Chisoxfn

Viola and Moviel are not major league prospects. Yet Sean Tracey and Jerry Owens (two of our 10 best prospects) are somehow on the list with him and Ryan Sweeney is nowhere to be seen. Also surprised Richard Brooks isn't anywhere. I like his arm. 90% of his up and comers list is garbage. And if Chris Stewart is a cream of the crop our organization should be dead last. Ya that young Cf that Kenny loves. Name escapes me right now and Micah is definately the s***znit at 3rd.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Jan 20, 2006 -> 12:47 PM) The house I live at in Fort Worth, Texas, if it were in Steff's neighborhood ( ) would probably cost $300K. I paid a hell of a lot less for mine, in an up and coming neighborhood, and the school system is one of the best in the state. In the first two years, I've gotten about $35K in equity according to appraisal values as well as what the houses are selling for in the neighborhood. I can't complain. Ya, Texas has had a down real estate market for a long time. I think its going to be one that grows a good amount thanks to people from California and Arizona moving there due to the ridiculous prices out here. Plus the government is just hammering businesses here. Freaking idiots we have in most of the government offices are doing everything anti business (but I'm not gonna turn this into a political topic). There is a lot of really nice things about living in texas, one of which is that you can buy a really nice affordable house, even when your younger.

QUOTE(Iwritecode @ Jan 20, 2006 -> 12:40 PM) What's the two mortgages deal? I don't think I've ever heard of that... Its basically a 2nd mortgage. So lets say you get an 80% loan (it needs a 20% down payment). But you get a 10 or 15% second and now you only have 5% down but don't have to deal with PMI.

QUOTE(Steff @ Jan 20, 2006 -> 06:47 AM) Just saw this Boz... Awwww... BTW.. Houlihans said no way Jose to a reserved dinner. Can't blame them.. we barely got them to give us the tables we needed last year.. so how about brunch/lunch on Saturday..? Looks like Brian isn't going to make it this year so we won't have to worry about waiting on him to crawl off the floor before we can eat. :rolly ROFL...count me in whenever you can set up some sort of group grubbage.

I had to switch back to the classic hitting style. I'm having a hell of a time hitting still though. Don't know whats up, but it may be because my team has 20 freshman on it. I made my own school and than took a D roster in the big west and boy did they blow. Simmed through my 1st season to get to recruiting and holy cripes all my team was seniors and my 2 good underclassmen transfered (probably because the team started 0-14). One thing pissed me off, Illinois won the whole damn thing. Thats bulls***. No way should that happen in the 1st year of the dynasty. To make matters worse, Fullerton was under .500. So a perrenial national title contender goes under .500 while the Illini win the whole damn thing.

QUOTE(Flash Tizzle @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 08:58 PM) I suppose all reports detailing her obnoxious, courtside attitude were correct. Ya, plus you could see the fan call for security. From the video I saw it definately looked like Mrs. Davis started the whole thing.

QUOTE(Steff @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 12:40 PM) You didn't have to click the link... But we did and now me knee hurts just from seeing that. Ouch the ligaments.

Another nice thing to do is if you have a few rental properties go to one of the banks and shop around for an equity line of credit. Basically take out the line, but don't even use the money. The thing is, you at least have it there in case you have a little negative on your rental property and times get tough. This way you have a little rainy day fund of your equity that was built up that you can essentially use to help ya out and get through the rough times (cause its inevitable, the real estate market will have to hold up or drop a little bit over the next few years). I don't think you'll see anything like the 80's though. That was insane, but the problem than (well according to my pops) was that at any new track of homes he'd go to, 75-80% of the homes were being purchased by speculators. So when stuff started turning everyone tried to put stuff on the market making the problem worse. Now new home builders make things a lot more difficult on investors and while plenty of people are investing in the market (don't know if its a great idea to do right now, but I'm sure there are still some solid investments out there, but they are probably tough to find) its nothing like it was back than (this is again according to my pops cause I didn't live it or go through it). I was a freaking baby.

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 11:35 AM) And surfer., Does he surf professional too? Thats crazy if he does. I know he's world class in skate boarding and well he's quickly become a legend on the snowboard.

QUOTE(Steff @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 05:39 PM) Our payment is a little less then that, but in the same neighborhood. And I agree on the 2 mortages. We had several friends and family do it that way, and we did it on our investment properties. Oh ya, 2 mortgages are a great option. There are a lot of really advantgeous routes when it comes to buying rental property and for 1st time home buyers. Its getting with people that know what they are doing cause they can save ya some money. But as Balta showed they are in legal trouble (Ameriquest) and they are total freaking crooks and scumbags. Just my 2 cents. We happen to do loans on ocassions through their wholesale arm Argetn and they are one of my favorite companies to do a loan through. But they aren't competitive rate wise and its only recommended when you plan on buying an investment house that your gonna get rid of in 2 years (otherwise you better refi cause the margin gets ridiculous after 2 years). Basically they, like I'm sure plenty of those fly by night (Ameriquest isnt' fly by night) lenders who advertise and tell you how cheap and easy it is to get a loan from them, tell you how great a refi is when in all honesty it may not be the case. They are just salesman trying to get a loan done and will tell you what you want. Thats one of the big things they got in trouble for (with the refi's and such). Remember this is just my 2 cents. And kyle if you compare the rates from ytd today and ytd last year I can get clients the exact same loan essentially. I'm sorry you lost your job and its a tough industry but it depends on companies. Right now in general their is a slow down in the mortgatge sector in CA (I know a few people working for the big boy lenders and they've experienced) but its due to the refi market halting and the fact that the real estate market is starting to slow down (imo). Its not due to rates.

QUOTE(kyyle23 @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 05:12 PM) The weekly LIBOR came down from Ameriquest, I am pretty sure. That was our umbrella company. Either way, rates are going up. Ours werent so good and there were plenty of people coming to us because the rates were going up everywhere. We had nothing but high class clientele, let me tell you. Ameriquest is a crooked ass company. Thats all I'm going to say about that.

QUOTE(kyyle23 @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 04:41 PM) I think Town & Country Credit and the 10 percent of its workforce who were laid off(including myself) due to rising interest rates on mortgages would like to respectfully disagree. They are still at record lows, but they are on the way up right now. That may be the jargon they through out, but rates aren't gonna be a factor. They got laid off because people don't refi much anymore. The market has slowed down. Those that wanted to refi and do all that stuff already have done it. Its not the rates going up. Plus if they were securing and holding onto the loans they gave they may have gotten bit for having less than strict lending practices that forced them to eventually eat quite a few loans (not that this happens much since property value hasn't been declining). When the real estate market stops (which its starting too, imo, at least in CA) appreciating and possibly dropping (maybe people are lucky and it just holds steady for a few years) you'll see lenders get in trouble because most of those zero percent loans they gave out to people they usually wouldn't have, well they are gonna bite em in the ass (imo). Just put it this way, when the stock market crashed any buffoon could tell you stuff was overpriced and needed to be devalued. 9/11 eventually pushed the market down even more, but the fact of the matter was all the long time ratio's (such as the PE ratio) were totally out of whack and the market was in for an price adjusting period (downturn). I'm not a stock market expert so I can't say much more than that. But essentially the real estate market (at least in SoCal) is basically at that stage. Prices of homes have appreciated too much so the only thing left is for them to hold for a few years or go down 5-10% a year for a few years. Of course 10 years from now they will still probably be up as opposed to todays price.

QUOTE(Steff @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 04:02 PM) 1%...?? Really? So a housepayment on a $400K house should be $4K.... ? I'm no mortgage expert besides what I have paid for my own.. but that hasn't been my experience either. Jason.. being the mortgage expert can you chime in on this as well..? Even before the low interest rates I was always (and am now) well under 1%. Ya, maybe the 1% includes property taxes on the year, but that has to be a really generic figure since property taxes vary greatly by state and area. In most places I think they go by assessed value, while in California they go based on purchase price. Plus you have newer developments that have started doing mello roos (basically the tax as you get the city started). Supposedly it usually has a cut-off date years into the future. I know in car sales, ball park in Ca tax and license is 10% of the purchase price of the car. But I'm sure the 1% is some generic figure that maybe was tossed around. Its not a rule I've heard of, but most agents say a lot of really crazy stuff, especially right now, where you have tons of new agents that jumped in thinking its such an easy career (but they've never experienced the down turns of a bad market where its tough as hell, even if your good). We know I haven't experienced it, but if you aren't a good agent and the market gets soft, your gonna have a hell of a time making money. If your really good, its just like the stock market, you have an opportunity to do some things you couldn't do originally and set yourself up for some big gains in the future.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 12:15 PM) ^^^ Very near the upper echelon in the league when concering farm systems, and our minor leagues got ravaged this year...in a good way obviously, with callups and trades. I'm wondering where it is had KW not traded Young, Gio, and Haig. I really don't think we are the 11th best farm system. If we are the other systems must blow. All our talent is at lower levels and even that is quite thin for the time being. If a few guys can get healthy and live up to their potential I can see us being there, but they haven't proved it yet. My guess is they had them pretty high and made the ranking when we had all those guys. Our system was pretty strong than, probably right around top 10, maybe top 7.

QUOTE(Steff @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 11:27 AM) Right, but even still.. the 2x rule would still not apply across the board. A better more accurate (IMO) rule is not to exceed 20% of your monthly income towards paying a house payment. The typical ratio is 50%, but its not the ratio of the price of the home. Has more to deal with the actual payment and how it figures. YOu have two ratio's when you do a loan and depending on the loan program you want you need to get them into whack (most of the time people just bs the ratio's anyway cause they are for the most part garbage). Just think about when you go buy a car, most of the time the dealers will tell you to just make up a figure (if you are getting a loan through them) thats higher. If people actually had to properly qualify for these loans (and they got strict on it), than you'd see the price of homes fall big time.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 11:24 AM) There could be a sizable difference between buying today and 3 months from now... Who knows how long it will take the guy to find a place. Mortgage rates haven't gone up nearly as much as interest rates, so eventually there is going to be an evening out of things. I could get someone the same loan today that I could a year ago. The media likes to hype a lot about the rate and sure the fed rate has adjusted, but that has a minimal effect on the rate you can get for mortages. What would change is if they made qualifications stricter on loans cause right now almost anyone can get a loan (regardless of how much money they can put down). Plus the programs out there (which are so liberal in a sense) allow people to pay a lot less on homes (low start rates, etc).

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 11:17 AM) Low interest rates have a lot to do with that. Once interest rates start to go up, is when you will really see that start to change back towards the 2Xs figure. Rates aren't going up, not on mortgages. Plus that figure may work in certain areas, but not many people are going to make the median price in the Orange County or LA area and my guess is that works in Chicago too. The median price of homes (was in the paper today on the real estate front page) is over 600K. However, California real estate over the past 16 years has seen an average apprecaition of 7.1% (pretty damn good). I'm sure if you factored in SoCal alone it be even more ridiculous.

Cripes addy....now I don't know if I support it Well, not until you eat that hat, haha.

I ended up preordering it so I'm gonna pick it up when I got off work. Can't wait. Haven't played any games (aside from Fifa International Soccer and Super Mario World) in a while.

Damn thats really interesting. if they sat down, JA must be serious about considering TO as an addition. I love TO the player and this would definately be a risky move, but its one I could live with assuming Rex and the players give the okay.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 09:37 AM) I still don't like the idea of having as valuable of a chip as him and letting him walk with us getting absolutely nothing in return, given that we want to build a franchise that can win for a long time here. If we got another Ws championship out of it I'll be able to live with it.

I'm kind of confused. Jimbo's is a cool place but they only have a few really small tv's. If I'm going to watch the superbowl I'm going to a place with a lot of real nice HDTV's.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 09:26 AM) I watched Brunner in HS. The general consensus around NE Iowa was that he kind of seemed like a waste of a schollie. No idea how he got as good as he is. He works hard, that's for damn sure. I'm going to guess Horner's knee and the contraptions that are on it are not helping his shot. I also think the Hawks have a nice future in Tony Freeman, but I've been hearing their basketball recruiting has been lacking.....ISU on the other hand.... Freeman was the lone good recruit. Guy is really talented though. Super quick and can play pretty good defefnse as a freshman. Needs to develop more of an offensive game, but I like him and he gets pretty good minutes. Alex Thompson is a guy I've been expecting some things from. Alford always talks him up and he'll ocassional make some real nice moves, only to blow open shots. Don't know how the recruiting is this year, but I expect the Hawks to totally blow next year so they need to do something good this year.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 09:29 AM) Heh. At least he's our "assbag". I wouldn't want any other "assbag" running that offense. Greasy? Me either....I prefer Brady on the Pats so he can win big games (3 Super Bowl Championships).

QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 08:33 AM) Think of it this way. We have him signed through the year. He doesn't have an extension. If we need something at the trade deadline, he's our man. And, hopefully, he'll be the pitcher he was last year...even 3/4 the pitcher and we should get something good in return. If we can't trade him, we keep him for the year and hopefully get the draft pick...I would imagine it would be a sandwich pick at least. If not that, he goes and gets whatever he wants, and we plug in BMAC, who will have one more year of experience under his belt. Kenny is dealing from a position of strength. We want the Count here, but we are prepared if he leaves. What a fantastic job by K-Dub!!! If he pitches like he did during the 2nd half of last season we'd be fools to trade him. Ride him into the post-season and see what can happen cause the guy was a beast for the 2nd half of the season (best pitcher in the AL too).