Desperate formerly-wealthy are pawning their fine art.
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Update: Mike Johnston pointed me to this article. Almost funny, but not really. Notice it's from last summer, before the big collapses! I wonder how it's going now.
“They fear their kids won’t get invited to the right birthday parties,” said Michele Kleier, an Upper East Side-based real estate broker. “If they have to give up things that are invisible, they’re O.K. as long as they don’t have give up things visible to the outside world.”
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I've long been astounded at how badly some people are managing their finances. Take Annie Leibovitz, mentioned in the article, she is one of the most prominent, if not the most prominent and successful, commercial photographer in the world. And yet she is in such dire straits that she has now taken big loans against several properties and the rights to all her work, even future work! Holy cow. How do you manage that?
... I didn't know she was gay. And yet she's had three children in the past eight years, two from a surrogate mother. She is sixty years old now, isn't it a bit... irresponsible to have three children that late in life, and such a busy life too? When the youngest children are teenagers, their mother will be in her seventies!
14 comments:
I find it odd that that company is disclosing its dealings with its clients, seems a little unethical if not illegal, perhaps they are short of cash themselves and selling the stories but I doubt they are going to get many more well known people dealing with them in the knowledge that their transactions are going to be disclosed
They disclose the transactions to prevent people from "selling" the same thing twice.
Annie is indeed gay (just look at her) and being a jewess helps her 'super photographer' image too.
It's always always always about money.
Sukiho: oh no, it's "very discreet", they say so!
Anon: Well, they do usually have possession of the object.
Anyway, made me discover Annie Leibovitz, I surfed to see her pictures. I already knew some, she's cool!
I guess it is difficult to go backwards. When you are used to spend a certain amount of money per week on a regular basis, not to wait before buying anything, you think you cannot do otherwise, need to go on...
Really interesting story.
Yes, it is tough reduce spending.
Personally I've opted for living very much beneath my means, so it would have to be a very dramatic change before I'd have to reduce my lifestyle.
Some people were also literally raised on the belief that real estate and land ownership were the only true wealth (notice how the article mentions mortgages on many properties). That belief is certainly being put to the test these days...
Indeed.
I've talked to several people, including both my sisters, a few years ago who were totally fired up about investing in real estate. I said "f**k no, it's exactly the wrong time! It'll crash."
The right time if ever is a couple years from now.
I also know a guy with a quite successful business, who was buying prime real estate in several European capitals, he was in *so* deep. I wonder how he's doing now. I warned him, but he said: "your method is the old way of getting rich, this is the new one."
I sorta reminds me of a story from when the North-American mega-lotteries came to be, sometime around the mid-seventies.
The first winner of a 10M$ prize (was a lot of money then) took the advice of a friend and bought property after property as a way to lock his hew fortune down in a profitable manner. Came the end of his first year as a landlord, he had no cash left to pay the taxes and lost it all to the sheriff.
The article in the paper said that the properties were swiftly bought back for peanuts from the sheriff by the "friend" who had given advice to the winner in the first place.
There's always a good and a bad way of doing things...
I've always thought of real estate as something safe to have... At least one can always have a roof somewhere. :-)
Aniko said..
"I've always thought of real estate as something safe to have... At least one can always have a roof somewhere. :-)"
Even if real estate is mortgage free it still requires taxes to be paid, insurance, continuous maintenance and up keep.
Unless you are living on the property, It must produce some income to off set the expenses.
Depending on the market, it is almost impossible to turn it into quick cash.
Joe
Well, I have never been in those money trips...
:-) Real estate for me is something you live in, or rent to people. Or sell if really needed, but it takes very long to find a good deal, so one should not really count on quick transactions.
I guess nobody around me had unused real estate. :-)
I think that's a healthy attitude.
Also, while real estate can gain a lot of value, one must also know that it can loose it too. Not to mention the big cost of upkeep, insurance, and taxes. It is far from a sure money-maker.
That article is great!
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