Flipping out, housing + stock market update 8-23-07 10:00 pm

I saw the 3rd episode for Bravo’s Flipping Out where you see Jeff struggle to sell one of his 5 properties he is currently holding. He has a property that he listed at $2.6 million and is offended when someone low balls him an offer. He doesn’t accept and waits till he gets another offer which is close to his price, a $2.4 million. This makes him happy now he can pit the 2 bidders against each other. He describes the strategy to us directly on camera. He eventually gets his asking price of $2.6 million and is happy. He will be able to keep afloat in this tough market. I was really surprised in this tough market he got very lucky. I have to admit, the quality of workmanship in his rehabs are high quality. That maybe the difference of how he will be able to get through this tougher housing economy.

This episode doesn’t show any of his other crazy stuff like psychics, however he does get his dogs $75 doggie massages even though he is stressed about not having cash. His housekeeper kids around with him saying she could do the massages for the dogs if he likes because she watched how they did them. He says then he would pay her the money instead and when she finds out how much he paid them, she is stunned a little bit.

We do see him interact with his semi-estranged father who he sees maybe 3-4 times a year. He is also a real estate investor but he rehabs apartments and rents them out with higher rents afterwards. Jeff doesn’t like these types of flips and even points out to him the poor quality his Dad’s contractors did with the caulking. His father pays him no mind. The relationship seems more of a casual business acquaintance.

The stock market was kind of jumpy today. Seems very sensitive to any housing news that comes out. All three indexes I watch started out on a positive note, kind of a carry over from yesterday. Then some usual profit taking took it down a little bit. After that, a countrywide executive mentioned the recession will probably happen because of bad mortgages and poof the market scooted down for most of the day. The dow came back to almost positive territory. Again the closing numbers don’t tell the whole story for the day. If you judged solely on the closing numbers, it looked like nothing really happened.