You gotta love Jon Stewart of the Daily Show. He is making news more accessible to young people (my kids and, of course, me) by delivering it as entertainment. He’s had some interesting guests on the show to cover the housing market. The housing market situation is so ridiculous, it is a natural fit on this kind of show.

>John Stewart: People would come in and say “I don”t have good credit, or a job, and my car has been repossessed and I’d like a house, what do you think?

>Lender: Ok

Last night I saw the interview with Richard Bitner who is humping his book, Confessions of a Subprime Lender. I was in a BN a few weeks ago and almost picked it up. I had read the interesting review in Daniel McGuinn’s Newsweek Resident Expert column in the spring but was already OD’ed from subprime talk.

But after hearing the interview last night, and the fact that he speaks with such clarity, I would imagine it’s a fun read. He was a wholesale lender, providing mortgage money to mortgage brokers…and guess what?…underwriting standards eroded.

Looks like another reason to delay reading War & Peace.

See the clip [it starts at 15:00]


2 Comments

  1. Edd C Gillespie July 24, 2008 at 9:27 am

    The humor is great and even better since it is John Stewart. John is nobody’s dummy and did you notice Bitner hardly got a word in edgewise.
    No doubt subprime lending is a highly visible blight, but Stewart saw through it to the deeper problem.
    The Wal Street pendulum of fear and greed calls for the steady hand of oversight in the lending industry. As long as the objective is making lots of money with minimum risk somebody has to be the cop.
    I liked Stewarts comment concxe3rning the acronyms used for the giants of the mortgage industry. Fannie and Freddie are sort of uninspiring. How do you take either seriously and still cal them by those names?

  2. yanni raz July 29, 2008 at 7:31 pm

    The Real Estate Market Starts Climing Again

    During the past couple of years we’ve all seen a tremendous change in real estate in the country.
    This change actually has spread all over, businesses loosing money while gas prices are extremely high.

    The real estate market has become a big issue for all of us out there, we’ve seen many homeowners loosing their homes and struggling to find a home to rent because of their credit.

    What happen to us?
    Remember the bubble 4 years ago?

    That’s exactly the answer, from years of prosperity and times of spending, traveling and investing in stocks and real estate, we are now experiencing another bubble but this time the bubble is going in a different direction and we are wondering what to do.

    So real estate was going down and it’s still going down, some economists say that it will get stable in 2 years from now.

    The sellers market became a buyers market, and today we all know it by now.
    Investors and renters that saved their money for better days to buy to make money are in the market today, that’s making the real estate market busy.

    Real estate agents that learn how to change with the market also learned how to make money from the changes, these real estate professionals are making lots of money and while we are all struggling for business they’re making the business.

    Today you can get a home directly from the banks for almost half the price.
    I’ve seen homeowners that are so desperate that they’re willing to give their homes for free, just come and take their loan and continue their payments.

    On the other hand, investors are looking to buy homes in bulk, they can get homes $.50 on the dollar.

    Some banks like bank of america and countrywide are selling hundreds of homes in bulk to investors at a discount prices.

    So real estate agents are busy getting hundreds of listings and reo’s from banks, then they’re selling these homes at a low price to future homeowners and investors.

    It’s definitely a buyer’s market like we had in the early 90’s, so if you’re an investor or a homeowner.
    This is your time!

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