Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

An interesting continuing trend I see in a lot of cities is "gentrification" (or what could more crudely be termed reverse white flight, if you will).  Cincinnati has seen it in the OTR area north of downtown.  Atlanta has seen it in midtown (where we are moving) in a big way.  Some of the residences there just 20 years ago were very run down and now sell well into 7 figures and the houses are all beautiful (nearly all).  The more commercial side of midtown has construction cranes everywhere as new high rises go up (mostly apartments I'm told and some businesses).  

The area I grew up 12 miles from downtown has undergone an almost 100% "race reversal".  My former HS is now 90% African American (and largely middle class).  

We are going from 2 cars to one and expect to do more walking to stuff.  The park is right across the street and we have enjoyed the parks here but have to drive to them.

And despite the efforts of HUD and others, the "Projects" still exist around Atlanta, generally not in good shape at all even the ones that are fairly new.  Unintended consequences happen a lot in life.

it's always the cascade, and rarely the catalyst.  

the press in the late nineties to lower restrictions for home loans was the catalyst.  exploiting it for all it was worth- buying above the ability to repay, or valuations of property going sky-high with the only basis being "well, they can get the money", and extending that credit and then selling the notes before the first payment was due were cascades.  

the crash was the catalyst- the cascade was (and is) felt far and wide in just about every sector.  

this is/was my perspective, anyway.  

Banks were giving out loans based on stated income. Stated.

Think about that for a minute. Duh.


I find this interesting:

https://www.ilnews.org/news/statewide/census-retirees-will-outnumber-kids-in-less-than-years-for/article_b0149f88-383c-11e8-895b-93a77c0e4035.html

Non-verified income AND no money down. Considering a loan is based on three vectors, they were basically just working the corners of unknown credit.
And the damnedest part was they were doing it with relish. There were moments where banks actually filled out forms with higher incomes than the people even said they had. Because there was incentive to get loans on the books so they could be sold off to the wider investment world. Of course, there was a bunch of laundering bad debt into good, plus a slew of multipliers that spun value wildly out of whack. It really in retrospect was something to behold. 
Perhaps we can argue it began with trying to push home ownership in a ham-fisted manner, but incentives pushed the fervor on the loaning side to where it was. People who were supposed to be responsible and smart were not. Lord knows, business will resist and work around interference at every turn, and if policy alone could actually incite the volume of lenders spraying money all over the place, well we'd spend a lot of time talking about how effective that big G word really is. 

Condolences not necessary, but thanks. We were always careful - we did not dive fully into the residential business like other firms did - many of which are no longer in business due to their greed and short-sightedness. 

We were diverse in our work and that's why we are still around. And we are still diverse. 

The biggest problem we now face is finding people. There is a big gap between seasoned staff and newbies. The middle is all gone, because they simply just got out of the business.

I need to find my replacement. That's been a struggle.

Stated FICO score

831, thank you.

best of luck, cincy... it sounds like your plan was a solid one!

@847badgerfan : i had an 849 at one point... i was using personal credit cards at 0%into to buy merchandise for my store, and running them up to the limit of $45k twice a month, and paying them off twice a month- attempting to buy only what i knew would sell in the time frame (high volume items exclusively using personal cards)... it kept me from higher rate terms with vendors, and though i was constantly on the phone with credit card companies inquiring about fraud, i learned a thing or two about how they rate folks... i had no clue that spending at or near your extended limit and then paying it off was a glitch in their system of reporting... 

if a person wanted to dramatically improve their situation and were willing to pay for it (not some goofy service) they could simply get a card with a low or no intro rate and run it up-pay it off-run it up-pay it off, paying the processing fees, yes, but dramatically improving their rating... like, use paypal or something akin to pay yourself, and withdraw from paypal to pay it off.  two or three months of that is worth quite a bump in rating- and would be a good plan if a person's rating is not too good and they were looking at buying something substantial in the coming year.   

to me it demonstrates the lunacy of determining a persons solvency.  

The factors influencing credit are quite incongruent in some cases.   Too much unused credit?  Bad.  Not enough credit history? (Bad, probably the worst characteristic next to prior delinquency/bankruptcy).    Someone who has always been a cash buyer of everything, and is self employed, is viewed as a high credit risk.  there's just no (or little) sample size to evaluate.

There's a fundamental sweet spot when it comes to use of revolving credit.   The ratios are what you need to pay attention to (if you're trying to improve your FICO).  If you utilize 75% or more of available revolving credit, that can ding your FICO.   Bring that utilization down if you can.  If you're north of 750, you have 'great credit'.  There are no brownie points for being 800+ (850 is generally the top), though a couple 'newer' scales go into the 900s.  Truthfully is you are 720 or better, you're going to be fine.

Pay on time (always)
Establish and use some revolving credit (hopefully you pay off each month), keep utilization close to 50%
Installment credit (student loan, mortgage, HELOC, with consistent payment history) are usually positive credit score factors.
Order your report once a year (check for accuracy, mistakes, fraud).