patrick.net

robertoaribas says

Happy travels, and thanks for playing!

I too am reconsidering my time posting here, for the following reasons:

1. it is no longer a housing blog. Housing posts have dropped from 95%, to maybe 3% of posts on here. [this is not so unexpected I guess. A housing blog with a bear premise, in face of one of the fastest increasing housing markets in history is sort of pointless, after the lowest bottom in history, that the majority of the posters missed]

2. it is full of conspiracy nuts.

3. In the old days, arguing the merits of various positions/predictions forced me to do more research, sharpen my arguments. I haven't felt that on here in a long time.

Peace and good luck to you!

From the guy who perpetually calls others idiots. Brilliant!

This is by far the only website on the internet where you can have sensible debates and conversation. That is at least when Trollivists
don't chime in with mean spirited attacks on people they disagree with. They are paid schills and are as transparent as an Obama backroom deal.

dodgerfanjohn 2 8:59am Tue 2 Jul 2013

I was thinking the same as you, you beat me to it. Ironic that response #1 would originated by my #1 reason why I do not often visit and no longer support patnet financially, at all.

And why, as a real estate blog, has become, largely irrelevant.

Arizona sucks.

I'd be curious to see what will happen in the future of housing blogs. Most of us here seem to be "Survivors" of the last housing bubble. Many of us have gone and actually bought houses. So naturally that keen level of interest and concentration has dissipated. But then of course there is now a whole new generation of hopeful homebuyers whom I assume are now feeling that same level of frustration at a system that most of us learned years ago is totally rigged in the favor of Wall Street as a means to squeeze whatever money the middle class has left.

This current bubble is pretty new still. As in its in its first year. The last one took years to cumulate a steady following of "Bubble sitters" as we were called back in the day. I used to peruse many housing blogs from 2004-2007. As soon as the bubble popped I think many people who had been waited simply lost interest and especially when the spectacular crash in prices- especially in placed like California- didn't happen as we had expected. Instead we found that again- the system was carefully rigged to ensure that prices would never fall close to anything reasonable, and to add to it all, investors swooped in to soak up whatever lower cost houses were out there.

So here we are again: Prices at unsustainable high prices and out-of-control appreciation with no obvious conclusion in sites yet. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

sbh says

Your white trash theater is unparalleled.

I see you still haven't mastered the a apostrophe you dumb fuck.

sbh says

Oh God, you're an illiterate waste of oxygen.

Well good, I'm glad you feel that way.
I bet you like to watch old people fuck just so you can squirm.
You sadistic fuck.

CaptainShuddup says

I see you still haven't mastered the a apostrophe you dumb fuck.

?

I used to post a lot, still check the forum and post occasionally. It's changed over the years (note that I used an apostrophe, cap'n) and I'm certainly not here as often.

But Patrick is a friend and I'll continue to check the place out. Sorry that you're leaving.

I love these dramatic swan songs, where a diva member holds their dear sweet foreheads and swoon because something bothers them just so desperately and they have to let everybody know they are leaving with a grand flourish, hoping members will run and grasp their darling hands and beg them to come back.

If someone leaves, just leave. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out and don't create an annoying thread to draw attention.

robertoaribas says

dodgerfanjohn says

From the guy who perpetually calls others idiots. Brilliant!

If I complained about people calling others names, then your post would make sense!

I didn't complain about anyone else's decorum. I don't care when people call me names, so your retorte doesn't make even the least bit of logical sense.

rather, my issue is that: it is full of conspiracy nuts, and i don't ever really get challenged by anybody who has facts, does research, or any amount of thinking skills that force me to improve my analysis of housing...

In other words: yes, you are an idiot, and no, talking to you doesn't help me in any way shape or form. You sir, in fact should be paying to read my ideas, and I shouldn't be suffering yours.

How is it you still have not figured out that 90% of the posters on pat.net as well as probably most lurkers are soley concerned with buying in the Bay Area within a reasonable commute from work in a relatively safe area with above average schools?

That's it. No one cares about Phoenix. No one here ever will. No one challenges you cause no one cares. Six likes in short time. That should be enough to tell you where you stand.

Ha ha - with all the 9/11 conspiracy, GMOs are poison, white people should be able to say the "n" word, we should have an all-cash healthcare system without doctor licensing, debt doesn't matter, etc. ridiculous posts on this forum, the one that sent him over the top was the thread where we said the Fed's actions are contributing to wealth disparity, a demonstrable fact.

Go figure...

CaptainShuddup says

sbh says

Your white trash theater is unparalleled.

I see you still haven't mastered the a apostrophe you dumb fuck.

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Captain, you are so stupid. How do you even dress yourself?

That's right schmuck IGNORANCE IS BLISS

david1 says

The prevalence of conspriracy theories and ill-informed, unsupported claims hijacking nearly every thread topic has taken the joy out of coming here for debate. It seems few have either the desire or ability to learn.

I just can't stomach reading another "Fed is the devil," Permabear, race, theology, or goldbug argument. I have found the end of the internet on these topics - nothing new in a year or more.

robertoaribas says

dodgerfanjohn says

Six likes in short time.

yeah, you got the "likes" battle won! Too bad you will always be a dipshit who missed the bottom after all your patrick.net time, only to watch home prices go back on the rise....

Pick any home you might have bought two years ago, how is it's value today?

Oh, but I remember: you have the life financial plan of, "my parents will die and leave me an expensive coastal home..." so why are you here at all? Some people have a plan to actually do well for themselves, in a non parasitical manner; They have to understand the market, you clearly don't understand it and don't care.

I didn't miss any bottom. No place that I want to live dropped far enough. 250% increases followed by 25-30% declines from that peak. There's no house or condo I would have bought, even at the five year trough. Even with recent rent increases and interest rate declines, all that's done is decrease the rent:buy disparity from $800/ mo in favor of rent to $550/ mo in favor of rent. And that's before the astronomical price increases of the last few months.

Keep pounding that drum son, hold that hammer of "I'm right" high and mighty. I'm sure that attitude has nothing to do with the negative reviews your students post online.

dodgerfanjohn says

I didn't miss any bottom.

That's Right. This ain't Fucking Phoenix !

This isn't my forum, and I don't want to even consider trying to run one. Patrick has done us all a great service. So for that I am grateful.

That said... I think that I'd consider getting rid of some of the features that seems to attract trolls.

1: Re-focus the site towards being more strictly about real estate, housing bubbles, and housing-related finance. In other words, a more specific type of blog that gets back to the "roots" of what this originally stood for.

2: Get rid of unrelated topic areas, in particular the political, general finance, and Misc. topic areas. I feel that the politics section has invited a lot of folks who seem hell-bent on turning the forum into their own personal place to rant about liberals and Obama in particular. There are plenty of places for such people to air those concerns. A housing blog shouldn't be one of them. Don't get me wrong- perhaps during the weird doldrums period from 2007-2012 when the housing market was bust there could be a reason to include politics to "liven up" the site. But we're now in a new housing bubble and so it seems appropriate to get away from those unrelated topic areas.

3: Come up with new real estate related topic areas. But stick to a common theme- which has been about overpriced houses, real estate bubbles, and so on.

I think if we just got rid of the outright flamers, people who dish out "idiot, pea brain, cock sucker, dimwit, asshole" etc for no reason, we'd clean up a lot of garbage.

Right now, it takes only about 2-3 post before any topic dealing with RE, the economy, or anything with money/assets before some jerk face comes in there bragging about how well they did in the market, and then another jerk calls them a lying cunt rag, and everything devolves from there.

Goran_K says

Right now, it takes only about 2-3 post before any topic dealing with RE, the
economy, or anything with money/assets before some jerk face comes in

Hmm, you see the pattern too? Interesting.

I personally do not visit the 'Southern Orthodox Baptist Society for Ultra Conservative Values' website, as a made up example and do not understand if someone finds the comments posted here so distasteful, why visit?

Again, to me it's like a Straight Man consistently seeking out Gay Porn, but whatever.

Again, it has been awhile, I am still thankful to this site for helping me make a wise decision several years ago now. I still say the site has potential with it's interactive, conversational features I personally have not seen anywhere else. Noteworthy, many points were gleemed from comments that were a 'diamond in the rough' and no one attacked them afterwards for posting the comment. Still further, I enjoy writing and like when my other people enjoy my comments.

The 'outright flamers' you described in your post is the reason I stopped paying the monthly premium dues. To me, that would be paying to support bullyism.

david1 says

The prevalence of conspriracy theories and ill-informed, unsupported claims

I wonder at the confidence some people have in the official narrative supplied to them by a government and a media that have squandered all credibility and are obviously agenda driven.
Anything in any way alternative is assertively dismissed as "conspiracy" to avoid cognitive discomfort. I say it is those people who add nothing to the dialog.
If I wanted to know what Brian Williams had to say I would buy a TV.

No david1, don't do it!

Please, please, please stay!

I LOVE YOU

Robert Sproul says

Anything in any way alternative is assertively dismissed as "conspiracy" to avoid cognitive discomfort

just because the corporate media is anti-informational doesn't mean the nut contingent have anything interesting to say.

I can tell a nut by the inability to react to this graph:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GINIALLRH

if your world view doesn't think that's bad and/or doesn't have any useful ideas towards reversing that trend, you're a crank/nut etc.

The internet is around 70% nutjob at this point.

dodgerfanjohn says

How is it you still have not figured out that 90% of the posters on pat.net
as well as probably most lurkers are soley concerned with buying in the Bay Area
within a reasonable commute from work in a relatively safe area with above
average schools?

That may have been true at some point, but it is clearly not the case now.

Bellingham Bill says

Robert Sproul says

Anything in any way alternative is assertively dismissed as "conspiracy" to avoid cognitive discomfort

just because the corporate media is anti-informational doesn't mean the nut contingent have anything interesting to say.

I can tell a nut by the inability to react to this graph:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GINIALLRH

if your world view doesn't think that's bad and/or doesn't have any useful ideas towards reversing that trend, you're a crank/nut etc.

The internet is around 70% nutjob at this point.

Yeah you need to shut down the entity that publishes that graph. In fact if that entity hadn't existed in 2008 you wouldn't have much to worry about now if the convergence towards 1 in that graph is your main concern.

Robert Sproul says

tools of the same corrupt forces

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012

127M voters voted for continued corruption in 2012.

This was 2 orders of magnitude greater than the purity candidate.

Good luck with your revolution.

Bellingham Bill says

Good luck with your revolution.

I don't foresee any revolutions in America.
I see a bipartisan/corporate totalitarian state. They have all the control mechanisms in place now.
They have control of the media, they have criminalized dissent, they have broad, sweeping laws (with hideous, draconian penalties) on terrorism that have already snatched up Facebook goofballs and meth cook "Terrorists".
And they have created a complacent, desensitized, medicated, civically ignorant population of consumers.
And drones, the drones are coming baby.
Orwell's "boot stamping on a human face-forever".
(And it is a fat man's face, and he is clutching a remote control)

ducky said: I have yet to hear any rational argument how the federal reserve is enriching the top at the expense of the bottom.
Well, we saw, perhaps, the greatest wealth transfer of our time, where almost 4% of the housing stock was transferred into the hands of rent seekers. I know, the rebuttal is -- if Ben allowed deflation nation, it would have been a lot worse. Got yams?

I think Dude flounced already, and the original topic is long forgotten, ironically.

Patrick.net: Come for the real estate, stay for the discussion and banter!

I actually found this place when someone pasted a snippet from here on a different forum. When vetting cut/pastes on this mostly conservative/redneckish industry forum, I often find that the text is making the rounds of the usual roster of right-wing-bubble sites, never repeated by mainstream media and falsehoods, misinformation, and outright lies are never corrected nor acknowleged. Then someone posted something interesting and relevant, and I found it originated at Patnet and had no instances elsewhere on the internet. Wow, an original post by an insightful thinker!
The original discussions on a variety of topics keep me coming to this site. I own my home and a business property, so my day to day interest in real estate matters is incidental to topical news being discussed. There would probably be a transient interest in RE topics if/when I'm buying another property, but for those outside the RE vertical, real estate discussion only has a limited period of interest in a given person's life.
Bottom line, keep discussion of all topics alive and interesting here, and be a little quicker to deep six trolls.

Automan Empire says

When vetting cut/pastes on this mostly conservative/redneckish industry forum, I often find that the text is making the rounds of the usual roster of right-wing-bubble sites, never repeated by mainstream media and falsehoods, misinformation, and outright lies are never corrected nor acknowleged.

I think the right-winger type ramblings on forums is a more recent phenomena. It doesn't seem to matter what forum we're talking about either. Basically all forums I participate in have the same types of posters who don't exactly care about the topic at hand so long as they can in some vague way tie the story again to liberals and whatever weird conspiracy/nutty theories they heard on the radio or whatever. It gets so old too.

The best forums I find are the ones who simply made a rule where no political or religious content is allowed. Everyone gets along better that way. Perhaps the same should be true for this site.

edvard2 says

I think the right-winger type ramblings on forums is a more recent phenomena.

The majority of the posters criticizing the status quo does not view those as partisan issues and therefore doesn't go for the left-wing / right-wing rhetoric. In fact it seems it is more those who defend the status quo who try to make this a partisan issue. There really isn't enough of a difference, no matter how much one would like to blame the other party.

mell says

The majority of the posters criticizing the status quo does not view those as partisan issues and therefore doesn't go for the left-wing / right-wing rhetoric. In fact it seems it is more those who defend the status quo who try to make this a partisan issue. There really isn't enough of a difference, no matter how much one would like to blame the other party.

But there is. It really comes down to the basic definitions of conservatism and liberalism where one side wants things to more or less stay the same, or in some cases even regress to a previous state while one side wants to move forward and in many instances actually does challenges the status-quo, and particularly when it comes to basic principles like civil rights, environmental concerns, and living conditions. I grew up in a fairly conservative family. I can appreciate what some of the beneficial values that conservatives present. I also realize that no party is perfect and that in reality one cannot live without the other. But its also grossly inaccurate to make a statement that they are more or less the same because they aren't. Good or bad they are totally opposite of one another and while neither "side" is without blame for the partisan mud-slinging, its clear that conservatives seem to be trying to fight a battle they are losing and the closer that reality comes to fruition the louder they seem to become.

Politically what is very apparent to me is that neither side really works for the people anymore. Both sides are manipulated like marionettes by various lobbys, industry groups, financial interests and very wealthy private individuals. You want something done? Better have tons of money to get your voice heard. This is why the infrastructure, schools, state and federal financial situations have gone down the toilet. With outside interests controlling elected officials its clear why everyday Americans are more or less getting the shaft: Infrastructure, schools, and other things that directly benefit the middle and lower class aren't super profitable for those who are doing the spending in Washington. It is absolutely no surprise to me that most any or all proposals that includes a new tax, a new social or public service, or a new program that could possibly benefit everday citizens is instantly shot down or criticized and done-in with overwhelming negative PR, the latest being the health care bill which had an enormous amount of corporate dollars opposing it even in the form of fake astroturf movements which ironically got the very people up in a huff in the name of "Freedom!" who would actually benefit them if it were passed but conversely benefit the corporate interests they were unwittingly protesting on behalf for.

Politics are totally messed up at this juncture. My take is that there needs to be a complete and total elimination of ALL corporate interests in Washington. You want to run for president? Fine. Stick up some posters, get everyday people to donate a few bucks, give a speech or two and be done with it. May the best person win. Want to get a law passed? Write to an elected official and tell them what you want. That's the way it should be.

edvard2 says

a new social or public service, or a new program that could possibly benefit everday citizens is instantly shot down or criticized and done-in with overwhelming negative PR, the latest being the health care bill

our currently f-u'd politics basically required the reform bloc to co-opt the insurance industry, get them in the tent vs. the rest of the health sector that's feeding at the trough, so PPACA would have at least some private money defending it. That was the lesson learned from HillaryCare at least.

Since the insurance industry skims only 10% or so, it's not the biggest ox that needs to be gored. Hospitals (i.e. hospitalization) is #1.