Christ. Doesn't look like I'm missing much by not being there.

Suburbia is unsustainable. At some point (when the oil runs out or becomes so expensive only the rich have access to oil), we will see whole suburban "towns" sitting empty, tumbleweeds blowing through. This pic is a nice glimpse of that.

We are planning on staying here. I was going to mention this later but since you asked...

I bought my house for like $580k in 2006. It was built in 2003 but was a model home. According to Zillow, it's 3k sq feet, five bedrooms, and worth $276k (which is up compared to six months ago).

We entered into a "home retention program", which took us fourteen months of paperwork and phone calls. However, they reduced the principle on the house by half AND dropped our interest rate to 1%. You can't beat that.

Was that government funded? If it is, where do I sign up? I mean I wasn't stupid enough to buy on top of the bubble, buy a house for double what its real worth was, but I would like a free house, where do I sign up?

No offense to you.... but my head is about to explode if that was government funded. How much did it save you by cutting the principle in half and drop your rate 1%?

yes it will be a "lost decade."

I think your wrong.

We still have enough oil left to last us some time, and electric cars are starting to come on line that will change our driving habits. Ford yesterday announced they are selling their Hybrid Lincoln for the same price as the regular gas version. New car gets twice as much MPG in the city. With new cars MPG will increase to unheard of levels, reducing the amount of oil we need, which will maintain us until everyone drives electric cars.

I do see some changes, however. I think in the future people won't commute to jobs. Most of us will work from home, and houses will be built with home offices built in. My wife drives into Sacramento every day, and there's no need for it. She has a computer here at home, and if she needs to talk to anyone she can do video conferencing.

Back to their parent's basement, who themselves must be struggling to get by on their pensions.

Looks pretty bad, the situation in most of the Netherlands is not even close to that.

I kinda take the over loaning and bad loans as one of main the reason why they built so many houses, helping create the overbuilt once it failed.

At least our area doesn't look like yours, yours is crazy. I don't think we have had a foreclosed house in this area, at all this year and overall very few did and they filled back up quickly. They really knock the value of the houses down and ours has slowly been catching back up. Knock on wood....

I did in fact buy at the height of the market. And you would think that looks stupid of me. But... I also sold at the height of the market. I bought my house in Phoenix for $220k, and sold it in 2006 at for $540k. So in a way I just sort of traded houses, and I'm in a much nicer house (although without a pool) and I don't complain about the Phoenix weather.

Was it government funded? I don't know. I believe so.

yup, that paint job does absolutely nothing for it :2 cents:

That really makes you take a look at shit from another perspective hey.

That shit must also devalue your place buy a shitload too, that's gotta suck.

So you are so ungrateful for getting your house payment cut in half you dont even know where the money came from? Sorry man but thats just low down. I dont blame you for doing what you did, I would protect my home and family the same way. But come on, at least know where the money came from. :(

So along with all of the housing boom, in 2006 / 2007 a large number of projects were in place - new shopping centers. Keep in mind ALL of this is within two miles of my house.

This shopping center was built and never filled up. Behind me in this picture is another building with Firestone tire center (which seems to be booming), and there's also three other large buildings in this shopping center, mostly empty. One has a subway, there's a credit union, a nail place, and a tax place, but otherwise it's pretty empty.

http://www.rochardsbunnyranch.com/rock/lincoln14.jpg

This is another business complex, built right on main street. Four very large buildings, all empty save for a Dominos pizza place and a a new yogurt place. Oh and an insurance place.

http://www.rochardsbunnyranch.com/rock/lincoln15.jpg

Is it a VA Loan? Those don't count :)

And here's where it hit home for the entire town - The Rainbow Market closed. I don't remember the details, but the Rainbow Market was the original supermarket in town from like the 1950s. It closed down about six months ago, and a short time later the dumpy little pizza place next door closed down too. All that's left in that complex is a Taco Bell.

http://www.rochardsbunnyranch.com/rock/lincoln17.jpg

http://www.rochardsbunnyranch.com/rock/lincoln18.jpg

On all your pictures I barely see any human being :)

It looks like a complete ghost town!

At the end of the day, I re-financed the loan with the terms the bank gave me. I don't recall the documentation saying anything about any program that it was covered under.

It's not intentional really. I'm just taking pictures of empty houses, and for the businesses, well, they are empty of people because there is no businesses there.

Ok fair enough :thumbsup Congrats on saving yourself 100k+ :thumbsup

Yeah, and then everybody gets to move back into the cities.

http://www.fmft.net/archives/gangsta1/gangsta%201.JPG

Somehow I don't see the average suburban family as being too keen on that idea.

Think again.

Yes. Existing homes are being reconfigured for this and I believe new homes already are being built with offices as part of the plan. This house I'm in is a good example of a reconfigure. It's a 4 bedroom / 3 bath with a good sized separate dining room and two living rooms. We use the one at the back of the house as the "living room" because it's got sliders to the back and is all open to the kitchen and everything, and there's 2 bars (kitchen bar and a separate wet bar). I use the front living room as my studio. Massive vaulted ceiling and architectural cutouts & styling, fireplace (also a fireplace in the back living room and again in the dining room) and right next to the front door. The space is fantastic, but the downside is there are no doors or anything, it's wide open so no office privacy. Second floor is entirely master suite, (bath & walk-in) and nothing else. (attached 3-car garage, laundry room, blah blah blah, etc...)

The homes here in this area were all generally built this way, with minor variations. One of the two living rooms was intended to be a "show" living room basically. One of those places where snooty people put expensive furniture that no one can ever sit on. Well I decided that was stupid, got rid of all my extra furniture, put in overhead halogens, and studio-ized it. Been working on the garage and exterior here now for the last few weeks, putting in shelving and wiring for sound, etc... because garages are for boring people. I need a Lair. :rasta

They look like Track Homes.

Oddly enough, while out running this morning, I was thinking about this exact subject - the "show" room. When you walk into the front door of my house, you have a large foyer, which opens up to a dining room / living room. WHAT THE FUCK IS THE POINT OF THIS?

Foyer:

http://www.rochardsbunnyranch.com/rock/house01.jpg

Opens to living room:

http://www.rochardsbunnyranch.com/rock/house03.jpg

and a dining room behind that.

What the fuck is the point of this? It's a waste of space. We've used the dining room an handful of times when we've had "company" over for dinner. Otherwise no one ever uses it.

But in my case there's only three of us here and we still have rooms we don't use. Oddly enough the most popular room is my office here.

Nearly every house i've been in in this country has some sort of foyer/hall inside the front door with all the rooms leading off it - even council houses. Only exceptions I can remember are tiny coal-miners terraced houses where the door went straight into the living room and farmhouses where the door went straight into the kitchen. Does seem a waste of space now I think about it - the one in my house is as big as a room.

Incredible and sad, but it's good to see that people are realizing that car-dependant suburbia isn't sustainable over the long haul. Not everyone can telecommute. There still have to be local jobs.

Interesting pictures.

Taco Bell survives recessions the same way cockroaches survive nuclear testing on South Pacific islands.

are we supposed to feel sorry for this? no one made those people go out and take those loans for houses. survival of the fittest. plan for shit like this. live accordingly.

No great loss with any of those establishments. :2 cents:

5 Years ago Countrywide said...come and get it. Interest free loans with 0 down.
Well...we see what happened. 5 year adjustable everyone got 5 years ago is a different story.

I disagree! Panera Bread ROCKS! :thumbsup

mmm, what caused this recession again...? :1orglaugh

There was a story from a little while back of a guy who came from Canada to the US as a college student. He was going his last 2 years of school at a US university. So he needs a bank account. He goes to Washington Mutual with about $2,000 to his name and opens up a checking and savings account. He is told while doing this that he qualifies for a 360K mortgage. He says, "How can that be? I don't even have a job." He is told that having a job or verifiable income wasn't one of the qualifications for the loan. He says they even told him he could buy a house, they would set it up so he had no payments for 6 months and during that time he could fix the place up and let it appreciate a little the sell it before he ever had a payment due.

He passed on the offer, but with loan practices like that it is no wonder so many homes are being foreclosed on.

Indeed the massive bubble was key. I bought a Maui property close to the beach in mid '03 for $660k and sold it in very early '05 for $1.1 mil. All I did was live in it. Only improvements were re-doing the master bath and some tile work out front. $440k instant profit, minus expenses, I walked with approx $390k.

And then the whole fucking program collapsed. :disgust

A few years ago, right at the top of the bubble, a friend of mine bought a new house in a new construction development. He paid 305K for it. All he did for improvements was put up a fence and put grass in the backyard. Total cost about 2K. He had only lived in the place 2 months when he was offered 355K by a co-worker. 3 months after that the builders broke ground on the next phase of the development and the new price for the house he had purchased was 410K. He was then offered 435K by someone and passed.

Now the house is worth about 270K an falling, about 70% of the new phase from the development sits empty and never has sold.

That shit is painful. I've lost everything I gained on that first property. My 2nd Maui property was, at one point, worth $2.1 mil.
Today it's more like $1.4 mil. :(

Come to the DC area. Mall's are full on Wednesday afternoons with people carrying shopping bags. My buddy recently relocated here to run a tattoo shop and was shocked that most people pay with cash or debit cards and not credit cards.

All thanks to federal and homeland security [deficit] spending!

and people wonder why we're fucked