patrick.net

Ray,

I totally agree that the housing market is absolutely NOT a free market. It's an industry that monopolizes information that its consumers need to make purchasing/selling decisions (MLS listings), and it blatantly manipulates that information to the realtors' benefit (days on market, probably monthly sales data). I won't even get started on the mortgage industry as well. On a very slightly positive note, did you see in today's WSJ that the Treasury dept. is threatening to put the clamps on Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae? There's clearly a little political pressure to regulate the industry better. I'm not expecting any positive results, though.

When confronted with this type of market maybe a boycott should be one of the tools used to break-up the monopoly.

Just try to approach this from another angle. Ask yourself if the monopoly is sustainable on its own.

If it is truly sustainable, buycotting will not help. You should seek to join the monopoly yourself. Do not fight it. Join it.

If it is not, nothing needs to be done. It will happen.

Wow! I bet somebody is going to jump at the opportunity to save themselves $12.00.

It is not the reduction of $12. It is the addition of two 8's that is attractive! Expect a bidding war among Chinese buyers soon! :)

Peter P,

"Buyers strikes" don't need clubs, presidents, memberships or dues. They just kind of organize of their own accord. Besides wouldn't a boycott have made more sense in like uh...... 2001?

Besides wouldn’t a boycott have made more sense in like uh…… 2001?

Huh?

“Buyers strikes” don’t need clubs, presidents, memberships or dues. They just kind of organize of their own accord.

I agree. Should we call it "free market boycott"?

Prime rate is now a lot higher than last year. Anyone buying with less than 20% down (first time buyers? need 80/20 HELOC?) will be seeing significant difficulties.

I don’t normally join boycotts but I did joing this one in my own way two years ago after several failed attempts to buy.

I look only if a home has been on the market for a while. Be greedy only when others are fearful.

Jimbo Says:

> FAB, you only get overtime in the SFPD if you are senior
> enough, or so I hear. The newer guys have to “get by” on
> $65k a year, plus very generous benefits, including full
> retirement at age 50. If you have a college degree they
> start you at $80k/yr

As a SF native (of Irish decent) I know quite a few SF cops and all seemed to get overtime from day one and I was just talking to a young kid at a wedding (SI & SFSU Grad) who is in the SF police academy and planning on making $100K from year one. Quite a bit of SF Police overtime may be considered “unofficial” since the city does not pay it but there is always a SF cop with a gun at the Getty house (and the homes of many other high net worth SF families) and cops are paid overtime by movie studios and concert promoters to work on their shoots and at their concerts.

> I don’t know any firefighters making $200k/yr, but plenty
> make over $100k.

Lets say a firefighter “only makes $100K” for a standard 10 day a month 24 hour shift that is $833 a day. If he works one overtime day a month at time and a half he makes almost an extra $15K. If he works 12 days a month he is up to $130K. When a captain or chief is making over $150K a year base the extra 2 days a month of over time will push them over $200K. Every firefighter I know has another job and most are in construction. In the past few years my firefighter friends my age are making so much money on their second jobs that they have been working less than 10 days a month and giving the younger guys more overtime…

Robert Cote'

"Portland -was - a noble experiment" LOL!

I do hear you though Robert! It's a big part of the reason I never involved myself in "Rose City" politics! (I STILL sound like a Chicagoan) and am typically rejected before I've finished a sentence. But "someone" needs to tell them their experiement has failed! Otherwise they'll keep insisting that either the leaches were applied incorrectly or that they need MORE leaches! I'm sorry but it's just become laughable.

Robert Coté Says:

> Portland’s Urban and Transit planners advocate:
> Higher residential densities, just like LA.
> Higher transit usage, just like LA.
> Fewer roads per capita, just like LA.
> Greater public dedications, just like LA.
> Higher carpooling, just like LA.
> New subways, just like LA.

Portland also has:
A high percentage of fat out of shape people unlike LA
Way more tree hugging hippies than LA
Women with short fat hairy legs vs. long tan legs in LA
Way less convertibles than LA
More car hating liberals than LA
More pot smoking hard drinking Canadians than LA
More people who say they are “Large and in Charge” than LA

Peter P,

All I meant to say was why bother w/ a boycott now? Prices have more than doubled in under 5 years. With today's housing prices (and the loans you'd need to afford one) it's like saying I'm boycotting hepatitis.

FAB,

What can I say? When you're right you're right!

The idea of organizing a boycott of absurdly high housing prices sounds great, populistic et al, but there is basically no way this is going to happen. You'd have to convince a very high % of the target (buyers) that this is (a) a good idea, and (b) to stay the course long enough to have a significant impact on regional prices. That also means capturing the loyalties of a sizeable chunk of the population for an extended period, including all those new "genius" flippers and the 60% or so of people who STILL haven't even heard that a housing bubble exists. Good luck with that.

I believe that this and similar blogs are already promoting an informal market data and reason-driven form of housing "boycott". As in, don't buy unless it pencils out for you. I really think that --plus the slow-mo freefall crash we're just starting to see happen before our very eyes-- will be enough.

Of course, long-term structural reforms are still needed on the NAR/MLS monopoly, cheap-money policy Fed, GSE/MBS taxpayer "implicit gurantee", cap-gains/interest tax deduction "24-month club", etc., etc... If people really want to organize a grass-roots movement for meaninful change, those areas would be a much better place to start.

RE: the BA housing boycott site, here's the link if you're curious. It seems pretty darn benign, actually. I like the layout, though.

http://www.boycotthousing.com/home.aspx

Completely off topic, but related to this housing boycott story on KRON. I haven't watched the local news in a while - does anyone else think that Gary Radnich has gone off the deep end into some nonsensical ranting version of his former self? Entertaining, but odd.

Dream Home:

http://www.boycotthousing.com/houseoftheday.aspx

Oh yeah!

New thread: "Wells Fargo considers entering the option-ARM business"

I’d like a 2000sqft house on an acre. Pool/spa all for 200k.

Construction alone costs more than 200K for a 2000sqft house in CA.

Jimbo Says:
Car usage is subsidized much more than transit in this country Robert.

This is pure idiot talk. I don’t neven have an answer for insane people that think these things.

What percentage of the land in San Francisco is set aside for automobiles? 25% 50% 75% How much is that land worth? At a pretty conservative value of $5M/acre at 25% of the total land set aside for roads and parking, that comes out to a whopping $44B worth of land set aside mostly for parking. At a discount rate of 5%, that is a susidy of $2B/yr just in San Francisco alone.

Here is a good analysis of some of the other costs to society of car ownership that everyone has to pay, not just care owners:

http://afo.sandelman.ca/cc3.html

"This subsidy has been estimated to amount to
about $2,750 per vehicle per year in direct quantifiable
public subsidy (CRD Task Group on Atmospheric Change,
Victoria, B.C., 1992), not counting long term effects and
indirect costs like environmental and social costs."

The cost today would have to be at least double that. And we aren't even starting to talk about some of the true cost of automobiles, which is the amazing number of people injured and killed on the roads every year. That alone is estimated to cost America $200B/yr.

http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/alcohol/EconomicBurden/pages/WhatDoTCCost.html

Transit is much, much cheaper. For example, MUNI's budget last year was $380M. 1/2M people use Muni every day. That comes out to $760 per person per year, a laughably small amount compared to just the subsidized cost of automobile usage.

Then the owners spend an average of about $5000/yr on their car to boot. So the total cost, direct and indirect to transport someone by autmobile, including the indirect cost of all the land set aside and all the injuries caused by car crashes, is well over $10,000 per person per year.

No transit system in the country comes anywhere near costing that and I challange you to demonstrate otherwise.

The reason you have no answer for "insane people" like me is because there is no answer. Transit is so obviously, overwhelmingly cheaper, that your only hope to "win" an argument on the topic is to not argue at all.

And since this is the housing bubble blog afterall, I will tie into the overall cost of housing.

The main reason housing is so expensive in the Bay Area is because land is scarce. Land is scarce for many reasons, but the primary one is that so much it has been tied up in the inefficient and archiac method of transportation we use, namely automobiles. How much cheaper would housing be in the Bay Area if we did not dedicate so much land to parking, roads, freeways and the like dedicated to automobile users?

Worse yet, our slavish devotion to the automobile causes our cities to be spread out more than they need to be, aggravating the effect. A spread out city not only requires more land dedicated to the automobile, the effect feeds on itself because spread out cities lead to people taking longer trips, which lead to more congestion, which leads to more freeway building, which leads to being spread out more.

Hey, if you hate planning and you love long trips by automobile, just move to one of the cities that have decided to go that path like Houston or Atlanta and enjoy your time in traffic.

Of course, deep in my heart I really want other people to join the boycott - when it is time to buy… less competition.

this would become like game theory... all the 'boycotters' would be sneaking out to buy property, and it would be game on again... not to mention the specuvestors harvesting the windfall of slightly cheaper properties and 'keeping the dream alive'... aka the tragedy of the commons... whatever... where's randy?

this would become like game theory…

Exactly. Either that or I am evil. :twisted: