I grew up in Brooklyn at a time when it wasn’t cool. It was dangerous to walk around in today’s hipster neighborhoods, places where brownstones fetch $3 million, up from 250k, back in the 1990s. I’ve never seen shittier homes selling for such high prices. Broken down, piece of shit, houses are selling for a million dollars, in horrible neighborhoods filled with burglars and rapists. You have no idea.
Enter Dime Savings Bank of ‘Williamsburgh’. They’re offering exorbitant interest rates of 1.1% for deposits in order to lend into this bubble. What.can.go.wrong?
As of March, the bank, whose parent company, Dime Community Bancshares, has been publicly traded since 1996, had $5.5 billion in assets, up by $1 billion since the end of 2014. JPMorgan Chase & Co., the nation’s largest bank, is 439 times as big as Dime, with assets of $2.4 trillion.
Lending on apartment buildings used to be a tougher business. One in 10 New Yorkers left the city during the 1970s, and those who remained faced a surging crime rate. City neighborhoods were deteriorating. Mahon would sometimes arrive at the bank on a Monday to find burned-out cars smoldering on the corner.
Now the city’s 8.6 million residents face a housing shortage. The value of apartment buildings has soared, and owners have a steady stream of rent checks to borrow against. Dime lent out $1.3 billion last year, up 37 percent from 2014. It continued to step up real estate lending this year, originating $377 million in loans in the first quarter.
To keep up with the demand, Dime needs deposits, and the customers at its 25 New York-area branches have only so much cash to save. Plus, it’s difficult for any bank to win new clients, said Collyn Gilbert, an analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc. Changing banks can be a hassle. “To get deposits in the door, you really need to pay up for them,” Gilbert said.
Last year, Dime began touting its 1.1 percent rate on money market deposits, using banner ads, Bankrate, and other websites. Online customers came from all over the U.S., especially the Northeast, California, and Florida. Since the beginning of 2015, the bank’s deposits are up 30 percent, or $814 million, with most of the new cash in money market accounts. In the last quarter alone, Dime took in $305 million in deposits.
In a sickening gesture to lure bicycle riding hipsters into his banks, Mahon, its CEO, is catering to the younger generation through moronic design.
The new branch at Williamsburg’s Bedford Avenue will look more like a coffee shop than a bank, with big doors opening onto the sidewalk, welcoming pedestrians to stop in and charge their phones. Light fixtures made from mason jars will illuminate the coffee counter. The goal is to appeal to the neighborhood’s young, new residents in a way that Dime’s 1908 headquarters does not.
Why is he doing this? Well, the answer is very obvious.
For millennials, Mahon said, “It’s a little bit of an obstacle to come into a big limestone building.”
The next generation is one rife with fucking imbeciles.
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The Curmudgeon Society could use a Curmudge like you.
shut up, asshole.
To a real estate man like one D. Drumpf this is sweet music to the ears.
Ugh, so disappointing.
Fraudulent.
A few miles from me is a lower middle-class neighborhood. Grid plan streets, simple rectangle shaped houses for the worker class, no garages.
The houses are not “starter home” quality for aspiring young professionals, instead they are the house equivalent of a mobile home . Locals would consider fair value of these houses to be 140K to 210K.
Today’s market price is 350K to 400K for one “renovated” with the cliche laminated flooring, kitchen island and bathroom sink from a trendy ’90s Japanese restaurant. Some are still offered at the 200K to 250K range. These are not renovated because they have expensive systemic problems and are unattractive to flippers, or the owner would like to sell now, or the structure is too small to be seriously jacked up in price.
I’ve described one part of the market above. Elsewhere, starter homes at the young professional or yuppie quality level are over 450K, with very little inventory. Among these are 250K homes carefully made up and dressed to masquerade as something they are not.
Over here in my neighborhood several homes are offered a 300K plus that everyone who lives here knows are former mold and rot infested houses that were abandoned.
Bon appetite!
The bank branch will be a safe place in case the hipster doufas has a triggering event like sees a Trump bumper sticker or maybe a spike in cafe latte prices at Starbucks or a payment due for their student loan.
Haha
Triggering event
Had one off my girls do that. Asked her to explain the disparity of men and woman’s income. Also to explain the difference between income and salary. She went nuts. Lol
If she was prettier, I would have never asked of course.
Regards
Chuck Bennett
Not sure what you mean by “one of my girls,” but the typical explanation would mean either one of your daughters or one of your female employees.
So I’m equally unsure on whether their lack of ability to give you an explanation reflects on your shortcomings as a father, or your company’s poor employee selection process/low standards.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you mean employees, but still don’t see the point of your actions, unless it was the obvious belittling of somone of lesser intelligence/education to make you feel better about yourself. I’ll admit that I sometimes lower myself to that same guily pleasure once in a while.
We live in a bashing belittling culture. You see it here, and just about everywhere. If people have different views politically, often at least one of them just can’t stop themselves from belittling or insulting the other person. It’s not very constructive and certainly solves none of our nation’s problems.
It does give people a temporary ego boost. But given the destruction it causes, is it worth it? That’s the question. In the case of an employee, is it really helpful to cause them to stress out over hurt feelings, which can interfere with their getting their work done well? When someone belittles a person because of their physical appearance, which they can do nothing about, that seems sad to me.
In the case of politics, this habit of belittling one another often paralyzes our body politic when instead we should be taking action to solve problems.
Interesting that most of the online customers are coming from the Northeast, Cali and Florida. I watched a piece on Maine food stamp fraud this morning….most originating from NY CA and FL.
This is why I call it Floriduh!
This has got to be the best post ever. I grew up in Brooklyn during the 80’s and when I hear people buying places in Crown Heights and Bushwick, my first reaction is “are you friggin nuts?” but then I realise its not my Brooklyn anymore.
Its safe and hip. I can use a Red Stripe on Eastern Parkway, “patty wid bread”, and some Irish Moss, ya hear?
Oh to be back in Brooklyn, Kings County G Building.