patrick.net

shrekgrinch says

ch_tah says

That doesn’t even make sense. You can’t be underwater if you buy with cash.

Not my prob if your reading comprehension skills suck.
If you buy a place for cash for $100,000…and in the future it is valued at $90,000…then your investment is underwater by $10,000. If you sell it at that market price, that ‘underwater value’ converts into a real cash-loss of $10,000.
What is the comprehension problem here, exactly?

My understanding was that when referring to houses being "underwater," it usually means that the person owes more than the house is worth. Hence, if there's no mortgage, you can't be underwater. If you use a strict economics definition, it can mean a price lower than the purchase price, so the statement itself isn't completely nonsensical, although the theory that cash investors are going to rush to sell because the value of the house has dropped 10% seems a little sketchy and completely ignores the fact that the house may be cash flow positive where the investor isn't concerned with a temporary drop in principal.

And San Diego....

Once again, it seems that that sharp uptick in asking prices didn't actually happen.

I can only guess that the spikes being shown in current charts are likely to mysteriously disappear as well.

If I were a banker holding the 2nd, I wouldn't give up claim on payments just because the bank with the first did a write-down. I would want to force the homeowner to either give up the house or make payments to insure that I got the most value out of the loans. If it is in the owners and 1st holder's interest to do some sort of write-down agreement, then they should have to pay off the 2nd or make some deal with the holder of the 2nd.

I think no one truly knows exactly how DELUSIONAL sellers right now are.

Not only sellers, but *some* landlords as well.

As to the sellers...I posted a thread on city data forums in the Los Angles section about LA real estate. Much much much defensiveness from homeowners...almost like they are all relying on their home as their retirement plan(which is probably the truth). A TON of denial and every excuse in the book as to why LA county real estate can't possibly fall further.

As to landlords...I live in downtown LA. I got into my loft late last year when they were still running incentive. Prime prime prime location, older building(but renovated with modern kitchen and upscale furnishings), no pool, includes gym Gold's membership, water, trash, also a $1000 gift card at move in. 850 sq ft, $1550 per month after incentives(2 mo free on 14 month lease). At the time, this was the only smaller unit available(theres also 650 sq ft units but again none available). Only one larger unit available and anything that they had available went within 5 days. Fast forward today and all incentives are gone. I think its cause the same size unit in the newer and more upscale market lofts runs around $1900/mo and in the upscale Watermarke building, a 850 sq ft unit is $2500/mo.

Now some explanation about Watermarke...opened a while ago and supposedly completely rented out at the time(cough...bull-----sh--). One problem. The buttheads there are now spamming craigslist like mad. Really, who thinks there are THAT many people who make $125-130K a year and don't have families(very very few families downtown...I think maybe 5 in my entire building, all with children under 5...less than school age).

In short, I think Watermarke was lying about being full. I call shennanigans big time. Same for market lofts. And guess what...now my building...which was as close to 100% occupancy as one can get is not only having available units, but also is having many people trying to break lease...at the new rates, not the discounted one.....Anyone out there want to guess what the next thing to happen to this market will be?

And to add further fuel to the fire...theres several buildings near Staples that were trying to capitalize for a couple years on proximity to Staples and LA Live. Rates were stratospheric IMO....$2K a month for 500 sq ft. FAIL! A few of those very upscale nice buildings have dropped their rates into the same range as the new rates at the building I am in. I *knew* this would happen eventually, I'm just very surprised it happened all within a 3 month period.

Point of all this....

1.) List prices are irrelevant and just ridiculous as an indicator of anything. Could be more expensive properties comming up for sale. Could be loony sellers.

2.) The BS being spewed about rising rents is just that..BS. Hoping and wishing do not make things so, despite real estate agent assertions to the contrary.

Not good.

Good observations MarkInSF. Redfin was showing spikes that weren't really there on all those graphs.

Suffice to say, there's a good chance the spikes shown now will also be corrected, but some suckers will be fooled to "buy now before it's too late!".

This video explains some of the charts.
http://boombustblog.com/reggie-middleton/2011/02/24/further-proof-of-the-worsening-of-the-real-estate-depression/
Check around 12 minutes in.

He is using total sales (volume * price) as a leading indicator for case shiller. I don't get the US / Japan comparison though. His chart shows the US bubble as much bigger than Japans. IIRC, Japans was bigger than the US's based on an article by Reinhart & ? on property bubbles over the last century or so.

I'd say that is considered high combined income by any standard, but individually may be a bit low, depending on your responsibilities, education and the size of the company. Additionally, if you are management, the number of the staff you oversee and the industry you work in.

Have you been to salary.com?

No one answer; it will just depress me.

10-15 years in mgmt $110-115K is about right. The same is true for other functional positions, marketing, sales, finance. But you have to be at the right place at the right time.

Dual income families have been around for some time in SV. Nothing new about that, but
not the factor some say was the driver of the current bubble or that will keep prices inflated.

Overall today, high salaries may be considered more of liability since we as a local BA employees starting to compete with other lower cost regions. Our $115K per year vs. 75-80K theres in other states.

A good research aid is the Bradford Salary Guide which many HR departments use as guide in setting salaries.

"high salaries may be considered more of liability since we as a local BA employees starting to compete with other lower cost regions. Our $115K per year vs. 75-80K theres in other states. "

Competiting with other states? No. Try competing with other COUNTIRES. You are competing with $15,000 a year software engineers in India. Your also competing against all of the H1-Bs.

Competing with India wages in IT didn't work, we need live awake able bodies at 2PM Eastern, when it's 2AM in India during meetings. It was a rough year, in '02 where virtually every position in my part of town anyway, was outsourced to India. Now there's always positions available and I'm always busy.

Now if Mexico were to ever get their kids to study hard and learn computer science, then we would be in big trouble.

HousingWatcher says

Competiting with other states? No. Try competing with other COUNTIRES. You are competing with $15,000 a year software engineers in India. Your also competing against all of the H1-Bs.

That is also so true. Recently PolyCom is moving from East Bay down to San Jose. Oddly they are moving and consolidating only 350 people locally out of 3200 global. And this is typical.
Symantec has 1400 people in SV out of 17,000 global, and so on and so on. Today is much different than back in the 80s-90s.

Tenouncetrout says

Now if Mexico were to ever get their kids to study hard and learn computer science, then we would be in big trouble.

Believe it or not! Both Equador and Argentina have been building out large IT/IS over the past several years now. Historically both Chile and Agentina way back in the day were heavy users of past tech products (Mainframes) in many of their industries, natural resources, banking, and government. Today they are growing and spending much faster.

Anything is good as long as your employer has not thought of hiring 5 guys in India to replace you.

Allow me to explain:

The best way to find out is to go interview at a few companies and pick the highest paying job. Whatever job you can land with the highest package gives you a good salary that is unique to your skill sets and circumstances.

OO, How is Perth treating you? Have you unloaded any of your position?

I have a brother-in-law that runs a small gaming company and everything techy is done in Argentina.

I wonder how much longer NBC's morning news show will be able to sit next to Barbara Corchoran (sp?) with a straight face, as she talks about the "bargains" available around the country? Of course all the networks probably have their resident shills, but that's the one that pops into mind.

Hey guys, Tim Ellis from Redfin (and also Seattle Bubble) here.

Thanks for catching this.

We've dug into the jobs that generate these charts and figured out that the way we are calculating the list price per square foot has an error that affects the price we display on the chart for past dates. The current point is accurate, but the past points are being incorrectly adjusted downward, resulting in the upward tilt toward the end of all the charts.

We're working on a fix, but at this point I can't say for sure when it will be live.

awesome. thanks for the update tim.

If you are not getting $100k+ from the stock option or bonus, then you are at the bottom of the company food chain.

How else people buy these $2 million house with the $60k average household income.

EBGuy,

not a troy ounce. Holding on till our QE is over.

What simcha might possibly be trying to say is that, when a person uses the professional services of another person, they're often in a position to be taken advantage of. The trust that a woman has for her doctor takes on an idol worship-like relationship, which is ripe for the doctor to take advantage of her vulnerability. This is a line that should not be crossed. If a patient and doctor are attracted to each other, the appropriate action is to find another doctor. There's generally a waiting period for the patient/doctor relationship. This same issue can be raised with lawyers, teachers, therapists, etc. The vulnerability of a patient toward their doctor can also be a man patient woman doctor, or same-sex. It's not exclusive to any particular gender. But it's sick & wrong for a doc to have sex with his patient. FYI

Tim Ellis (Redfin) says

We’ve dug into the jobs that generate these charts and figured out that the way we are calculating the list price per square foot has an error that affects the price we display on the chart for past dates. The current point is accurate, but the past points are being incorrectly adjusted downward, resulting in the upward tilt toward the end of all the charts.

Any chance that the current list price per square foot is ALSO in error? Just curious as the 'up-tilt' glitch has been in the system for a while (at least since November of 2010).

Better to use DQnew data ...been doing for 20 years, long before the web upstarts and their
"mythical algorithm". The public puts too much faith into Zillow's zestimates and Redfin Charts.

I'm not even sure what he did is that bad, depending on the circumstances, which are not clear clear at all. Maybe we should ban rock stars and politicians from having sex with their star-gazed groupies? I bet you anything that show would put on Bernie Madoff's, or Charlie Manson's, or any home that belonged to a famous genuinely unsavory character, if it was a photogenic house. Not sure why you're singling out this doctor. Oh. It's because it's about sex. Duh.

The title of that show is pretty funny. For $1M you can get a run down 1200 square foot home in Palo Alto. Yeah! Now that would be a funny episode.

I'll give 50/50 odds it was the boob-job "patient" who brought the charges against him after she couldn't extract out of him what she wanted.

thomas.wong1986 says

Better to use DQnew data …been doing for 20 years, long before the web upstarts and their

“mythical algorithm”. The public puts too much faith into Zillow’s zestimates and Redfin Charts.

Right. I never liked those Redfin charts too much. If you look at the small graph that comes up when you first enter the area you're looking at, and then go to the detail page and look at the large graph, the two graphs don't even agree with each other. Although I wouldn't equate Redfin and Zillow. Zillow is utter bullshit. It's in a league of its own.

Really? Really?

I am reminded of this underrated movie: Breast Men Chris Cooper is always great, but..... my personal favorite moment is David Schwimmer's death scene. It's one of those scenes that just WHAM, it STUCK with me. Funny how that works. Like when Usual Suspects surprised me. Or like nearly 30 years ago Magnum P.I. had a WHAM episode that I saw a scene copied on "Archer" and I instantly recognized it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7vW1oEKP1k

gameisrigged says

Zillow is utter bullshit. It’s in a league of its own.

In my area, its spot on with rent price estimates. And it does show the exact price a house sold at. Not sure what's utter BS about that. Do you mean the Zestimates? Those are sometimes good and sometimes off, because they don't know if a house is updated inside, or mold infested. Our house got appraised by the bank within $1k of the zillow zestimate. I thought it was pretty interesting.

How did I miss Breast Men? Back to "Really?"

zillow is pure BS. I had my house appraised for a re-fi to lower rate/terms... zillow was "off" by $200k.

I'm an agent and this is getting embarrassing to hear NAR open its mouth. They are on the wrong side of the debate. Worse, they want a dues increase to "lobby" congress.
Great, more money to the pimps & whores in Washington.
Folks, please stay on NAR to correct the skyed up sales figures. Still no correction of a + 20-40% overstatement. All I get is,"we're working on it".

I was browsing Detroit area (upscale NW suburbs) houses and "zestimate" for many houses was TWICE the asking price. I.e. DOUBLE. Like, asking $325,000 (and not sold), Zestimate $650,000.

Zestimate is utter BS.

This is awsome. I'm not sure what 'caal' means maybe you should call the site 'FB Parade' or something. Make sure to have a feature where they can print fake unemployment letters and fake paystubs to prove hardship! haha I'm kidding....people do that themselves with a copier at kinkos....no demand.

pkowen says

I was browsing Detroit area (upscale NW suburbs) houses and “zestimate” for many houses was TWICE the asking price. I.e. DOUBLE. Like, asking $325,000 (and not sold), Zestimate $650,000.
Zestimate is utter BS.

Zillow is not bullshit. As long as you know that it shows "Wishful thinking" prices, not actual selling prices. In Detroit the "Wishful" prices are 2x of the actual selling prices. In the Bay Area, the buyers don't seem to be as bright as the ones in Detroit, so the "Wishful" prices closer approximate the selling prices.