patrick.net

Could you say the same about Sarbanes and Oxley legislation which passed rather quickly in 2003? It would be in every consumers interest, to write to their congress person to create similar legislation regarding RE buying.

Sarbanes Oxley was a nice bit o' policy in theory, but proved to be all but totally ineffectual when it came to real financial oversight/stricter bookkeeping. A non-threat, as it were. I think the present landscape reflects that rather well. Writing your congressman, meanwhile, is like sitting on someone's shoulders to get a better look at the moon. Quaint, but not too effective. Face it: We are disenfranchised, and that's how we'll stay!

If that's anywhere near the Wal-Mart then run, Forrest, run. If you don't believe us, go to that Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon. Those people will be your neighbors.

Some Guy, What is your net worth? The reason that I ask is that it is highly unlikely that someone that has any money to speak of would spend this much of their time and efforts in a housing bubble forum politicizing everything. It has been my experience has been folks like you can't even afford to buy a hybrid vehicle. A ball park number on that net worth would suffice. Are you married and do you have kids? I'm just curious if the passion you have politically has an effect of dampening your relationships or maybe you only show this side of you on this (and possibly other) forums? If you want to make a real difference to yourself and your country you would argue less and work harder. We can all use the increased tax base. Before you fire back with a "none of your business" or "you &%&$ing republican", I am simply trying to understand where you are coming from. I'm trying to put myself in your shoes.

Just for your information, there was a big protest in Washingotn DC on Saturday (9/12). Mostly ignored by the media.

Some Guy says

Get a fucking life.

That violates the only rule on the forum: be polite.

Bapman said:

#1) 20% down to buy a house and no bubble-crap made new homes in a new subdivision being rentals a bit more rare, and Section 8 requirements are so high that only nicer homes qualify for the program now. #2) Invader-hyperbreeders had not been given the greenlight with the liberal court block of Prop. 187 yet. The blocking of Prop 187 was the trigger for the invasion, and the freebees made things ripe for breeding at 15. #3) Intrest rates were 14% or so. #4) The colture was not as degenerate as now, so accepting welfare and having babies on the state wasnot en vouge. Intitlements were not so popular

As for number 1, That was true at different points the 80s, and 90's too, providing a counter example that disproves your argument. As for number 2, Please read the following books, The Grapes of Wrath, and Cannery Row too, if your felling froggy. These books depict a counter-example, to your point. No sense trying to say it better than Steinbeck. As for number 3, Please see my response to point number 1. And finally point 4, Please read the following: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Better not try to outshine Hunter S. Thompson. You could also read Burroughs and some of the earlier Beat Poets, they describe a culture within America that is as degenerate as anything that has existed since. LOL, that reminds me. . . I read Junkie, when I was about 11, Holy Cow. . . Let me tell you, that book should be required reading for 11 year olds, as I can't think of a better way to educate kids about the Horrors of Drugs; Or at least scare them away.

Ramonp, You're far too generous. You can rent the following for $2,395/month on Craislist: "Bright & airy, very comfortable, 2000 sq ft, 3 bedroom 2 bath house with large back yard available for rent. The schools are West Valley Elementary (930 API score), Cupertino Middle (913 API score) & Homestead High School (846 API score). The house is located in Sunnyvale." (http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/apa/1371926184.html) (Search date 9/14/09.) Big assumption on my part: a 3 bed, 2 bath house probably built in the early 1960s is equivalent to a brand new 2 bed, 2 bath condo with $369 HOA dues. Hmmm...come to think of it...that rent value may be too high.

We will miss you, and good luck for your house hunting. :P

I apologize if I offended you Some Guy. I wish you the best of luck. I'm going to try to stay away from the forums myself for similar reasons. Patrick, my apologies to you as well for watering down the forums with my bizarre sense of humor and off-the-wall comments.

My fault. I thought people could be polite to each other without policing. Not true. You just have to delete the guys who are not polite. I've started, but it will probably take a while before they understand I mean it.

Yeah; you gotta delete them. Just keep doing it, to the people you agree with as well as those whom you do not. Ironically, that thread, which annoyed Some Guy, was the thread which I chose to come back in after a long time, I thought I had detected a more serious effort on Patrick's part to get rid of those people. Anyway, you lost one, and regained another. Although I doubt I'll be able to match Some Guys post count.

what about Marin? Its my understanding many of the homes in pre-forclosure and auction never make it to market due to loan modifications and all the voluntary moratoriums on foreclosures by the banks. THis coupled with low interest rates are keeping prices artificially high. It is still possible to buy a million dollar house if you can convince your parents to reverse mortgage their house to give you the 20% down payment needed to qualify for a jumbo loan. This is apparently how young families are able to come up with the money needed to buy homes in good school districts according to a mortgage broker I spoke with last week. I guess everyone in these areas makes at least 250k to pay the mortgage. I just dont get it.

"My fault. I thought people could be polite to each other without policing" Patrick : you sound a lot like greenspan after the bubble :-)

frodo says

Yeah; you gotta delete them. Just keep doing it, to the people you agree with as well as those whom you do not.

Five or six are now deleted, along with all their comments. I hope I remain pretty impartial about it. I'm going to add a "report as impolite" link. If many users report someone as impolite, they will automatically get blocked. You know what's weird? After I delete people, sometimes they seem to appreciate it, as if I'd done them a favor by showing them the line they crossed. Then they're pretty polite.

The old forum had a section for non-real estate discussions. This new format mixes everything together. I prefer keeping the posts seperate...somehow political agendas always get mixed in with the housing market discussions now, which can be interesting, but more often than not, very annoying. That seems to be happening on all my favorite forums whether it is related to parenting, real estate, fashion, travel or restaurants...many posters seem to be interjecting their political perspective into everything...or it may just be that I now live in the bay area and people here politicize everything anyway.

Good bye, some guy. But, hey Frodo! How's ya? Yes, this forum seems polarized (lib/conservative/dem/repub), but the housing problem, healthcare and such do have their political leanings. Obviously I have a problem with people who blame everything on illegal immigration, perhaps they should start their own forum about how badly they hate people who want to attain the same freedoms they enjoy. :)

samsmom says

what about Marin? Its my understanding many of the homes in pre-forclosure and auction never make it to market due to loan modifications and all the voluntary moratoriums on foreclosures by the banks. THis coupled with low interest rates are keeping prices artificially high. It is still possible to buy a million dollar house if you can convince your parents to reverse mortgage their house to give you the 20% down payment needed to qualify for a jumbo loan. This is apparently how young families are able to come up with the money needed to buy homes in good school districts according to a mortgage broker I spoke with last week. I guess everyone in these areas makes at least 250k to pay the mortgage. I just dont get it.

County: Marin Pre-Foreclosure / Auction / Bank-Owned 174 / 97 / 46 (July 2009) 191 / 89 / 29 (August 2009) 51 / 46 / 17 (Sept 1 - 14)

I'm doing good Ellie! I tried to participate in the Google Android Developer contest, but only had three weeks to do it in. . . and didn't finish it. But it was fun, and I am well on my way to a working Android Application, maybe when I finish it someone will hire me. How the heck are you? Have you recently tried to match wits and words with Mikey? As for the request for better segmenting of topics, I can see the value in leaving the current situation as it is . . . but would expect it to change in the future. Oh, and big cheers for Polite Discourse! May it thrive here, and serve as an example.

its not just this website. I've noticed in on the other (non-political) forums I read regularly. The hateful extremist wackos seems to be everywhere and voicing their opinions loudly and viciously attacking anyone who questions them. I consider myself a moderate conservative, but I see a big swing towards a fear & hate fueled political platform, and the sheeple are eating it up.

Recently read an interesting article http://www.housingnewslive.com/us-housing-news-articles.php

frodo says

I’m doing good Ellie! I tried to participate in the Google Android Developer contest, but only had three weeks to do it in. . . and didn’t finish it. But it was fun, and I am well on my way to a working Android Application, maybe when I finish it someone will hire me. No "funemployment" for you? How the heck are you? Have you recently tried to match wits and words with Mikey? Yes. Please check out the misc forum, where I've successfully shown that I'm woefully inadequate trading puns with the Master. But I still try, and fail. Sometimes I hurt my brain in the process. As for the request for better segmenting of topics, I can see the value in leaving the current situation as it is . . . but would expect it to change in the future. Oh, and big cheers for Polite Discourse! May it thrive here, and serve as an example.

Hip hip, hooray!

For the HTML impared: FORECLOSED PROPERTIES: Hidden costs ambush buyers Investors in foreclosed properties billed for former owners' fees, fines Sep. 14, 2009 Michael Evans bought the bank-owned fourplex near Monroe Avenue and H Street at an auction without seeing it first. The condition of the property might have scared off other investors, but he has been rehabbing and renting out property for a long time. Broken, boarded-up windows? No problem. Stripped plumbing and stolen air conditioners? You expect that. Holes in the walls? Ho-hum. Feces in the bathtub and dirty mattresses left by squatters? Goes with the territory. Then he ran into something new. "I thought everything was great until the letter came in the mail," Evans said. The letter, from the city of Las Vegas, informed him that a previous, neglectful owner had racked up more than $60,000 in fees and fines because the city had to hire someone to board up the building and pick up trash. Those charges stay with the property, meaning Evans was potentially on the hook for a bill that was far more than the property's $37,500 auction price. So far, two cases like this have made it before the City Council. More are expected because of the number of foreclosed and abandoned properties being snapped up by investors who might be receiving clean titles to places that shouldn't have clean titles. It could be partially the buyer's fault if he or she isn't checking the property's history in the Clark County recorder's office, said Devin Smith, neighborhood response manager for the city. "I probably get a phone call a day from someone who bought a property, and now they want their fees waived," he said. "People are just showing up, they're buying properties and then they're saying, 'I didn't know about this.'" But some people, like Evans, are telling the city they were given a clear title, though title to the property should have been "clouded" by city notices that work was done on the property. Mayor Oscar Goodman recently sent a letter to title companies urging them to be vigilant about the issue and warning about potential legal liability. "I feel sorry for these folks who are sort of being middled here," Goodman said. "But they certainly, in my opinion -- and that's the reason I wrote the letter -- have a potential cause of action. "The title policy should pick up any kind of liens or any kind of notice that's properly recorded against the property." Title companies research the ownership history of a property and check for liens and judgments that might be encumbering the property. When the city gets a report about a blight, it hires a contractor to bring the property up to basic standards. Broken windows are boarded up, open doors are secured or blocked, unsanitary pools are drained, weeds and trash are cleared away. In extreme cases, buildings are simply demolished. The city incurs "hard costs" for that work, usually a few thousand dollars. Since the foreclosure crisis deepened and abandoned properties proliferated, the City Council has started imposing civil fines of up to $500 a day in an effort to scare owners into maintaining properties rather than face tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. In the two cases heard before the counci -- Evans' property and one on Stacey Avenue near Lake Mead and Decatur -- the new owners bought the properties after the work had been done but before the council met to establish the fines. In each case, the council left the "hard costs" in place as a lien against the property, which must be paid if the property is sold. For Evans, those amounted to $2,416. The large civil fines were waived. That's the approach the council most likely will take with future cases, Smith said. "The council wants to know what you're going to do to bring the property up to standard," he said. "I don't think they're going to waive the hard costs." Evans said he understood that, though he doesn't agree that the approach is fair because he is not the one who neglected the property. It allows him to proceed with the renovation of his four units in a part of town that has seen hard times and needs investment. "By the 25th, it'll look good. If you didn't care about the neighborhood, you would say, 'Yeah. I can live here,'" Evans said. "You've got to start somewhere. Somebody's got to do something nice and hope that people appreciate it."

Anyone else thinking that the city charges are excessive, and at best counterproductive sinec it will keep people from buying foreclosures?

Is there any real freedom in developing Android apps, or is it all locked down like the iPhone? I mean, can you get at the APIs and really make the phone do whatever you want without signing away all your rights and paying thousands for some development kit? I tried to do a startup thing with a friend which would measure cellular signal strength at various locations, but you couldn't get at the signal strength API or the location API without a pretty elaborate certification procedure which made you sign away all your rights to it anyway. How about an app for Android which lets you pull out your phone and take a picture of a house, automatically posting the picture and location to patrick.net with some comments? Re the right-wingers, I think it's not all random, but they are being encouraged to vent their anger, and maybe even organized to some degree. I should check to see which ones are actually the same, by comparing IP addresses.

Is the topic illegal immigrants? Just kidding. I have noticed an increase of such people on many blogs, especially some that were formerly liberal. It must be the keyboard brigade of the teabaggers. Oddly, some site formerly conservative sites are more even-handed. Whatever -- I have not been a big contributor anyway, but the new format is confusing. The topics seem to come and go rapidly. It is too much for my tiny mind.

Is there any real freedom in developing Android apps, or is it all locked down like the iPhone? I mean, can you get at the APIs and really make the phone do whatever you want without signing away all your rights and paying thousands for some development kit?

Yes, no. Yes. Respectively. :) It is open. You can hack the living daylights out of the system. BUT, don't let anyone tell you it is easy, it is fun, not easy. There is a significant learning curve, and scant resources. But that is changing. It reminds me of the DOS days programming in C, except its OO. You *really* do have to be concerned about resources, this ain't a core i7, with 6GB of DDR3 and an SSD. Fortunately, Google is *THROWING* itself at this paradigm. The system is not buggy, but as with all new tech, there are undocumented gotchas. I never tried developing for the iPhone; I am under the impression that a contributing factor to the steep learning curve of Android, is the fact that they labled some similar concepts differently. At any length, the picture post idea ain't so bad. . . You take a pic with your phone, fill out the address and price, and press send.

Wow, even staynumz is here. . . How are things in your neck of the woods? It's nice to see you posting, I look forward to your commentary.

Hey Patrick, This is your Dutch Uncle. I'm curious why I was deleted? Please cite my "impoliteness". Your favorite Poster writes you a dramatic "Dear John" letter stating he's not going to hang out in this forum anymore, because his feelings are hurt, and you start deleting people trying to win him back? I think you may be a little too impressed by your own importance and forum. Please don't mistake my spirited debate for impoliteness. D

I basically did a search for the words "asshole", "libtard", "Mexifornia" and then poked through the results to see who was actually speaking seriously and with good will, and who was simply spouting hate or insulting the other commenters. Just a judgement call. Maybe I was wrong on your case.

Maybe I was wrong on your case.

No big deal. I still enjoy the Housing Crash portion of this forum ; )

Owning a house is no longer the American dream. It's just gonna run you in debt. The key is to have cash & investments. With money, you can rent anywhere and landlord will complete for your money.

I kinda stopped posting in this forum because to be honest, the housing market discussions are really all the same and can be summed up in a FAQ (actually that's a great idea; let's make a Patrick.net FAQ!) Q: Should I buy now or wait? A: Wait until median house prices in your arae are no more than 3x median family income in your area. Q: But I really, really want to buy now, can't I go ahead? A: No, you should really, really wait... Hehe! Not that I don't enjoy this conversation, but after a while it gets kinda old and then of course the political bs gets really old fast. I love having political discussions, but when people start the conversation with Obama=Hitler (sorry for the Godwin) it's pretty much guaranteed you're not getting through to them on any type of intellectual level. Lately I've been hanging around more in the Old Forums, which surprisingly enough, are spam free now. I really enjoy our discussions about economics, the stock market, and gold more than I do the housing discussions. Of course housing really is the core of our consumer economy so it's all related. Thanks for running the forums and trying to clean them up Patrick! It's appreciated. Maybe I'll come back and post a little more often here now.

lyoungblood says

Lately I’ve been hanging around more in the Old Forums, which surprisingly enough, are spam free now.

The old forum is spam-free because I blocked all new registrations there. This forum is spam-free because I can control it better. But it still lacks something in usability. Please write me with suggestions: p@patrick.net

patrick what do you think of posting the 'users (to be) deleted' in one thread.

It's pretty rare to delete any user. I think there have been only six so far, and no one could say they were polite. Well, maybe I made one mistake in there. Staynumz, that was actually relatively polite. I myself really don't like Obama's cooperation with the banks and posted a link about it today. I'm also annoyed he doesn't seem to be getting us out of Iraq at all. Every other country does health care much better than we do. Half the cost, universal coverage, and longer life expectancy. How do they do it? The French smoke and drink like crazy, so you can't say it's just our lifestyle. Anyway, if someone tries to tax me more for drinking moderately (and living longer because of it!) that would put me over the edge. I've got some hard cider bubbling in the back room right now. Really.

I too have noticed that most other forums are now serving as outlets for "conservatives" who have decided to blame all of the countries ills on Obama, liberals and foreigners. I don't know if they are being paid and organized to do this, or if there is just such hate there that we are doomed to a new generation of brown shirts, and I don't care. It's noise, pure and simple. Thanks for filtering them out and improving the noise to signal ratio.

Dear Ian: Lazy, stupid Americans who don't vote and who would rather watch "American Idol" are to blame for the country's problems. The noise is just scapegoat-ism and the entertainment morality so prevalent today. We are devoid of communication. I have noticed this in social interactions. Most commoners (idiots) in this "consumer" culture glaze over when I try to engage in cultured, literate conversations about real issues, meaningful books, poetry, etc., unless of course, I can recite chapter and verse about television, which I cannot because I don't have one. So, you get noise. What else can you expect from a culture of illiterates and a media that is part of the entertainment game?

The French smoke and drink like crazy, so you can’t say it’s just our lifestyle.

They also die at the rate of over 10,000 in a heat wave. Perhaps the French are a bit lacking on elderly health care.

Every other country does health care much better than we do. Half the cost, universal coverage, and longer life expectancy.

Half the cost and universal coverage, yep. But you might want to check on that "life expectancy." The life expectancy figures you are getting may not be just for natural deaths, but may be skewed by including expected deaths from war, traffic deaths, accidents, natural disasters, and murders.

HeadSet says

The French smoke and drink like crazy, so you can’t say it’s just our lifestyle.

They also die at the rate of over 10,000 in a heat wave. Perhaps the French are a bit lacking on elderly health care.

Nice anecdote. Do you have any actual EVIDENCE that elder care is better in the US than in France, or even that heat waves kill more people in France than in the US on average? HeadSet says

Every other country does health care much better than we do. Half the cost, universal coverage, and longer life expectancy.

Half the cost and universal coverage, yep. But you might want to check on that “life expectancy.” The life expectancy figures you are getting may not be just for natural deaths, but may be skewed by including expected deaths from war, traffic deaths, accidents, natural disasters, and murders.

Well, here is the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy Of course there are different factors involved in life expectancy but surely health care is a HUGE one. Just look at the rankings! Every single country in Western Europe has a higher life expectancy than the US. Every single one! If you want to claim that our health care system is better than all of theirs but somehow other extraneous issues cause them to have longer lives you need to come up with something pretty convincing before I'll believe you, not maybe this, maybe that. If your just going to assume your right and assume that evidence to the contrary must somehow not be telling the whole story then you are just being an ideolog.

We have war zones all over this country caused by the Drug War & Welfare State - which both parties still support! Of course we have lower life expectancy with all these animals killing each other of drug money!