patrick.net

SQT,
Congratulations!
The last time I saw $135.00 sq/ft. in that region was 2001. Given cost of living since then, things would have to get pretty bad for you to lose money. And with a ten year time frame, you got it made.
And as for your neighbors, oh well - sucks to be them.

Well said (and Google “Zimbabwe, recent history” for a real-world example).

My favorite golfer is a Zimbabwean. :)

Perhaps we can never legislate or regulate human behavior into a form of "morality" that we can all agree on 100%. However, we can most certainly design laws and regulate business in such a way as to incentivize /reward behaviors that most of us deem to be socially and economically desirable, such as: transparency, fair playing-field competition, economic productivity, promoting sane/fair compensation (that reflects individual work and achievements, not just birth lottery status), and protecting the commons (environment, air, water, etc.).

We can also regulate to dis-incentivize/punish those behaviors that we deem to be anti-social and anti-free market: monopolies/oligopolies, nepotism/cronyism, corruption, bribery, coercion, excessive pollution, artificial barriers to entry, perma-subsidies, tax loopholes, etc.

We'll never reach perfection, but we really ought to be able to do a whole lot better than we are today. I recall a somewhat more level playing field, more even distribution of wealth, more opportunities to reach a middle-class lifestyle, a somewhat less debt-addicted public & government, and a little less legislation-by-lobbyist when I was growing up. But perhaps I remember wrong. Any old-timers out there care to comment?

However, we can most certainly design laws and regulate business in such a way as to incentivize /reward behaviors that most of us deem to be socially and economically desirable

The market can do all that... can't it?

Awww, thanks everyone.

SP

I saw a chart that showed the Sacto region at $135 between 2001-2002. I still think we got especially lucky because most homes around here aren't really that low yet.

HARM :

I doubt I’ll see anything in those areas below $250/sft for at least a couple of years, probably more.

I would buy one at 250 right now ! But I cannot get anything at that rate even in Mountain House. In the divine land of Cupertino the rate is around 600, while many good parts of East Bay still go for 400. :-( The BA is still insanely out of whack. The only comforting sign is, I see many houses in East Bay listed at 2004 prices. And almost every single one sells way below the listing price - from 25 to 50K below asking.

I still think we got especially lucky because most homes around here aren’t really that low yet.

If you flip it now perhaps you can have that 300%. :twisted:

San Miguel! Now why didn’t “I” think of that!

If I drink beer, I always prefer German over any other. Those guys know a thing or two about making beer.

Wow. What happened to Yen ? If you look at the chart it has broken through all supports and 110 is very critical.

Congrats SQT.

Just make sure that you lock in a FRM and drag out the repayment for as long as possible, then you will be all set. ARM will have to head up some point, so you don't want to be exposed to that risk.

I said a couple of months ago that Yen was a good bet.

I think it is about time to increase exposure to Yen (not Nikkei, but Yen), because once it moves, it will move up pretty violently, because all the hedge funds will need to rush to Yen repayment to lock in the rates, pushing it up further.

Or alternatively, another way of betting on the Yen rise is to short US indices further, particularly that of the financial sector.

Just a schadenfreude question, has the Wall Street started the layoff yet? How big will it be? How many senior people will get axed?

HARM - legislating morality is the last resort of an utterly broken down society. Humans have a hard time screwing over people they know. So, if you want to design a minimally moral society, you make sure people have few friends and social connections, and you make most interactions not person-to-person but the individual against impersonal entities like corporations, gov't agencies etc.

I am bearish on humanity.

How many senior people will get axed?

Probably not many. Many mortgaged junior people will be axed though.

Hopefully, our friend in Marina will do fine. Oh, he is a "VP" right? :-P

Just make sure that you lock in a FRM and drag out the repayment for as long as possible, then you will be all set. ARM will have to head up some point, so you don’t want to be exposed to that risk.

We're fixed rate all the way. We wouldn't buy if we couldn't afford to do that.

OO

The yen has had many false starts and yet, like you, I also feel that this time the yen will really unwind. I sense it more from gut feel but am curious as to why you think it will happen ?

ex-sunnyvale-renter Says:
November 9th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
"HARM - legislating morality is the last resort of an utterly broken down society. Humans have a hard time screwing over people they know. So, if you want to design a minimally moral society, you make sure people have few friends and social connections, and you make most interactions not person-to-person but the individual against impersonal entities like corporations, gov’t agencies etc."

Different angle because you are both right. It is wrong for government to pass laws imposing morals onto society, HOWEVER, it is proper for government to regulate businesses based on larger social values as to prevent the forced decline in values by businesses gaining unfair competitive advantages by unethical practices. An example of this is banning pesticides or food additives which cause environmental or health damage but increase short term profits.

DinOR Says:
I’m so happy for SQT. Especially on a Friday, what a great way to go into the weekend.

Totally. Happy for the great deal SQT got. AND as a bonus the this week the stock market finally lost its bladder control. What a week this was!

I was thinking… Coors? Oh HELL NO! Now I’m thinking… Corona’s at least! I’m open to suggestions, and don’t just limit it to beer.

Try Negra Modelo, which tastes like a dark Viennese lager. IMO better than Corona.
SP

Negra Modelo dark is a headache in a bottle though, try Guinness but you have to be careful, only in glass bottles WITHOUT any modern gimmicks such as CO2 thingies, so "little sour ones" or "big sour ones".

May the US stock market crap its pants, and realize that it's about at about 8000 to anyone outside the Evil Empire, and may Surfer-X find happiness in SackOtomatoes.....

Danville woman,

ask the Japanese housewives.

About 2 years ago, there were quite a few reports on the Japanese housewives getting into the carry trade (borrowing Yen investing in USD), because Yen deposit is not earning anything, and Japanese are obsessive savers. When I was in Tokyo, I saw lots of posters for Yen carry trade seminars targeting Japanese housewives. If you want to know what's hot in Japan, check out the popular seminars.

Recently I have been reading that the Japanese housewives are anxious to do the trading in reverse, dumping their dollar deposit and going back to Yen, because Japan is getting very inflationary, particularly in the recent months. In fact, Japanese housewives are retrieving fund from America to buy gold as a hedge against inflation. That is why you see Yen strengthening without causing gold price to crash.

135 per sqft? arfk, (are you fucking kidding?) wow, right on!

StuckInBA Says:

I would buy one at 250 right now ! But I cannot get anything at that rate even in Mountain House.

If your willing to consider something as far out as Mountain House, look in Discovery Bay-its actually closer to the Bay Area than Mountain House and prices are better. Prices have been hit hard thanks to the overbuilding in 2005-2006 and lots of foreclosures in those housing developments. You cant get anything on the deep water for that price, but there are dozens of 2-3 year old houses under $160 sq/ft. My personal favorite is $128 sq/ft (4,088 sq ft, asking $525K).

Congrats SQT!!!

Has everyone seen the latest from Ben Bernanke?

At the very end of the hearing, Sen. Schumer, the Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, asked the Fed Chairman what his recommendation would be should the Congress increase the loan limit that the GSE's are allowed to purchase (the limit now stands at $437,000).

Bernanke replied simply, "A million."

WTF? This is insane,

and I forgot, many congratulations to SQT and family.

As a point of reference, I bought my place here in an mid-upscale neighborhood in Boise for $137 per s/f in June 2006. Current asking prices on the same floorplan have recently dropped to $134 per s/f. I'm wondering how this compares with the actual cost of construction nowadays.

Anyone who can buy a long-term home with comfortable financing has a good deal. I got really good financing on my place here: 0% fixed-rate on a no-doc mortgage. I did however put 100% down. :)

The FB who bought my Cambrian Park house in April 2006 paid $670 per s/f, and he used a 103% NINJA loan to do so. When I bought said house in 1981 I paid $110 per s/f.

As mentioned before, the best thing about SQT's deal is the property tax break he gets vis-a-vis his neighbors.

I digress. Idaho property tax law is quite different from CA property tax law. ID has NO "prop 13" and you pay around 1% of the assessed value. But this assesed value is NOT based on the sales price: it is completely VOLUNTARY to disclose the sales price here so the assessor cannot use them as a basis. He has to use comps and square footage to produce an assessed value. For tactical reasons I DID disclose my sales price, but the assessor came back with an assessed value considerably less than my sales price.

In CA there's a $7K "homeowner's exemption" for property tax, which is an insultingly low amount. Here in ID the homeowner's exemption is some oddball figure in the mid $80K range - about a third of the typical assessed value.

Japanese housewives ..... cool.

In a trdational Japanese shop among other neat things you can find little ceramic/glazed charms of a frog. You keep that in your purse so that every dollar (yen) that goes out will come back.

Japanese housewives are famously losing the, um, kimonos off their back right now. Currency speculation is a game you play with less leverage and deeper pockets. When the big boys get sick of the (small) increased cost of doing business they periodically swat all of these speculators out of the market. With Out Warning. I strongly urge people not to watch this group.

By the way - construction costs vary too much to answer your question Dennis. Direct labor is heavily influenced by location and cost per square foot is most influenced by the kitchen and number (and quality) of baths.

As a pure guess I would say a 3/2 with 1600 sq feet for $215k in Sacto would probably be about $45k less then building cost.

They won't put up the address because they want to get you to come to them personally, so that they have a chance of getting you to sign a screw-me-if-I-buy-anything buyer's agent contract.

Another rough way you can estimate the proper price of a house in Merced County is to take the typical yearly rent for a house and divide it by the current long-term mortgage rate, plus a few percent for other costs. So if a house rents for $12,000 per year ($1,000 per month) and 30 year fixed interest is 6%, divide by 8% to cover property tax and minimal maintenance to get $150K. That's the price a rational landlord would pay to break even. If he pays more, it's not worth his time.

You can put in other scenarios here:
http://www.forbes.com/fdc/rentorsell.shtml

Administrator Says:

> Another rough way you can estimate the proper
> price of a house in Merced County is to take the
> typical yearly rent for a house and divide it by the
> current long-term mortgage rate, plus a few percent
> for other costs. So if a house rents for $12,000 per
> year ($1,000 per month) and 30 year fixed interest
> is 6%, divide by 8% to cover property tax and minimal
> maintenance to get $150K. That’s the price a rational
> landlord would pay to break even. If he pays more,
> it’s not worth his time.

Even if you could get a 6% fixed rate loan on a rental home, and you lived down the block and managed it yourself, and you were a skilled contractor and did ALL the maint. and repairs by yourself you would still probably have negative cash flow paying $150K unless you had dream tenants that never moved (since most renters move every couple years the vacancy and turnover costs will push you in to negative cash flow).

As Randy H has pointed out the homes that people “buy” are usually a lot nicer than the homes that people rent. Over the past few years with more and more yuppies moving to Burlingame and San Mateo and fixing up homes there is a huge difference between the quality of rentals and for sale homes (you won’t find any $100K kitchens in any of my Dad’s rental homes).

So the regulatory efforts have begun, starting in the mortgage origination business. More sober heads like DinOR tried to warn the people in that industry, now is the time to pay the piper for getting too aggressive with their customers instead of taking a sustainable husbandry / harvesting approach to their business. When a client looks to you for guidance, even if they have a blank check, it is bad business to take them for all you can. I'm pretty hardcore capitalist, and believe in "all the market can bear", but I'm not a glutton for sales work. Repeat business is 10X less expensive to earn than new business, and clients always find out sooner or later how good a deal they got.

I think Carry trade will unwind, and this is just beginning of the end. But FXY has rallied very strongly very fast. So lot of people are expecting it to unwind. So I wouldn't be surprised if there is a little pull-back before another run up.

justme Says:
...what [Bernanke's] recommendation would be should the Congress increase the loan limit that the GSE’s are allowed to purchase (the limit now stands at $437,000).

Bernanke replied simply, “A million.”

In that case, someone should ask the fool whether that is the real rate of inflation since Y2K, when the limit was around 250K.

Otherwise, make the bastard explain why the rate should be raised, since the F'ed thinks inflation has been so super-golly-low all these years.

SP

SQT’s number is hard to evaluate because I didn’t see how many sqft she bought. Obviously $135 is good. My friend paid $146 but brand-new with upgrades and warranties. Bigger houses - you pay less per sqft.

I've noticed this too. We bought a bigger house, almost 3000sqft and per sqft it's a lot cheaper than say a 1500 sqft house. I feel really good about the $135 price because the house is only 4 years old and in great shape. Not tons of upgrades, but good carpet and tile, so I'm happy.

Getting back to investment question. I am not too comfortable putting more money into metals and oil at this point. If any of these get too expensive demand will adjust.

What I want to invest in is agriculture. Not sure where to start. I have ADM and it has kind of done OK. But it's not a pure play. I looked at DBA and it hasn't really done well.

Any ideas ? TIA.

If any of these get too expensive demand will adjust.

Oh really? Did housing demand adjust simply because it got "too expensive?"

I know people who bought in Mountain House and after 6 months of living there, they moved back to the Bay Area.

On the Merc awhile back, they reported that Mountain House does not even have a supermarket, people have to go to Tracy. If that's true, seems like a dead giveaway about the value of the developement.

but, they have trouble explaining why the lending standards were removed and free money was handed to liars just to buy those under-priced houses.

Do they not have trouble explaining anything right? :)