KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Wednesday December 8 Housing and Economic stories

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NJ School Superintendent Bitches about Making $175,000 a year, Gov. Christie says “Let Me Help You Pack” - (Mish at globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com) Every time I listen to NJ Chris Christie I want to stand up and salute. Today is no different. Please watch this 4 minute video where Chris Christie blasts LeRoy Seitz, Superintendent of Schools for the Parsippany School District about Seitz's threat to leave the state if his salary is reduced to $175,000. NorthJersey.com has more details in Governor sets sights on Seitz contract. Last week the Parsippany-Troy Hills Board of Education voted 6-2 to renew Superintendent LeRoy Seitz's contract, which included a 2 percent per year salary increase. What made the contract noteworthy, aside from the dozens of people that spoke out against it and the tongue lashing the Board and the Superintendent received from Gov. Chris Christie was that the contract Seitz is currently working under doesn't expire until July 1, 2011. The Board began contract negotiations during the summer, at about the same time the Christie administration released information about a plan to cap chief administrator's salaries and tying the numbers to the enrollment in the district. By finalizing the contract now the Board effectively agreed to give Seitz a salary well above the governor's proposed cap for almost five years. At the Board meeting Mark Tabakin, the Board attorney, told the gathering of about 90 people that the cap is still in the proposal form, that the contract was approved by the County Executive Superintendent Kathleen Serafino and that it is a legal action. "People are upset," he acknowledged, "but it's up to the will of the Board." The controversial contract drew township residents and protesters from as far away as Clifton and Hackettstown, who were outraged over the Board's end run around the proposed cap.

Rogers: Punish Irish Banks & Their Reckless Bondholders, Let Ireland Go Bankrupt! - (www.dailybail.com) Video: Per usual, Jimmy Rogers tells the undeniable truth... Even better, Rogers never mucks around with airtime. This is a solid 2 minutes of pain for bank-bullshitting fear mongers on both sides of the Pond.

There is No Reason to Pay Realtors When Selling a House - (www.time.com) There's an assumption that the 6% typically paid in realtor commissions on a home sale is worth it because the seller will command a higher price than if he'd gone the "for sale by owner" route. But a trio of academics who researched years of home sales says that this assumption is false. In fact, they discovered that owner sellers got higher sales prices than owners who involved—and paid a commission to—real estate agents. One of the researchers, Aviv Nevo, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management, econ professor at Northwestern, offers this main eye-opening conclusion: "Our key finding is that Realtors do not offset the cost of their commission; they do not get you a higher price." Their findings, summed up at the Kellogg Insight website, are based on a close look at home sales from 1998 to 2004 in one market: Madison, Wisconsin. Researchers compared sales involving realtors (who presumably received commissions) to sales from owner sellers who paid a flat $150 for an online listing. Here's what they found: With full access to data from both platforms, Nevo and his colleagues found that their raw data confirmed that owner sellers achieved higher prices for their homes. The average premium was 11 percent, or $14,800. That's on top of the funds that sellers who used Realtors lost in the form of a commission.

Banks walk away, refuse to foreclose, let house rot, empty - (www.baltimoresun.com) The abandoned rowhouse next door to Wendy and Brian Malaney has been a nightmare of a neighbor. The rowhouse's roofing material blew off, and water seeped through the Malaneys' adjoining walls. Later the pipes burst in the neighboring property, flooding their basement. The air they and their two young daughters breathe is now heavy with the noxious stink of mold. Abandoned buildings are a perennial problem in Baltimore — a city where many residents share connecting walls. Nearly one-third of the city's 16,000 uninhabitable properties are near occupied homes, city officials say. And a key part of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's new plan to attack vacancies is ratcheting up code enforcement on blocks where many residents still live, issuing fines more quickly. But as the Malaneys discovered, months of effort by code enforcers and multiple citations sometimes bring no results. The city went one step further on their block this month, spending $18,500 to replace the vacant home's roof and remove its mold-infested drywall, insulation and carpet to try to prevent more damage to the Malaneys' property a year and a half after their woes began.

"Tell the EU and IMF to Shove It!" - (www.counterpunch.org) Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen is Mahmoud Abbas. He's caved in to the demands of foreign capital and transferred control over the nation's budget to the EU and the IMF. This is a black day for Ireland. The Irish people will now face a decade or more of grinding poverty and depression thanks to their venal leaders. As soon as the ink dries on the IMF loans, the second occupation of Ireland will begin, only this time there won't be armored cars and Paramilitaries in fatigues, but nerdy-looking bureaucrats trained in the art of spreading misery. In fact, the loans haven't even been signed yet, and already IMF officials are urging the government to cut jobless benefits and the minimum wage. They're literally champing at the bit. They just can't wait to get their hands on the budget and start slashing away. And don't believe the hype about European unity or saving Ireland. My ass. This is about bailing out the banks. The bondholders get a free ride while workers get kicked to the curb. Here's a clip from the Financial Times that spells it out in black and white: