New York has been out bubbled by Sydney Aus.


Balgowlah is expensive, Alexandria’s just as baad
I really have the real estate blues, My ex-pat dreams in Sydney have gone up in smoke. $400 a week for a Sydney studio. What happens when the ARMs all get triggered and the foreclosure panic . You better have kept that old farm in the outback in Queensland. Here in NY and NJ, all we get is the “Outback” steak-house. But, that’s just a fantasy. $2000 a month for a spiffy 2-bedroom in Alexandria, near Sydney? Wow!
Here’s my real estate blues song, to the tune of “Stormy Monday” (done by the Allman Bros among others):

Balgowlah so expensive,
Alexandria’s just as bad….
Gonna go camp out in the outback.
And say’s a new greenie fad.

Dowtown Sydney’s oh so high.
The North Shore’s oh so saaaaaddddd!

Back in the old US of A (let me hear you say, oy vey!), According to the LA Times, housing market giant Freddie Mac is working with banks to construct a SWAT team, to quickly roll over the loans of the ARMS about to fall off. ARMs if you forgot, are the Adjustable Rate Mortgages, with the IO, the Interest Only payments in the beginning, and then you get hit in three to five, with the Negative Amortization, super high payment blowback.
Sept 10th, in LA Times, the headline was, “Lenders Rally to Stem Foreclosures as Interest Rates Rise”. …”Freddie Mac is coordinating . Craig Nickerson, exec
VP of expanding markets at Freddie Mac said,,,”we’re trying to create a comprehensive safety net to help people stay in their homes,”, but 55,000 families a month are going into foreclosure. Yikes!
This gimmick won’t work. We are going to have to have some type of internal debt moratorium, a refinance everything, long term, at 1-2% interest rates.