Fraser

I'm a loan originator at a small mortgage company and getting a loan isn't nearly as difficult or hard as people make out, there are several schemes out there designed to make it easier for existing owners to refinance and for new entrants into the market; FHA products and the like which require basically no downpayment, obviously mortgage insurance will be a factor then... The one problem with this scenario is actually the property itself. The investors my company work with are [b]very[/b] wary of getting into condos right now, at this stage they're seen as a real liability and the paperwork can be a nightmare versus a regular single family residence. So much so that my company chose to stop doing condo loans unless it was a previous customer... Monthly condo fees can be substantial, $500/mo doesn't surprise me and the area I work in isn't exactly a super expensive area either.

True, at that price point there's a fair few cars I'd rather get...a bit more $$$ will get you into a Flying Spur for example, which makes even the designo/600/65 interior look like a Kia... The 65s do make incredible second hand buys, even at 18 months to 2yrs old they're 50% off the MSRP! Very nice, I'm fairly certain my uncle with a car fetish (and connection at AM for being a regular) has one on order. I'm very jealous.

Very nice. Love the W140 with AMG monoblocks and the CL, which to me is one of the nicest looking Mercedes ever produced. Personally I'm not a big fan of the 63 AMGs, they sound amazing but they really lack in torque department compared to the 600 and 65 AMGs. Is that AM a Rapide?

Interesting, I suspected it was to do with the sportiness aspect. Have you tried any of the AMG W221s? I agree the V8s in the W221s do feel rather lame, stepping up to the 600 (bi-turbo!) gives a lot more oomph. I scare passengers quite a bit because although my 600 has the AMG appearance package you'd never really guess it was as quick as an M5 in a straight line. Upload the picture to somewhere like www.imageshack.us , when it is uploaded then you can copy one of the links and paste it in the area here.

Nice selection! Almost mirrors my own families choice of vehicles! We've had A4s, M6s, W210s and S Classes....any particular reason you switched from the W221 S Class to the new 7 Series? Am an S600 owner myself so interested to hear your thoughts. Good call on the G-Wagen!

Well maybe, but since I'm not going to negotiate a lower price to pay with cash every time I make a purchase I'll settle with my credit card. I'll thank those people who pay interest on their CCs who are paying for the frequent flyer miles and hotel points that I earn If it's a card that offers no benefits then sure, but many cards that offer annual fees have benefits. I do the maths and figure out whether or not I'll save more than annual fee cost over the course of the year. More often than not the savings or benefits are worth several multiples of the annual fee, even in cases where the annual fee is hundreds per year.

Which is why I said, "I guess things in the great white north are a little different"....the HELOC issue I addressed is a Fannie Mae rule so the vast majority of loans in the US will have to comply with the guideline. I'm not saying it's live but when my credit was pulled last time for my latest refinance the balance that Chase reported to the credit bureau was exactly the amount that my monthly statement closed at. The few times we pay off revolving debt as part of the refinance we use the latest CC statement to determine payoff and see the same thing. I think you're misunderstanding my point. The idea of the credit score system is to determine how responsible someone is with credit. If I never use a credit card then I agree with you, that doesn't show responsibility but what I was saying is that if I use my credit card daily and pay the balance off in full every month then I'm seen as being as responsible as someone who owes $10,000 and is paying $150 per month at 17% APR which is not responsible whatsoever....and people are encouraged to leave a small balance on revolving debt to get make their scores better!! I know it's better for the banks but it's every so slightly biased, right?

Actually credit cards aren't evil, it's the people that use them. If you can't afford to pay your balance off in full don't use credit cards....and if you have to rely on credit cards to survive then you've got serious issues. I find credit cards to be exceptionally useful. They allow to avoid carrying cash, if my card gets cloned then my bank account isn't drained, they're a good budgeting tool as I can see how much I spend each month and I earn thousands of dollars worth of frequent flyer miles each year as a result of my spend. Cost to me, a modest annual fee. Well, available consumer credit isn't something we directly look at. Credit scores take that kind of thing into account and, as broken as they are, we use credit reports (primarily scores) to determine credit worthiness. I guess things in the great white north are a little different

As a loan officer in the mortgage business it depends on the type of available credit. If you have a $100,000 home equity line of credit then your debt to income ratio will be underwritten as though you are using the entire $100k available to you even if you've never touched it. Fannie Mae rules indicate the monthly payment should be calculated as 1% of the limit, i.e. $50,000 HELOC, $500/mo payment. With revolving debt it doesn't matter how much available you have, you use the payment associated with any balances that shows on the credit report that is pulled against you. With revolving debt where you can get penalised is if you use a large proportion of the credit limit on a given card, even if, like me, you never carry a balance. When your monthly credit card statement ends that balance is reported to the credit bureaus and that is used to calculate your score. When I refinanced my own mortgage the other month my credit was pulled and one of my credit scores was down quite a bit because I'd charged more than 50% of my available credit on a given account that particular month. Not enough for it to put me in the zone where I was paying a penalty for it, but enough for it to irk me. The one thing that bothers me hugely about the credit score nonsense is that you get a better score by lining the pockets of the banks and CC companies. As long as you make minimum payments on time that's seen as being responsible enough to earn you a better score which is counter intuitive. When you read articles about improving your score it is always noted that 'you should leave a balance to show you can responsibly handle credit' - that makes absolutely no sense to me. Showing you are responsible is that you can pay the balance off in full every month!

I am. Fine, I'd just graduated from University so had no real ties back home that made it difficult, apart from family. But I travel back enough, and they travel to the US enough that I don't miss them enough. In fact my mother is rather sick of seeing me this year!

I was before I moved to the US five years ago.

Eh? Did you even read the title?

I'd say it depends on your line of work whether or not you should be expected to keep in touch on your days off. Personally I work with a small group of clients at a time, I tell them when I'll be out of the office and who to contact with problems. I'll delegate the handling of any issues to specified people and have yet to be called or emailed yet. Within the office time off is very well respected and most people would never consider contacting someone whilst away. The flip side of the coin my father had a job where significant bonuses and commissions (six figures worth to him) related to deals that went through. He has cancelled holidays at short notice (my mother, brother and I would go on our own) and even left to go back to the office midway through a trip. However, he was well compensated for things like that and it was expected that situations like that would occur.

The second mortgage can remain open as long as you get the noteholder of the second loan to agree to be subordinated to second lien position. The lender doing your new loan should be able to help with this. Depending upon your combined loan to value ratio, your debt to income ratio and the type of loan that your second is you might need to get the second loan modified, particularly if it is a line of credit. It makes sense to subordinate a line of credit as the rates on them are currently so low. With rates on second mortgages being particularly poor it currently makes more sense to pay both off and roll them into one. Depends...look at how much is left on your current loan term, and whether you're getting back on the wagon at the start again. I work for a mortgage company and have seen people come back and enquire about refinancing their way from being 7yrs into a 30yr mortgage back to square one again to get a lower rate. You've got to look over the Truth In Lending disclosure to see what the total cost of payments is and whether or not you'll really save any money over the life of the loan. Don't fool yourself into shopping payments unless you are truly comparing like for like products! Not necessarily. The company I work for (correspondent lender) does zero closing cost loans and the interest rate isn't hiked up to compensate for the fact we pay the costs. We work with a couple of large banks to get excellent rates and have people who routinely monitor rates of other lenders in our area as well as the big nationwide banks and more often than not we're offering a better rate with no costs to set up the loan. On many occasions when our customer finds out who will be servicing their loan they remark that they shopped that particular lender and that their deal with us was better! Last week I did a loan for a Senior VP of the mortgage department at a nationwide bank as we were offering a better deal than she could get through her own bank on an employee loan and she'd been there 35yrs! I understand that not all companies that cover the costs work the same way as the company I work for but don't rule out zero closing cost deals outright.

I went through training here. Fixed wing, like most, if not all do when they start out. Thank you RAF!

A couple of years ago I was on a business trip to St. Louis and went into a fairly shabby looking steakhouse near our hotel and once our dress had passed the muster of the maitre d' we were seated at a table beside a rather fancy cabinet which held one bottle of Budweiser in it. We thought it was a bit of a joke and started laughing at it until the waiter came over and pointed out the small plaque underneath it. It was one August Busch IV had drunk on his last visit to the restaurant. I'd thought with his money he'd have graduated to something a little better The only time you'll really see Foster's anywhere in Australia is at hotels catered to the international crowd who wrongly thing Foster's is what Aussies drink! +1 Leinenkugels is available here in VA now. Good stuff! Technically Sam Adams is still a microbrewery...not many micros that are listed on the NYSE though!

Didn't even know there was a Mark 6! My brother has a Mark V Edition 30 with the DSG gearbox. He lives on a small island with narrow roads and lots of twists and it's great fun to drive there.

Depends how much free time you have and what kinds of cities you like surely. If it was case of work and hotel room with no free time I'd pick whichever city offered the best hotel. Doesn't matter how great the city is if you're never "in it".

One of my main pet peeves at the moment is poor use of apostrophes. When people use 1950's instead of 1950s or FAQ's instead of FAQs. I even saw a NY Times article the other day that had incorrect use of apostrophes! Actually it is a lot easier to park straight when you back into a spot. I think it might be a European thing as my wife, co-workers and friends all find it quite amusing when I back into spots, whereas growing up it was normal.

Not bad. So what did you end up buying in the end? Did you recycle the profits out of one and into another or run side by side efforts? Interesting to see how our comments from a year and 18 months ago have panned out. My portfolio is certainly a lot healthier than it was the last time I commented here! My investment strategy has changed quite a bit since then though...2009 was where the easy money was to be had.

+1...........

As we say on a DJ forum I contribute on.....TL?

Yet lost horribly when it came to getting half the car in the shot

Errr, how? I don't think any 458s have been delivered to the US yet.