending agency based on the Home Owners Loan Corp., or HOLC. created by Congress during the Great Depression."

     General economic theories about 'overinvestment' and over indebtedness' suggest that once a boom ends and the contraction begins, the economic downturn is accompanied by deflation.

     Economist Wilhelm Ropke described the phenomena as follows, "the credit expansion setting the boom going proceeds by way of the interest rate being 'too low'...are created [not out of savings but] out of nothing through the banking system." - Crisis and Cycles, 1936

     Elaborating on the solutions attempted by the government and Federal Reserve during the 1930's, Freidrich Hayek observed that, "To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about - because we are suffering from a misdirection, we want to create further misdirection." - Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle, 1933

     A century before John Stuart Mill held the opinion that "in all the more advanced communities, the majority of things are worse done by the intervention of government than the individuals most interested in the matter would do them, or cause them to be done, if left to themselves."- Principles of Political Economy, 1848

     Echoing economists of yesteryear is Pimco's, Mark Kiesel.  He was recently quoted as saying that 'rescuing borrowers will only worsen the economic misery for everyone.  Keeping the market from correcting itself only prolongs the problem...The housing market will find its own bottom, without a government bailout."  Which is, I think, another way of saying that the market forces today are simply far more powerful than any interventionists measures can hope to achieve.

     Irving Fisher, another economist who lived through the 1930's Great Depression, believed the 'great cause of over borrowing' was easy money.  The depression grew out of a boom, which started in a credit currency boom  There were international debts of every description, long and short, public and private, the obligations running in every direction."

     The heavy debt burdens borne by subprime borrowers and banks today are fast becoming heavier with falling home prices and ARM resets.  The big fear today is that falling home prices amidst ARM resets they can ill afford will lead to more distressed selling which will further depress already falling home prices - creating the very same debt deflation spiral that Irving Fisher gave witness to 70 years ago.

     Irving Fisher went on to say that "if liquidation for some reason gets into a stampede, it wipes out credit currency, which lowers the price level and reduces profits, which forced business into further liquidation, which further lowers the price levels and reduces profits and so on and on - a tail spin into depression,...We now come to the paradox that if the debt gets big enough, the very act of liquidation puts the world deeper into debt than ever.  Payments could not catch up with the 'real indebtedness - the more we paid the more we owed." 

     As the props to consumption are flattened out, the downward risks to consumer spending and 'underconsumption' begin to mushroom.  The only viable prop left to the economy may just  be a huge increase in gov't spending says Bill Gross.

     Bill Gross proposes a 'return of depression-style economics, saying;  in the form of consumption has been artificially and fictitiously stimulated in recent years by financial engineering run amuck.  There is a legitimate question as to where its black hole imploding destructiveness can be totally countered with another dose of lower yields and deficit spending packages.  The $150 billion "return to sender" deficit plan advanced by Bush and the Congress, for instance, amounts to just 1% of GDP and is of marginal benefit to long-term prosperity'...

     'The U.S. needs a "demand-based" fiscal package alright, a $300-$500 billion permanent one, because as the system of modern day levered shadow finance slows to a crawl or even contracts at the edges, its ability to systemically fertilize economic growth must be clled into question. To provide a stable recovery path, government spending needs to fill the gap - not consumption.  Public works programs, badly needed infrastructure repairs, as well as spending on research and development projects should form the heart of out path to recovery.'

     "As Keynes theorized, when private demand falters, it becomes the responsibility of government to fill the breach.  Because it likely will not do so effectively until after a new Administration is elected in late 2008, the U.S. economy and its somewhat coupled global companions will sleep walk for some time and a resumption of prosperity as we knew it will be dependent on reform of monetary and fiscal policy resembling the 1930's, more than our past decade." - Gross' emphasis not mine.

To read the full article, go to:

Can Overindebtedness in the Housing Industry Lead to a Deflationary Spiral and Collapse of the US Economy????

Subscribe to Real Estate Investor Girl!

What is YOUR opinion?  Leave a comment below.

Money Originally uploaded by TW Collins I have come across a site, www.realtaxtips.com It has a variety of real estate tax related posts for the real estate investor. This article by Tom Helfrich is a good way to sell in a slow market. However, the owner financing could be set up in any way that makes sense to you. Generally, I would not suggest doing a second and not requiring payments until the ...<< MORE >>

     Online advertising for sales and rentals of real estate has now proven to be the media most people use to look for their next home.  There are many places online that will get your message out.  You could go to each one and post a classified, or you can go to an ad distributor and make one ad, and have it posted to multiple sites.
     One site I have found is Postlets.  They have a template for the ad that makes it look professional.  It sounds expensive, but in fact their basic version is FREE.  Either an individual, or agent can post on the site.  They will distribute the ad to a list of other sites.

     Also, you are provided with HTML to put on a website or blog.  See my ad on the sidebar. Click to see the full ad.  This is the basic version. I have too many leads to handle so I am passing this one to you.  Make an offer, and after you can show proof of funds, I will submit it and negotiate it for you.  Unlike most short sales, this one is in very good condition.

     To read more about short sales, link to these previous posts:
Increase Your Income With Short Sales
Let the Short Sale Circus Begin!
No, You Can't Buy the House, but Gimme the Money!

     Support my blog, and Subscribe to Real Estate Investor Girl!  Questions or comments?  Leave them below.                                                                        

                                                                   

     This is the breaking news.  The FBI is investigating 14 subprime mortgage companies on the allegations that they gave loans to people who they knew were not qualified to be able to pay the mortgage on time.  Also being investigated are the big investors who bought the loans in bundles with other loans.  The report did not give any names so far, but said they have been investigating some companies for four years.  Let's watch to see what becomes of this part of the mess.

     If you want to learn more about real estate investing, and sharpen ...<< MORE >>