patrick.net

Anyone else uses astrology to assist in decision-making?

"What cards did you get?"

A modern Marseilles-style deck created shortly after the Great Depression called "The Bubble".

Just an informal observation. Have seen lots of people going through Open Homes but not much sales activity here in the Danville/Alamo area. A few price reductions, but nothing major yet.

Did see an article in today's paper that Silicon Valley has had a recent increase in jobs so perhaps there is a blip of activity there based on that.

I checked zillow on some of the homes for sale here in the Danville/Alamo area - they are priced between $50,000 to several hundred thousand higher than zillow's estimate.

I use an analysis product called Crystal Ball, does that count?

"hey frank, we should meet up for some scotch or something next time Im in NY"

I'm always game for a scotch!

Well, I didn't think it was going to happen, but my landlord just tried to put up the rent 25% last week. After a 10% hike 6 months ago. Cites 'market rates' and 'interest rates'. The LL built the place themselves 12 years ago 'wholesale' so interest rates aren't it -- it's just a shameless grab for cash.

I've been busy writing to influential people and trying to haggle with the LL, who is mostly not answering the phone.

I predicted rents wouldn't go up, but they are going up in all the major cities apparently. Supply is meant to be tight, also, for some reason. Further, nothing protects you form a 25 or 50% increase -- the Tenancy Tribunal allows 'market rates' whatever they may be, doesn't look at the % increase.

Clearly new LLs are passing on the hurt to tenants. (And old LLs are profiteering to boot.) Maybe the RE gurus were right after all, it's never a bad time to buy, you just manipulate the economy to suit yourself. I now believe that most inflation in Western economies is housing driven...

DS, higher living costs translates into more expensive labor for local business that eventually results in loss of jobs. Therefore, this is a self-correcting process only limited by monetary inflation.

DS, higher living costs translates into more expensive labor for local business that eventually results in loss of jobs. Therefore, this is a self-correcting process only limited by monetary inflation.

This is exactly what I have been saying...people seems to think that the jobs will always be there in the GOOD areas. Companies have been outsourcing to other countries to save money; there's no reason why they can't outsource to other states where the cost of living is much cheaper as well.

All three of those houses are completely remodelled on the inside and were immaculate from the photos - also the one on Seena is listed for 30-40k below Zillow zestimate - so may encourage people to go out and look. All of them are in good school districts. The one on Cuesta for sale not long ago was priced in the high 800,000's - priced to attract interest and it also will be in the Los Altos School District - highly sought after!

Tampa Renter Says:

> Being someone who voted for George Bush twice (I know….).
> I thought that George Bush and a conservative government
> would restore fiscal responsibility to a country addicted to the
> craziness of the late 1990s bubble.

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in politics where the people that get elected are appealing to their partisan conservative or liberal base while using free money and free stuff to bring in enough swing voters to win.

I just read an article that said that the (free spending liberal Democrat) Clinton had a budget of $1.9 Trillion in his final term, while the (fiscally conservative Republican) GW Bush has just proposed a $2.9 Trillion budget (increasing the budget more in a term and a half than the increase over the four full terms of his Dad and Clinton).

Bush got the swing vote in the last election with his free drugs for seniors plan. I’m thinking that our next president may win by giving free healthcare or college to all (or maybe Obama will promise 40 acres and a mule)…

P.S. One more person to the spending out of control list is Arnold Schwarzenegger. The current CA budget is about 30x higher today than when Regan was Governor and is close to ¼ of the entire US budget when Regan was President!

OpinionsPlease Says:

> “Location, location, location. Buy in the best location
> possible. Look around you. Where do you see prices
> falling…

San Diego, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Tiburon (Agassi sold for millions less than he paid), Pacific Heights (the Biotech guy recently sold for millions less than he paid), Hillsborough (my parents told me that a family near them just threw in the towel and sold for hundreds of thousands less than they paid in 2005 after almost a year of making mortgage payments on their new home in CT and their empty home on the Peninsula). I guess Tiburon, Pacific Heights and Hillsborough are not considered “best locations”…

> and where do you see prices continuing to rise?

Areas with a short commute to Google and areas with good schools and a lot of well paid recent immigrants…

> Life is short. If you can afford to buy, buy.

Buying is a bad idea right now (even if you can “afford” it)…

frank Says:

> DS, higher living costs translates into more expensive
> labor for local business that eventually results in loss
> of jobs. Therefore, this is a self-correcting process only
> limited by monetary inflation.

Then allah Says:

> This is exactly what I have been saying…people seems to
> think that the jobs will always be there in the GOOD areas.
> Companies have been outsourcing to other countries to
> save money; there’s no reason why they can’t outsource to
> other states where the cost of living is much cheaper as well.

Many of my friends from business school work in corporate finance. Their primary goal is to increase the bottom line (to increase their bonuses and get more stock options). Every time they can move a single job out of the Bay Area $25-$50K on average drops to the bottom line (due to lower salaries, benefits, support cost and the cost of office space)…

This one here thinks that BUYERS are greedy :lol:

I would not recommend a retirement home in the snow belt to anyone, except my enemies.

We are facing either a dollar collapse, or a deflationary credit collapse, or both. EIther way, the purchasing power of our dollars will go down a whole lot for stuff that people in other countries also need to buy with their stronger currencies.

Like energy.

So unless you're very wealthy, retiring to the snow belt is probably a bad idea. So is, retiring to a place with high summer AC bills, like Dallas or the Mojave.

Many of my friends from business school work in corporate finance. Their primary goal is to increase the bottom line (to increase their bonuses and get more stock options). Every time they can move a single job out of the Bay Area $25-$50K on average drops to the bottom line (due to lower salaries, benefits, support cost and the cost of office space)…

FAB understands well that this is the (oft painful) process of capitalistic creative destruction. As a net macro analysis, it makes the local area and greater economy stronger, not weaker. Although that is not an idea well received by those displaced.

Good areas, of course, won't be good forever. But, they will remain good for far longer than those cheering for them to turn bad hold their interest in the subject.

Put up Edwards style protectionist trade barriers and retaliatory anti-free-market hurdles. Then I'll start worrying that places like Manhattan and the Bay Area are headed for Detroitism.

By the way, there is a fairly healthy net influx of new labor force into the Bay Area right now, for the first time in many years.

(Housing prices will still go down though. And since this will occur despite a strong job market, sellers will finally start to 'throw in the towel', as FAB's parent's neighbors did.)

Long cold winters are not conducive to the health of the elderly. Repetitive shovelling, stooping down to chain tires, effect of cold on already clogged arteries, responding to slippery wet conditions with geriatric responses... And we're not even getting to the unsavory elements of these rust belt cities.

There's a reason why Florida is choked full of "snowbirds" in winter.

Much of the purported savings of living in the rustbelt would be burned up (quite literally) by winter heating. It's cheaper and easier to retire to the south.

Buy 3 snowblowers with your savings. Your problems are solved.

If you think snowblowing when you're 75 is good entertainment, chances are you're already from the rust belt or snowy north anyway.

In addition, you might have some friendly neighbors, in Buffalo, who’ll actually talk to you vs the Boston-to-DC zone where 80% of the people don’t even know who lives next to them for decades at a time.

Buffalo? Oh yay, it's another three feet of snow! And that weather variety in the fall and winter--why the sky can be gray, light gray, dark gray, and my personal favorite, "taunting you with the distinct possibility that you might see the sun this week" gray.

As someone originally from the "Boston-to-DC zone", I can honestly say: if I wanted to know what youse guys were up to, I would ask. There's nothing wrong with people keeping to their own business. :)

If you want to retire somewhere that gets snow in the winter, try Colorado. It's sunny, inexpensive and has real seasons. Loveland, CO and the surrounding area is basically a "town of the newly wed and nearly dead". Lots of snowbirds here, and the winters are very mild from a snow standpoint.

I lived in Oklahoma for quite a few years and venture out of metropolises - I find the people mildly xenophobic and slow to get to the point.

*unlurks*

My crystal ball says that the subprime mortgage implosion will reach into the Alt-A and better quality tranches of borrowing. Pension funds that bought MBS paper will suffer poor returns, while retail investors who bought retail MBS paper (like GMAC commercial paper) will suffer some loss of principal as some of the MBS issuers go under. Derivative daisy-chain unraveling will be stopped at the cost of massive FED intervention, resulting in major inflation. Curiously, the price of housing will not follow the great inflation since with subprime and MBS implosions becomes very difficult to get a mortgage.

*tap* *tap* this crystal ball just cracked from the strain of that prediction!!!

Wait, let me get another crystal ball...

This one predicts that there will be a U.S. recession in late 2007 but the Canadian economy, though performing lacklusterly, still has jobs and a small amount growth. Economic/housing bubble refugees from the U.S. result in a major illegal immigration problem north of the 49th parallel. Ordinary Canadians blame the jump in unemployment on illegal Americans who agree to work for less money! THey also attempt to blame the long wait times for health care on the illegal immigrants, which proves somewhat unfounded due to the requirement to have a provincial Health Card which is not issued to illegals (but is to local residents and refugee claimants). A few illegal immigrants attempt to gain refugee status in order to access free health care but in making the claim are uncovered and deported.

By 2011, the pissed-off locals start harassing the illegal American immigrants, who attempt to pass themselves off as locals by dropping their regional U.S. accents adopting "eh" at the end of most sentences. They reveal their true nationality in local Tim Hortons, where they fail to say "double double" when ordering a coffee with cream and sugar. Instances of vigilante justice result in several Tim Hortons where shocked customers shoot the illegal immigrant, including in the small town of Bobcaygeon in Ontario and in big-city Calgary in Alberta.

Hm...interesting...what does the last crystal ball say?

Hm...this crystal ball seems to show a blog party in the Bay Area That there looks like Peter P, chowing down the sushi while Surfer X mixes a mean drink for DinOR and Mrs. DinOR, who have driven down from Oregon. Due to the recent fall in housing prices the rent-to-buy ratio has fallen from 3X rent to 2X rent. Surfer-X's newly rented digs, site of the party, feature a swimming pool and new deck. Surfer-X has decided to spend the difference between rent and buy on steaks, a new BBQ and sushi for Peter P.

A webcam "links" a simultaenous blog party in Los Angeles where folks from both parties say hi to each other. Hey, the crystal ball even shows me arriving at the party. HARM has just picked me up from the airport and on the way to Surfer-X's, has taken me on a BubbleHood Housing Tour. I am amazed at the quantity of new but empty houses in new subdivisions, with a ForSale sign on every third house. I wave at SFWoman and CB in the webcam, and meet a handful of lurkers who (like me) rarely or never post but somehow convinced Surfer-X to invite them. Astrid hands me an envelope full of heirloom tomato seeds. Damn, who would have thought the housing bubble would be so much FUN???

*relurks*

*Unlurks again*

I thought the crystal ball was done showing the blog party but it now shows the star of the party.... Patrick appears and is feted by all! The threadmasters (Randy H, Surfer-X, HARM, and a few people I don't recognized but would know by their handles) hand Patrick a new coffee cup with the Patrick.net BubbleHouse logo printed on it, to enjoy on his "crappy pine table" where he scans for Housing Bubble News each morning. FAB makes a small speech and everyone cheers.

Man, that's one heck of a fantasy blog party.

*relurks*

*unlurks*

While waiting for someone to comment on my wild crystal balls I saw the discussion on Buffalo.

Here's a great link on old Buffalo architecture and one man's campaign to bring these gems to the attention of the world:

http://fixbuffalo.blogspot.com/2005/07/get-ready-to-duke-it-out.html

Great website, great photos, excellent blog entries.

Like many other American cities the downtown core of Buffalo is rather dead even though it contains neighbourhoods designed for walking not driving, good density, good quality construction of yesteryear and all that great stuff. I'm thinking of a bicycle tour of Buffalo next summer to check it out.

....if there weren't issues with immigration, I could see all the young artistic types in Toronto swarming Buffalo, since the cheap rent, cheap artist digs and cheap houses ready for renovation and rehabilitation have been completely priced out of reach. Though maybe the city of Hamilton will get swarmed first....

*relurks*

TOLurker,

Ah, seeds! Announcement will be made here in two to three week's time.

Atherton, Palo Alto, Los Altos, Menlo Park, Cupertino, Saratoga and in the most part Mtn. View are sought after areas to live in. Big Tech companies surround these cities. Schools are above average in the most part. It seems like the higher you go in elevation, the home prices shoot the roof. Is this sustainable? Probably. Is it practical? For a few. Google doesn't own the southbay nor it pays every new employee $250,000. I am sure the people that actually make a million or two shake their heads with the high homes prices out there generating interests.

There is going to be a point where enough is enough. I don't think it is sustainable. If people are okay purchasing homes at these prices and knowing that they are able to make their mortgage payments for 5-10 years, so be it.

Actually, I almost bought a house for 800K a few months ago but That would mean my wife will have to work for awhile. I grew up with mom at home setting us straight. She made sure we do our homework, chores etc... My wife would rather stay at home and raise the kids. We'll buy in a few months after things settle a bit. It may not be in the Bay Area unfortunately.

KP,

I simply don't see the logic behind retiring to the rust belt, except as an exercise in extreme self mortification.

If money is a problem, retiring to a small apartment/2bdrm house (if violence does become more prevalent in USA as it is in RSA, I'm sure gated communities will spring up for the middle class -- in any case, I don't see why it would be demonstrably safer in Buffalo than in Orlando) in FL or AZ seems more sensible. If that's still too expensive, perhaps renting (since owning can be tricking) in a banana republic.

The rust belt is done -- it's a crappy brown field in a country still full of green fields. Why would any sane businessman open a business in Michigan or Ohio (with their union friendly laws and relatively high taxation) when they can go to the mountain west or the south for similar costs and less headache?

- tricking
+ tricky

Muggy,

I do wonder if the realtors charge more than 3% each for these under $10K listings. If this agent actually goes through with the listing you showed and collected the std fee, the net would be $130.

OpinionsPlease Says:

> FAB - Speaking of Pac Heights, did you not see my link
> in the last thread about a PAc Heights SFH that went for
> $4 mil, vs. 3.5 mil asking? Was on the market for 14 days.
> 5 bidders supposedly. Address is 2707 Laguna St.
> Purchase price in 2005? $1.85 million.

You are correct about the recent sale for $4mm (to a former Robby Stephens guy), but the property (or any property like it in the area) did not “sell” for under $2mm in 2005 (there was a recorded “transfer” by a long time SF RE family to a family trust for $1.85mm in 2005).

P.S. Let us know if you know of a single property that was listed and sold in 2005 (or even 2004) that is selling for more in 2007.

P.P.S. What real estate firm do you work at (your "The SF market is crazy in 2007 already" comment has been in e-mails from many SF reators)?

P.P.P.S. Nice move pretending to not know what a short sale is...

Unless global warming is going to turn Buffalo or Syracuse into a sub-tropical zone, forget about these frozen places. Very soon the residents in the rust belts are going to run out of money for their heating cost.

What do you think will happen when NG and heating oil spikes again? What if there are more frequent snow storms?

If cheap real estate is all you are after, there are plenty of choices in the mining outback towns in Australia with much more pleasant weather, and these places have more jobs you can imagine, and these jobs will be around for the next decade. You can pick up a nice home in Mt. Isa for $100K AUD.

The reason why both coasts are so expensive is because that is where the most lucrative jobs are, and where the job growth is. $20K home sounds great, but who is going to take it over from me for $40K a decade later? Perhaps nobody since I will be the last one leaving town turning off the lights.

Buffalo is well known among the first generation immigrants for one thing and one thing only - the processing center for immigration petition.

Apart from that, I can't think of any reason why anyone will want to live there.

For those retirees with less money, Chile is a good place to check out. I have an ex-colleague who went down to Chile to open a resort and retirement community targeting Americans and according to him, the business is booming big time. Chile has similar landscape and weather as California, only at a fraction of the cost. The only problem is medicare, but in the first couple of decades of active retirement ages, they can fly back to American for treatment. What about later? Well, in 25 years the medicare may be entirely bankrupt so it may not make a difference at that point.

After Different Sean says that his rent is going up 35% in a year Jon Says:

> This is exactly why I favor rent control.
> There’s no benefit to society, as far as I’m concerned,
> forcing people to drop everything and move to a new
> place because some greedy ass landlord wants to turn
> a commodity into a luxury.

Let’s assume that Different Sean’s rent is actually going up 35% in a year. Since Australia has not had 35% inflation or an overall increase in rents of 35% it means that Different Sean has been getting a great deal. If I was renting a 4 bedroom bay view home in Sausalito for that past couple years at $1K a month and the landlord raised the rent to $3K a month I should be happy that I saved $24K in rent over the past couple years…

> It destroys productivity, uproots communities, forces
> children to make new friends at new schools, puts average
> joes in situations of longer commutes or switching jobs, etc.

Very few places in America have rent control yet the percentage of people that move every year due to an increase in rent is in the (very) low single digits (every major apartment owner and manager keeps track of why people leave). In the past 40 years my family has never had even one person move from an apartment or due to the increase in the rent (every now and then an apartment with way below market rents sells and a large number of people are forces to move, but I bet more people win over $1,000 from state lotteries every year)…

> The landlord’s right to make a profit is superceded by the
> tenant’s right to have a stable, predictable, safe and affordable
> living situation. I would flip your landlord the bird.

If any tenant wants a stable safe and affordable living situation they can buy a home in Upstate New York or Ohio for less than $500 a month.

OO,

Perhaps some shrewd businessman can start a medical services business catering to these active retirees, especially for any service that cost less than a round trip flight to the US.

PS - I think southern China (Hainan, Guangxi and Guangdong) will be pretty good for Asian retirees. The summers hot (though less hot than Shanghai and Beijing) but the winters are quite nice. Nursing and servants are dirt cheap. The main problem would be access to high quality hospital care.

As much as I want house prices in the BA to crash, I am not seeing any signs of price concessions in high-end markets of Palo Alto & Los Gatos. Au contraire, prices in PL & LG have risen sharply in the Q1 so far. This is really very discouraging. How can prices in these cities go up when we are seeing large price concessions in all the surrounding areas? Does this mean that I would have to move to a high-end city in LA or San Diego? I personally think that the high-end markets in those markets have more to offer than the BA, and the prices there are falling, or at least they are not going up? What gives?

I see no reason for landlords to be required to subsidize their renters, just as there's no reason for renters to subsidize FB landlords. Each party should adhere to the terms of the contract for the duration of the lease. Great if the LL/renter relationship turns out to be a mutually beneficial long term relationship, but certainly no a moral obligation to forgo profit.

If you REALLY want to rent long term, find a long time landlord like FAB's parents, offer 10% above the market rent, agree on a benchmark for future rent increases and ask for a really long lease (which also means you'll pay big penalties if you break the lease).

Otherwise, take your chances.

Moving is a hardship for people with kids. For singles and DINKs, it should be no more than a nuisance - $400-1,000 for movers and 2 weekends packing up the delicate stuff.

I would think that a long-term lease is a bigger advantage to the LL than to the renter, therefore, it should be 10% below market value.