Tag Archives: real-estate

If it Were Only So Easy

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I must say I really like and respect Habitat for Humanity. It is one thing that Jimmy Carter ever did that was worth while. However, even this organization is careful. They require that those who are going to get the house take a real part in building the house. Houses are never just given to people so that they really appreciated them.

The great majority of homes provided are held onto by the original owner for ten or so years. However, not all can be foreseen and sometimes things didn’t work out.

There was one case I heard of over the news. A family helped to build a home and it was truly appreciated. Even so, the family lost the home in less than a year. They could not come up with the taxes required for the property tax. You see, when you build a house in NY,NY, you really need to make a lot of money to pay the property taxes, especially when it was a nice home as this one was.

And so it was NY, NY took the house and auctioned it off. Those who had been given the home was again homeless. It is more than a sad story, though it is that. It also has a lesson. You can’t fix the homeless problem just by building homes and giving them to the homeless. It doesn’t always work, especially if if it costs them nothing. They don’t appreciate it and in the long run, nothing is solved.

As I said, I do respect and appreciate what Habitat for Humanity does. However, even they will admit that it does not always work. Though they do screen those they give the homes to carefully, sometimes things do not work. For this I say it is a shame. In the case I cited, it was because of the government. However, there are a thousand things that can go wrong.

In fact, it did. Perhaps, if you were ten years old at the time, you remember. There was a time when the government provided loans to millions with no down payment to people who could not make the loan payments. Yeah. I remember it. Thousands, maybe millions of people defaulted on their loans. Many times it was on purpose.

People would apply for one of the give-away-loans, never intending to make more than 1 or 2 payments. They lived in the house, in essence free of charge. Then, eventually, the home was repossessed.

The people that lived in the home free for a year while frequently not maintaining it, then went their way. The bank that wrote the loans were stuck with the paper on the house and they were having a very difficult time recovering it.

Well. It was actually more complex than that. It won’t fit in a post. You wouldn’t want to read it and I’m not sure I could keep it accurate. The thing is, the mortgages were sold to other financial institutions and then they were sold again. After all, the loans were insured by the feds you see. They, in theory had value. I wrote checks to three different banks before I refinanced my home.

Then I wrote checks to two different banks on that loan. It is very common for a 30 year loan to be carried by 3 or 4 banks. It is a little frustrating. The bank that originally carried my loan was local. I could rush down to the bank the date the payment was due and give them a check. The other outfit was in Tupelo and I had to make sure to mail the check 5 or 6 days early or be in danger of a late charge.

Going back to the bank tragedy of which I was writing. As you can imagine, it went along swimmingly for a couple of years. Then, as usual, we tax payers had to come to the rescue and bail out all the financial institutions. The reason we had to bail them out, I don’t really understand. They said that if we didn’t, the banking institutions would collapse.

The point is this, Kamala can’t solve the homeless problem by throwing money at it. We tried it and ended up with an enormous banking institution disaster. It is one of the reasons that financial institutions usually require a sizable down payment.

People who have a large down payment in their house will work hard to keep it up and keep the payments up. It is considered a good investment by the bank and everyone wins. When the loan is not secured, it is a risk, not an investment. And it is quite possible the bank, the government, or most likely the tax payers end up paying for it.

It is also why Old Joe should have never let 20 million people in this country. They have their hands out for hand-outs and their only real loyalty is to themselves or the county they came from.

Just as with the people that walked away from homes they didn’t pay for, the illegal aliens will quickly leave this country should things start turning bad. It is the sort of thing that people try when they have no practical experience in running real things, like banks, like businesses, like restaurants. Kamala has her head in the clouds in the clouds when she says, we will fix it by throwing money at it. We will fix it by giving things away.

Those who go around with their heads in the clouds are doomed to fall and fail one day. Gravity will have its affect one day. Gravity always works. The real rules of economics will eventually work. The many man made rules will eventually be overtaken and the natural ones will prevail.

Something for nothing never works…not for long anyway.

Yard Sale

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As we were driving home from eating, I happened to see a yard sale sign. It prompted me of an old memory. I guess it had to be around 1974 or 75. When I was teaching at MCAS El Toro, one of the other instructors, Sandy was teaching there too, another subject. He was known for going to the base dump every Saturday he could, he collected anything he thought he might could sell. Any time he felt he had gathered enough, he held a yard sale. He had actually gathered a reputation of having very good yard sales.

One Monday after he held one of these yard sales, he reported that he almost sold all he had. All he had left was a bowling ball. He took down his signs and decided to terminate the sale. He took the bowling ball inside in the hopes of selling it next time.

About 30 minutes later, he had a knock on the door. The late arrival asked if that was the place that had the yard sale. Sandy said it was but he sold everything. The man asked, “Everything?”

Sandy said, “Well, all I have left is a bowling ball.”

The man said, “I’ll take it.” He never asked to see it or what kind of price. And so it was that he sold everything he had pilfered from the dump. All it cost him was a little gas and the time it took. And, by the way, for those going green folks, he also helped to recycle.

Thinking back over it, do you suppose we should hire people to go through the dumps and collect stuff and sell it. It would decrease our rubble.

Purchased New 8000 btu window AC

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So what? What’s the big deal. I am trying desperately to remember when I bought the last one. It was at least 4 years, maybe 5. The old one still works but needs a good cleaning. I’ll put it out at the curb and someone just might be grateful I did. Somebody will take, clean it up and they have a new AC.

This is not the first time I wrote on air conditioners. I guess the last time was when I put the last one in. That cost just a little more than this one.

The question may very well be, why didn’t I buy a central unit? Well I, at one time did. However, every year I paid a minimum of a thousand dollars to repair it every year.

So, I asked my question. What costs more? Fix my AC every year for for a grand or replace a window unit for a few hundred every 4 or 5 years for 350.

Now my math skills might not be the equivalent of Einstein’s but I elected to just buy window units and let those HVAC repair guys go hungry. And guess what? No installation costs. I put the thing in the window and plugged it in all by my lonesome while my wife watched.

Again, I am not brilliant, but I suspect one day, someone will get the idea of having 2 hoses hooked up to a home and hook the other ends of the hoses to something similar to a window unit AC. That way, most of the noise is outside and there need not be a box hanging from the window.

There is another upside. After 4 or 5 years, you decide to replace the outside unit, you buy one, pull the old one and put the new one in. No need lift the old one out and the new one in. Faster, simpler, easier. Who knows? It might even be less costly.

Well maybe that is the reason it will never happen. People love selling stuff the can charge lots of money for.

Afterthought… A central unit breaks, that’s another grand for the repair. I have never had a window unit break. If it does, I replace it for about 400. I prefer the window unit math.