The FHA has stepped in to the role subprime lenders used to fill in our housing market. Will the FHA suffer the same fate?
Irvine Home Address … 708 LARKRIDGE Irvine, CA 92618
Resale Home Price …… $286,000
{book1}
A court is in session, a verdict is in
No appeal on the docket today
Just my own sin
The walls are cold and pale
The cage made of steel
Screams fill the room
Alone I drop and kneel
Silence now the sound
My breath the only motion around
Demons cluttering around
My face showing no emotion
Shackled by my sentence
Expecting no return
Here there is no penance
My skin begins to burn
My Own Prison — Creed
Underwater homeowners who do not walk away are trapped in a prison of their own choosing. Our Government, the Federal Reserve and the lending oligarchs have conspired to make that choice for people and keep them in perpetual debt servitude.
One author whose voice I admire on the housing bubble is Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He has written a great piece titled, FHA Troubles Are Likely to Curtail Demand, that is the focus of today’s post.
Most modification plans leave homeowners without equity and paying excessive housing costs.
The Federal Housing Authority has been taking steps over the last month to tighten its standards on the loans it guarantees, most notably by dropping several initiators who have had especially bad track records. While this is a necessary and appropriate step given its financial situation, tighter standards from the FHA will have a dampening impact on the housing market in the coming year.
Remarkably, little attention has been given to the extent to which the FHA filled the gap created by the collapse of the subprime market. At the peak of the bubble in 2006, subprime mortgages accounted for almost a quarter of all mortgages. This share fell to near zero in subsequent years. The FHA, which had been marginalized by the explosion of subprime, saw its share increase from less than 3 percent of the market in 2006 to 23 percent this year. In a context of falling house prices and double-digit unemployment, this rapid expansion virtually guaranteed that the FHA would face problems.
Now that the FHA is tightening up, its market share will presumably fall back towards its historic level in the 8-10 percent range. While some FHA borrowers will be able to find other loans, many will not. If the FHA market share drops by 10 percentage points and half of the would-be FHA borrowers cannot find mortgages elsewhere, this implies a drop in demand of 5 percent, or more than 250,000 potential buyers. This will have a substantial impact on the housing market.
Subprime crowded out FHA during the bubble. FHA fell from
its historic norm of 8%-10% of the market to being only 3%. Why go
through the brain damage of FHA (the application process is rigorous)
when the application process for subprime was nil?
Now that subprime
has imploded, FHA has filled in as the only lender willing to accept less than 20% down, so their market share has gone up to replace subprime. Can low downpayment programs prop up a falling real estate market?
Monthly Percentage Change of Owners’ Equivalent Rent, 2000-2009
The continuing decline in nominal rents is making it ever more apparent that the main beneficiaries of mortgage modification programs are likely to be banks. Under some of the proposals being discussed, the government would pay up to $50,000 to keep homeowners in their homes. In the vast majority of these situations, even after a loan has been modified, homeowners will be paying considerably more on their mortgage and other ownership costs than they would to rent the same home. In the markets that were most inflated by the bubble, this difference can be well over $1,000 a month. In other words, each month that the government keeps the family in their home as a homeowner is a further drain on their income and savings.
This is what I have been saying here at the IHB for years. To me, the most obvious sign of the bubble was paying a premium for ownership. When rents are less than the cost of ownership, appreciation is required to compensate for the additional cost. Once appreciation goes away, it is crazy to pay more to own than to rent. As many have pointed out, rents are falling, and cashflow values fall along with them. This trend will continue until the recession is over locally.
Back to the post:
Also, in the vast majority of cases, homes are sufficiently underwater such that there is no reasonable prospect that the homeowner will ever build up equity in their home. It seems that many policymakers even now have not come to the grips with the housing bubble. They fail to recognize that the surge in house prices from 1996 to 2006 was a one-time blip that is now in the process of being corrected. There is no more reason to expect that house prices will rise back to bubble-inflated levels than there is to believe that the NASDAQ will return to the peaks of the Internet bubble in 2000. As a result, most of the homeowners who receive modifications are likely to find that they either have to bring cash to a closing, arrange a short sale, or default at some future date.
If mortgage modifications cause homeowners to pay more money for housing for each month they stay in their home and still leave them with no equity when they sell their home, it is difficult to see how this policy helps homeowners. The money that the government pays out is going to banks and other lenders, allowing them to collect much more money on their loans than would likely be the case without modifications. Unlike the TARP funds, which were loans that had to be repaid with interest, the money that the government pays in modifications is simply given to banks.
Policymakers who are interested in helping homeowners facing foreclosure must focus on developing policies that either ensure that homeowners will be paying comparable amounts to the rent on a similar unit and/or that they will actually have equity in their home at the point where they sell it. A policy that both raises monthly housing costs and leaves homeowners with no reasonable prospect of accruing equity is not helping homeowners.
The only reason people are not pissed off about loan modification programs is because they still believe houses will be back at peak values in a couple of years. There are many people who are trying to stay in houses that are dramatically underwater because they believe the rate of appreciation they witnessed during the bubble will return soon. With the direct and unprecedented manipulation of mortgage interest rates by the Federal Reserve, many homedebtors believe the Government has their back when in reality, the Government is bending them over.
I am of the opinion that the FHA is going to be forced to tighten lending standards and increase downpayment requirements because if they don’t the FHA will lose money just like subprime, and the US taxpayer will finally call an end to the madness — years later, some bean counter will produce a report claiming the FHA made money while stabilizing the market; the report will be bullshit.
The road ahead is clearly through the FHA. Stabilizing the bottom of the market is a foundational step. After we reach the bottom, those that purchased will gain equity and begin the chain of move-ups that signifies a healthy real estate market. We are many years from that level of market stability.
Irvine Home Address … 708 LARKRIDGE Irvine, CA 92618
Resale Home Price … $286,000 
Income Requirement ……. $59,760
Downpayment Needed … $10,010
3.5% Down FHA Financing
Home Purchase Price … $410,000
Home Purchase Date …. 7/29/2005
Net Gain (Loss) ………. $(141,160)
Percent Change ………. -30.2%
Annual Appreciation … -7.9%
Mortgage Interest Rate ………. 5.08%
Monthly Mortgage Payment … $1,495
Monthly Cash Outlays ………… $2,080
Monthly Cost of Ownership … $1,690
Property Details for 708 LARKRIDGE Irvine, CA 92618
Beds 1
Baths 1 full 1 part baths
Size 868 sq ft
($329 / sq ft)
Lot Size n/a
Year Built 1999
Days on Market 6
Listing Updated 12/14/2009
MLS Number S598717
Property Type Condominium, Townhouse, Residential
Community Oak Creek
Tract Oakp
According to the listing agent, this listing is a bank owned (foreclosed) property.
Elegant townhome in the highly sought-after and gated Oak Creek community featuring a spacious master suite, one & one-half baths, sun-splashed patio & direct-access two car garage with custom storage cabinets. Large living & dining room with recessed lighting and sliding glass door access to balcony. Beautiful designer upgrades include hardwood floors, custom paint, plantation shutters and custom baseboards! Gourtmet kitchen, opens up to the living room, boasting honey-maple cabinetry, built in microwave, pantry and recessed lighting. Spacious master suite with walk-in closet and master bath with dual sinks. Just steps to resort-style pools, spas, fitness center, tennis, basketball, volleyball, award-winning schools and Oak Creek Village Center with Gelson’s Market and upscale shops & restaurants.
I wonder if people will ever understand that the ONLY way you gain REAL “equity” is by paying down your loan and NOT through “appreciation”.
Let’s say you buy a place (to live in) for $100k with nothing down. All you can afford is a $100k mortgage.
Somehow, it MAGICALLY doubles in value to $200k after 2 short years.
Score!
Or is it?
You sell the place for $200k
Pay your 6% and walk with $88k after paying off the 100k loan because all you paid over the 2 years was “interest”.
You’re fucked.
You’re already $12k short of being able to buy your old place back because now you’d need a $112k mortgage.
Move up buyer? Not a chance.
Capiche?
“You’re already $12k short…”
Your calculations are fundamentally bogus.
You had to compare ownership vs rent. For example, if You rent apartment for $1200, then You will end $28.8K short after 2 years. It may be worse then “$12k short”.
Also, both “equity” and “appreciation” are figments of imagination. Not just “appreciation”.
Reality looks like:
Profit = (Sale price – Buy price) + (Ownership gains – Ownership expenses)
Owner may:
– pay $30K to repair roof
– rent 1 bedroom to friend for $300 a month
– receive $8K tax credit
…
It may be ever more complicated.
For example, my friend was renting, but his wife wanted house. What was next? Divorce. So financial impact of divorce must be added to his equation. Illogical, but fact.
“Your calculations are fundamentally bogus.”
You are ignoring the consumptive value of owning in your comparison. Both owners and renters consume real estate; owners pay this rent to a bank in the form of interest, and renters directly pay rent. The owner also spend the $28.8K the renter did to live in the property, unless they own the property outright.
Scenario:
1. Guy rents apartment from Apartment Company. So he is renter of property.
2. Also guy is major shareholder of Apartment Company. So he is indirect owner of property, and he can extract money in form of dividends and capital gains.
3. Guy hired himself as CEO of Apartment Company. So he can extract money in form of salary and benefits.
You said: “renters directly pay rent”. Guy can set his rent to $1 and reduce salary by $1199 to compensate. How do You like it?
I think E’s point (and it’s a valid one) is that many home owners don’t actually benefit from rising home prices. In particular young home owners most of whose lifetime housing consumption is ahead of them are typically hurt by rapidly rising prices. Really only people who are about to sell and rent or sell and downsize really benefit.
Thank you.
That’s what I was trying to say in an oversimplified manner.
Who wins with rising home prices?
Well…the downsizers and the STR (sell to rent) crowd may do ok…but I’m guessing that’s a small percentage overall.
The property tax collector and the insurance companies LOVE it when you tell them how much MORE your house is worth.
They make more insuring and taxing a 200k home over a $100k home.
Of course…prop13 makes it a little different in California on the tax end.
Your reading skills are fundamentally flawed.
This was not a RENT vs BUY scenario.
Furthermore…
Show me a 100k residence anywhere that rents for $1200.
Other than allowing lower FICO scores to qualify, FHA is NOT the same as subprime.
The author says it best: “Why go through the brain damage of FHA (the application process is rigorous) when the application process for subprime was nil?”
FHA borrowers must PROVE income (with more documentation than even Prime loans). The borrower must prove the loan is affordable with consistent/stable income and the debt ratios are kept in check. Employment and Employment history is fully verified. Meanwhile, subprime allowed ‘stated’ income or very little documentation (you could qualify by just showing “deposits” going in the bank).
Also, appraisals are scrutinized and preformed only by licensed FHA appaisers (who are afraid to lose that lic.). Home cannot be is disrepair, not even peeling paint. On the other hand, subprime appraisals were rife with fraud… No one was checking back then.
My point, is that it’s not a fair comparison.
HOWEVER, FHA may fail at a higher rate becuase of the ridiculously low down-payments required! But if that happens, it will be because of strategic defaults… The borrower’s will have been fully vetted and CAN afford the home. Therefore, if they default, it must be becuase they are suddenly underwater or unexpectadley unemployed.
If it weren’t for such little skin in the game, even the unemployed would probably fight harder to make payments, but they now have no incentive to do so!
The point of the post isn’t that FHA = subprime, but that FHA will fail like subprime for some of the same reasons. Fortunately, FHA does have good underwriting standards, and it does not share that flaw with subprime; however, FHA with its low downpayment cushion will likely see high default rates when prices continue to drop. FHA will not fail as spectacularly as subprime, but when the total cost to the taxpayer is revealed (the real cost), it will not look like a success.
PS. I think someone needs to figure out at what minimum percentage people are least likely to walk-away when times get tough, and that needs to be the new standard.
Is it 5%, 10%?
If I had $50,000 (10% of OC median home) tied-up in a home and lost my job, I would probably start draining my 401k to keep it hoping to find a new job ASAP.
If I have invested… Well, we already know how that ends (jingle mail!).
$286,000, prices are coming down, but still another 6 figure drop to go in order to get homes to the value they *should* be at.
Proposition 13 needs to be repealed….yesterday, because it encourages people to buy as many homes as possible for investment. As the corporate world goes with monopolies and huge companies stepping on competition, so the housing world goes with investment.
Loose lending to people who couldn’t even afford the OLD prices without the bubble was sure to end badly. They KNEW this. Creating toxic loans that were unsustainable unless wealth was created out of thin air, were doomed to end with defaults. They KNEW this.
If you knew someone couldn’t pay back $1000, and then you loaned them $10,000 who is *more* at fault?
Stop trying to sh1t me, the fraud happened from the top down and now ALL of us are getting financially raped through our corrupt government that is in cahoots with the banksters.
Throwing rocks at your neighbors will only exacerbate the problems and does NOTHING to fix them. When you see your neighbors losing their home, make sure you run out there and tell them the same exact things you post here and see how long you remain standing. Don’t let the corrupt elite get you to blame the victims.
Exactly, we’re ALL getting financially raped…but it’s the homeowners that all cry for cramdowns. I’d bet a homeowner with a juicy cramdown would still list their homes at WTF prices.
Hey OrangeRenter, I agree that more people wouldn’t walk if they had put down 20%. I myself put down $100,000 on a home in Lake Forest, bought in 2004, and am still upside down, hence the reason I haven’t walked, but if the economy takes another tank, I may very well wash my hands of the $100,000 and default.
It’s not hard to figure out. Let’s say the mortgage is $3,000. If you can go 12 months without paying, you save $36,000, OR you get an IMMEDIATE 36% return on your money. Your INVESTMENT at least will pay back 36%, so in actuality, you only lose $64,000. If you can string it along longer, your investment pays you back more. At minimum, it takes 6 months to get someone out of their home and that is still an $18,000 return. Throw in a HELOC and the losses are even less, but it is still a LOSS.
For the people gaming the system, it’s 100% profit if they put 0% down. Yup, and I’m the bad guy 🙂
The powers to be just has to keep that up for another election cycle.
With the govt backed high house price supports and moving liability to the feds, there are lots of winners.
1. the banks win big time (no bad house loans to cover),
2. the “homeowner” wins by selling the house at inflated prices,
3. the buyer with 5% or less down wins by free rent for at least a year,
4. the RE agent wins with commissions,
5. mortgage broker wins with the 1% fee.
Only lossers will be purchasers with more than 15% down and the future taxpayers that aren’t in the above 5 catagories.
Do it for the children — your children and grandchildren need debt. Debt is wealth, right is wrong.
God this sounds like we are a banana republic.
Not yet, but if Obama has his way, we will be one. If the healthcare bill passes, it will be one more nail in the coffin for privacy advocates. The gub’ment wants to have a central database of ALL people in this country and this will be the beginnings of that. You WILL have to register or face massive fines. Welcome to the Socialist Republic of America.
“Unlike the TARP funds, which were loans that had to be repaid with interest, the money that the government pays in modifications is simply given to banks.”
That’s been the own idea of the elections, the banksters have gotten the a huge ROE, i.e., political contributions. The banksters continue to back the winning party or choose the winning party.
The rules of changed:
1. Work hard for a company and retire with defined benefits.
2. Corp has strategic defaults and bk to void the pension plans and wage agreement, while CA increases wages and benefits above old corp plans. Exec get bonus for “saving the company.”
3. Corp has forced self directed plans with match in managed plans with high fees and set sectors. Exec get bonus and separate retirement plan with difined lots of cash present and future.
4. Market drops like a rock and leave contributer hold the bag. Exec. get retention bonus.
5. Table is turned in non-recourse state with HELOC abuse and Refinance walk away. Bank Exec get retention bonus during downsizing.
6. End of Housing Ponzi scheme with lots of first time home buyers. No one else scam — wait get immigrants, OSC with cash!
7. Housing market takes down other markets. Bail out banks at all cost. 0% interest loan, loan modifications that benefit 90% to the banks, 4% to the RE agents, 1% to brokers, 2% to trades people and 2% to the “homeowner.” 140% loss for the regular working taxpayer after inflation adjustment. Other taxpayers/banksters have access to 0 to 1% Fed loans for investing in stocks. Inflate the stocks then dump to #3 and start another cycle.
Newbie…with posts like that, I’m suspecting you really aren’t a newbie. Well written. The content of what you wrote makes me feel ill, but it about sums up the game plan.
Where’s MTV with the “Rock the Vote?” It’s made such a HUGE difference with the chosen one in there….LOL not. The public just lost the 3 card monte game…nothing to see here, move along. Hamster wheels need to be spun more.
Scenario.
Irvine homeowners with identical $500K houses:
1. 30-Year Fixed, 20% down, 5.385% APR
2. 30-Year Fixed FHA, 3.5% down, 5.920% APR
3. 15-Year Fixed, 20% down, 4.727% APR
4. 5-Year ARM, 20% down, 3.638% APR
5. 5-Year ARM FHA, 3.5% down, 3.347% APR
All strategically default after 2 years.
Question: Who is winner and who is loser?
:coolsmile:
Paid (approximately):
1. 100000 + 24 * 2208.82 = $153011.68
2. _17500 + 24 * 2930.74 = $_87837.76
3. 100000 + 24 * 3059.98 = $173439.52
4. 100000 + 24 * 1909.67 = $145832.08
5. _17500 + 24 * 2527.93 = $_78170.32
Answer: Winner is 5-Year ARM FHA. Losers are US taxpayers.
FHA will NOT default, regardless of any losses. It is backed by the full faith of the U.S. government which has infinite resources at its disposal as has been shown. Granted, this may dilute everybody’s networth but the treasury won’t go broke. Savers get a double wham as they get near-zero return on their money. We feel the pain now somewhat which is good I guess (Why pass all the pain onto the children??)
The FHA will not default. It’s the “homeowners” who got the FHA loan at 3.5% down, who will be defaulting. The taxpayers will be forced to make good on those bad loans on over priced houses. Bad loans moved from private(publically traded, but control by a few people) to the liability of the US govt. with the new home sales and loan modification.
BHO talked about no forgiveness on govt. backed loans before the elections, but now it’s profit the banks at any cost via loan modifications (upfront fees paid to the bank and liablity moved to the govt.). If the new loans had a no forgiveness clause, people whould think twice before bidding up the price on an alread overpriced houses and the banks would be stuck with the paying for the bad loans. Prices would dramatically be reduced to people’s income levels.
Stock investor,
The Homeowner with those defaults got to live in the house for about 9 month (in Irvine)to 24 month(if they are in IE or know how to game the system) before being forced to move out. That’s free rent and PT for a year. Say market rents at $2000/month x 14 month = $28,000 in saving.
If 0% down = net profit of $28,000 (no longer likely)
If 3.5% down on $400k = $14,000 net profit.
If 3.5% with $8000 tax credit = $24,000 net profit with walkaway and gaming system for 14 months.
But it even better,
Newport Beach Puchase in 1998 at $600k
Refinance in 2004 on first for 2.2 million
Stops paying in late 2008,
Walks away with 1.6 million in the pocket and 9 months of free rent.
TRidge: 1.4 million purchased by a loan officer.
Fills house with renter/roommates and refinances at 2 million after a year.
Stops paying, but still collecting rent.
Walks away with 600k in the pocket plus rents and free housing. Also trashes house.
Poor victims with 600k and 1.6 million and the poor banks.
The govt. expects the working taxpayer to make good on these bad loans and make the banks more than whole?
“got to live in the house for about 9 month … to 24 month … before being forced to move out”
System rewards criminals and punishes honest citizens. It is even worse than I expected.
:bug:
Also, there’s a new god in town. “It is backed by the full faith of the U.S. government which has infinite resources at its disposal as has been shown.”
A Low, Dishonest Decade
Stock-market indices are not much good as yardsticks of social progress, but as another low, dishonest decade expires let us note that, on 2000s first day of trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 11357 while the Nasdaq Composite Index stood at 4131, both substantially higher than where they are today. The Nasdaq went on to hit 5000 before collapsing with the dot-com bubble, the first great Wall Street disaster of this unhappy decade. The Dow got north of 14000 before the real-estate bubble imploded.
And it was supposed to have been such an awesome time, too! Back in the late ’90s, in the crescendo of the Internet boom, pundit and publicist alike assured us that the future was to be a democratized, prosperous place. Hierarchies would collapse, they told us; the individual was to be empowered; freed-up markets were to be the common man’s best buddy.
Such clever hopes they were. As a reasonable anticipation of what was to come they meant nothing. But they served to unify the decade’s disasters, many of which came to us festooned with the flags of this bogus idealism.
Before “Enron” became synonymous with shattered 401(k)s and man-made electrical shortages, the public knew it as a champion of electricity deregulation—a freedom fighter! It was supposed to be that most exalted of corporate creatures, a “market maker”; its “capacity for revolution” was hymned by management theorists; and its TV commercials depicted its operations as an extension of humanity’s quest for emancipation.
Similarly, both Bank of America and Citibank, before being recognized as “too big to fail,” had populist histories of which their admirers made much. Citibank’s long struggle against the Glass-Steagall Act was even supposed to be evidence of its hostility to banking’s aristocratic culture, an amusing image to recollect when reading about the $100 million pay reportedly pocketed by one Citi trader in 2008.
The Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal showed us the same dynamics at work in Washington. Here was an apparent believer in markets, working to keep garment factories in Saipan humming without federal interference and saluted for it in an op-ed in the Saipan Tribune as “Our freedom fighter in D.C.”
But the preposterous populism is only one part of the equation; just as important was our failure to see through the ruse, to understand how our country was being disfigured.
Ensuring that the public failed to get it was the common theme of at least three of the decade’s signature foul-ups: the hyping of various Internet stock issues by Wall Street analysts, the accounting scandals of 2002, and the triple-A ratings given to mortgage-backed securities.
The grand, overarching theme of the Bush administration—the big idea that informed so many of its sordid episodes—was the same anti-supervisory impulse applied to the public sector: regulators sabotaged and their agencies turned over to the regulated.
The public was left to read the headlines and ponder the unthinkable: Could our leaders really have pushed us into an unnecessary war? Is the republic really dividing itself into an immensely wealthy class of Wall Street bonus-winners and everybody else? And surely nobody outside of the movies really has the political clout to write themselves a $700 billion bailout.
What made the oughts so awful, above all, was the failure of our critical faculties. The problem was not so much that newspapers were dying, to mention one of the lesser catastrophes of these awful times, but that newspapers failed to do their job in the first place, to scrutinize the myths of the day in a way that might have prevented catastrophes like the financial crisis or the Iraq war.
The folly went beyond the media, though. Recently I came across a 2005 pamphlet written by historian Rick Perlstein berating the big thinkers of the Democratic Party for their poll-driven failure to stick to their party’s historic theme of economic populism. I was struck by the evidence Mr. Perlstein adduced in the course of his argument. As he tells the story, leading Democratic pollsters found plenty of evidence that the American public distrusts corporate power; and yet they regularly advised Democrats to steer in the opposite direction, to distance themselves from what one pollster called “outdated appeals to class grievances and attacks upon corporate perfidy.”
This was not a party that was well-prepared for the job of iconoclasm that has befallen it. And as the new bunch muddle onward—bailing out the large banks but (still) not subjecting them to new regulatory oversight, passing a health-care reform that seems (among other, better things) to guarantee private insurers eternal profits—one fears they are merely presenting their own ample backsides to an embittered electorate for kicking.
Write to thomas@wsj.com
As HAMP Fails, Treasury Flails
From Bloomberg: Homeowners Get More Time for Home-Loan Modifications
Mortgage servicers must give U.S. homeowners more time before kicking them out of the government’s loan-modification program … Servicers can’t cancel an active Home Affordable trial modification scheduled to expire before Jan. 31 for any reason other than property eligibility requirements, according to a posting today on a government Web site. …
“The Treasury Department believes that this further guidance and associated requirements will provide more certainty and transparency regarding the final determination of eligibility for borrowers in trial modifications,” Meg Reilly, a department spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement.
Extend and pretend. Fail and flail.
I was feeling a renter’s remorse but maybe then it’s a good thing afterall that we renewed our lease for one more year!
Most FHA borrowers I see are either 1st timers who have no clear cut idea what it costs to own, or second time buyers who don’t have a great deal of cash.
The first group is either going to walk, or subsist on Top Ramen for a while until they die of sodium poisoning. The second group who isn’t very good with their cash are going to stay that way, whittling down their reserves until capitulation. Why else is FNMA’s default rate in the 7’s while FHA by some accounts is double that?
My .02c
Soylent Green Is People
“The first group is either going to walk, or subsist on Top Ramen for a while until they die of sodium poisoning” I almost dropped my laptop I was laugh so much, thanks
The government is spending a lot of money and I think there may be a risk of hyper-inflation in our future. If this is the case, owning a real asset may not be a bad decision.
Nice.
A brand new agent (although he doesn’t identify himself as such) who was a knife catcher last summer on a 400k Anaheim condo.