Spot The Speculators #56 - "The hairdresser I went to the other day was telling me he and his partner have been approved for up to a $1 million in new mortgage financing, assuming they can sell the existing suburban home they bought last year."

“The hairdresser I went to the other day was telling me he and his partner have been approved for up to a $1 million in new mortgage financing, assuming they can sell the existing suburban home they bought last year, tarted up and are now attempting to flip for a big profit. I don’t mean to imply that theses jobs are marginal, just that incomes in those types of jobs are variable and extremely market sensitive. If the economy does take a hit, servers and others in personal care-type service industries will be hit hard. My daughter, the perennial student, is a part-time server in a trendy downtown watering hole and says tips have plummeted in the last two years. She maintains that people that can’t afford to go out are still going out but not tipping as much or at all. She and her fellow servers also complain about the prevalence of groups of people that go out and expect to sit and watch a sporting event without buying drinks or food – usually one person will buy something to try to maintain a table but everyone else orders little or no menu items. The manager of the bar now routinely politely evicts those “squatters” but it is a problem.
The banks seem ready to approve large mortgages for people that used to be considered marginally employed (back in the day when I worked for a bank).”
- Observer at VREAA 15 Oct 2011 11:45am