patrick.net

SFWoman,

Thanks! We packed a lot of shampoo/conditioners and two (!) camera tripods. As for the food, I would like to try puffin and smoked lamb, but generally, Iceland food is plenty scary (because of the price) even when you don't know the ingredients!

astrid,

Puffin tastes like fishy duck, not awful but not great. I've not had the smoked lamb. I had divine cod there, believe it or not. The krona isn't insane like it was two years ago, which was when I was there last, so you'll be OK. The geothermally heated municipal swimming pools are great, and are full of really attractive people. I remember alcohol being really expensive, as well as the taxi ride into town.

We packed a lot of shampoo/conditioners and two (!) camera tripods.

Why two?

The problem with tripods is that the good ones are really heavy, owing to the law of physics.

Why not one tripod and one ipod? ;)

all your quote are belong to me.

;)

Launch all ARMs! For great justice!

@astrid

I was in Iceland earlier this year and had a wonderful time. If you like hearty lamb soups, there is no better place for it. The soft serve ice cream, including the ones available at gas stations, was also surprisingly good. There is a duty free shop at Keflavik airport where you can buy alcohol before leaving customs. If you drink, you'll either want to bring your own or stock up there. Credit cards are accepted virtually everywhere, and so there is not much need to exchange for cash krona. And don't forget to drink the water -- which has the benefit of being free and, in my opinion, the best I've tasted so far. Enjoy your trip!

From the National Review article-

"Lenders are making fewer risky loans. Some of the biggest, such as Countrywide Financial, have tapped large lines of credit to cover short-term borrowing needs, announced layoffs, and instituted other cost-cutting measures."

Can anyone imagine if you substituted American Express and/or Master Card for Countrywide? If a card co. had a lowered credit rating I could see merchants refusing to accept them as they would be concerned about possibly not recieving payment for all of the goods/services provided.

Might we widely see one day "Cash Only" no credit cards!?

Cupertino is officially not the bay area anymore.

20% price decline from July06 to July 07!

Might we widely see one day “Cash Only” no credit cards!?

No.

Nearly all cards are issued by banks through the transaction agency. The merchants are guaranteed payment.

You might end up with issuing banks demanding much higher credit standards and even more debit transactions, but the vendors will still take the cards. That part of our merchant system is not going backwards, period. If anything handling cash at the PoS is too costly and rife with real world problems, not the least of which being "evaporation" and tax fraud.

According to DQnews.com

(Sorry, should have included that.)

Cupertino is officially not the bay area anymore.

20% price decline from July06 to July 07!

The fortress is cracking, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!

Cupertino is officially not the bay area anymore.

Good riddance!

Seriously, though, down 20% is a HUGE drop.

Also, the bottom of the Menlo Park sales dropped out. None of the unicorporated and east of 101 houses are selling worth a damn, as the median price in Menlo Park jumped 41% YoY for July :

MENLO PARK 36 $1,107,500 $782,500 41.53%

sfbb,

Just wait until the effects of the frozen jumbo loan market show up in the sales stats...by that point, NONE of the Bay Area will be in the Bay Area any longer!

@patrick

Here is an example of the kind of info you can get on a property from a common source like PropertyShark (some data removed by me with '***' so I don't violate my license agreement).

This example also shows that it's very hard to know who's a FB. You'd think they have 10% equity with an ARM due to reset. That may be true but the house is actually owned by Mummy, the 2nd name on the title, and the young couple there can afford to (and have) pulled their listing and rent it out in perpetuity if need be. (And thus, stickiness rears it's ugly head yet again).

Document Details
APN ************
Event ID ************
Document rec status
Document type Grant Deed/Deed of Trust
Document number raw *****
Title co name California Land Title Co.
Date keyed 6/16/2005
Tax transfer ****
Transaction type Resale
Full/partial flag Full transfer value
Event date 6/9/2005
Sale amount $1,000,000
1st party ***,Heidi *
2nd party ***,Kristy *
Owner address ****
Mill Valley, CA
94941
Lender # 1 Pro30 Fndg
Loan amount # 1 $650,000
Rate type # 1 Variable
Lender # 2 Pro30 Fndg
Loan amount # 2 $250,000
Rate type # 2 Fixed

sfbb:

That is a truly beautiful page!

(Noticing my old stomping grounds in Emeryville are -25.56%)

http://www.dqnews.com/ZIPCAR.shtm

If you go look at the menlo park info in detail, you see that the cheap area had a huge drop of in sales (-32%) and price per square foot dropped by 13%.

The HIGH PRICED area of Menlo Park had increased sales (66%) and a massive median price drop (-32%) and ppsf drop of 15%.

Yet... the consolodated chart says Menlo Park up 46% yoy!

BRUTAL.

From the report:

MOJAVE 4 $179,500 $105,000 70.95%

OMG! Desert bubble!

Hmmm.... it looks like a lot of the data is inconsistant if you go from the overview page to the zipcode page.

I have some problems with the DQNews.

Menlo Park going up 40%? Even South San Francisco going up 7%? OK, the numbers there are just too small to make any statistical difference. We should make it a rule that
1) condos should be reported separately from SFH
2) median should only be quoted if the sample size is larger than, say, 50

Or else, the fact that certain areas are down 20% may be due to more mix of condo sold, and certain areas are up 40% may be due to a higher mix of activities for SFH. Without classifying data according to inventory mix and ensuring a big enough sample size, such data is just garbage in, garbage out (yes yes, I understand most Math-impaired MSM reporters need some "stats" to back up their articles)

Aug DQ news will be really interesting, there will be so many n/a because there won't be any transaction. Or there will be 100%+ jump in median price for most cities, because only cash offers can go through.

Randy,

that's why you need the owner name. It is not perfect, but it is quite amazing how much information you can dig out on the internet.

I found out the loan profile of one of my neighbors, who just purchased a home on a $1M convertible loan, and $2xxK fixed, with about 10% down 2 years ago. Then I found his resume online, just a senior engineer. And since he listed his position at different places, I sort of guestimated whether he hit the jackpot with these companies, nope. Eventually I figured he couldn't carry this house for long, and he listed his house on the market about 3 months ago, lucky for him, he got rid of it, making almost no money on the deal.

Armed with a bit more google skill, you can really zoom in on someone's profile. In your example, if I look up homes owned by the mommy on propertyshark (a feature only available for NY so far), I will have a better idea of the situation of the owners.

If a buyer wants to be really nasty, he can even pay $50-70 for some web detectives to dig up the borrower's credit scores, employment history, previous addresses, marriage history, etc. Most of our personal information, unless guarded fiercely to begin with, is already out there.

I don't put a whole lot of stock in online insta-petitions, but this one speaks directly to this blog (and may have been started by someone here?). It's at least worth a click:

http://www.petitiononline.com/bailout/petition.html

Most of our personal information, unless guarded fiercely to begin with, is already out there.

This is why real people hold assets in havens like CI and BVI.

Kinda "glad" that I am still fake.

sfbubblebuyer :

I have stopped paying attention to the DQ reports ... and even their unofficial archive at viewfromsiliconvalley.com site. Much better information is available at http://www.rereport.com/scc/.

They break down the information by SFR and condos. Also include historical trends. And sometimes they even admit the problems with median. It's an RE site, so they of course try to spin it as much as they can. But once in a while you see a glimpse of honesty.

SBA,

thanks for the link, that seems like a really comprehensive site. How come the San Mateo county numbers are only updated till 2005?

Randy:

I wrote some bad checks a few years ago because of sloppy bookkeeping. Rather than ruin my credit, the bank honored them and then just gouged me with some fees.

Learned my lesson.

Haven't written a check since, exception for two things: charity donations (use cancelled check for proof) and income tax payment.

It's liberating, really, to use cash. The bank makes it easy with all the ATMs, and nowadays I can pay all but one of my bills without a service charge by typing numbers into the keypad on the phone. But that one bill, a utility bill, has a liquor store payment center that I drive past on my way to work. So I pay them cash there.

Except for the bills, nobody knows who I am or what I am buying. I can buy all the liquor or nails and nitrate fertilizer or racy videos or admission to the Kit Kat or gifts for an elicit relationship that I want, and there's no trail or paper nor data bits.

Cash.

It's great.

sybrib

That is until I help co-found the company that sticks the chip -- I like to call it the BMARK2 -- in your hand (or optionally forehead), as required to conduct any monetary transaction.

:evil:

Randy,

It's coming...

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/134

I was going to try to defend biometric tagging; but instead I'll just scroll back to that thought about a road trip with SFWoman.

8O

OO: I had a whole post typed up about how freakish it is that you were "investigating" your own neighbors' finances without any due cause. But I realized that it would ultimately be pointless. If you don't understand why that's in such poor taste, you probably never will. I hope that someday your children come to grasp the American concepts of privacy and community.

astrid Says:
We packed two (!) camera tripods.

Why two? Ever since I got my fast VR lens, I have only used my tripod once for nighttime shots. The lens is very sharp even at wide open apertures, and I rarely stop down to less than f/16 on digital cameras. And the DSLRs have very good quality at higher ISOs, so I can always get a good shot at 1/15s or less.

Tripods are a hassle for composition, and for mobility. Am curious what kind of pictures you intend to use the 3pods for.

Sorry for the OT.

SP

sfbubblebuyer Says:
Cupertino is officially not the bay area anymore.

Good riddance, can we physically move that soulless shithole someplace else?

SP

Randy H Says:

Congress will try to weaken the Fed independence. All those who have criticized the Fed as some “private” bank that controls the fate of millions may come to regret the US under a Congressionally controlled monetary policy. Imagine a world where inflation spikes into the high teens the year before every major election.

I'm talking to the Federal Shadow Minister for Housing, Families and Stuff, and she or her lackeys have put in writing to me that the Labor party will make housing affordable by 'keeping interest rates low' as their policy platform. I wrote back asking how this can be guaranteed, given the arms length status of the RBA, the interaction of international trade and finance, and so on. Besides which, low interest rates helped trigger the boom. I think they just trot out the interest rates lines to the sheeple as a simple kneejerk policy point so that people think they are responsible 'managers of the economy' (being the non-business party), while yet another canard is that the govt of the day (GOD) 'manages the economy'... I pointed them to the Greens housing policy and politely suggested they just lift that and use it instead of their pseudo-marketese, pull the wool crap...

And the DSLRs have very good quality at higher ISOs, so I can always get a good shot at 1/15s or less.

True, but they do not have good quality in long exposures. A shutter-release cable is a still a must.

Am curious what kind of pictures you intend to use the 3pods for.

I can never take good pictures without one. Perhaps my hands are shaking a bit too much. I think it is great for composition. However, mobility is definitely an issue. Oh well, the DSLR itself has mobility issues. And I still think medium format has prettier black and whites.

Now I am way OT.

Good riddance, can we physically move that soulless shithole someplace else?

We can make it an extraterritorial city of China, on condition that good, authentic Chinese food be provided at all times.

Peter P Says: True, but they do not have good quality in long exposures. A shutter-release cable is a still a must.

My point was that I won't need the long exposure when the lens is sharp at wide aperture and a DSLR has good quality at ISO 800. I can get exposure down to about 1/15 or 1/30, which is fine with VR. Nowadays, I only drag my tripod out when I deliberately want a slow exposure (light trails or moving water, etc).

Obligatory housing reference: Cupertino down 20% is most likely because of condos, as well as larger number of cheapo flip-sales in the run-down western area (bordering Lawrence/Bollinger).

SP

Brand,

I don't think is unAmerican and poor taste to browse through readily available data, I am not the one to put these data on the internet to begin with, you should blame the service provider. The fact that such service exists proves that there are plenty of people, and most of them are Americans mind you, are doing so.

Why is it without due cause? Maybe I want to sell my house one day and I would like to see how many desperate sellers there will be during bad times. How is it different from people checking up the addresses of their friends and colleages on zillow? Do you think zillow's biz model is entirely based on people checking on their own property value and transaction records?

What I am doing is perfectly human and American. If you want to guard your privacy, do it the legal way. Shut down these sites, that is the ultimate resolution of guarding your privacy, American way.

Peter P Says:
We can make it an extraterritorial city of China

Maybe the Chinese can use their dollar reserve to buy the whole thing and we can help them move all of it including the current inhabitants (*) over there.

SP
* getting the Cupertinoids to move would be easy - First move Monta Vista to Suzhou. They will all go chasing after it by themselves.

I don’t think is unAmerican and poor taste to browse through readily available data, I am not the one to put these data on the internet to begin with, you should blame the service provider.

But renting is un-American.

http://tinyurl.com/yupvgf

Some simple-minded idiot called Kathleen Pender wrote in the SF Chronic-le today that "Higher jumbo-loan limits would help borrowers in the Bay Area". http://tinyurl.com/ys8wa7

No mention of the fact that "Lower jumbo loan limits would help buyers by bringing home prices down to sensible levels." If you have a login at the site, I would recommend adding a comment to point this out...

SP