Posted on 08/07/2007 7:37:25 AM PDT by 2banana
Several months ago Silvia Cuevas took stock of her life, and it was a profoundly unsettling experience. At 40 she had a solid job with a modest salary at the public library in Santa Ana, Calif. She'd carefully squirreled away some savings and bought herself a little house. She was financially secure - and utterly dissatisfied. All around her, Santa Ana throbbed with the feverish energy of recent immigrants eager to cash in on the promises of America.
"I was going nowhere," she recalls. "How was I going to find my fortune?" Then a girlfriend introduced her to Nouveau Riche University.
Not exactly a university, Nouveau Riche offers real estate investment classes -and a host of related products and services - to would-be tycoons. In April, Cuevas plunked down tuition of $16,000 and attended a weeklong program in Phoenix. Two weeks later, emboldened by her instructors and an advisor assigned by the university, she refinanced her home, taking out $200,000 - a large share of her equity. She used the money for down payments to buy - sight unseen in one case - three investment properties through a real estate agency controlled by Nouveau Riche. By midsummer Cuevas' portfolio of investments had grown to include a condo in Colorado, three acres of undeveloped land in the Smoky Mountains, and a three-bedroom house in San Antonio. Her debt load has grown too, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans she took out on the properties, but she doesn't worry. "I learned how to be bold at Nouveau Riche," Cuevas says. "They're the market experts, so I trust them to help me buy. I can't wait to make my next purchase!"
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
When is this real estate madness going to end????
Nouveau Riche University? Frankly, anybody the name itself should have been enough of a giveaway to scare away anybody with half a brain cell.
I sense that jail is in the future for Piccolo...
He will flee the country in the end. They always do.
On which she was able to extract $200,000 in a refinance? Some little house.
Plus on a "modest salary at the public library" she can afford to pay an additional $2,000 per month to service that loan? That's it. I'm submitting my resume to my local library.
Nouveau Riche? I’d say more like Nouveau Broke.
They have it backwards. One does not become wealthy as a result of SEEKING risk, though the work of becoming wealthy often requires one to ACCEPT risk.
If she needed risk in her life, she could have taken up skydiving.
Oh, well, not my problem, unless I’m expected to feel sorry for her if she loses everything.
A friend of mine owns a tiny little place (1200sq ft??) in So. Cal. Houses in her neighborhood are selling for 500k, 600k or more. She's refinanced it a couple of times, but she still has 75% equity because she bought it in the 60's.
It's not the house. It's location, location, location.
It’s tough to understand folks sometimes -
I have a younger brother in law that’s planning on buying a 400k condo in Chicago when he graduates from law school. How the heck is someone fresh out of school thinking that he can afford the debt service on a 400k loan?
As foreclosures increase and values drop, smart investors should be able to score a coup. Timing is everything.
Houses under 200K in decent shape are still moving in my neck of the woods.
When you get to the $300 and $400k houses, which are your 2000 sq ft homes in nice neighborhoods, they are sitting on the market, but for the most part they are overvalued. There is a great house that I wanted to look at. It was a 1700 sq ft. raised ranch in a good school district, in a nice, but not great location. No land to speak of, very good condition. They want $318k, I said forget it, they said they were a little flexible, and I said “you won’t be flexible enough”, seven months later, that house is still on the market. Those people were nuts. The $300k houses around here that are on the market three months are really $200-250k houses. Those aren’t going to sell. I have no idea about the market for the very big ($1 million plus) homes. But for the “small” homes, the market by me is fine.
The starting salaries at major law firms, for 1st-year associates fresh out of school, are in the $130k-140k range, and go up substantially every year. Toss in huge performance bonuses and benefits such as relocation expenses, and your brother will be able to afford that condo.
For the vast majority of law school grads (like me) that did not make it to a major firm, let's just say I was not the only one that had to endure the nightmare of moving back in with my parents for a few years before being able to afford a modestly-priced condo. I hope your brother fares better than that.
“Oh, well, not my problem, unless I’m expected to feel sorry for her if she loses everything”
You’re not supposed to feel sorry for her, but you and I and the rest WILL be forced to bail her sorry a$$ out IF she fails.
This is SoCal. The guard shack at the county dump costs more than that. ;)
More for sale by owner signs up today, and real estate broker signs too. They are not selling. The few that were sold last summer (June) sold instantly.
That's true, but I won't let it bother me. The government would be taking our $$ for something ...
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