patrick.net

Patrick,

Take a look at HousingTracker as well. The median asking price is down from 748K to 599K for South BA.

What ???? No comment on the DQ report ?

http://www.dqnews.com/RRBay0108.shtm

Bay Area home sales drag along bottom, median price back to 2005 level

Peter P Says:

> I have a feeling that Tahoe is mostly for the jet-less “rich”
> from Bay Area while Sun Valley, Aspen, and Jackson Hole
> are for the real rich. Am I right?

You can’t really compare “Tahoe” a huge area that includes six different counties in two different states with the small resort towns of Sun Valley, Aspen and Jackson Hole. On a busy weekend there are more people in South Lake Tahoe than the entire population of Blaine County (Sun Valley), Teton County (Jackson Hole) and Pitkin County (Aspen) COMBINED…

With that said the real rich in Aspen (Like the Saudi Royals) are probably richer on average than the real rich in Sun Valley (Like East Coast Hedge Fund Guys) who are on average richer than the real rich in Tahoe (Like Sand Hill Road VC Guys) who are richer on average than the real rich in Jackson Hole (Business owners that like to get away from it all).

P.S. Jackson Hole slipped down in the “average real rich” rankings when Wal Mart founder Sam Walton’s kid mega Billionaire John Walton pulled a “JFK Jr.” and slammed his toy plane in to the Jackson, WY airport runway a few yeas back…

Rents are tied to “supply and demand” not “employment and salary levels”.

True, though the latter _demand_ itself is generally more elastic over a shorter time frame than the _supply_. This manifests itself as an indirect tie between employment & salary to *sustainable* rent levels. The 4 maid to a room example is an anomaly which the market will correct for as maids either leave the area for better economic outcomes in other areas _or_ employers of maids are forced to pay higher wages (or more units are built or landlords are forced to accept lower profit margins or some jackass city council member succeeds at instituting rent controls...usw)

StuckInBA Says:

> I think FAB hit the nail right on head - just supply
> and demand. Simple, old, plain vanilla economics.

It’s good to see that at least one person agrees with me…

> The apartment rental companies are faster to move
> in either direction. They know the conditions on a daily
> basis. That’s their business.

One other thing to keep in mind is that most “rental surveys” just call the biggest apartments in the region (my Dad with over 100 units on the Peninsula has never been in a rent survey in 40 years). When you read “rents in SF up 9%” it means that “the ASKING rents at Parkmerced, Fillmore Center and South Beach Marina apartments are up 9%”. When you read “rents in SV are up 9%” it means that “the ASKING rents at the big complexes owned by Essex and Avalon-Bay are up 9%...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22712082/

In case it hasn't been posted yet. And here just this last weekend a realtor was telling me and my wife that "prices in this area just simply don't go down, ever".

Randy H Says:

> The 4 maid to a room example is an anomaly which
> the market will correct for as maids either leave the
> area for better economic outcomes in other areas _or_
> employers of maids are forced to pay higher wages.

The term “living like Mexicans” has been around for a long time since every time a maid that learns English moves to a better job in the US there is another maid coming across the border and take her job (since it is better than most jobs in Mexico and living 4 to a room in the US beats living 12 to a room with the entire extended family in Mexico)...

It's a stylized example and I suspect you fully grock my point. I make no statements about who's coming over what border for which reason. Just that demand for rental units is more elastic than supply of rental units.

ackson Hole slipped down in the “average real rich” rankings when Wal Mart founder Sam Walton’s kid mega Billionaire John Walton pulled a “JFK Jr.” and slammed his toy plane in to the Jackson, WY airport runway a few yeas back…

Why would someone like him fly a plane like that? KJAC is challenging enough simply because of the hot and high conditions.

I will never fly in planes like that. Well, I do not shop at Walmart either.

I just renewed my lease today - $50 increase (private owner).

My rent went up by about 5% last June and I suspect it will happen again. One reason is that all renters are captive in the sense that moving takes a lot of time and energy. We will compare the cost/hardship of moving versus the increase and conclude that it is better to stay put.

The largest rent increase I have had was in 2000 when the rent went up (In Santa Clara) from 1725 to 2100 a month! After we signed a one-year lease, they agreed to lower it to 19-something.

Rent were going up 20% when I left Sunnyvale in mid-2007. People are voting with their feet, and leaving the place.

As netdance says, discussion about current or recent rent hikes is moot. Once the recession gets really going, we certainly won't be talking about rent increases for a while.

Do you think during a recession Americans are going to continue to buy useless and/or overpriced electronic crap (think iphone, new laptops every couple of years, other useless gadgets)? If the recession turns global, ditto for the rest of the world. And do you think corporate America will continue to pump money into "web advertising" at the same rate? And do you think VC's will want to keep wasting their cash on useless "me too" "Web 2.0" BS? I suspect not...

But if the recession ruins people's lives, they can only turn to Second Life. :roll:

My friend just started working at Second Life. I went to their holiday party last weekend (open bar, how could I say no?).

I went to their holiday party last weekend (open bar, how could I say no?).

Was the party real or virtual?

LOL, it was real. But their meetings are in virtual reality.

Your friend has my condolences, lunar. Linden recently ousted their CTO -- if you could ever really call him that. Well, he did help to create an architecture where it takes about 1 server to support every 30 players for a mediocre graphical experience and serious time-lag issues, and perhaps the singularly worst scripting language ever dreamed up.

Randy, are you not afraid of the avatar's wrath? :)

Randy, interesting. My friend says they are hiring like crazy right now.

I have had negative feelings about Second Life ever since I read about your experience.

Maybe they are onto SecondLife 2.0.

If that sounds as a weird way to name something, remember there was J2EE 1.4 (Java 2 Enterprise Edition version 1.4).

Here is my rental history:

2004: $2900
2005: $2900
2006: $3100
mid 2007: $3900 (! I got upset at that point, signed a short lease, started to look)
2008: $3800 (moved to a nicer house - old house lying empty - which feels good!)

My resolution for 2008? Either rents fall substantially, or else I get the hell out of this area. I am preparing for the latter.

what's going on is simple:

you are asking why your rent increased but the average went down...

the sample size of your observation: n=1

even if you polled all your friends your observation has inadequate power to evaluate the rents in the area...

rent is throwing money down the toilet

buy now before too late

just kidding about last 2 statements...are you paying attention!

Rents are rising, or so they say...
Average asking rates for apartments in the nine-county Bay Area reached $1,562 during the fourth quarter, up 9.4 percent from a year ago, according to a report released today by Novato research firm RealFacts. Prices are up 16.3 percent from four years ago.

or so they say…

Buy now or forever be a jealous bitter renter! :twisted:

Just another observation for people saying their rents didn't go down with the average in their area. The average includes new rental leases, I would not just sit back and expect an nice letter saying your rent is going down, on average means you should be able to open the paper and find a comparable house for less. Then you can try to negotiate it with your landlord if you have a lease coming due.

Ha it was about 1.5 years between laptops for me! And now Apple's biting the bullet because I'm just going to use this one until it's dead then use some thrift store special computer..... no more new lappys for me!

And as for 2nd life, I'm enjoying that right now. In this Life 2.0 I have time to learn the trumpet, and I just got a cool little cornet, made somewhere in the 1940s, today. Hopefully fairly soon I'll be playing Real Life (tm) I'll be the avatar playing trumpet or cornet downtown around Whiskey Row and hangin' at Cuppers.

Did you watch SICKO. There is a scene like this news item. GOD BLESS AMERICA.

Paraplegic man dumped in LA gutter sues hospital
Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:52pm EST
By Jill Serjeant

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A mentally ill paraplegic man filed a lawsuit on Thursday against a hospital that dumped him in a gutter on Los Angeles' "Skid Row" -- a case that highlighted the plight of the city's vast homeless population.

Gabino Olvera, 42, sued the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center for negligence after it discharged him in February 2007, took him across town in a van and left him in a soiled hospital gown without a wheelchair in the heart of the city's homeless area.

Witnesses who came to Olvera's aid said they saw him dragging himself on the ground with hospital papers and documents clenched in his teeth while the driver sat in her van and applied makeup before driving off.

The incident was captured by security cameras at a nearby homeless shelter.

Hernan Vera, a lawyer with Public Counsel, which helped bring the lawsuit on behalf on Olvera, called it "the most obscene and callous example of this practice that we have seen."

The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court and seeks unspecified damages.

Hollywood Presbyterian said in a statement it had thoroughly reviewed its patient discharge policies to ensure nothing of the sort ever happened again.

The hospital added it had held extensive talks with Olvera's lawyers and remained optimistic about reaching a satisfactory out-of-court settlement.

The Olvera case was one of about 50 reported incidents in the past 12 months of sick, confused and homeless patients being left by ambulances in the 50-block area of downtown Los Angeles thought to have the highest concentration of homeless people in the United States.

Estimates of the number of homeless in the United States ranges from 500,000 to more than a million.

In Los Angeles, an estimated 12,000 people, many of them mentally ill or addicted to drugs and alcohol, live and sleep on the streets of the area known as Skid Row.

Vera called Los Angeles "ground zero in the fight against unlawful dumping of homeless patients by hospitals."

Lawyers for Olvera said one of the goals of the lawsuit was to force local hospitals to change their practices.

In May, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the country's largest nonprofit health-care provider, settled a lawsuit involving the dumping of another patient by agreeing to find shelter places for all patients it discharges in Los Angeles.

Kaiser also agreed to improve discharge procedures and to contribute $500,000 to homeless services on Skid Row.

PAR said:
We have also been trying to fill about six open headcount spots since August and four of them remain open.

Do you work at a startup? Because I have heard from several people who are specifically looking for a NON startup employer.

PermaRenter, I feel a violent rage building when I read stories like that.

>> Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the country’s largest nonprofit health-care provider

If Kaiser is non profit, why it behaves like this. Is this because executives can take home fat pay by keeping cost low. I would like to understand Kaiser in more detail -- can any insider help?

I bought a refurbished, vintage 1911 concert tuba a couple years ago at my favorite instrument store in Oakland. It only works in life v1.0 though, and the 4th key is a bit sticky.

If Kaiser is non profit, why it behaves like this. Is this because executives can take home fat pay by keeping cost low. I would like to understand Kaiser in more detail — can any insider help?

In short, yes. Kaiser has always done things on the cheap. Their managers and MDs are incentivised to keep costs low. It's okay for some issues, IMO, like using generic drugs that are not only cheaper but have longer proven track records. But this system fails for other issues, like the homeless patient dumps in Skid Row. This story has been playing out for a couple of years now, BTW.

Kaiser's premiums are usually around 3-5x cheaper than other plans, but you get what you pay for.

My rent went up over the past couple years, but SFH rents here in Marin have definitely softened recently. 6 months ago all you'd see in CL was an occasional 3+BR house for between $3K-$4K/mo., and then a whole bunch for $7.5K-$8.5K/mo., right about mortgage-coverage level for recent buyers.

Now most all the homes are in the $3K range, and the "cover my mortgage please" people don't even bother. There are even occasional 5BR or nice 4BR homes under $4K, which I haven't seen the entire time since living here until now.

Hey, the more rents come down the cheaper houses have to get before I buy one. Or, they can just keep paying me to rent...

I am a nurse practitioner and have worked at Kaiser in various departments on and off for the last 30 years . I have worked at Kaiser in Oakland, Pleasanton and Walnut Creek. In my personal experience, it is a very ethical organization.

He cited the tech sector’s strength as a key factor contributing to the Bay Area’s 1.9 percent payroll employment growth

I am suspicious of the "tech" part - a lot of the crap that passes for tech these days is just some fancy-pants consumer-discretionary item with a chip.

Fortunes of companies in this sector ("Yes, I am looking at _you_, AAPL") will behave more like consumer product companies than like tech companies, so evaluating them as techs is somewhat misleading.

StuckInBA Says:
What ???? No comment on the DQ report ?

There was, on the _previous_ thread. Recycled here...

skibum Says:
I like their headline: “Bay Area home sales drag along bottom”

At least another quarter of dragging along the bottom, then a couple of quarters of sliding down the back of the thigh, a quarter dragging along the back of the knee, maybe a quick run down the shin, then circle the ankles for another quarter.

Let me know when it is tickling the sole, I may start looking at a house to buy.

The "tech sector" as a financial analyst target has always been a broad category comprising everything from hardware, software, overlap with chips, overlap with telecom, and overlap with "techy" appliances like gaming consoles. SAP and Oracle have as much in common with EA and Vivendi as Apple has in common with Google. They're called "techs" because they aren't car companies, oil drillers, drug producers, or the makers of the Swiffer.

So we were merrily watching our mid century Ventura stucco masterpiece drop every so nicely, about 5-10K a month and then WHAMO our house is "zestimated" at 50K more than we bought it for. Shit, I need this technology because I have a whole lot of history i would like to revise.

danville woman, Kaiser rocks!