Appraisal Scope

As some of you are aware, I have become part-time at M&P these days due to a new and totally separate venture that I truly believe can help improve valuation services to lenders, brokers, and consumers while helping to reinstate more of appraisers' traditional fee schedule that many have found significantly eroded over the past year for a variety of factors, not the least of which is the HVCC.

At any rate, I realized that I have neglected the blog and yet still don’t have time to do it justice, what with the complex economic conditions surrounding us. I am working on some stats for a blog for next week though and thought for the mean time I would “steal” from my favorite blog, patrick.net, a list of housing and economic news from the past week as there are some really incredible stories and editorials that seem more fiction than reality.

Housing Crash News from patrick.net:

Senator suggests AIG execs should kill themselves (news.yahoo.com)
Grassley: AIG execs should repent, not kill selves (sfgate.com)
Once paid, AIG bonuses will be hard to recover (sfgate.com)
Real Scandal of AIG: executives accountable to no one (robertreich.blogspot.com)
Judge Rules Vallejo Can Void Union Contracts (Mish)
Freddie Mac: The Government's Next Black Hole? (time.com)
Bernanke's False Analogy of "A Burning House" (informationclearinghouse.info)
Bernanke's Witness Protection Program (patrick.net)
The Real Ponzi Scheme: Unreal Interest Rates (news.goldseek.com)
Chicago's Condo Market on Ice (chicagopublicradio.org)
Oahu rents likely to keep falling (honoluluadvertiser.com)
Good graphs of Las Vegas crash (lasvegassun.com)
Banks failures still relatively few (msnbc.msn.com)
Why bailout money goes to banks, not us (sfgate.com)
IRS Plans a Deduction for Madoff Victims (nytimes.com)
Residential mortgage fraud hit all-time high in 2008 (signonsandiego.com)
For Many Young Irish, First Taste of Hard Times (washingtonpost.com)
Financial Secrets of the Wizard of Oz (news.bbc.co.uk)
Golden Gate Economics (youtube.com)

Cities brace for losses as property "values" continue to drop (latimes.com)
Florida property tax hikes more permanent than house prices (patrick.net)
Two out of three foreclosures are house flippers (floridatoday.com)
Media struggles in search for legitimate "victims" (sacramentolanding.blogspot.com)
Sub-prime borrowers are milking the system (godlikeproductions.com)
Credit Cards Are the Next Credit Crunch (online.wsj.com)
Real estate woes seep into malls, office towers (features.csmonitor.com)
Property prices will have to fall further (guardian.co.uk)
Attack of the condo craters (blog.macleans.ca)
China Price Drop Spurs Deflation Fears (online.wsj.com)
Tim Geithner's Black Hole (mobile.washingtonpost.com)
Regulatory reports show 5 biggest banks face huge loss risk (mcclatchydc.com)
New Zealand PM Sees Productivity As The Solution (online.wsj.com)
Follow the Kiwi leader, not Obama (theaustralian.news.com.au)
Bad real estate advice from TV agents (walletpop.com)
Adviser invented $1B clients to lure investor (investmentnews.com)
What does one TRILLION dollars look like? (pagetutor.com)
Baltimore Board of Realtors President Bankrupt (citypaper.com)

Five Reasons Renting Still Beats Buying (realestate.yahoo.com)
Depression Dynamic Ensues as Markets Revisit 1930s (bloomberg.com)
More Debt Won't Rescue The Great American Ponzi (optionarmageddon.ml-implode.com)
Bankrupting Leverage: Are We A Zombie Nation? (yourmortgageoryourlife.wordpress.com)
Cleveland Commercial Loan Delinquencies Signal More (bloomberg.com)
San Francisco construction slows to a crawl (sfgate.com)
Forget About "Recovery" (jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com)
Letting go of your dream price is hard to do (boston.com)
Where Were The Media As Wall Street Imploded? (npr.org)
Public Transit Ridership Hits Highest Level in 52 Years (washingtonpost.com)
Buffett says nation will face higher unemployment (sfgate.com)
But FDIC Is Hiring! (fdic.gov)
Federal Reserve At Work