Income up in Tulsa

[iplaw]

quote:Originally posted by aoxamaxoa

Mortgage situation has changed dramatically the last week. Terms are going to be very difficult for anyone making less than $100,000 a year who want anything in excess of $400,000. Many are over leveraged already.

That is not a negative comment. Just reality setting in.....

Who the hell buys a 400K house on 100K salary?  Only someone who's spending the remainder on crack...

[aoxamaxoa]

quote:Originally posted by iplaw

quote:Originally posted by aoxamaxoa

Mortgage situation has changed dramatically the last week. Terms are going to be very difficult for anyone making less than $100,000 a year who want anything in excess of $400,000. Many are over leveraged already.

That is not a negative comment. Just reality setting in.....

Who the hell buys a 400K house on 100K salary?  Only someone who's spending the remainder on crack...

Uh, people with low net worth....?

[brunoflipper]

quote:Originally posted by iplaw

quote:Originally posted by aoxamaxoa

Mortgage situation has changed dramatically the last week. Terms are going to be very difficult for anyone making less than $100,000 a year who want anything in excess of $400,000. Many are over leveraged already.

That is not a negative comment. Just reality setting in.....

Who the hell buys a 400K house on 100K salary?  Only someone who's spending the remainder on crack...

dummies who've been convinced that they can afford to pay 50% of their take home on a mortgage payment (don't forget the two new cars financed for 10 years)... it is the era of the "house poor," unreal expectations and a sense of entitlement (cribs?) has pushed many a person to  attempt to live well beyond their means...

the numbers make sense to me... my posse (family/friends) is all making more than ever in tulsa... mind you, they work in a wide range of industries and have a range of salaries... but, anecdotaly, they are all getting further ahead of the game...

hell, i've had not one, not two, but three people in to look at shifting from other midwest locales to take jobs in tulsa because the pay is too good to ignore...

[okcpulse]

Let me chime in here before lunch ends.  The sources are not from the Tulsa World.  The source comes from only one single entity...

The Bureau of Economic Analysis in Washington, D.C.  

Here is the site... www.bea.gov

Read it and weep.  Get off of Tulsa's back.

[mr.jaynes]

quote:Originally posted by brunoflipper

quote:Originally posted by iplaw

quote:Originally posted by aoxamaxoa

Mortgage situation has changed dramatically the last week. Terms are going to be very difficult for anyone making less than $100,000 a year who want anything in excess of $400,000. Many are over leveraged already.

That is not a negative comment. Just reality setting in.....

Who the hell buys a 400K house on 100K salary?  Only someone who's spending the remainder on crack...

dummies who've been convinced that they can afford to pay 50% of their take home on a mortgage payment (don't forget the two new cars financed for 10 years)... it is the era of the "house poor," unreal expectations and a sense of entitlement (cribs?) has pushed many a person to  attempt to live well beyond their means...

the numbers make sense to me... my posse (family/friends) is all making more than ever in tulsa... mind you, they work in a wide range of industries and have a range of salaries... but, anecdotaly, they are all getting further ahead of the game...

hell, i've had not one, not two, but three people in to look at shifting from other midwest locales to take jobs in tulsa because the pay is too good to ignore...

Like a friend of mine in T-Town pointed out-it's a matter of wants versus needs: do I need this thing, or do I just want it really bad? Put things in that perspective, and it all sorta takes care of itself.

[Conan71]

quote:Originally posted by aoxamaxoa

Mortgage situation has changed dramatically the last week. Terms are going to be very difficult for anyone making less than $100,000 a year who want anything in excess of $400,000. Many are over leveraged already.

That is not a negative comment. Just reality setting in.....

Absolutely correct, and no not a negative, just mortgage lenders coming back down to reality and realizing overly-permissive lending practices are starting to bite them in the behind.

One anecdotal example I can give is a fellow I know who was building a $1.2mm house in Wagoner county.  He was real proud of himself because he was doing one of the popular interest-only loans so he could keep his payment somewhere around $4K per month (still seems a bit low to me).  Long and short of it is, he was using the same rationale that people in areas which were experiencing explosive real estate prices were doing:  Get in on a payment you could afford, cash out in two or three years at a profit as the real estate market was rising.

He fails to realize that there's not a high-demand for 12K sq. ft. homes, nor $1.2mm- plus price tags in Wagoner Co., Oklahoma.  Turns out the builder has jacked him around, it's still not finished two years in to the process, and he's about to wind up defaulting.  Poor personal decision.  

Right now there are people in places like Miami, Denver, and So. Cal. who are major- upside-down on their interest-only notes because those markets have cooled off.  Surveying the Miami Herald a week or so back, I noticed that prices are definitely softer than they were a year ago.  Not necessarily a reflection on the local business economy and personal income, but when you have a glut of housing on the market, it's already over-built and there are plans for more development- well law of supply and demand takes hold.

[iplaw]

Speaking of mortgage rates, I have a friend who is a CFP here in town who told me at lunch yesterday that his aquaintances in the bigger firms like Morgan Stanley were told to cancel any vacation they may have had planned for this summer or fall.

Apparently some of these larger firms took out loans and invested in funds...unfortunately a lot of these loans were heavily leveraged on the backside with mortgage liabilities...not going to be a pretty picture for some of these guys.

[Conan71]

Lenders never seem to learn.  Seems to be about a seven to ten year cycle: Some sort of new promiscuous high-risk lending practice starts with great returns.  People invest in it.  More lenders get involved, more investors get involved then the bubble bursts and it's a clamp-down for a few years until short attention spans allow this all to start up again.

Greed will trump common sense every time.

[sauerkraut]

quote:Originally posted by cannon_fodder

Still no one has answered the question:  how could this be bad news?

And AMP... FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.
THIS IS NOT THE TULSA WORLD STATISTIC.  The World ran the article when the stats come out.

According to the breakdown stats given by the BEA, the median income is up.  The average income is up.  Every bracket is up.

What the hell counts as good news around here?  There is plenty of bad news in the world that we don't need to turn EVERYTHING into negative news.  No, the picture is not immaculate.  But Tulsa is better off than 297 other metro areas (including OKC, Albuquerque and other cities similar to use) AND has a faster rate of icnome growth.

HOW IS THAT BAD NEWS?
HOW IS THAT BAD NEWS?
HOW IS THAT BAD NEWS?
HOW IS THAT BAD NEWS?
HOW IS THAT BAD NEWS?
HOW IS THAT BAD NEWS?
HOW IS THAT BAD NEWS?

Omaha, NE. almost always out rates Tulsa in just about every catagory. Omaha's out door R&R are right up there with the big boys.

[aoxamaxoa]

quote:Originally posted by okcpulse

Let me chime in here before lunch ends.  The sources are not from the Tulsa World.  The source comes from only one single entity...

The Bureau of Economic Analysis in Washington, D.C.  

Here is the site... www.bea.gov

Read it and weep.  Get off of Tulsa's back.

Like I trust THAT government cronie staffed agency.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070810/pl_nm/economy_bush_dc_2;_ylt=AiZJVwJN0JPJHn6DJH_LKYEE1vAI

I was NEVER on Tulsa's back! I was on Whirled info's back. I might be hopping onto Bushco's back. K?

[bokworker]

AOX... I did not see the BEA cited in the article you attached. Did I miss it? While I would agree that the BEA may be filled with beaurecrats... it is not the type of agency that gets staffed with "cronies".

[USRufnex]

quote:Originally posted by AMP

Sorry you experienced a problem with not having a pair of gloves that day. I know the folks that ran that office, and they were all very considerate and aware of safety needs. Afterall they were paying for your work comp insurance, and a claim affected their modifier on all their hours of all their employees, so it was to their benefit to make sure no one sustained any on job injuries.

Dang, AMP... OMG!... LOL!

Thanks for giving me job-related advice based on a personal story I told that actually happened TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO!... FYI, "Labor Ready" may be a perfectly fine company these days, but "Anybody Anytime" 25 years ago was a daily-cash, show-up-in-the-morning, get-your-drinkin-money-at-night place that couldn't care less about it's workers, and I didn't know where I was working until I actually got there... please don't take up for the selfish, egotistical, self-centered butt-wipes who made pretty good money driving their AA vans to ORU so a buncha wine-o's and homeless skidrow bums could get paid daily minimum-wage cash so they could buy a bottle of Colt '45 or Wild Irish Rose while eating hospital patients' leftovers... or in my case as a young stud, could buy some Little Kings, underage of course... mmm, that green-colored Wild Irish Rose was a taste treat, though... memories, like the corner of my... []



Ah, the good ol' days... back when I was temping at Anybody Anytime, drivin' my 1973 LTD Brougham to Skelly Stadium to watch the Tulsa Roughnecks play the New York Cosmos, Chicago Sting and Tampa Bay Rowdies.... buying a roll of Scott t.p., a squirt gun and a newspaper (was tempted to dress up as Meatloaf, but never actually did it)... to go to the Rocky Horror Picture Show (@ Fontana?!?)....

Let's Do The Time Warp Again!?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDCcb3zRl8U

--"true backbone of Tulsa?"

No.  The temp-industrial section of Tulsa's economy working for jobs at or attached to minimum wage in 120-degree summer heat without A/C qualifies as the armpit of Tulsa's economy, not the backbone... and it's oh sooooooo sad to watch those two-bit places on North Sheridan going out of business due to competition from a growing temp company like Express... and maybe due to the fact that as Tulsa's living standards get better, the HR scumsuckers at the bottom of Tulsa's aquarium are no longer needed...

Once again, good news.

p.s.... Oh, Bruno, if you think I'm nuts for soccer, looka this...
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/BWWB1/signatures.html

[Conan71]

USR- great posts.  Only disagree on one thing:

Jeff Daniels says Michigan is a great place to be, so that's gotta be true, right? []

I've been up to the GR/Rockford area and if that's the area you were considering vs. Tulsa, that was a no-brainer.  We've got a guy who works for us from the area.  Says he'd never go back after being here for the last three or four years.

[TheArtist]

quote:Originally posted by Double A

quote:Originally posted by kakie

Per capita or personal income that is discussed here is not the same as median income.  It is the income received by all persons from all sources. The sum of net earnings by place of residence, rental income of persons, personal dividend income, personal interest income, and personal current transfer receipts.

Therefore,  the rich may be getting a lot richer while those middle and low income folks are losing ground.  There is more data that needs to be taken into account - such as median income to get a better pictures. I don't have those figures handy but I'll look for them. I don't think it is as rosy as you think.  Consider the following:

"Over the last 20 years, the net worth of the top two percentile of American families nearly doubled, from $1,071,000 in 1984 to $2,100,500 in 2005. But the poorest quarter of American families lost ground over the same period, with their 2005 net worth below their 1984 net worth, measured in constant 2005 dollars.

The poorest ten percent of families actually had a negative net worth---more liabilities than assets. The poorest 5 percent of American households had a negative net worth of a little more than $1,000 in 1984, compared to nearly $9,000 in 2005.

"These findings show that the wealth gap is increasing steadily," said Stafford, a senior research scientist at ISR and director of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which is funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Aging."

Shocking, isn't it?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070807171936.htm

That's sums up my opinion on this report. I am happy to report that wages and benefits are increasing in the building trades, due to HB 1804 IMO.

Why do you say that?

[AMP]

I doubt if Bob Funk had much to do with a few start up temp agencies on North Sheridan closing up shop.  Nothing against Express, matter of fact the assistant manager of AA worked for us for 16 years prior to moving to Express, where he is today.  I served as the Legislative Representative for the Oklahoma Staffing Industry for three years, and was Vice President for four.  

Would not be so quick to point fingers at the temp agencies that pay daily advances.  Withoug them there would be a much larger gap between the homeless and the day labores.   Remember at that time the companies they serviced were who set the pay rates, not the temp services.  

Trust me, the margins of profit are driven by the total wage, so the higher skilled and higer paied employees earned the agency and it's staff more income.  Most employees in that industry as with the majority of sales driven industries are paid on a commission basis. Just like automotive sales and mechanics.  Perform or go hungry, there is no guarantee.

There are all kinds of jobs that need to be performed in a city, some are better than others.  As I stated, we filled mostly Skilled and Semi Skilled positions, but also had many minimum wage job orders that came in.  Just like a store, some folks want Porter House, others choose not so lean hamburger meat, but most stores offer a wide variety. Why Baskin Robbins had 51 Flavors.    

Most people would be very suprised to see how many people on a daily basis are working for Temp agencies in Tulsa.  We had over 3,200 employees in a single year, and we were one of 35 agencies in Tulsa at the time.