creiZ about Real Estate and Deals

JPMorgan is buying Bear Stearns for the price that non-performing 2nd liens (notes) and HELOC portfolios are trading for. Incredible! And the fed is helping make it happen. Sweet deal!

JPMorgan is acquiring Bear Stearns at a huge discount of $2 per share. On Friday the stock closed at $30 per share.

Anybody else have a billion dollar company that they are looking to sell for 7 cents on the dollar? I have buyers for opportunistic investments!

Tags: non-performingnotes, discounted properties, distressed assets, bear sterns, JPMorgan, distressed companies, discounted assets, NPL, REOs, illiquid assets, opportunistic investments, vulture investing, pennies on the dollar, opportunistic investment,

Posted by eMarv at 04:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On my way back from Safeway this morning after buying about a week's worth of milk (in other words 6 gallons, hey I've got 4 kids and it's just past noon and half a gallon is gone already... but anyway), on my way back home I passed by Michaels and saw a bunch of Christmas wreaths selling for 90 cents each. These are normally about $5 to $10 wreaths at the peak of the Christmas season. If someone or even maybe a Christmas store (you know those that only open for a couple of months at the end of the year) bought these and held them till the end of the year, they could probably make a killing. They could probably have an ROI in the few hundreds.

Rather than stopping and buying 100 wreaths (since I know my wife would not be too happy seeing 100 wreaths in the garage), I got to thinking how much the wreaths were like discounted real estate/REO properties (or in general any discounted asset that is out of season). The subprime mess (among other things) in the United States has caused a glut of residential real estate to fall out of season.

As with wreaths, residential real estate will be back in season eventually. The time frame may not be the same since wreaths will most likely be back in season in the latter part of year and residential real estate may or may not recover some, but it will recover. It always does. It is, to use Warren Buffett's words, a "high-probability event" that residential real estate will be back to where it was 1.5 to 2 years ago. It may just take 1, 2, 3 or more (or less) years to get there.

So imagine the returns those that buy now at 40 to 70 cents on the dollar will see once the residential real estate market is back up again. It may not be in the hundreds as with wreaths, but in the 30s to 50s shouldn't be too bad.

Could this be of interest? If not, I can definitely find you some wreaths that available for pennies on the dollar. You can open up your own Christmas store and you'd make a killing!

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Tags: high-probabilityevent, distressed investment sourcing, distressed asset investing, bulk reo, loan portfolios, note portfolios, warren buffet, reo properties, reo portfolios, discounted property, mortgage trading, commercial portfolios, investment portfolios

Posted by eMarv at 02:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the Houston Business Journal: More jobs were created in Houston between January 2006 and January 2007 than in any other metropolitan area in the nation, new figures show. "The [US Bureau of Labor and Statistics] numbers show Houston on a dramatic growth trend, outpacing the rest of the nation in jobs gained," said Jeff Moseley, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership. "This is great news for our region and further validates our board's vision of contributing to the creation of 600,000 new jobs and $60 billion in capital investment by 2015."

what this means for Houston real estate:

It means that there will be some growth in practically all Houston real estate sectors. After all, where are 600,000 people going to live, work, play and shop? One of the things that concerns me the most about Houston (which is probably the case with a lot of metro areas) is traffic. Downtown real estate is going to continue to increase in value so where will the majority of people (in the low to mid income range) end up looking for houses? More often than not they will probably be looking for real estate in the suburbs as property gets more and more expensive closer to downtown. (Remember, expensive is relative to Houston because you can still find decent single family homes under $200,000 within the main city limits whereas in DC, well...you'd be lucky to find a good 1 bedroom condo for that price!) So back to the topic...what this means is that there will continue to be more and more traffic! Naturally, developers and city of Houston and Harris County officials need to continue addressing the traffic issues immediately. Expand on the positive that Houston is already working on which Tory Gattis talks about in his houston strategies blog.

Personally, I think that more mixed used the development would be helpful. In many areas it is practically impossible to find places that you could actually walk to from home or work (except in the downtown areas). It'd be nice to actually walk to places without having to take a car everywhere and always have to find parking. I know that a common argument against this might be that it is way too hot to being walking outdoors in Houston, especially in the summer, but a good integration of trees would help too. (And according to Tory and the Houston chronicle, it looks like that is starting to happen too.) Only time will tell...

shameless plug: And I hope that my company can be a part of the Houston's future in the near future!

Posted by eMarv at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)