patrick.net

Or worst yet, who wants to be tied to a tenant that long. I know from first hand accounts that it is a pain to try to bribe a tenant to move if you want to take the house back and it is under a lease. That is stupid.

So I guess happy endings are off topic....

Peter, I'm seeing a recurring theme with you.

Wow Claire, that is nuts. Hopefully it is just a blip. My rent went up $50 at the beginning of the year (Cupertino). I'm fine with the $50-$100 increases but I refuse to be sucked back into the dotcom $250+ increases. I don't even love it here :(

(Though I really should step away from this blog for a while...a little too much objectification of women going on the other night and toed over that fine line between delightfully saucy openmindedness and crass erroneous stereotyping.)

I guess that's just another thing Astrid and I disagree on :(

Peter, I’m seeing a recurring theme with you.

What theme?

food, silly.

One example is the small razorclam that you’ll only find in eastern China, near Shanghai.

I had razorclam last month in Mountain View.

I'm wondering if those rental prices aren't people trying to cover their albatross mortage payments - I am waiting to see if they get relisted for lower or put on the mls

"Time of Madness"... I like it. Existing Patrick.net terminology?

I'm shopping for a new rental house now. Unfortunately where I live the FBs are still clinging stubbornly to shreds of hope the Big Spring Buyer Bonanza will rescue them, so I haven't yet seen a flood of new rental listings. Probably see it later in the summer, when I want to be moving next month. Arrrgh!

lunarpark and Claire,

Looking at the rental price tracker on patrick.net itself, there's no apparent spike in rental prices I can see. I wonder if there are a few stray FBs trying to rent out places after failed attempts at selling at their "wishing prices."

skibum - the rental properties on Patrick.net have not changed over the last few days - I think it might need updating (or there's a problem) - also look at Craigslist - South Bay AND Penninsular - it has only been over the last few days that I have seen the properties appear - however I am concerned that other would be LL's will see these prices and think that these are the going rates and price accordingly (and then my LL sees these wish prices and hikes mine too)!

GC, in reading Randy's post I get the impression that he is not smiling, nor is he trying to be funny.

Claire, I did as you suggested, and to me the rents seem about what I would expect, although I haven't been looking in quite a while. In fact, I noticed that one of the more expensive units in San Mateo:

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/326928928.html

was listed for sale not too long ago, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaking of 'spiking', did anybody see CFC today? Jumped up 7%!

WTF?

I just looked at CraigsList and I saw things about the same as I remember them recently...

There are always a few 'wishful thinkers' with prices so high you KNOW they're trying to cover their interest only ARM nut. :D Like the fool trying to rent out a Pacifica house for 5k. Riiiiight.

I am looking at Mountain View specifically - the normal price for a 3bd 2 bath was $2400-2600 until recently (not including the apartment unit guys who were asking $2100) now the majority of them are asking north of $2800, some over $3000, although there are not many rentals out there so it is skewing the data maybe.

Also, I am looking where these properties are located and the ones in the not so good areas are now asking prices that used to be asked for the better areas.

Claire,

I almost never get MV rentals popping up on my craigslist search thanks to the "dogs" clause I always have clicked. They may have boosted the asking prices if they are seasoned landlords for the 'school season' figuring people moving to MV to get a decent school system need to be in in the next few months, and will drop the rates if they don't fill them by August.

Mind you I am looking in a very narrow range, so it could be overall they are not much different, but for my search specifications prices seem to be spiking (although a couple more of sub-$3000 properties are now listed).

SFBubbleBuyer - maybe, I have also noticed a couple of them listed several times, and they are starting to allow small pets! I don't allow the "no pets" to worry me. If they are desperate they will waive that. In fact our landlord did and I don't think he has regretted it as we have been here 4 and half years now! I find it amusing now that some properties in Los Altos (better school district) are asking for less than Mountain View ones. Which is kind of whacky!

In Chicago, I see plentiful rentals and of course, thousands of condos for sale.

Wow, sounds like we're all friends in agreement (of disagreement).

GC,

Sadly, no. When I was young, my extended family suffered a mass Hep A infection from uncooked razor clam...we haven't served it since. I heard it's quite delicious though.

But the ones I was talking about are elongated with thinner and crisp shells. You will need to thoroughly cook them.

Yep, I had those in Mountain View. Thin with crisp shells.

I even saw razor clam sashimi, but I felt like having them cooked that day.

GC:

If you didn't mean it as an insult, then I apololgize for insulting you back. I am a lingust. I speak spanish and protuguese, some understanding of chinese and thai. I was married for 5 years and my ex is venezuelan, so my trips to south america were as a couple, and we lived in mexico for a year. I don't go to asia for prostitutes, anyone who can learn a conversational amount of chinese or thai, and takes the time to understand the culture will find better things to do with their time then whore around.

Interestingly, rental vacancy rates here are supposed to be at a low, being less than 2% -- something like 1.7%. I'm not sure of the reason for that. It may even be a fake figure cooked up by the REI. But because supply is meant to be tight, the REI umbrella body is encouraging all RE agents to push up rents by 5-10%. This could well be an economic response to suckers people paying too much for investment properties over the last 5 years, and since capital growth manifestly isn't there, they have to crank rents to compensate, and have to fabricate some reasons to do it.

What is a provocateur?

A $40-word that means 'jackass'

SP

Rents here in NYC continue to climb as the metro are continues to have much higher demand than supply. Also seems over the last few years that more and more hipsters with kids are choosing to stay and raise their brats in the city instead of moving out to suburbia as was once traditional. Apparently a '50s Cape Cod-style in Long Island is a fate worse than death.

I'm getting so tired of the stroller brigade that is taking over my neighborhood sidewalks that I'm able to sympathize with the elderly Italians in the neighborhood that complain about us upstarts moving in. They literally give The Evil Eye to anyone walking around under the age of 40 who wears skinny jeans/tight T-shirts/converse/holding a latte.

Hey, neighborhoods change, but now it's like rents are going up just because these breeders want to have their cake and eat it, too. They act like NYC is such a logical place for The Children. They, of course, don't send their precious cargo to the local PS107; instead, private schools are de rigeur, if not de facto. Where all the money comes from, I have no friggin' idea, and I see lots of the mom-hipsters roaming around during the day, obviously without jobs, yet shelling out top dollar rents to live here.

Outrageous.

What happened to the quality of this blog ?
I thought we were here to discuss markets, economics and bubble theory :)

I'm getting tired of this food and sex talk.

Does anyone know where the web article or analysis showing GDP with the housing bubble effect removed is? There have been some links to it from here, but it's hard to search for...

Ah, you mean hai guazi (sea melon seed). Yes, those are delicious and great beer food.

Food and sex has everything to do with markets, economics, and the bubble phenomena.

"mom-hipsters roaming around during the day"

"Where all the money comes from, I have no friggin' idea"

philistine, I too once struggled with the "sustainability" of this family/economic model. Then I was getting my oil changed at Oil Can Henry's and my complimentary copy of USA Today made it all too clear how that works. They featured an affluent community in NJ where taxes are 18-20k + per year. The for sale signs sprout up a couple of weeks prior ro the last child's HS graduation! No, seriously. Mom-hipsters aren't waiting a second to down-size! They move a town or two over (pay 1/4 the tax) and use the profit from the sale of their former home to finance college. (Up until now, it's worked)

While they did feature NJ in this article (5 May '07) they said it was not only growing trend locally and hardly confined to NJ.

Food and sex has everything to do with markets, economics, and the bubble phenomena.

Exactly.

Besides, the bubble theory has been talked to death already. That is getting boring too.

We could talk about stranglets AKA black swan particles.

Run away!!!

In ways I understand how Ozman (or anyone for that matter) feels when they come here for a much needed fix of bubblenomics. However, when raising stone idols you reach a point where it is more upright than horizontal!

While not perfectly perpendicular, our monument to the credit/housing bubble is nearing it's completion. From here, it would take more effort to restore it to it's crude original state than to check for plumb for all eternity. It's only natural that talk among the natives turns to food.

C'mon Ozman,

There must be some 'favourite' mouth watering fair from down under that you want to tell us about.

How about those fruit and creme filled crepes available at the Freemantle markets? Or maybe a banger on a bun with a black and tan at the pub?

Do you put a slice of beet on your burgers, or is that only offered to tourists?

Karima,

I can't speak for others but of all the issues that I face the Reverse Mortgage is the one I'm the least sure of. If one had not adequately planned for retirement and had no living heirs there's little to debate.

However that doesn't describe the vast majority. Most of us (or our folks) have done "some" preparation for retirement and have children or someone they care about. Since the President of the Mortgage Brokers Association seems heel bent on making sure there isn't one dime of "equity" left untapped, it looks like we (as potential heirs) are fighting the flow. I fear as they become even more popular (as folks live longer) and continue to use it fund lifestyle there won't be anything left for long term care and final expenses.

The examples "I've" seen exhibit seniors with all kinds of credit card debt. I understand much of that is due to the cost of medications but judging by the steady flow of elder piloted motorhomes I suspect there may be more to it. Additionally as RE prices continue to cool will lenders be as eager to extend credit? Will terms be as generous? Again, more questions than answers.

I dunno, "...go back to decent lending standards..." seems a mighty big stretch to me.

It would take a complete breakdown of investor confidence in MBS and CDO markets to dry up demand for these mortgage products. Even after I/O and no-doc markets go back to their original sizes, we still have down payment sizes ranging from 1% to 19% that the orginators can flog to death like they have I/O and no-docs, before we reach sane lending standards again. How long that will take can be a very long time indeed.

The back story of these securitized packages of mortgages is that sophisticated computer models ensure the risk is all managed away. Reminds me of LTCM. It worked until it didn't; and when it didn't, it didn't in a real big hurry. Pretty much right up to the blow up, LTCM investors kept holding out hope that it would straighten out.

The reaction in the MBS and CDO markets to collapsing subprime risk models wasn't, "oh crap, maybe the models for no-doc (Alt-A), 2% down, 5% down, etc. tranches aren't so good either". It was a "flight to quality" retrenchment from NINJA tranches into less risky but still unconventional products that are still not really suited for mainstream consumers but are marketed as mass-consumption financing vehicles.

I can see this stretching out for many years, even more than a decade, before capitulation and the rush for the exits, and these products become financial toxic waste. Any bail out would only devalue them further, too.