I'm going to be in De Wallen for a couple days. AKA Amsterdam's crazy Red Light District.
Suggestions? I'm looking up music gigs now...
shame ... article in Espanol, may require using translator
IEEPP: “Policía irrespetó la Constitución”
There's a photo contest in CS? Not a whole lot of action there - feel free to browse the pics and you can vote for your five favorite photos! No membership or special registration required.
When you choose your fave five, rank them 1-5 in order of preference (1 being your most favorite). Enjoy.
Stephen Hawking's boycott hits Israel where it hurts: science
or
Pacific islands’ deadly threat from climate changeSomething to think about if you are heading to these Islands ...
(snip)After a prolonged and unseasonable drought that began late last year, the severe lack of drinking water in our northern atolls led my government to declare a disaster area on May 7. This humanitarian crisis is climate-induced. About 6,000 people are
affected by severe water shortages and are surviving on less than one liter of water per day. All of the affected communities have lost the staple crops that provide their daily food.(snip)
Read more:
Moment in the life of Nicaraguan students at carnival
Nicaragua has a lot of poverty
I receive a newsletter from Gary Scott of Ecuador Living. Today he sent out a curious bit of information on the impact that Wall Street and Hedge Funds are having on Ecuador's Real Estate Market.
Looks to be renter's will have many choices. What's your take?
Wall Street Sucker Punch Can Impact Ecuador Real Estate
May I predict the next Wall Street sucker punch headed our way and its impact on Ecuador real estate?
We have been seeing a glimpse of the next big stock market ripoff that is being built.
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#1 Problem: Real Estate Collapse and hard to get mortgages. Winning Idea: Invest in real estate for rentals
A January 22, 2013 article in USA Today entitled “Rental Investors pant for next hot home market” tells how home shoppers are now seeing multiple offers, bidding wars and shrinking supplies of homes for sale as investors swoop in.
Major institutional investors are amassing a $10 billion war chest to pursue the single-family rental market, JPMorgan Chase estimated in a recent research report.
This $10 billion dollar war chest may be the beginning of the end of our buying rental real estate for now.
I believe we have gained good value in the houses we have purchased. This has not come without effort. We have scoured probably hundreds of properties on the internet, looked at a ton of these, offered on a dozen and have invested in six places for this effort. We mainly buy fixer – uppers like this one.
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Prices of houses in Central Florida have risen dramatically. Properties in the range we seek do not stay on the market for long. We act quickly. We know what we want, how to find them and in this case we offered full price. The deal was delayed and delayed. Finally the house was pulled off the market and foreclosed.
I still liked the deal so we checked out the title and found that this house was going to be sold on the courthouse steps.
Enters Herb
We sent an agent to the auction where this property was sold (for $81,000) along with 20 other houses in 20 minutes.
All of then were purchased by one man… Herb. I have changed his name to protect the guilty in this case.
Our broker approached Herb and offered him a quick profit. “Nope, we are fixing them all up and renting them”, he said.
We checked. Herb works for a hedge fund.
Here is the triple ripoff I believe we will see. The banks that are buying these rental houses will bundle them just as they bunched mortgages. They will sell the bundles on the stock market.
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If I am correct. three events will take place.
First, investors like myself who can take distressed properties and fix them in a value oriented way, can be priced out of the market.
Second, housing prices will become less affordable again and many Americans will not be able to afford to buy or even rent a home.
Third, (the worst of all) these syndicated rental properties will be offered on the stock market (if they are not already there) and they will have similar disaster risks as the syndicated bundled mortgage shares.
This is an early warning so the details below from Roberto Ribadeniera, head of the Ateam Ecuador in Quito, makes special sense.
PJ1961 Blog (7)