Housing Market Follies

I'm sure that there is no one left in the United States that doesn't know that the housing market is in the crapper and circling the drain. There is no doubt whatsoever that the largest part of this situation was created by greedy, near criminal, irresponsible banking institutions and other financial corporations trading obscure derivatives on wall street like bubble gum cards with about as much real worth.

However, there is another smaller yet integral part of the puzzle that makes it nearly impossible to sell a house even if you have an willing buyer. That part is eagerly supplied by incompetent realtors, title companies, bankers (there they are again - what a coincidence) and small time swindlers. This will be a tale of a hypothetical situation (hypothetical to avoid any implied information about actual people who might be involved in such an actual collosal FUBAR).

The story begins when the matriach and patriach of Midwesthappyfamily passed away. Midwesthappyfamily then embarked on a series of marathon weekends where members of the family visited from several remote locations to clean out the house and prepare it for the auction of its contents in preparation for the sale of the house itself. Now imagine how easy these transactions would be if the following desired events were to occur.

1) Auctioneer takes charge of auction preparations per instructions from family, house contents are sold and house is ready for sale.
2) Realtor lists house and performs duties regarding communications of offers, counter offers, needed documents, etc.
3) Offer accepted
4) Bank sets up appraisal- appraisal is made.
5) Decision to make loan is made. If decision is no, return to #2.
6) Loan is okayed - closing date is set.
7) Title company performs title search.
8) All documents finalized.
9) House ownership changes hands at closing.
10) Buyer and seller go away happy.

Now let's examine how in our hypothetical case things go wrong.

1) Instead of auctioneering all items auctioneer forgets who he is working for and cherry picks what he wants to auction. The rest he leaves in the house after thoroughly trashing it. He also disables water to the house after breaking the water line when removing the refrigerator. All members of the family are authorized to remove any articles from auction prior to sale date. Auctioneer tries to deny granddaughter access to items previously designated for her. After auction takes place family is left with a massive clean up job and disposal problem with items auctioneer couldn't be bothered with. Proceeds from auction disappear mopping up unethical auctioneer's leavings.
2) Realtor does list house. Tells family she has cash offer. Family accepts cash offer for house "as is". Oops! Realtor now says it is not a cash offer but there should be no problem with the loan. Closing date set.
3)Bank appraiser doesn't show up on time, closing date postponed. Weeks go by.
7)Title company can't get title search done on time, closing date postponed again.

Now buyer who has not had "as is" explained by realtor wants mold inspection and more cleaning done. Family declines. Realtor completely clueless and gives family false and conflicting information during this period. Finally family demands a firm closing date and buyer claims this is "too much pressure" and backs out.
So it's back to step 2.

To skip all the feverish phone calls and urgent emails from family to the realtor with the realtor whining that "I've never had trouble like this before" let's move ahead to the offer which finally culminated in a sale. Once this offer has been accepted, the house appraised and the loan approved a closing date is set and the realtor tells family "we have all the documents we need, everything is all set".

By now the family realizes that this statement means that there are going to be problems ahead and sure enough one week before closing each member of the family receives a packet of forms from the title company by email with an instruction list on which members need to sign which documents and which ones need to be notarized. The instructions are so incomprehensible that the family requests revised instructions that can be understood by normal human beings. A new set of instructions arrives the next day with instructions that totally contradict the first set. Requests for better instructions result in being told to call the office so "we can walk you through it." This produces an explosion from the family threatening to withhold commission from the realtor for non-performance. Finally this produces crystal clear instructions and the forms are returned from locations scattered all over the continent barely in time for closing.

Finally after three months of blunders, false starts and stupidity the sale closes.

The point of this rather lengthy tale is to ask - Why does it have to be this difficult? Of course corollaries to this question include "Why can't people just do what they get paid for?" and "Why is it so hard to keep incompetent people out of critical positions?" In this case our hypothetical family had a realtor that had to be told what to do and what was expected at every step in the process and who gave false information on numerous occasions, an auctioneer that was a borderline confidence man, appraisers that couldn't manage their work load, one title company that couldn't meet a deadline and one title company that had at least one employee that couldn't write comprehensible English. These aren't volunteers, these are people who get paid to do what they so egregiously fail to do in a satisfactory manner.

The American economy is going down for the third time, and these are the people and thousands like them standing firmly in the way of recovery. Lets let incompetents do hard manual labor and get some intelligence into the places that make capitalism actually work shall we?

Corporate Befuddlement

Today I am sitting in front of a computer screen doing nothing productive at time and a half.

Basically I am being paid to be the human equivalent of a Prozac tablet. Huge code rollout for the software I use last night and today testing is going on on the west coast which started at 4 AM PST and will go on until every possible scenario is tested. What no one has bothered to figure out is that testing every possible scenario would take days. Bear in mind that before this code rollout went live testing on a duplicate of the live environment went on for six weeks. So would common sense not dictate that testing on the live environment only be necessary for each component to be called and not every possible combination? Of course it would. So I think we can safely assume that there is no common sense at work in this particularly dysfunctional corporate world. As the day wears on and the zombificated testers work on into the night will anyone realize that six weeks of testing cannot be duplicated in a single weekend? I'm not holding my breath.

What makes this particularly galling is that I have had to postpone a holiday vacation with my extended family by one day so that I can come into the office and stare at the wall. My presence here is needed because the company I work for practices management by fear. Since they hire middle management not for their knowledge of the work that will be done by their employees but by their longevity and ability to avoid offending anyone higher up the ladder. Thus IT departments find themselves run by people with no knowledge of the technology used by the employees they manage. Consequently on a day like today people are called to sit in their cubes and rot "just in case". In other words because management is terrified someone will ask them a question they cannot answer. For instance "Hey why aren't the names fitting in the fields on the form?" Instead of being able to say "Because the server monkeys didn't load the correct fonts." management needs galley slaves tied to their benches who can spit out the answer. Note that this does not require the galley slave to actually haul on the oars (touch any code) it merely requires them to provide an statement that any moderately functional member of the department considers common knowledge.

The system works perfectly. Not only does the manager not have to know what's going on, the system of mandated overtime (a characteristic I have always considered as indicative of a sweat shop) insures that the manager will never have to learn it. Thus the presence of the code jockeys in the cubes allays the fear that a manager might be exposed as knowing nothing about their department.

I give you one guess as to which industry can afford to waste money in this manner.

..and a Tip of the Hat

So long Steve, the world would have been so different without you. Your vision made it a better place.

Testosterone in the Heartland

Iowa recently passed a law to allow dove hunting. This has stirred up a passel of heated invective back and forth in blogs, letters to editors and other opportunistic venues for spleen. It's not like Iowa good old boys have nothing to hunt, Iowa has enough deer to feed an army of Daniel Boones to the point where they are referred to as "giant rats" because of the damage they do to the environment, gardens, grain storage and the like. There are seasons for pheasant, turkey, quail, rabbit, squirrel, grouse and deer in Iowa not to mention trapping for beaver, otter and bobcat. But this is not enough and the call went out from the mighty men of reknown that they needed a season to hung the mourning dove, an inoffensive little bird slightly bigger than a robin.

For the moment let's forget the fact that these "conservationists" (all avid hunters will try to convince you that only if they are allowed to kill anything that moves can our environment be saved - I have some difficulty with this but maybe I am just being dense) also lobbied mightily not to have their fun spoiled by requiring them to use steel shot thus saving the environment from the hazards of lead pellets.

In a letter to the local rag laughingly referred to as an actual newspaper, a letter was published expressing dismay that people felt the need to kill these birds. I added a comment saying "It takes a big brave man to kill a mourning dove." I suppose I should have known better. The rag in question used to allow sign in with an anonymous screen name (backed by their records regarding email address) but recently changed it to allowing only facebook login. Since I feel that I have nothing to hide I posted my comment under my facebook (real) name and today my comment was answered by one who thoroughly researched my facebook, my website and my blog to comment to all and sundry that this "computer geek who plays bassoon and likes opera and classical music knows nothing about bravery." The conversation went back and forth with his invective building as I posted replies flying way over his head. Finally I told him "you win - I admit that it DOES take a big brave man to kill a mourning dove." That the sarcasm of the last reply was even heavier than the original that started his diatribe completely escaped him. Nevertheless, I now have a gun toting "big brave man" out there somewhere that knows who I am and what city I live in. Now I have to start looking over my shoulder.

I've dealt with guys like this ever since I got my first pair of glasses in fourth grade. In grade school I was beaten regularly for being smaller and "geekier" than the neckless boys would like. When I suddenly got large in high school similar attempts ended in big surprises. I guess that intellectually I knew that the bullies are still out there - big when they are "carrying" but still cowards at heart. It does not surprise me that those that feel that they need to own a gun and kill things for amusement are largely of this ilk.

The sad part is that I, who have never owned a firearm, now feel I may need one to protect me from someone who feels threatened because I questioned his need to shoot small birds.

New Frontiers in Stupidity

We've dealt with stupidity before in these pages, particularly stupidity as it presents itself in the midwest from the belief that you can turn in any direction from any traffic lane to the belief that the number of times the floor buttons are pressed in an elevator determines how many people can get off at a given floor but new examples of new depths of stupidity appear almost daily.

For now we won't belabor the point that the Iowa straw poll indicates that a majority of Iowa republicans are just fine with someone obviously mentally challenged being president of the United States. If this opinion holds across the country then God help us all. Enough said on that topic.

The very latest example of human beings that function at or below the animal level involves children falling out of windows. This summer an epidemic of this has broken out in Des Moines. Every few days on the news we hear that a toddler has fallen from a second story or higher window. Setting aside how this points out that not every human being with working genital organs should be allowed to reproduce, the really mind boggling part is the response of the community. Des Moines is now setting up classes for parents on how to prevent children from falling out of windows. Yes, that's right, you didn't misunderstand - actual classes to teach presumably adult people how not to let their kids take the concrete plunge. What's the curriculum going to be? 101 - Proper use of screens? 102 - Windows, once opened, may be closed - a hands on approach? 103 - Putting down the crack pipe to watch the child - a survey of techniques?

The talking heads on the news seem to be soliciting sympathy for the parents. Sympathy my wrinkled ass! As corrupt and inefficient as Child and Family Services is, seize any kids belonging to these troglodytes and clap mom and dad (if dad is even around) in the slammer until child bearing age is past. The coddling of idiots in our society has got to cease.

Music Therapy

It had been a long tedious work day. Expiring deadlines coupled with unreasonable requests for last minute changes. Members of other departments calling for help rather than solving problems on their own. The ongoing process of new and exciting software bugs appearing requiring fruitless hours of troubleshooting. I was tired. Maybe not physically but certainly mentally fatigued. When I got home the last thing I wanted to do was go out again and exert any effort whatsoever.

But we had a double reed quartet rehearsal scheduled. After a quick frozen pizza refueling (frozen pizza hardly qualifying as food but simply fodder) I packed up the bassoon case, grabbed a stand and crawled into the car. My wife, in much better spirits than I, loaded her oboe and english horn and we headed for the interstate and a thirty minute drive to our second bassoonist's house.

Our double reed quartet is a fledgling effort, as yet gigless and still in search of coherence. We'd not met since the end of our orchestra season in May and I was hoping to make it through the evening with little heavy lifting. All four of us play in the same orchestra. The thirty something accountant second oboe with the blazing technique and amazing sight reading, the mid twenties band teacher second bassoon starting her family and my wife and myself, both of the latter of another generation.

The four of us are good friends and as we assembled instruments and fussed with reeds we caught up with each other. Second oboe was back from a weekend country music festival - wife and I had tales of horrible and amazing experiences playing for a community musical. As we began to rehearse we kept it light playing several tangos, a Gottschalk dance and a Csardas and as we played some of the things that keeps guys like me playing began to happen. When a group like this is formed there is a period when everyone may be playing their parts but the real ensemble, the "oneness" that is the goal of fine performance only comes with time, with familiarity with the other players and learning to feel what the other players will do, how they will form their expression and nuance almost before they do it. And finally, last night after three years of sporadic rehearsals searching for repertoire and a voice as a group, it began to happen. We began to sense how this player would interpret this phrase, that ritard. How two of us should articulate a passage together. How we begin to transcend the written dynamics and shape the rise and fall together. As the two hours came to an end we worked on a Bach prelude and finally for a brief moment we four became one voice - the voice of an organ - the whole much greater than the sum of its parts.

Driving home I was no longer tired. My wife and I didn't speak much - we have been together long enough that we didn't need to. This is why we keep doing it. Because sometimes, sometimes the magic happens.

Watching the sun set on my country.

Having spent the last ten years with my jaw constantly dropping at the machinations of the republican party (yes, grammar police I know it should be capitalized but I refuse to grant even this tiniest morsel of respect) I think I have finally figured out their game plan. As we all know, half the people you meet are below average intelligence and the average has been on a major slide since the late 19th century. As a result of these facts, in the United States of America the vast majority of the population is stupid. Republicans have obviously realized that this is their voter base for the future. If they can just train them to get out of the house, stumble to the polls and read enough of the ballot to vote, they can't lose. How else can you explain the fact that Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin, to name only two, are actually considered viable candidates for the presidency? And really, can you blame the republicans for grabbing this opportunity? You can twist history any way you want - none of your target constituency has any knowledge of it anyway. You can make up statistics, you can lie, you can proclaim family values while divorcing your cancer ridden wife since none of your target audience reads anything deeper than the TV listings and anything negative on the news must be the product of those damn commie liberals. Just hate women, minorities, proclaim your love for Jebus and the mouth breathing shamblers will gather like flies above fresh horse flop.

It's really no news to me that stupid is our country's new direction. I shouldn't be surprised when I see how our government at every level in the midst of a financial crisis refuses to eliminate waste caused by idiotic decisions. For example, how much good can be done for our country at home if our solution to everything in the world that irritates us is to try to bomb it out of existence? How many lives would be saved if instead of putting gruesome pictures on cigarette packages we just stopped subsidizing tobacco growers and manufacturers? How many future depressions or recessions could be avoided if bankers and Wall Street financiers were actually punished for swindling the American public? How much money could be saved and how many lives changed if we stopped pretending that locking up people for 20 years for possession of a roach and funding a completely failed "war on drugs" was having any effect whatsoever? I could go on for pages, and I'm sure anyone intelligent enough to read this blog could put up a long list of their own.

Sadly, I no longer believe that there are enough of us left to stop this slide into the kind of country we always tried to protect ourselves from in the years after World War II. I no longer believe that there are enough intelligent people willing to serve in a government that is paralyzed by partisanship and stupidity, not to mention horrible abuses of position such as attempts to sell Senate seats, molestation of aides and interns, flaunting of complete disregard for morals and ethics and ownership of members of congress by corporate interests which is not concealed nor denied. I've reached an age where I know I won't live long enough to see the full descent into the disappearance of the middle class and the division of the country into a huge poverty class toiling and supporting a tiny class of robber barons but I really see no way short of revolution out of it. Perhaps even my children will not see the ultimate result, but I fear for my grandchildren and all of their generation.