Jon Smirl

http://www.digispeaker.com
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    • Wed Nov 19th 08:56 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Solve the Housing Crisis by Rewarding the Prudent
      A simpler way to implement this is to allow the tax deduction of 150-200% of mortgage interest paid, not accrued. That would achieve the same effect without needing to refinance everything. Limit the deduction to pre-existing loans on your primary residence.



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    • Sun Nov 9th 10:29 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Ten Reasons to Invest in Florida
      I suspect the water problems would go away in Florida if the massive federal subsidies for sugar were cut.
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    • Sun Nov 9th 07:43 AM | Rating: 0 -1
      Commented on:
      It Might Be Impossible to Stop the Decline of Housing Prices
      A simple short term fix would be to temporarily lower the cost of keeping a home. This could be done by allowing the tax deduction of double the amount of interest paid on an existing loan on your primary residence.

      The government knows how much interested is being paid and can calculate exactly what this would cost. Lower the multiplying factor each year until the excess inventory clears.

      This would be trivial to administer and it delivers the largest benefits to the people who need it the most; ones with large, high interest loans. It a lot of cases it would wipe out this group's federal tax liability completely.

      It would have cost a lot less than $700B and the banks would have been ok since everyone would have paid their mortgages. You only get the deduction for interest PAID not accrued.
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    • Fri Oct 31st 13:07 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      'Too Much House' Buyers To Be Rewarded?
      Best solution is quick, easy foreclosures. If you can't afford the house today you probably still won't be able to afford it ten years from now.

      Nothing or little down == renter.

      Why didn't I buy that $15M Florida ocean front mansion for nothing down? I could have gotten my loan adjusted into something that I can afford!
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    • Fri Oct 31st 11:02 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Economic Anomalies Explained
      It's Congress that spends the money, not the President. Congress routinely ignores the President's budget requests. It doesn't matter which party is in power, it is Congress spending the money.
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    • Tue Oct 28th 09:17 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      On Rescuing Homeowners Undergoing Foreclosure
      I agree, the way to fix the housing mess is to speed up the rate of foreclosures rather than slow it down. If someone has bought beyond their means how is short term government support going to help? As soon as the support ends they'll be back in trouble. These are 30 year mortgages and 30 year problems.

      Given the stat that 45% of homes under foreclosure are unoccupied makes me think that far more people in trouble are speculators than owners. I'm renting a second home in FL right now for thirty cents on the dollar of what it would cost me to buy and the price is falling 20% a year on it.
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    • Wed Oct 22nd 14:42 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Lease-Back Bailout
      "How can we help people who are genuinely having difficulty making their mortgage payments, without needlessly bailing out any old homeowner who'd simply like to pay less?"

      I'm having genuine trouble making payments on the $15M nothing down house I wish I had bought.

      If you can't make your payments you bought more house than you can afford. You are better off in the long run losing it.
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    • Wed Oct 8th 13:16 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Debate: McCain's Insane Mortgage Proposal
      Why should the government buy defaulted mortgages at 50% of face? I'll default on my CountryWide Alt-A tomorrow if that's the case. I'm sick of hearing hedge fund managers on CNBC saying they can't sell Alt-A's at 50 cents on the dollar. I called up and offered 75 cents on the dollar for my Alt-A and was told to get lost or pay 100%.

      If banks are so desperate for capital why won't they deal with the mortgage holders? The only way to get them to deal is to purposely send the loan into foreclosure.

      I am completely at a lost as to why anybody would sell at a loan at 30 cents on the dollar without first sending letters to the mortgage holders offering 30 day payoff deals at 50 cents first.
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    • Wed Oct 8th 09:28 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Debate: McCain's Insane Mortgage Proposal
      There are far simpler solutions that could be implemented instantly.

      For example allow the deduction of 200% of interest paid, not accrued.

      Forgiving people who put little down extremely punishes people who put a lot down and then lost their down payment. It is cruel to force people who have lost their entire down payment to subsidize people who put little down. Zero down == renter.

      Deducting 200% interest paid will keep people in their home who can afford it, but not help those who were never able to afford the house in the first place. I wish I'd bought a $15M house for nothing down! If you truly can't afford the home, the faster it forecloses the better off everyone is.

      200% deduction would only be for pre-existing loans and it would phase out in about five years.
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    • Sun Sep 7th 10:34 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Housing: Did We Learn Nothing from the Dotcom Bust?
      Another group that got hurt badly were people doing involuntary moves that put down a large down payment. Aren't about 7% of transactions involuntary due to relocation, divorce, etc? This group wasn't speculating and lost their down payments.

      It's insane that the government is helping the nothing down crowd who were effectively renting. I know a builder who cleared $4M by renting out his spec homes, keeping the rent and not paying the mortgage, who ultimately lost them to foreclosure. Of course he knew he was going to lose them all along and fought in court for as long as he could.
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    • Fri Aug 22nd 09:24 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      3 Stocks Hitting 5-Year Highs, Despite the Bear Market
      Sybase, SY, is hitting 15 year highs. It's mobile messaging is really doing well.
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    • Fri Jul 25th 14:26 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      NVIDIA's Long-Term Prospects Mean It's Currently Undervalued
      The GPU threats to Nvidia from Intel and AMD haven't shipped yet. They are a fundamental change in the way GPUs are constructed and are difficult for Nvidia to respond to. Intel/AMD are going to hurt Nvidia badly when these chips ship. Nvidia will probably be forced to respond by entering the x86 CPU market. Nvidia is at their peak revenue right now, the future is going to be much more difficult.

      A simplistic way to look at this is that we are switching from add-in graphics cards to GPUs that plug into CPU sockets. Intel and AMD control those sockets and they're making their own chips. Competing against bundled GPU/CPU SKUs from Intel/AMD is a tough nut to crack.

      This change is the reason why AMD bought ATI. Intel decided Nvidia was too expensive and designed the chips in-house. Nvidia is left without a partner.
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    • Thu Jun 26th 10:29 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Sirius-XM Combination: A Future Microsoft Acquisition?
      This will never happen. If Microsoft wants to do mobile radio they'll do Internet radio and then use devices like the iPhone to stream it to your car. Cellular based streaming Internet radio is a long term threat to satellite radio and should ultimately kill it. Cell radio will appear to be free since it is bundled into your cell plan.

      Why hasn't someone cut a deal to use the cell based systems like OnStar to stream radio to cars?
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    • Thu Jun 5th 14:34 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Hanging Up the Walkway Myth
      A very important observation is that the zero/low money down crowd can make money by walking on their loans. They do this by ceasing to make payments and then fighting the foreclosure. This can result in one to two years of living rent free.

      This is happening at all levels. I know a high end builder that is stuck with twenty homes. He knows he is going to lose them but he has been fighting the foreclosure in court for over two years. But get this, he has them all rented and he isn't making payments to the bank. He is pocketing close to $1.5M a year while he fights. He uses this money to finance the court battle. Of course he is going to keep this up as long as he can.

      In general it is a mistake to think that the people currently in foreclosure are the ones that have really been hurt. If you ended up in foreclosure this quickly your were never really able to afford the house in the first place and it's in your own interest to lose it as quickly as you can.

      The people that have really been hurt are the ones that put 20% or more down. Those people have really lost a lot of cash - their down payments.

      Allow the tax deduction of 150-200% interest paid for a couple of years. This will help the 20% down crowd (and the zero down crowd too if they are making payments). Increasing the deduction will make it easier to hold onto your house giving the housing market some much needed time to heal and for inflation to work on prices.
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    • Wed Jun 4th 19:43 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Hanging Up the Walkway Myth
      An even simpler scheme than the FDIC plan that doesn't involve changing loan contracts is to allow the tax deduction of 150-200% of interest PAID (not accrued) for a year or two. That will help people who have lost their entire down payment, and not just people who put nothing down and are in foreclosure. A person who put nothing down and hasn't be making payments for a year is actually making money (free rent) on the foreclosure and they don't deserve a bail out.

      Look at these two charts.
      Boston - www.zillow.com/static/...
      Miami - www.zillow.com/static/...
      Whole report - www.zillow.com/quarter...

      Note that the magnitude of the problem is inversely proportional to the size of the median down payment. This is true in every market. A study of Boston will not be representative for CA/FL/NV since their median down payments are much lower.

      When you are playing with other people's money (ie nothing down) and get to keep the rewards, you take enormous risks since there is no true downside. This is exactly what happens with hedge funds and CA/FL/NV housing. Raise the margin requirement (down payment) and the problem goes away.
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