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Bubblepalooza


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2007 Jan 31, 10:52pm   25,676 views  251 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (58)   💰tip   ignore  

Bubblestock

From a Malcolm S in San Diego:

Hey Patrick, I just had an idea which is so morbid, ridiculous and ill conceived, I thought I would run it by you. You asked how to have fun during the bubble, well how about a party? This catastrophe is the biggest joke of the decade and I think it calls for a nationwide rally maybe in SF, or whatever city you designate as the birthplace of the housing bubble.

It could be called BUBBLESTOCK or BUBBLEPALOOZA! Some of your advertisers, and I guarantee a bunch of other businesses and media would love to sponsor, support, attend, and cover such an event.

Picture it! Swarms of like-minded bubbleheads converging on Golden Gate Park for an overnight festival of music, big screen bubble clips, movies, roasts.

Some ideas:

Lereah's powerpoint presentation on now is the time to buy
Fun with Dick and Jane
All the YouTube clips like Mortgage Gangstas
Gotta have at least a few country western songs about losing the house and the tractor

Think of the impact something like that could have. It could literally be a jab of historic proportions.

I guarantee that even with this theme you will have lenders, and realtors paying booth fees.

#housing

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28   Paul189   2007 Feb 1, 8:02am  

Anyone notice the falling rents on the old homepage? It looks particularly severe for 3 bedrooms.

29   Doug H   2007 Feb 1, 8:13am  

DinOR said:
"Like I lost my footing on the sidewalk and accidentally stuck my ___ in your wife?"

I'll see if my wife will buy the "It was an accident, baby....you believe me, don't you?" and let everyone know whether it works. That is, if I have any fingers left to type with.

30   FormerAptBroker   2007 Feb 1, 8:50am  

DinOR Says:

> Like SFWoman said, Gavin does have odd taste in women.

Gavin has made some strange choices in women over the years, but most of them have been good looking.

When he was dating Kelley Phleger (who is now married to actor Don Johnson and who’s Dad or Step Dad was a Wells Fargo Director) 10 years ago Kelley she was IMHO the hottest girl in San Francisco.

Over the last few months (after dumping the 20 year old Republican) Gavin has been dating Jennifer Siebel (who’s Dad co-founded Montgomery Securities) and even though she is not as hot as her married sister Brooke (who is almost 6’ tall and has unbelievable long legs) she is not bad to look at (I like the ballet dancer photo on her web page below):
http://www.jennifersiebel.com/

P.S. I bet Jennifer is the only “actress” in America that is also a GSB grad…

31   Paul189   2007 Feb 1, 8:51am  

Muggy,

I would add - Burning down the house by the Talking Heads!

Also, not relevant to anything on this site, but my neighbor when I bought my house in 2000 was Liz Phair. A couple months later she moved to LA.

32   Different Sean   2007 Feb 1, 9:15am  

Rat in a Cage - Smashing Pumpkins

33   Different Sean   2007 Feb 1, 9:18am  

oops, make that 'bullet with butterfly wings' - maybe 'zero' would be better

34   SFWoman   2007 Feb 1, 9:33am  

I received this as an email:

February 1, 2007

Mayor Gavin Newsom this morning released the following statement:

“Yesterday, I apologized privately to the Tourk family for my profound lapse of judgment. I am deeply sorry for hurting these long-time friends.

“Today, I want to apologize in public to the people of San Francisco. I made a personal mistake that I deeply regret. I let down my family, my friends, the people of San Francisco and every person who shares the agenda we have advanced these past three years.

“I humbly ask all of those I have hurt for their forgiveness.

“I will not let my personal failures impact my public duties. I believe the best way I can atone for what I have done is to focus every day on helping to make this a better city. That is what I intend to do. I hope the people of San Francisco will accept my most sincere apology and allow me the opportunity to renew their trust.”

Paid for by Gavin Newsom for Mayor. FPPC ID# 1290430

35   SFWoman   2007 Feb 1, 9:38am  

There is this song (from the 60s I believe) by Melody. I was told it was written about the houses in the southern part of San Francisco:

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

36   SFWoman   2007 Feb 1, 9:40am  

And The House Song by Peter Paul and Mary:

This house goes on sale ev'ry Wednesday morning
And taken off the market in the afternoon.
You can buy a piece of it if you want to
It's been good to me if it's been good for you.

37   SFWoman   2007 Feb 1, 9:43am  

And Weird Al Yankowitz:

Gonna buy me a condo
Gonna buy me a Cuisinart
Get a wall-to-wall carpeting
Get a wallet full 'o credit cards
I gonna buy me a condo, never have to mow de lawn
I gonna get me da T-shirt wit' de alligator on

38   StuckInBA   2007 Feb 1, 9:47am  

SP :

My Sunnyvale Cupertino search of housed below 1M now has 60 out of 100 properties added in Jan. The total is not up by the same amount. So some are relistings and some others might have just expired.

Unfortunately it is still not that difficult to sell a house in certain parts of Cupertino. With inventory of 66, the BA population virtually guarantees enough GF / cash rich people to keep Cupertino market strong. Unless we see meaningful changes in rates and/or lending standards, I doubt Cupertino will be affected much in the 0.8-1.2M range. I still hear about bidding wars. It amazes me, even when I knew it would amaze me.

But Sunnyvale ? I don't know what's up with it. The inventory is like getting flooded there. Many are condo/TH. So other parts of "Core" area are showing cracks. Let's see.

39   Peter P   2007 Feb 1, 9:49am  

I doubt Cupertino will be affected much in the 0.8-1.2M range.

But what you get for 0.8 - 1.2M in Cupertino will be affected. If you can get more house for the same price, it is good enough.

40   StuckInBA   2007 Feb 1, 10:22am  

But what you get for 0.8 - 1.2M in Cupertino will be affected. If you can get more house for the same price, it is good enough.

True. But I also meant that. The same sh1tboxes that were selling for obscene amounts are still selling for same obscene amounts. The obscene amounts have not changed (due to almost no effective change in lending yet). And I really cannot differentiate between sh1tboxes. They all are unlivable. Maybe they are getting bigger sh1tboxes in the same price ? Let's see what the sqft rate is when the data comes out.

41   frank649   2007 Feb 1, 11:24am  

Here's a fun article...

Relationship Management 101

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

42   Joe Schmoe   2007 Feb 1, 12:20pm  

Wow, Jennifer Siebel is one beautiful woman. She's not one of history's great beauties, but she is very beautiful.

Normally I don't much care for the "rich heiress" look -- a tall, skinny blond woman with classic, somewhat cold and distant features who looks good an evening gown and silly in jeans -- but I find her beautiful.

Her elegance is natural, it's not just the result of good bone structure and a photographer getting her to strike a particular pose. She'd still be an elegant, beautiful woman if you met her in the frozen vegetables aisle.

IMO she's the real thing.

43   SFWoman   2007 Feb 1, 12:32pm  

OK, the gossip I am getting at the moment on our mayor is that he is going to be hit with two sexual harassment suits. The office is in a bit of an uproar, and the harassment suits are what is making his advisors leave in droves.

I get along with the guy and he has been quite helpful with several of my projects. We could potentially get a real lunatic in the mayors office should Gavin not serve again. This isn't good for the city.

(For those of you not in the Bay Area, Gavin Newsom, who started marrying gay couples at city hall in 2003, is considered right wing by many in the city).

44   FormerAptBroker   2007 Feb 1, 12:52pm  

A couple guys on the way to Bubblepalooza:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvH6hjlidbw&NR

45   e   2007 Feb 1, 1:06pm  

(For those of you not in the Bay Area, Gavin Newsom, who started marrying gay couples at city hall in 2003, is considered right wing by many in the city).

1. Some argue that that move helped Bush get re-elected in 2004.

2. The Democrats actually had to spend money here to make sure Gavin got elected - and not the Green party candidate.

Only in SF.

46   surfer-x   2007 Feb 1, 1:51pm  

With inventory of 66, the BA population virtually guarantees enough GF / cash rich people to keep Cupertino market strong. Unless we see meaningful changes in rates and/or lending standards, I doubt Cupertino will be affected much in the 0.8-1.2M range.

Seriously dude, go fuck yourself, really. Type in "cupertino" in maps google com and then read your tired fucking diatribe out loud. I think you will hate yourself even more than I do. 800 to 1.2 million for a fucking fuck $hit box in crapafuckingtino? GO FUCK YOURSELF. What we need is meaningful changes in the laws protecting fucking assholes from breeding. Again for the fucking record what kind of income does it take to afford a 1 million dollar house? Oh, shit, sorry thats right, it's not the house but the school district. That's right isn't it? Hmmmm, how about a 200K house and hiring a teacher for 50K/year for 16 fucking years. Really dude, get the fuck off the enamor of crap a fucking tino.

47   surfer-x   2007 Feb 1, 1:56pm  

I imagine Ms. Siebel, as pictured here, tinyurl.com/2rpojf covered in martini puke stumbling back to her crapatino palace.

I would put her with stuckintheba but I think her command of English be better. I mean all strong indicators suggest cupertino not go down because school district very good and make many smart people who make money king sized in future. Isn't this how sometimes it is in areas where many people go to afford school that aren't bad?

48   surfer-x   2007 Feb 1, 2:09pm  

Gavin Newsom, who started marrying gay couples

Gavin is married to a gay couple?

49   Doug H   2007 Feb 1, 2:25pm  

Surfer said:
"Seriously dude, go fuck yourself, really. Type in “cupertino” in maps google com and then read your tired fucking diatribe out loud. I think you will hate yourself even more than I do. 800 to 1.2 million for a fucking fuck $hit box in crapafuckingtino? GO FUCK YOURSELF. What we need is meaningful changes in the laws protecting fucking assholes from breeding. Again for the fucking record what kind of income does it take to afford a 1 million dollar house? Oh, shit, sorry thats right, it’s not the house but the school district. That’s right isn’t it? Hmmmm, how about a 200K house and hiring a teacher for 50K/year for 16 fucking years. Really dude, get the fuck off the enamor of crap a fucking tino."

You gotta stop being so wishy washy and say what's really on your mind. However, I gotta hand it to you...you covered sex, birth control, housing, and income....all at once. Next time someone mentions Cupertino, wherever that is, be sure you include a blue and a couple of reds so Surfer doesn't blow a gasket....chill, my friend. :o)

50   StuckInBA   2007 Feb 1, 2:53pm  

Surfer-X :

Yes, trolls haven't visited us for some time. So now you have started shooting the messenger ?

Dude, I do not make up stats. Nor am I responsible for creating desperation in the mind of people who are still buying, and participating in bidding wars. I do not like this craziness either, but why is commenting on it a crime ?

51   surfer-x   2007 Feb 1, 3:08pm  

Hugs! Normal now equals in peoples minds 1.2mil 1200 sqft $hitbox on the valley floor. Does it get props for being close to Saratoga? Perhaps you could just call it East Saratoga, while you're at it rename Milpitas South Fremont, or better yet just re-label the entire south bay South San Francisco. Whoops too much baggage with that perhaps North Malibu.

Just quoting stats? Name the fucking source and then strip out the liar loans and tell me just how fucking many of the houses were bought on 2x the median family income for the bay area. And then quit wasting my mother fucking time.

52   surfer-x   2007 Feb 1, 3:12pm  

before you start jerking off over crapatino real estate look at this and then please please pretty please tell me which fucking asshole making over 200k/yr would buy this

tinyurl.com/2z5tag

Oh shit, I'm sorry, that's right new paradigm no land great schools everyone making money rich foreigners.

53   Different Sean   2007 Feb 1, 7:18pm  

wow, this is the answer -- Short Sale Magicâ„¢

54   SFWoman   2007 Feb 1, 9:29pm  

I got another Sacramento Bee email (why me?) with a housing ad:

"Truly unique at no extra cost. Each home is engineered for a specific site, making it unlike any other. More costly to build, yet not to purchase. Special savings on select homes ends 2/14/07."

I'm confused. Don't houses need to be engineered to their site? Wouldn't you have problems if they weren't? Are these subdivisions just plans that are slapped up wherever the lot is, regardless? Don't you run into drainage and seismic issues if houses aren't engineered to their sites?

55   Michael Holliday   2007 Feb 1, 10:10pm  

surfer-x Says:

"...Type in “cupertino” in maps google com and then read your tired
f-cking diatribe out loud. I think you will hate yourself even more than I do. 800 to 1.2 million for a fucking fuck $hit box in crapafuckingtino?
_____

Exactly.

To people like me who grew up in the South Bay Area, this whole surreal-estate market is nothing short of heart-breaking.

I'm in AZ and can't go home to San Jose because I can't even afford the shittiest shitbox, even though I jumped through all the hoops society said I had to to become "successful:" served in the military, got a BS then an MBA (granted, I'm a "state school" guy, and not Crappertino-bred Stanford material, but still).

Do you know how much a common Crappertino $800-1.2M house looks to the common working man? And San Jose is almost just as expensive as Crappertino.

This is friggen' insane. Mind numbing.

56   Boston Transplant   2007 Feb 1, 10:32pm  

Perhaps this is old news but I just encountered a beta feature on housingtracker.net. They have mortgage/rent ratios, price/income ratios, etc, all plotted over the last 10 years.

Looking over the SF numbers, I realize how much more bubbliscious it is than Boston. Yet strangely prices here in Boston are falling here first.

http://www.housingtracker.net/affordability/california/san-francisco

57   Eliza   2007 Feb 1, 10:59pm  

I think that Bay Area people, especially the transplants, can be pretty addicted to the idea of success, the bright and shining future. Believe, baby, believe. Real estate here, go down? Never!

I saw it with the dot com bubble, too. I knew more than one newly minted Cali couple who held onto their doomed stock options all the way down because they weren't going to give them away for $500K when they knew they were worth $1.5M. Would you give away your Apple stock for just $500K? And it was all Apple stock, you know, the Pets.com and the Webvan. Some of those folks ended up having a bit of a problem with the AMT, since the fed still wanted a chunk of what they had "made" on their now-worthless stock options, and that led to loans from family, bankruptcy, divorce--it was ugly. But you gotta hand it to them all--they had a great capacity to believe.

Are we there again? Yeah, maybe. I know a stay-at-home mom who is all about buying broken-down houses for bargain prices--usually less than $600K!--then fixing them up for resale. I don't know what will happen to her family if there is even a 15% drop in prices, since that 15% is more than she would make in a year if she went back to work--never mind the cost of childcare. But she believes, she knows she's right, she knows that she deserves success and that her potential is unlimited.

The Google-area stuff might retain it's value--I am sorry about that, but lots of two-income tech families with no kids want to live down there. Anywhere else, though? The suburban communities full of .org families and folks with normal incomes? Pheh. Doom, I say.

58   Bruce   2007 Feb 2, 12:48am  

Bork

Sometimes targeted marketing is invoked by something as innocuous as a bit of catalogue shopping, or a holiday gift card. Marketing firms often cross-reference their data, and when a platinum card indexes a 'golden' zipcode, your mailbox and telephone may become temporarily lively.

Hateful, but there it is.

59   SFWoman   2007 Feb 2, 12:59am  

SQT,

It astounds me, people paying $500,000, $1,000,000, and up for what are basically disposable houses. Shoddily constructed, cookie cutter, no trees. I don't understand it. If you can scarpe together the financing for that amount of money you'd think you'd demand more in terms of quality.

60   astrid   2007 Feb 2, 1:23am  

Jennifer Seibel has weirdly unfocused eyes, though not nearly as wonky as Paris Hilton's. Her forehead is also very shiny - lots of botox injections there.

61   Doug H   2007 Feb 2, 1:52am  

GC said: "A man of the same upbringing tends not to view the woman as a sexual object."

I agree.......Flat chested women are NOT sex objects.

62   FormerAptBroker   2007 Feb 2, 2:09am  

GC Says:

> Interesting. I just checked out J. Siebel’s website.
> Her detailed BIO — which exclaims “adore me,
> understand me, want me” — and her pictures all
> tell the same thing: She is an unhappy woman.

I meet a lot of girls like Jennifer in the Bay Area who have a lot going for them but seem unhappy since they can’t find a guy who measures up to their Dad. Jennifer is an extreme example, since the odds are slim to none that she will find a tall handsome smart guy like her Dad who does so well that he can afford for her to stay home and raise her kids in a beautiful $10 million estate in Ross and give millions to charity every year like her Mom did.

Most girls I meet that grew up around here are bummed out since the odds are very low that they will find an even average looking guy who does well enough to afford for them to stay home with the kids in a crappy little $1.5mm house in Burlingame or Mill Valley and maybe give a few $ to KQED and make it to the Symphonix Bash before the Ball every other year like their Mom did.

63   Peter P   2007 Feb 2, 2:09am  

That’s absolutely fine, but then you can’t complain about not being able to afford a place in SV where people tend to make lifestyle choices which are different from yours. You can’t have it both ways, unfortunately.

Honestly homes in Silly Valley are not really that expensive in terms of price. However, they are just crap at that price. I blame the NIMBYists for that. There should be more urban development/renewals.

Most people confuse about their life purposes and I am sure they do not make optimal lifestyle choices.

Just look at this list:

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/Worth_1.html

Most richest people are not in technology. And the richest tech barron is not in Silicon Valley.

64   Peter P   2007 Feb 2, 2:26am  

GC, have you gone hunting (deer, elk, etc) lately?

65   Peter P   2007 Feb 2, 2:34am  

No. Why do you ask? I have never hunted, although I was quite interested.

Oh, I thought you were pro-hunting. I may be interested too. It is probably a good sport.

66   FormerAptBroker   2007 Feb 2, 2:42am  

GC Says:

> I don’t know if it’s just me . But I’ve noticed that a man’s
> perception of a woman is heavily influenced by his relative
> social background (vis a vis the woman’s). A man of the
> same upbringing tends not to view the woman as a sexual
> object. He more or less views her as an intimate friend.

I’ve noticed that most guys with a Dad that dumped their Mom for a younger hotter wife when they were a kid and (and is currently married to their 3rd or 4th hot young wife) tend to view women as sex objects, while guys with parents happily married for 35 years (and grandparents happily married for 65 years) tend to be looking for a life partner and intimate friend.

Then Doug H. Says:

> I agree…….Flat chested women are NOT sex objects.

Most guys forget that (almost all) girls that are “curvy” with a “big rack” in their 20’s become fat and gross in their 40’s. You won’t see a lot of slim classy looking women working as strippers, but many guys considered Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Kennedy and Grace Kelly “sex objects” and they were all A cups…

67   Joe Schmoe   2007 Feb 2, 2:57am  

I dunno, I still think she's hot.

Maybe she's unhappy, maybe she's had Botox injections (the picture surfer-x linked to is more than a little scary), and maybe my appreciation for her is the product of subconscious feelings of inadequacy...but I still think she's hot. Or I would, if I were a single man.

The idea that rich girls are often unhappy because they can never find a guy who measures up to dad (and almost inevitably have to accept a lower standard of living once they leave the nest) is very interesting. There is some truth to that. I know several beautiful rich women who are still single. They are in their mid to late 30's and do not appear to be headed toward marriage. They are all from broken homes, too, and I suspect that also plays a role.

Poor parenting probably has something to do with it as well. Their parents are probably wrapped up in a materialistic, self-indulgent life. They have not taught their daughters to focus on someone's character instead of their material possessions. So the girls are confused, on the one hand they are instinctively attracted to ordinary guys, but the values instilled by their parents cause them to reject regular guys as unworthy working stiffs. That's sad.

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