patrick.net

As a former aerospace engineer who hangs out with a few civil engineers still, I don't believe the amount of structural steel used has a lot to do with how well it will withstand an earthquake. Depends on how it's deployed. From what I understand, it's how the structure is designed and how it floats (or doesn't) on the soil that determines it's immediate survivability. Designing some "give" into a structure can actually be a good thing. A willow will survive wind-storms that a tall oak will not. In any case, getting a good engineering assessment or two of your structure would be a good idea not just rely on the word of the builder/seller about how strong it is.

The best thing you can have is insurance. In any case even a structure that survives an earthquake could be damaged/destroyed by post-quake factors like fire or flood. Or the surrounding area that is destroyed could create it's own hazards for some years. If your neighbors are slow to rebuild you could be living on a block with boarded-up empty buildings and that's not good on several fronts.

what about plagues of locusts or frogs -- do we need to insure against that?

From what I understand, it’s how the structure is designed and how it floats (or doesn’t) on the soil that determines it’s immediate survivability. Designing some “give” into a structure can actually be a good thing. A willow will survive wind-storms that a tall oak will not.

Vincente,

From the little I know, I think you're right. I remember reading about super-tall skyscrapers like the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur or the Taipei 101 building, both located in earthquake and typhoon-prone areas. They use very interesting damping systems to counteract extreme forces, sort of like humungous internal pendulums that counter the sway of the buildings during a quake or typhoon.

But, as you say, any reinforcement may not be good enough if the ground underneath completely gives way and shakes like a bowl full of jello, which is how they describe what happens to places like the Marina.

I’m in the market for a perpetual motion machine and an underground cave, 100 meters or more underground.

Locusts are good though - good famine food.

SFWoman Says:

> The strongest I have ever felt the ground shake was
> in an earthquake in about 1988 at my family place
> in the Back Bay (Boston, landfill, massive Edwardian
> stone townhouses).

The Brookline area of Boston has always reminded of Presidio Heights. Is Brookline considered part of the “Back Bay” (or is the Back Bay just the area east of Fenway Park and BU)?

The Brookline area of Boston has always reminded of Presidio Heights. Is Brookline considered part of the “Back Bay” (or is the Back Bay just the area east of Fenway Park and BU)?

No - Brookline is a separate town abutting Boston proper (by the Longwood medical area and Fenway). Back Bay is the neighborhood east of Mass. Ave., north of St. Botolph St (or for some, Huntington Ave.), west of the Boston Common, and bordered by the Charles River to the north.

How does Brookline remind you of Presidio Heights? I don't see the connection so much (having lived in Brookline for 2 years).

Off topic but does anyone buy these stats?

Randy H., any comments?
_____

A brisk rise in American wages:

Pay rose faster than the cost of living for the first time in years.
By Mark Trumbull | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

American paychecks are rising again at a pace not seen since the 1990s.
The pay increase amounts to 4 percent on average over the past 12 months, and it comes at a very helpful time for millions of households.

For three years, pay increases haven't kept pace with the rising cost of living. Then came this year's housing slowdown, which has further squeezed family finances.

Those setbacks, however, are now being offset by rising income. Four percent may not sound like much, but you have to look back to 1997 to find a calendar year with a gain that big.

Equally significant, tamer energy prices mean that the "real" wage gains, after inflation, are above 3 percent for the past 12 months. That, too, hasn't happened since the 1990s, even though the economy has been expanding over the past five years.

"The striking feature of this expansion has been that ... real wages for the typical worker haven't risen that much," says Richard Berner, US economist at the investment bank Morgan Stanley in New York. But with real incomes rising, he says, "YOUR GET A PICTURE OF AN ECONOMY THAT CAN WEATHER THIS HOUSING STORM."

For the rest of the article:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1120/p01s03-usec.html

Seems MBSs don't make the best property owners. Blight, coming to a foreclosure near you...

CLEVELAND - Some of the world's biggest banks are accused of owing the nation's poorest big city money for upkeep on vacant houses, a newspaper reported Monday.

The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer analyzed records detailing the more than $2.6 million the city spent last year mowing untended lawns, removing trash and boarding up windows on the homes owned by the banks, nonprofit organizations and others. It billed the landlords but recovered only $750,000, or 28 percent....

Most of the banks dispute the claims. They say that Cleveland tries to make them pay for properties they no longer own or have never owned.

The banks say Cleveland often considers them owners, when they are trustees.

"A corporate trustee for mortgage-backed securities where there is a pool of investors only serves an administrative role, but has no ownership stake," said Kevin Heine, a Bank of New York spokesman.
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/16058889.htm

BTW, I finished watching "The End of Suburbia" on YouTube a couple of days ago. They have some snarky comments at the end about McMansions being "the slums of the future" and mention the possibility of two or more families taking up occupancy.

@Michael Holliday,

Real wages may indeed be increasing, but it seems the problem is this will increase inflationary pressures overall. Combine that with the recent reports of low unemployment, and you have a recipe for inflation. I don't know if any of these numbers are true, but if they are, it doesn't necessarily mean good things for housing. Increased inflation will put upward pressure on long-term mortgage rates, and the Fed will also have increased pressure to raise the rates as well.

And another thing about the data presented in the article you linked: if you look at 2 of the top wage increases by job sector, they are construction and financial (which would include the mortgage industry). We all know where those wages are heading!

I said:

> The Brookline area of Boston (where I have been a couple times)
> has always reminded of Presidio Heights (where I live).

Then skibum Says:

> How does Brookline remind you of Presidio Heights?
> I don’t see the connection so much (having lived in
> Brookline for 2 years).

Just a few of the reasons that Brookline (at least the area just west of BU and the Harvard Med School) reminds me of Presidio Heights are:
1. Nice area
2. West of downtown
3. Mix of Homes and Apartments
4. Nicer than average Homes and Apartments
5. Older than average Homes and Apartments
6. Nice homes just a few blocks from a big hospital
7. Big Jewish Temple with a dome on top
8. Lots of Volvos and Land Rovers parked on the street

7. Big Jewish Temple with a dome on top
8. Lots of Volvos and Land Rovers parked on the street

@FAB,

These are *definitely* true! Brookline's nicer parts are very nice, but they're not really that old in the Boston scale of "old." There is a very large Jewish population there, and more recently, Russians (including Russian Jews). The analogy falls apart (in addition to the fact that Brookline is a separate town) is when it comes to schools - they're excellent in Brookline, and they suck across the board in SF, except for Lowell HS.

The really annoying thing about Brookline is that they don't allow overnight on-street parking at all. In this way, it's more like Menlo Park, CA!

fargaud:

You are Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, and I claim my mini desk-elephant.

On a side note, does anyone know where the Foster City fake land ends and the real land begins?

fargaud,

Hilarious! :)

I dare you to send your response to Mr. Cannon's ("broker") letter to the Chronicle and see if they print it!

skibum Says:

"...And another thing about the data presented in the article you linked: if you look at 2 of the top wage increases by job sector, they are construction and financial (which would include the mortgage industry). We all know where those wages are heading!"
_____

Very astute observation. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I figured there were a few glitches to the wishful thinking on salaries.

SALARIES ARE UP HAIKU:

Salaries are up
in a down market. Go buy
more houses. Have fun!

farguad,

Good on ya!

That's been much of my problem with the "arrangement". Everybody gets a piece of the action. What makes it worse is that often as not they are working in collusion with one another!

King_Cobra,

Actually I'm a pretty fur piece from Hood River (closer to Salem, OR). HR is a great place (in the summer). Wind surfing is getting national attention and that's great! My understanding is that the rolling bubble has found Hood River too. Evidently views of the gorge are no longer the domain of carefree wind surfing vagabonds.

Due to the multitude of environmental groups and all of the "impact surveys" YOU have to pay for to build or develop there it's out of reach for the average guy.

SFWoman,

Thanks for the maps!

SFWoman,

Great maps --thanks! My only lament is that the first map doesn't seem able to pull up any data for SoCal zipcodes/cities and there is no SoCal analog to the second map (you click on the So. Cal. link and just redirects you to the State's website & it's old, poorly detailed grid map).

Once again (in yet another way), SoCal sucks compared to the Bay Area.

@Michael Holliday

I am probably in the minority because I believe those numbers and think they are understated, if anything. I have been claiming for a while that real wages are accelerating.

This is consistent with the quiet/unreported/underreported inflation that many have been claiming, myself included. My reasoning is simple. Rents are rising. Rents cannot rise if real wages are flat or declining for very long. Either rents must fall, which they aren't, or wages must rise. Then add in all the other inflation we've seen, namely energy and more recently food, and wages are under tremendous pressure even ignoring house prices.

Keep a couple of things in mind. These stats are very broad, so tiny movements in the rates are considered significant. The income distribution is heavily skewed, so small movements in the median mean there has been very large absolute wage inflation. Compare that to the past 5 years where the upper 5,10,20% (whatever you happen to measure) has experienced tremendous wage growth, but these stats just sat flat because that group couldn't move the median. However if you bump up minimum wage a few cents the median starts moving. (Not to digress into an anti-minimum-wage debate, but herein lies the math that macroecon opponents rely on).

If the big quaker comes in at 8, he will probably make plenty of mush all along the bayside. Liquefaction can then abound and shake down some prices. A six or seven if centered in just the right places might do much that same. Some of the faults are long overdue for a shake out. Given time they will show themselves, and then after the shake gravity might long last come into play.

The Alaskan quake of '64 was quite a spectacle and sent a tsunami into Crescent City, CA. California would be hard put to come up with something of that magnitude. There has been plenty of seismic retrofitting all about California which will probably stand up quite well to strong shakes.

Waterspouts out at sea are much more common in California than the rare tornado. Hurricanes happen in Baja California Sur where warmer ocean waters can support them. Hurricanes die out rapidly on reaching the deep and cooler ocean waters of Upper California.

Randy H.:

Good explanation of real wages & rent.

Is it possible, like housing, that instead of wages actually going up, what's really going up is one's percentage of take-home pay going to rent.

Are rent payments rising in some proportion to the rise in monthly mortgage payments?

In otherwords, is the higher percentage of income that is now going to mortgage payments actually pushing up the average household percentage of income going to rent payments, irregardless of a rise (or fall) in median salaries?

Is there a correlation? Is the higher ratio of income now going to pay mortgages causing the ratio of income to rent payments to go up?

Etc.

FRANKEN-HOUSE HAIKU:

Stupid, little flip-
pers flop hard as the house comes
to life, and hurls them.

Is there a correlation? Is the higher ratio of income now going to pay mortgages causing the ratio of income to rent payments to go up?

Most likely. In fact, if this _did not_ happen, then there would be a much bigger problem because it would mean that a landed-gentry class was emerging in the US. To a much smaller degree, this is happening to be sure, but we're still very far from a Western European style cast system. But if rent were to stay this far (or farther) below ownership costs for a generation or so, it would very profoundly alter the culture of American society. We're built on the Horatio Alger rule: work hard and you can get ahead. But a landed-gentry system would mean that no matter how hard you worked, if you didn't inherit land you can never hope to buy it.

He said they were holding onto boulders for dear life.

BAP33,

Nah, that would be too much hard work. One dirty bomb in a van in Pacific Heights ought to do it. Ditto Midtown Manhattan. Ditto Foggy Bottom in DC. And so on. Nothing needs to be destroyed or even killed, just rendered uninhabitable and worthless for 50 years or more.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/21/BUG5UMGNVT1.DTL

Housing article on sfgate.com.

lunarpark,

Even with as modest a decline as Mr. Rosen is calling for I'm sure that article has plenty of seller's blood boiling. LAY (is she STILL around) seems to concur, basically home prices will go down little if at all and within 18 mos. every thing will be back to "normal" in Berkley?

DinOR -

Yes, that article probably raised the blood pressure of many would be sellers. The articles keep getting more bearish.

Another one from Marketwatch:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/commentary-psychology-favors-buyers-housing/story.aspx?guid=%7B49CC3F2B%2D9AB7%2D413F%2D809D%2D1E59F6E65CF3%7D&siteId=

Also, one of the commentators on CNBC this morning compared realtors to car salesmen.

SFWoman,

I admit, it depends on the type of nuclear material. Radioactive waste would be expensive and probably call for a somewhat lengthy quarantine...but the cities could survive. I was thinking of low grade plutonium from rogue breeder plants - I understand that would be quite hazardous for sometime to come.

Based on my understanding, the bombs dropped in Japan were constructed from Uranium and much of the radioactive material was burnt up in the blast. Most of the radiation poisoning issues appear to be from the blast.

The O'Shaughnessy dam in Hetch Hetchy is not well guarded. In addition to the flooding danger - you BA people should really cringe at the prospect of buying icky drinking water from LA if the dam blows up. BA has much better tasting water than LA.

SP,

I suppose lying is possible, for him to illustrate his point about the Lehman caves. Maybe he mentioned another earthquake and I remembered Loma Prieta (given his age and the fact that he worked extensively in Sequoia). He's an NPS tour guide and not a park ranger, so maybe lying is more acceptable (putting aside that scout troop leader thing).

lunarpark,

Kind of on the fence about marketwatch's bubble coverage. Mortgage rates didn't get super ridiculous crazy cheap until 2003/2004? This would have been the logical entry point for all those new members to the "ownership society". Buying what? Mostly entry level housing! How does some poor schmuck finally being able to qualify for a 3/2 1,500 sq. ft. home out in Fresno have any bearing on the unprecedented run-up in up-scale neighborhoods in the BA? Maybe I'm just plain wrong here but I fail to see any connection.

The bubble didn't work like that. It was the, yes, "Superstar Cities" going hog wild first and THEN the locusts took their MEW and migrated to Bend, OR and Missoula, MT etc. Not the other way around! In this regard the new entrants really couldn't make a dent so can we please drop the whole cheap money=entirely new pool of first time buyers=bubble=bust? Please?

DinOR, you make an interesting point.

lunarpark,

Thanks, I'm not so sure that I'm on to anything b/c MSM pundits are now eagerly getting on the bandwagon telling those of us that have "been there" from inception how it all went down.

Because it is THEY that are behind the learning curve on this and are just now getting on board they're scrambling to explain how things could've gotten off kilter "so quickly". Well we were already in a state of "bubble fatigue" before they were aware there was one. Now they want to come along and tell us where the train and the tracks departed. Don't get me wrong, we can use all the MSM exposure we can get! We welcome you (Carol Lloyd etc.) to "the team" but ya' gotta tell it right!

By the time most folks that were "apartment dwellers" got wind there was a big housing thing goin' on we were already 3-5 years into this! (Depending on your area and MSM level of awareness). The only thing the first time buyer can be guilty of is being the last GF's. And think about, some couple fresh out of their first apt. together DRIVING the bubble? It doesn't get any more silly than that!

Also, one of the commentators on CNBC this morning compared realtors to car salesmen.

Hey now, let's not be so harsh on car salesmen!

@lunarpark and DinOR,

RE: the sfgate article and the Haas real estate conference, I'm mixed about the event. On the one hand, yes, they paint a more bearish picture of Bay Area RE. On the other hand, they are in the end, tied heavily to industry. Here is the program's advisory board:

http://groups.haas.berkeley.edu/realestate/Fisher/PAB/index.asp

However, I'd give them credit for at least not being merely RE cheerleaders like Restinas at Harvard, or that loser at UoP, despite an advisory board that is basically made up of representatives of the REIC.

Oh and while we're at it I also reject the notion that all former apt. dwellers/first time buyers had FB written on their forehead! Due in large part to the fact that there's just so much "stuff" you can cram into an efficiency apt. my guess is that some/many of these folks had better DTI/fico than Mr. and Mrs. Serial Re-fi!

We're all being fed a bunch of stereotypes that are convenient scapegoats for the MSM just to give their articles "flow". I mean how many people are really going to challenge this stuff?

How can ANY first time buyer be in worse shape financially than a more "established" couple straddling two mortgages/coasts and an investment property (or two)? If I found myself in some sort of "freaky friday" switcheroo can I be the first time buyer?

If Katrina is evidence, then an earthquake would raise housing prices.

2 Reasons:

1) Lower housing supply (assuming a bunch of houses are destroyed.) People aren't going to leave exodus-style because of an earthquake. People have too much tied up here - jobs, family, friends, etc.

2) Gentrification. Maybe some of the crappier areas will get destroyed and be rebuilt to be nicer.

My understanding of New Orleans and other areas is that housing prices have absolutely soared since Katrina.

skibum,

Sometime back HARM posted the list of "contributors" at Harvard and it read like a REIC who's who! A-Z. Pella Windows, Moen you name it! Needless to say their conclusions were equally comical!

Are ARMS pegged at the same rate as short term T-Bond or the 10 year like fix?

TN,

Most ARMs in the U.S. are pegged to LIBOR, or a derivative thereof. Most FRMs are pegged to the 10-year Treasury. The Fed more or less directly manipulates LIBOR, by adjusting the Fed funds rate. In theory, they have far less control over FRMs because Treasury rates are set on the open market via auction.

However....

The Treasury Dept itself issues Treasuries (hence the name ;-) ) and the Fed regularly buys and sells large quantities them "as needed": http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/whatwedo.html By being able to manipulate demand to some degree, they do have some control over these rates as well (greater demand results in lower rates, less = higher). This has given rise to some conspiracy theories re: the PPT (Plunge Protection Team), often centered around the activities of the shadowy "Working Group": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/blackm/plunge.htm

WARNING: Totally OT!

I've been told that my impersonation of "Kramer" is hysterical. Ah-hem, "Kramer" will not be making the rounds during the Holiday Season this year thanks to some j@rk-off that totally screwed it up for me!