Falling House Prices, Rising Sales

Real estate agent Tracy Comstock shows a Prince William County property to Chris James of Clifton, who has been investing in foreclosed housing. Buying and renting foreclosed properties is good for the community, he said. (By Sarah L. Voisin — The Washington Post)

Today’s Washington Post, front page claims Prince William County is the ‘epicenter of the boom’ and a bargain-hunter’s paradise because of the extreme number of foreclosures.

The more foreclosures in a neighborhood, the more the value of the other homes is depressed. According to the Post:

The buying frenzy is the silver lining of a staggering decline in home values. With banks choking on a glut of empty, foreclosed properties, the median sale price for detached single-family houses in Prince William plunged 41 percent in the past year, from $405,000 to $239,900. In September, 118 homes in the county sold for less than $100,000, and many foreclosed townhouses sold for less than $70,000. One three-bedroom Manassas townhouse recently sold for $43,500, even though it was assessed at $273,100 in 2007.

“Prince William County is a fire sale,” said Joey Remondino, a “ridiculously busy” real estate agent with StoneHouse Realty in Manassas. “People are looking for amazing deals, and I’m writing offers as fast as I can,” he said.

Somehow being the cheapest is just not what I considered to be a good thing. Who wants to be described on the front page of a national newspaper as a ‘firesale’? I see our county becoming an oasis for investors and absentee landlordism, confirmed by the Post with:

Much of the dealmaking has been led by investors, according to real estate agents who specialize in foreclosed properties. Doctors, lawyers, engineers — anyone with good credit and disposable cash — are becoming part of a burgeoning class of landlords. Some are forming business partnerships to acquire properties; others are realizing that they can buy cheap homes and rent them out for more than the monthly mortgage payments.

I think this might be a cleaned up version of saying ‘slum-lords.’ Does anyone else feel this is something to celebrate? I know the dark screen was clicking its heels and thinking it was going to end up in Oz.

With credit as tight as it is now, I doubt that ordinary couples who have saved for a house will be able to obtain financing. I don’t think our new neighbors will be Mom, Dad, 2.3 kids and a dog.

McCain Rally at McCoart Complex Saturday

John McCain will speak at McCoart Complex at Saturday, October 18 at 2:00 p.m.

Sean Connaughton Plaza
Prince William County Complex
1 County Complex Court
(Located off the Prince William County Parkway)
Prince William VA, 22192
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Supervisor Stewart has sent emails out to many constituents announcing this rally:

I wanted to make sure you received an invite to join our next President, John McCain, at a rally in Prince William County this Saturday at 2 p.m. (doors open at 1 p.m). Senator McCain’s time is a precious resource, and his presence in Prince William reinforces our status as a key battleground county.

Traffic is supposed to be a bear so if you don’t have to be in the area, don’t be.

Once again Prince William County is the rally site for a presidential hopeful. Long ignored in presidential races, Virgina is a battle ground state during this election cycle as both candidates and their running mates hope to acquire the holy grail of all elections: President of the United States.

Prince William has been particularly blessed with a visit from both candidates. We were Obama’s first stop once he accepted the nomination of his party.

Will voters turn Virginia blue? Will Prince William be the pivotal county in the presidential race? With all the attention we have received, it is becoming more evident that we are more than just a blip on the radar. I wonder why that is?

It’s hard to be humble with this much attention.

Click for story and link to

Washington Post

Prince William County Warns Big Service Cuts Are Likely

Today’s Washington Post reports that County Executive Craig S. Gerhart has warned that budget cuts in Prince William County are unavoidable because of the massive decline in house values. Each department head has been told to slash their budget by a third.

Not every department can take this kind of hit. According to Gerhart,

“The request was not meant to suggest an across-the-board reduction but to identify the potential impact of severe budget cuts.”

Shortfall amounts are unknown at this point in time but more financial information should be available within the next month or so since PWC supervisors hold their annual financial retreat.
Naturally Corey Stewart weighed in:

“It’s going to be ugly,” said Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large), board chairman. “We are going to balance this budget through cuts, not tax increases.”

What happened to all those people who said they would gladly have their taxes increased to rid PWC of the ‘illegals’? What happened to those massive savings that were always brought up by the anti-immigration folks when those of us here brought up the fact that our county could not afford THE RESOLUTION? Savings were supposed to come from all over the place, especially from the schools. (See ESOL Thread below)

It’s time for all those folks to pony up and help us through this deficit. I sure would not want to admit that I had helped contribute to this local financial mess.

Jeff Frederick, GOP VA leader, equates Barack Obama to Osama Bin Laden?!

Now, its bad enough that this country is dealing with an economic crisis, enveloped in global ramifications, but then, to top it off, you have this Republican GOP yahoo feeding the flames of ignorance and hatred, and it makes one wonder, how BAD can Prince William County look?  This article in Time magazine allows us a glimpse into the local strategy of the McCain campaign and it isn’t a pretty sight.

In response to this outrageous comment by Jeff Frederick, John McCain’s tepid response is incredibly disappointing. I wonder, in what “context” would comparing Senator Obama to Osama Bin Laden EVER be acceptable?

 

If John McCainis as serious as he says about running a “respectful” campaign against an opponent he considers “a decent person,” word hasn’t yet trickled down to his newly opened storefront field office in Gainesville, Virginia.

No Democratic presidential candidate has carried Virginia since 1964, and most election years both campaigns pretty much ignore the state. This time, however, McCain is running behind Barack Obama in statewide polls, thanks in large part to the head start he got on the ground there. “We haven’t seen a race like this in Virginia — ever,” said state GOP Chairman Jeffrey M. Frederick. “The last time was 40 years ago, and they didn’t run races like this.”

Indeed, Frederick, a 33-year-old state legislator, hadn’t even been born yet. But earlier this year Frederick unseated a moderate 71-year-old former lieutenant governor (who also happens to be Jenna Bush’s father-in-law) to become head of the Virginia GOP, promising “bold new leadership” for a state party recently on the decline.

The McCain campaign invited me to visit Frederick and the Gainesville operation on Saturday morning, to get a first-hand glimpse of its ground game in Prince William County, Virginia, a fast-growing area about 30 miles from Washington, D.C.

With so much at stake, and time running short, Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: “Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon,” he said. “That is scary.” It is also not exactly true — though that distorted reference to Obama’s controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. “And he won’t salute the flag,” one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, “We don’t even know where Senator Obama was really born.” Actually, we do; it’s Hawaii.

 

MSM Reports on PWC ESOL Enrollment

The Washington Post now reports on the higher than expected enrollment of ESOL students in Prince William County Schools but refuses to lay blame for the debacle on anyone in particular.

School officials said that it’s not unusual to miss enrollment projections but that the under-projection in ESOL is unusually large — and potentially costly. If school officials had had better estimates, the information would have been part of their budget request to county supervisors, who base the county tax rate partly on the school system’s needs.

And now, contrary to BVBL’s claims that ‘PWC’s greatest fiscal savings will come from not having to educate ESOL students at a 50% greater cost than regular students’, we instead learn there has been NO significant financial offset to this failed experiment which instead has caused us to underestimate the school’s budget causing a rather unprecedented $1.6 million shortfall.

We should be asking ourselves, what was the point? We have spent millions of dollars without being able to account for any savings. And now, in all probability we will witness the legalization of a majority of these individuals with the end result being that Prince William County will have done ourselves more harm than good.

Additionally what we have learned:

  • underestimating the ESOL enrollment for 529 students equates to a $1.6 million shortfall but using Stewart/Stirrup’s Fuzzy Math not educating 700 students would have saved us $7 million
  • educating an ESOL student costs $2880, a far cry from the 50% that BVBL suggests
  • there’s most likely a constant interchange of students between Counties
  • any increases in ESOL enrollment in surrounding Counties appears to be part of an overall trend in higher general enrollment

Southern Poverty Law Center includes Robert Duecaster and Help Save Manassas on their Hate Watch Blog

The appointment of Robert Duecaster, although narrowly approved by a 5-3 vote, only sets the example of legitimizing the extreme rhetoric surrounding immigration and the primary target, Hispanics.  Although there are some that will dismiss the findings of the Southern Poverty Law Center, can they also ignore the Anti Defamation League? Mr. Duecaster has every right under the constitution to express his feelings towards Latinos as “invaders” and that the invasion is being “funded by foreign governments”. Mr. Duecaster states that he has a message for the current President of Mexico, that “citizens do not want this internationalization”. Mr. Duecaster never points out any other ethnic groups in has diatribe on april 29th except Latinos when referring to illegal immigration. I have included only a partial part of this most recent piece written by SPLC, please click on the link to read it in its entirety.

Robert L. Duecaster helps lead a nativist extremist group and regularly makes defamatory comments about Catholics, Muslims and undocumented immigrants, calling the latter in an October 2007 blog post “an invasion of parasites set on reducing this country to the levels of their own.”

But all that didn’t stop the Prince William (Va.) Board of County Supervisors from appointing him to a committee that will influence county decision making on human services policy and budget priorities. After a closed-door discussion, the board voted 5-3 on Sept. 16 to approve Duecaster’s nomination to the Human Services Strategic Goals Task Force, which will develop a roadmap for the next four years of human services planning.

Duecaster is secretary of Help Save Manassas, an anti-immigration group that has spawned other “Help Save” chapters in Virginia and Maryland. In 2007, he helped author a local ordinance aimed at denying county services to undocumented immigrants and empowering local police to enforce federal immigration law. County officials later softened the ordinance because of concerns that it could lead to racial profiling.

Duecaster is known for his inflammatory remarks. “This country is being invaded no less than if hordes of armed people came across its borders,” he said during an October 2007 county supervisors meeting. “This invasion is not armed, but they’ve got weapons. The weapons that they use are their anchor babies. … This invasion is being funded by foreign governments.” He offered another dire warning to the supervisors in April 2008: “You’re at an historic crossroad today. You can fund and continue to enforce the rule of law resolution or you can let it go by the wayside and watch this county and the rest of this region degenerate into a third world slum.”

Duecaster, a 57-year-old lawyer, was nominated to the human services task force by County Supervisor John T. Stirrup Jr., who said criticisms of Duecaster’s appointment amounted to “character assassination.” In a recent interviewwith The Washington Post, Duecaster didn’t retract any of his controversial past statements. “At the time the comments were made, we were living in a threatening and inflammatory environment,” he said, adding that he hoped to serve “the interest of legal residents of this county.”

Duecaster has been even more flagrant in his remarks under cover of a pseudonym, according to the Post, which reported that on Black Velvet Bruce Li, the blog of Help Save Manassas founder Greg Letiecq, Duecaster has postedblatantly bigoted comments using the screen name “Advocator.”

In January 2008, Advocator called for an investigation into “whether or not illegal aliens have a preferred breeding season.” In April, he responded to a comment someone had posted using the pseudonym “Truth” with this gem: “An’ thass right, Trufe, I am bitching about ESOL [English for Speakers of Other Languages] as classes. Those anchor babies be costing me money.”

Charging Bulls, at Least for the Day: The Stock Market Rallies

Dow 9,387.61 +936.42 (11.08%)
Nasdaq 1,844.25 +194.74 (11.81%)
S&P 500 1,003.32 +104.10 (11.58%)

Wow! What a day. We needed this. Is the stock market giving the finger to the economic crisis, sort of like it gave the finger to 9/11?

No, we aren’t out of the woods yet. The stock market is a reaction and a prediction of what investors think will be happening in the future. However, let’s hope the bottom is in the past and we are on an upwards climb and today’s rally was a sign of good things to come on the financial horizon.

[Update: Today was the largest single-day gain ever for the Dow]

McCain calls comments by Georgia Democrat ‘shocking’

When is enough enough? It seems this election cycle is the new shock jock entertainment, if that’s what floats your boat. The Cultural War seems to be escalating.

According to CNN, Senator John McCain has called on Senator Obama to ‘immediately and personally repudiate’ remarks made by Rep John Lewis, D-Georgia.

Rep John Lewis issued a statement after several days of what he perceived as attention-grabbing attacks on Barack Obama during McCain/Palin campaign rallies:

“What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse…

George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.”

Senator McCain, who has previously sung the praises of Rep. Lewis, responded with:

“Congressman John Lewis’ comments represent a character attack against Gov. Sarah Palin and me that is shocking and beyond the pale,…

The notion that legitimate criticism of Sen. Obama’s record and positions could be compared to Gov. George Wallace, his segregationist policies and the violence he provoked is unacceptable and has no place in this campaign. I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I’ve always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track…

I call on Sen. Obama to immediately and personally repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments that are so clearly designed to shut down debate 24 days before the election. Our country must return to the important debate about the path forward for America.”

Good grief! This rancor and contentiousness is just getting out of hand. I do hope everyone remembers the sad fate of Governor George Wallace. He ran for president as a third party candidate and was shot down in an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Laurel, Maryland in 1972. Wallace was permanently paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. Evil and careless words lead to evil deeds.

Oddly enough, Wallace had become a born-again Christian and had apologized for his segregationist vitriol of earlier years.

Retirement Plans: What’s a Person to Do?

Today’s Washington Post is just full of financial articles today. Section F, the business section, has so much information in it, your head will spin.

One article in particular that caught my eye was “Retirement Wreck: Are 401(k)s Still Viable for Saving? (F1). It discusses the gradual movement from defined-benefit plans, like social security and employer pensions to defined-contribution plans like 401(k), 403(b) where the employee has ownership of the plan and the risk, regardless of how little they know about investing or the stock market.

In the past 15 months Americans have lost around 2 trillion dollar’s worth of retirement savings housed in pensions and 401k-type plans. Ouch! 401k plans generally have more stocks in their portfolios than do pensions, so they have been hit the hardest.

Historically (or back as far as 1976), it has taken as short as 5 months to as long as 8 years to recover from a bear market. The article warns about letting fear take over. Those who panic and withdraw their funds face penalty and lock in their losses.

Is the advice solid? Who knows. It seems to be pretty much the same that the experts on TV like Suzie Orman and Ali Velshi advise us.

Click on the Washington Post link above for the entire article.

BREAKING NEWS….Obama Is Not ‘An Arab’

Attempts to sow seeds of terrorism fear about Obama may have backfired on the McCain Campaign. McCain himself has had to put out a few fires at political rallies where crowds have shouted out, ‘Screw Obama,’ ‘Terrorist,’ ‘Kill him,’ ‘Bomb Obama.’ and other horribly offensive types of language. One woman, as seen in the embedded video said she didn’t trust Obama because he is ‘an Arab.’

To his credit, Senator McCain took the microphone back and told the lady that wasn’t true and issued a few platitudes about Obama. It looks like Senator McCain and Governor Palin are reaping what they have allowed to be sown.

Are character assassination and attempts to associate Senator Obama with former Weather Underground leader turned education professor Bill Ayers going to pay off for The McCain Campaign or does this type of rhetoric just make his campaign look desperate? Has Senator Obama taken the high road?

Lastly, does any of this look vaguely familiar?

8.3 Trillion Dollars Lost Since A Year Ago

The stock market tanked again today. People are scared. Trading was heavy as people tried to scoop up bargains.

According to the NY Times:

Stocks Plunge Again in Last Hour, Dow Below 8,600

A late-day decline once again pushed stock markets down
sharply Thursday. The Dow Jones industrial average declined
about 7.3 percent or 678.91 points on the day to close at
8,579.19, about 40 percent below its peak close of 14,164.53,
exactly a year ago. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock
index was down nearly 7.6 percent on Thursday

These are scary times. We are at a 40% correction at the moment. Today was the biggest percent drop since the crash of 1987.

Guess Who Called Northern Virginia’s Religious Community “Communists”

This is who was attacked as a “Communist clique” …

This is who did the attacking:

Which version of Faith do you prefer?

These are two fairly different versions of religion which seem to be in sharp contrast to each other. The second video is a convoluted version of Christianity which endorses a ‘Send them Back with Love’ approach which appears quite different than the atmosphere that was evident at the recent VOICE (Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement) event.

Here is one of the many offensive comments on a recent Greg Letiecq attack:

Bolstered by communists from Arlington and Alexandria, the large crowd asked Prince William County Chairman Corey Stewart to provide more “affordable housing”, more ESOL classes, and taxpayer-subsidized dental care.

Do you see Communists in this video?