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September 12, 2037


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2007 Apr 3, 5:37am   24,319 views  333 comments

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http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,915445,00.html

Unleashing their pent-up demands and taking advantage of fairly easy mortgage money, millions of people are shopping for houses. In Santa Rosa, Calif., a 90-minute commute north of San Francisco, buyers in June began camping out in sleeping bags on a Thursday night to be first in line Saturday morning when 27 houses in a new subdevelopment went on sale. In the Kendall neighborhood of southwestern Dade County, the last open area reasonably close to Miami, prospective buyers on weekends parade caravan-like in cars and campers through flag-festooned developments.

Sound familiar? Yet another story from 2005? Nope... the publication date of this article was September 12, 1977 - nearly 30 years ago.

Let's look at some other snippets from this time capsule:

Rachelle Resnick, 27, a San Francisco school-bus driver, counts herself fortunate to have bought—with much help from her father—a two-bedroom house that she candidly describes as "a little nothing." It cost $48,500, and she will have to spend $5,000 or so to repair termite damage. But had she waited, it almost surely would have gone higher. The house sold in June 1976 for $28,000, and has since been resold four times by four separate speculators, none of whom lived in it.

Such speculation is common in California and is beginning to appear in other states. Indeed, California is a housing Oz unto itself; its population is still growing faster than that of any other large state except Texas; the recession bit especially deep in California, creating a huge backlog of demand, and strict environmental requirements severely limit the land available for housing. Prices are starting to level off, but the level is in the stratosphere. In platinum-plated Beverly Hills, one cynical real estate broker exclaims: "Oh, I have such a dog on the market right now! Come to my Sunday open house and see what I'm offering for $185,000. I can tell you, for $185,000 you get a piece of nothing." Tom Lorch, a high school principal who is looking for a house in San Francisco, adds, "When we talk about houses, it's money, money, money—not how we're going to live, which seems wrong. And these absurd numbers, $100,000. It's some kind of fantasy world."

Does anyone know what happened to the housing market in California after 1977? Or was the impact of Prop 13 too influential in the resulting statistics?

And finally, the social impact:

Like all inflations, housing inflation has serious social effects. Some wives feel forced to go to work, not because they want to have careers or earn their own spending money, but because buying that dream house nowadays usually requires two incomes. Six out often first-time buyers are families in which both husband and wife hold jobs. Couples who want to have children sometimes face the brutal choice of a house or a child—and, more often than in past years, select the house. In the early postwar period, sociologists and merchants suggested that Americans spent too little on shelter, too much on less basic needs. If so, the market has more than corrected that tendency. In order to buy a house, couples are scrimping drastically on other spending—for cars, food and even furniture; not a few fancy new houses are almost bare inside. Young people have always asked parents for help in scraping up the down payment on a home; mortgage bankers call the payoff from papa a "gift letter." Now the pool of cash required to spend the first night in a new house—frequently $20,000 to $30,000—has made this sacrifice of independence a matter of necessity rather than choice.

So... this was in 9/1977. Now, it's hard enough predicting what 9/2007 will be like - but what do you think September 12, 2037 will be like?

Already, both parents are working, realtors are spinning the Bay Area as a place so great that you don't need to take vacations - what's next? Will child labor make a come back? ("Monta Vista High School and Fireworks Factory #88"?) How much more special can it get here?

(Bonus points for including Peak Oil in your prediction...)

#housing

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174   FormerAptBroker   2007 Apr 4, 7:18am  

allah Says:

> DinOR, How about those Harley EDA’s?

Harley has some tough times ahead as their target market (Low IQ Boomers, and Closeted Homo Boomers) gets older and stops paying top dollar for the pile of crap noise makers that Harley calls motorcycles…

175   HeadSet   2007 Apr 4, 7:20am  

"Still. It is hard to image what would have happened without DOS and Windows. Technically superior products are useless if they do not sell."

Absolutely. Look what happened to the Amiga 2000, which had 4096 colors and multi-tasking while Mac was was still a black&white single tasker. The English really porked the marketing on this marvel by deliberately making it harder for 3rd party add ons (like Video Toaster).

Microsoft compares to the Model T Ford. Not the best car by any means, but the one that put America on wheels.

176   Peter P   2007 Apr 4, 7:21am  

Microsoft compares to the Model T Ford. Not the best car by any means, but the one that put America on wheels.

And in this case, Microsoft puts a computer on every desktop. Bravo!

177   Jimbo   2007 Apr 4, 7:24am  

SF is a self-proclaimed liberal city. Can someone tell me why it is so adverse to changes (e.g. redevelopment, demolition, etc)? I thought liberals are supposed to be open-minded.

Most people who live here like San Francisco just fine the way she is and are adverse to changing what works very well for most of us. Compound that with the very democratic decision making process and you have the recipe for slow decision making.

The truth is that San Francisco has build 25,000 new units in the last decade, more than all of Marin county and more proportionally than any city on The Peninsula. SOMA has changed dramatically in the last decade and China Basin even more so. I literally did not realize where I was exactly the last time I was there, and I used to work in that neighborhood.

Sorry, you are going to have to find another straw man to beat up on.

I think FAB is wrong in his characterization of what "liberals" in San Francisco are like. But what he would probably call a liberal, I would call part of the far left. People like Chris Daly are hardly liberal. Even they would deny it. I have a bunch of friends who consider the word liberal an insult to hurl at people like me who are "appeasionist" to capitalism.

And even Chris Daly has championed plans to allow developers to increase their density requirements and reduce their parking requirements, both of which increase developer profits, in return for increasing the amount of housing required to be built as low income.

178   Peter P   2007 Apr 4, 7:45am  

And Space was correct it was Garry Kindall who first made the first DOS and not Bill Gates.

True. But who made money out of it?

179   Peter P   2007 Apr 4, 7:48am  

in return for increasing the amount of housing required to be built as low income.

In a free market there are no requirements for density, parking, and low-income housing. The market sorts itself out.

The very need to have BMR housing units is suspicious enough.

180   Jimbo   2007 Apr 4, 7:50am  

Oh, my prediction for what the Bay Area is like in 2037:

I think 10M people will live in the area, up from 7M today, but the roads will be much less congested because gasoline will be $20/gallon. Most people will commute in little electric smart carts that will drive them around and allow much faster and easier transportation. When they get to their destination, they will park their carts and either walk or take bicycles.

Homes will average $3M in San Francisco, but the overall cost of ownership will be less, since interest rates will be 3% and inflation will be 1%. The average family income in the Bay Area will be $300k, but most things will actually cost less, as globalization really kicks in. Anything that can be made in China will be much cheaper. Homes, medicine and college education will all be much more expensive though, balancing things out.

None of us will actually do any manual labor, in fact we will get paid our enormous salaries for posting at blogs like this one at work. All manual labor will be outsourced to Mexico and China and any actual grunt work will be done by robots, operated remotely by illegal aliens living in Nevada.

The Bay Area will be even special than it is today, because global warming will moderate the climate and the coast will be the only place anyone will want to live. And there will be genetically engineered plants that everyone will plant in their backyard which will produce delicious and healthy foodstuff, so no one will every have to go shopping for food again.

Genetic programming and plastic surgery will be commonplace and combined with the improved weather, beautiful women (and men) will routinely walk around naked, displaying their glorious bodies for all of us to enjoy.

Okay, I can think of any more utopian bullshit to spew, so I am going to have to stop here...

181   Peter P   2007 Apr 4, 7:51am  

The Bay Area will be even special than it is today, because global warming will moderate the climate and the coast will be the only place anyone will want to live.

Huh? If "global warming" is real than Bay Area will be way too warm. British Columbia will be prime.

182   lunarpark   2007 Apr 4, 7:59am  

"any actual grunt work will be done by robots, operated remotely by illegal aliens living in Nevada."

LOL

183   Allah   2007 Apr 4, 8:08am  

I sure hope this chart is wrong,it shows that the dollar just plummeted! :twisted:

185   Peter P   2007 Apr 4, 8:11am  

Please be very careful with financial data. There are glitches all the time. This is why I am very suspicious of non-exchanged stop/limit orders.

186   sfbubblebuyer   2007 Apr 4, 8:17am  

Allah, I believe that the trade got misrecorded. 8.294 instead of 82.94.

If that wasn't just misrecorded, but actually mistransacted, then somebody is going to be seriously po'd when they see that.

:D

187   Allah   2007 Apr 4, 8:19am  

Off by a decimal point and it's not even april fools day! :lol:

188   sfbubblebuyer   2007 Apr 4, 8:46am  

They appear to have fixed the decimal point.

Hey, they were ONLY off by an order of magnitude... that's not bad!

189   e   2007 Apr 4, 8:48am  

FAB: Most of the homes in California are not that old (and most of the old homes like the one I grew up were very high quality).

Hm, maybe this is just my East Coast bias, but it seems that most of the Californian homes I've seen are pretty cruddy. Especially "not very old" ones - e.g. ones built in 1950's 1960's.

Similar homes built around the same timeframe in the East Coast seem a lot sturdier and... well put together.

190   DaBoss   2007 Apr 4, 9:08am  

eburbed --

Thats cause bricks crumble during an earthquake.
Yes, I would say thats a east coast bias.

191   DaBoss   2007 Apr 4, 9:12am  

"Huh? If “global warming” is real than Bay Area will be way too warm."

I guess you kids would never have survived the California drought of 1970's. You would have called it "Global Warming" as well.

Oh it was great no having to put on a wet suite when I went surfing.

192   DaBoss   2007 Apr 4, 9:14am  

"True. But who made money out of it?"

The point is your wrong and your back tracking.

193   Peter P   2007 Apr 4, 9:14am  

I still think that "global warming" is a hoax.

194   Peter P   2007 Apr 4, 9:19am  

The point is your wrong and your back tracking.

Huh? How am I backtracking? The point is that market drives history. The person who created the market for DOS is much more significant than the person who created DOS itself. If DOS was not created, Bill Gates could just have bought something else and made it great. Buf if Bill gates was not there, we will be asking "DOS what?" now.

195   FormerAptBroker   2007 Apr 4, 9:19am  

Jimbo Says:

> I think FAB is wrong in his characterization of what “liberals”
> in San Francisco are like. But what he would probably call a
> liberal, I would call part of the far left. People like Chris Daly
> are hardly liberal. Even they would deny it.

I would call Chris Daly a “Liberal/Progressive Politician”. Liberal/Progressive “Politicians” differ from other “Liberal/Progressives” in San Francisco in that they change their position on issues depending on how much money they get (both legally and illegally)…

As much as I hate Chris Daly I have to give the guy a hand since he was able to get re-elected despite the fact that he is not only the biggest asshole to ever hold public office in SF but also the most corrupt person to hold public office (in the past 30 years) in SF (and that is saying a lot since Willie Brown was elected twice in the past 30 years)…

196   PAR   2007 Apr 4, 9:33am  

Fun with Shiller and roller coasters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUldGc06S3U

197   e   2007 Apr 4, 9:34am  

Thats cause bricks crumble during an earthquake.
Yes, I would say thats a east coast bias.

Well bricks are one aspect - but here the interiors of some of the places are just weird: It looks like heat registers were added willy nilly, as an afterthought. The default doors are of the worst quality, walls tend to be cracked, or crooked.

Things really seemed to be built slapdash - especially the 60's stuff I've seen in San Jose.

198   Malcolm   2007 Apr 4, 9:40am  

These days I don't know the difference between a Democrat and a Republican. It seems shocking but true that Democrats are more fiscally conservative than we used to stereotype them as, and you don't have to always hear the annoying bible bashing from them either. They are normally very nice people except for the fact that they think they have a right to tell everyone how much is enough for them to have, that's my only problem with liberals.

199   sfbubblebuyer   2007 Apr 4, 9:41am  

I qualify myself as a liberal republican or a conservative democrat.

I'm all for :

Gay Marriage.
Guns for people.
Mandatory registering said guns and holding owners to manslaughter charges even if they didn't pull the trigger.
Abortions.
No public money for abortions.
Public money for condoms on campuses/highschools.
Sex ed in school.
Stem Cell Research.
Limiting stem cell lines to ones harvested from donated extra fertility treatment eggs.
Reducing greenhouse emissions.
Passing cost on to consumer for reducing emissions.
Passing horrifying tarrifs against polluting countries.
Bombing the shit out of terrorist countries, and then not giving them a dime to rebuild. Rebuilding them = more terrorists.
Pulling the army out if Iraq. (And every dime.)
Pulling Haliburton's federal contracts as they are no longer an american country. Also, penalizing them for all the contractual obligations they've missed.
Sending Dick Cheney hunting with himself and himself only. And with no cell phone.
Reducing welfare expenditures.
Reducing military spending, preferrably by cutting 'pork' from 'old boy network' of military contracts.
Reducing dependancy on oil, foreign or otherwise.
Balanced Budgets. (Or rather, budget surplusses for a good long time.)
Paying off the deficit.
Once the deficit is paid off and we're running a surpluse, reducing taxes.
Term limits for Senators and congressmen/women.
A monkey in every garage, and an elephant in every pot. Or was that the other way around?

200   Peter P   2007 Apr 4, 9:44am  

They are normally very nice people except for the fact that they think they have a right to tell everyone how much is enough for them to have, that’s my only problem with liberals.

Conservatives are nice people too. They just look mean sometimes.

I do not usually pay too much attention to the fiscal issue. I worry more about hopeless programs like welfare and overt market distortion.

201   Malcolm   2007 Apr 4, 9:46am  

SF, more and more people that I talk to who label themselves one or the other all seem to have that sort of similar ideology. The lines are so blurred now I don't recognize them anymore. I used to be the biggest ditto head out there and then I wrote my masters thesis on public private partnerships, go figure.

Everyone my age (35) with almost no exception is pro individual freedom, anti welfare, and very environmental. Your list that you just put up only has a couple of things I would even debate you on without necessarily even disagreeing on.

202   Malcolm   2007 Apr 4, 9:50am  

I always considered myself conservative, then I would listen to my peers' points of view and I started not liking conservatives. God I've got to forward this stupid anti gay/ABC emails from one of my red neck friends from Poway, CA just sent me. It's the typical, 'you liberals in the media keep promoting ...... I'm not going to watch you anymore and I'm going to tell my other 3 friends not to either.'

It's like, give it a freaking rest already.

203   Peter P   2007 Apr 4, 9:50am  

Everyone my age (35) with almost no exception is pro individual freedom, anti welfare, and very environmental.

Because our Pluto is in Libra.

204   Malcolm   2007 Apr 4, 9:51am  

I'm a leo.

205   Malcolm   2007 Apr 4, 9:52am  

Oh, and very anti union. I don't think there has been a time in this country where unions were so despised.

206   Peter P   2007 Apr 4, 9:56am  

I’m a leo.

Perhaps your Sun is in Leo? If you are 35 your Pluto should be in Libra. If you were a bit older you Pluto would be in Virgo.

207   Malcolm   2007 Apr 4, 10:00am  

Gay Marriage. (sure why not?)
Guns for people.
Mandatory registering said guns and holding owners to manslaughter charges even if they didn’t pull the trigger. (only when clearly negligent)
Abortions. (Only through constitutional amendment for federal protection, otherwise state by state issue)
No public money for abortions.
Public money for condoms on campuses/highschools. (Or the 3 month shot for the girls)
Sex ed in school.
Stem Cell Research.
Limiting stem cell lines to ones harvested from donated extra fertility treatment eggs.
Reducing greenhouse emissions. (Without the politics, let's start with calling it smog)
Passing cost on to consumer for reducing emissions.
Passing horrifying tarrifs against polluting countries.
Bombing the shit out of terrorist countries, and then not giving them a dime to rebuild. Rebuilding them = more terrorists.
Pulling the army out if Iraq. (And every dime.)
Pulling Haliburton’s federal contracts as they are no longer an american country. Also, penalizing them for all the contractual obligations they’ve missed.
Sending Dick Cheney hunting with himself and himself only. And with no cell phone.
Reducing welfare expenditures.
Reducing military spending, preferrably by cutting ‘pork’ from ‘old boy network’ of military contracts.
Reducing dependancy on oil, foreign or otherwise. (E85 and Toyota will practically eliminate it.)
Balanced Budgets. (Or rather, budget surplusses for a good long time.)
Paying off the deficit. (I can't believe Republicans were against this)
Once the deficit is paid off and we’re running a surpluse, reducing taxes. (Don't confuse debt and deficit. The debt is 6 trillion, the deficit is 300 million.)
Term limits for Senators and congressmen/women.
A monkey in every garage, and an elephant in every pot. Or was that the other way around?

208   Malcolm   2007 Apr 4, 10:01am  

I'm all for putting my pluto in a virgo.

209   Peter P   2007 Apr 4, 10:06am  

FLAT TAX!!!
Legally valid civil unions for gay people.
Guns for people.
Discourage abortions without valid reasons.
Notify parents for underage abortions.
Teach abstinence in high schools but provde condom anyway.
Stem Cell Research.
Eliminate gasoline subsidies, pass on costs to consumer, allow the market to take care of the environment.
Bombing the shit out of terrorist countries, and then not giving them a dime to rebuild. Rebuilding them = more terrorists.
Eliminate most welfare programs.

210   Malcolm   2007 Apr 4, 10:10am  

Eliminate gasoline subsidies, pass on costs to consumer, allow the market to take care of the environment.

That is actually a clear free market failure requiring regulation.

211   Peter P   2007 Apr 4, 10:14am  

That is actually a clear free market failure requiring regulation.

Perhaps. I would recommend an electronic toll road system that charges motorists based on emission, speed, weight, and distance.

212   Allah   2007 Apr 4, 10:19am  

Fun with Shiller and roller coasters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUldGc06S3U

I wait for the sequel.

213   Peter P   2007 Apr 4, 10:21am  

Many free-market failures occured because real costs have not been fully passed on to consumers.

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