July 21, 2008

Hair of the dog that bit us

A reader comments:

"My fiancee is a successful real estate broker here in Orange County, CA. She attends industry meetings twice or more a week. She tells me that the "hot topic" in real estate sales circles is how the US must import more Asians, Hispanics, and other foreigners to get us out of the housing slump."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

15 comments:

  1. This is also Ben Wattenberg cure for the RE bubble. Just a couple of weeks ago on “Think Tank” he was saying that since the US would have 400 million plus people soon due to immigration then the housing oversupply problems would be solved. He however neglected to mention how much these new Americans could pay for these houses since they are also being brought in to be “cheap labor” to solve our competitive problems with other countries cheap labor. And of course these same low wage immigrants are also suppose to pay for the SS budget problems as well.

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  2. Hmmm, that comment is now a leading explanation for why so many politicians are so hot for unrestricted immigration.

    Of course, recent history tells us that certain groups are not a good bet for providing a sustained housing-led recover, while others are ... can you guess which is which?

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  3. The classic viewpoint of democratic capitalist societies; very few people of wealth, influence or power have any vision that extends outside of their grasp for more wealth and power.

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  4. This is what is so wrong about our overclass. They only think about the next five years or so.


    They never think about what kind of nation this would be forty years from now for their own grandchildren.


    Loan officers (I know some) and real estate agents (I know some of them too) and builders (yup, have aquaintences there also) just want prospective buyers to materialize out of thin air. Now that they have "discovoered" immigration, they think its great----as long as the immigrants dont live near them personally. These same people gripe about gang taggings in our part of town-amazing.

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  5. The fundamental problem is government intervention to increase home ownership beyond what a free market would support. Inevitably, this has led to mortgages being extended to ever-more marginal borrowers including a lot of unsophisticated mestizos. But the fundamental problem is government intervention. Investment banks leveraged themselves heavily in the secondary market enabled largely by the GSE's, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Mortgage-backed securities could never proliferate to such a point without the moral hazard of implicit (now explicit) government guarantees. And elsewhere on the margin, I know plenty of black and white yuppies taking out ARM's to buy million dollar homes. Sheer insanity--those loans will never be paid in full.

    The predictable response is to declare the insitutions "too big to fail" and prop up this sick industry with taxpayer dollars. So rather than letting home prices fall to market-clearing levels, we'll continue to see empty townhomes in absurd locations being advertised for $750K and up. I drive past such sites every day, and just shake my head.

    -Senor Doug

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  6. This is a good idea. What the US would do is say that you can immigrate to the US, but you can't get citizenship and you can't work and you have to buy a house worth $xxxxxxx. That would limit it to German retirees looking to retire in Florida. Right now there's a six month limit per year for this kind of visa.

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  7. Another thing, if we stipulate that increasing immigration will "solve" the housing slump, it will likely result in native-born real estate agents being displaced by immigrant & children of immigrant real estate agents.

    Have you perused the real estate ads? The ethnic agents have ads with things like, "Hablo Espanol!" or whatever their language happens to be.

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  8. From Barry Ritholz's Big Picture blog:

    Rampant Fraud & Felony Hires Amongst Mortgage Brokers

    Posted by Barry Ritholtz on Monday, July 21, 2008 | 02:30 PM
    in Credit | Legal | Real Estate

    Gary Kafka, former body builder with a long rap sheet and violent past ( A mesomorph, no? -- DD ), wrote millions of dollars in mortgages in South Florida without ever applying for a state license.

    Fresh out of prison after serving time for bank fraud, he never went through a criminal background check before selling loans. He never took a competency exam.

    He never had to...

    There are 3 articles in the series; 2 are already published.

    Here's some more stunning details

    Ex-convicts active in mortgage fraud

    Thousands with criminal records work unlicensed as loan originators

    • From 2000 to 2007, regulators allowed at least 10,529 people with criminal records to work in the mortgage profession. Of those, 4,065 cleared background checks after committing crimes that state law specifically requires regulators to screen, including fraud, bank robbery, racketeering and extortion. ...

    ...


    http://bigpicture.typepad.com/

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  9. I'm the guy who posted the original comment.

    Thatcher76 wrote: "Another thing, if we stipulate that increasing immigration will "solve" the housing slump, it will likely result in native-born real estate agents being displaced by immigrant & children of immigrant real estate agents."

    Excellent point. My fiancee, who as I wrote is a real estate broker, indeed has noticed (and has complained about) the same thing. Asian buyers will ONLY deal with Asian real estate agents. Hispanic buyers will only deal with Hispanic agents. Middle Eastern and Persian buyers will only deal with Arab and Persian agents. And so on.

    The losers are white Americans, increasingly thin on the ground here in Southern California, as we lack a sense of racial or tribal solidarity. In a Balkanized, multi-ethnic state, this is a disadvantage.

    I noticed this phenomenon when I worked in private banking at Wells Fargo in Orange County, CA. The most successful bankers tended to be the Asians and Persians, who were adept at taking advantage of their racial and tribal networks.

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  10. 'This is what is so wrong about our overclass. They only think about the next five years or so. They never think about what kind of nation this would be forty years from now for their own grandchildren.'

    i disagree. the true overclass --orwells inner party-- has been engineering the radical overthrow of traditional america for decades. they are obsessed with the facts on the ground forty years hence and are thrilled by the possibilities: their own permanently secured status as all powerful elites.

    as for the useful idiot middle and upper classes: no pyschologically broken generation in the history of the world has ever regained its footing. a certain number of individuals, yes. but the entire generation, no.

    the current leadership generation of america has been successfully indoctrinated. they are in the grip of a mass stockholm syndrome. their masters have demanded the death of america --as a moral imperative-- and the response is full compliance with the program.

    america's elites and their courtier upper class must physically pass from the scene before the madness will end. whether that means a violent exit or a gradual exit into retirement remains in doubt. but we are on the verge of a stupendous disruption of our domestic tranquility that is clear.

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  11. i disagree.

    Yeah, it takes a lot longer than a 5 year time horizon to work from before 1924 all the way to 1965 before finally prying the borders open, and then maintaining this policy up until the present.

    I guess that's a pretty good lesson in what happens to folks who trust the wrong sorts.

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  12. People are fungible. Black, brown, purple, red, or yellow, if they're standing on two legs, then they have MONEY - GREEN. Right?

    And they CREATE green. Right?

    Not necessarily. See: credit crisis, inner city, etc.

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  13. Ben Wattenberg cure for the RE bubble.

    Another Wattenberg cure was nationwide black-on-white miscegenation, which he advocated in an article. The disease? Whiteness.

    Jewishness is not a disease, of course. But maybe Wattenberg is a Unitarian.

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  14. Long ago there were three pigs
    Little handsome piggy-wigs
    For the big, bad very big very bad wolf
    They didn't give three figs

    Number one was very gay
    And he built his house of hay
    With a hey hey toot
    He blew on his flute
    And he played around all day

    Number two was fond of jigs
    And so he built his house with twigs
    Heigh diddle-diddle
    He played on his fiddle
    And danced with lady pigs

    Number three said "Nix on tricks
    I will built my house with bricks"
    He had no chance
    To sing and dance
    'Cause work and play don't mix

    Ha ha ha! The two little
    Do little pigs just winked and laugh, ha ha!

    Who's afraid of the big bad wolf
    Big bad wolf, big bad wolf?
    Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
    Tra la la la la

    Who's afraid of the big bad wolf
    Big bad wolf, big bad wolf?
    Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
    Tra la la la la

    Came the day when fate did frown
    And the wolf blew into town
    With a gruff "puff-puff" he puffed just enough
    And the hay house fell right down

    One and two were scared to death
    Of the big bad wolfie's breath
    "By the hair of your chin-ny-chin,
    I'll blow you in"
    And the twig house answered yes

    No one left but number Three
    To save the piglet family
    When they knock
    He fast unlocked
    And said "Come in with me!"

    Now they all were safe inside
    And the bricks hurt wolfie's pride
    So, he slid down the chimney
    And, oh, by Jimney
    In the fire he was fried

    Ha ha ha! The three little
    Free little pigs rejoice and laughed, ha ha!

    Who's afraid of the big bad wolf
    Big bad wolf, big bad wolf?
    Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
    Tra la la la la

    Who's afraid of the big bad wolf
    Big bad wolf, big bad wolf?
    Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
    Tra la la la la!

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  15. Does every1 think that a whole lotta of people in the real estate and associated industries esp. real estate agents, are just bad people......very selfish, self interest centric people who are not that bright or smart. Or it maybe i am extra spiteful towards real estate agents?

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