patrick.net

I work with social economists and human development researchers.

Probably much more fulfilling than the antisocial economists I studied under in grad school. Think disciples of Milton Friedman.

Thanks for sharing anything you can or care to.

Sometimes living longer has nothing to do with “healthy,” or maybe healthy for her was 2 drinks a day.

It has everything to do with fate.

From real life experiences of my family in the southeast, the pressures that in-migration is causing is already readily apparent and beyond hypothetical. For instance, my uncle who lives in rural alabama owns a large Dairy farm not too far from Montgomery. Now there are new developments popping up on any farm that is purchased from some of his less than fortunate neighbors. He gets million dollar offers for his land all the time. he expects these offers to only increase. Sooner or later he will probably sell, and give the money to his two kids who already have non related jobs in the vetranarian field. Still others like my aunt in memphis worry about the plethora of california natives swarming and and buying out houses with raw cash. She just got a job in rural missouri and may move there if her property taxes get too high. My parents learned 3 years ago that a major freeway is coming within a half mile from their house. They are looking at land in rural Kentucky and upper TN. It's all a matter of time to me that the south will become like the rest of the country- an endless sea of houses, wal-marts, shopping malls, seeded with the occasional yuppified city( probably nashville and Atlanta. Thus the transformation will be complete. What I hear from people in CA is almost like: gee wizz! lookit' all that cheap land over there in the south.. it's soooo undervalued! lets go buy a house.. or two.. or three...

Our older population and younger population was banking on their already twice refinanced homes to move. Seems like that wont be happening.

Enough of them have been trying to take their wealth out of the country for the IRS and US State Department to get into the act.

http://www.actionamerica.org/taxecon/taxpats.shtml

**not an endorsement of the political views of this site; generally a good disclaimer when it comes to tax watchdog groups

A unit for sale in my building in Condotino just relisted - for $10k HIGHER. WTF? Is this building magically generating cash overnight? I should check my mailbox.

SFWoman,

The English were moving into parts of Southern France and Northern Italy too when I was living there, but not nearly as many as going to Spain. There were a good number of Germans migrating to Spain too, but not so much fueled by real estate as by generous government entitlement annuities.

A unit for sale in my building in Condotino just relisted - for $10k HIGHER. WTF? Is this building magically generating cash overnight? I should check my mailbox.

Don't speculators always say things like "my property is going up $10000 per month" as if it is a job.

"Don’t speculators always say things like “my property is going up $10000 per month” as if it is a job."

But just watch some idiot come along and buy it. Honestly I hope it sits for months like the two from last year. They only sold after numerous price reductions. A unit in my building just sold very quickly because it was a total remodel and priced "low." So now apparently this other unit has magically gone up in value!

Ack, I'm going to go have some wine and read a book...

Davis_renter,

Your comment is there now.

Ack, I’m going to go have some wine and read a book…

Have some sushi too.

With the world population now at 6.5 billion and no slow-down in sight, how long will it be before there is REALLY no where to go?

Worse yet, most population increases are in places without sufficient resources. More affluent families are somehow not reproducing anymore.

If you keep thinking that the future is when you will finally be happy, the future sure doesn’t look so good from here.

I am more of a fatalist with the view that humanity is doomed to fail eventually.

If man doesn’t take care not to overpopulate Nature will, and she will do so brutally.

Man will not take care. Luckily, Nature is never as brutal as man though.

'por favors', heh. The English going to Spain and warmer climes is like USians going to florida, i guess - it's like the united states of europe now - and they qualify for the cheaper spanish medical care system after a year or two...

demographia.com has done it's second analysis of housing affordability, now including the UK - so it's now US, UK, Ireland, NZ, Oz, Canada... They've done a good job with the analysis, but I don't agree with Wendell Cox's views on 'urban consolidation' as being the main reason for price spikes.
http://www.demographia.com/

most people in Oz are forced to live in capital cities because there isn't anything else much - however, a few Sydney retirees cash in and move elsewhere to live off their ill-gotten gains - however, i don't think this pattern is going to be sustainable for very long anywhere, as the next generation simply won't have the money/credit to keep prices going up and up. the question is whether housing prices have outstripped wage increases and cost of living decreases from cheaper consumer goods, etc, and the answer is 'yes'. unless people are prepared to accept paying 50% of their gross income into housing for the next 3 generations to come, there will be a 'price revolt' and people will simply not be able to pay the asking prices, the whole lender credit system will fall apart with nothing to prop it up, etc. and it will be another 'Tech Wreck'.

unless people are prepared to accept paying 50% of their gross income into housing for the next 3 generations to come, there will be a ‘price revolt’ and people will simply not be able to pay the asking prices, the whole lender credit system will fall apart with nothing to prop it up, etc. and it will be another ‘Tech Wreck’.

Unless people no longer think that real estate is a great investment without any possibility of losing money, they will pay any price to participate.

Let me repeat, when people begin to see that they may lose money in real estate, they will no longer buy.

Thus the transformation will be complete. What I hear from people in CA is almost like: gee wizz! lookit’ all that cheap land over there in the south.. it’s soooo undervalued! lets go buy a house.. or two.. or three…

I agree with most of the observations here about land/RE prices in the South (FL/VA/MD excepted) and Midwest still being MUCH lower than on the bubble coasts. And, as SanJose-to-Austin pointed out, wages are roughly on par or not much lower than CA.

I think it will be a long time before there's truly a *need* for anyone to leave the U.S. in search of affordable housing. Not to mention that housing here will gradually come back into line with rents and incomes as the bubble deflates in the years to come. OTH, if you can't stand cold weather (and don't mind the crime, corruption and occasional civil war), then maybe Central or South America is your thing.

I visited an aunt & uncle living in Hunstville over the holidays and was astonished at what $200K would buy you there (new 3-4 BDM colonial detached SFR, 2 car garage + yard in good neighborhood close to downtown). Mosts skilled/professional jobs there pay roughly same as CA, and there were plenty of them. Needless to say, despite the, uh... "cultural climate" there, I was tempted to consider relocating. I spent the previous Xmas in rural NW Kentucky with a cousin. KY was even cheaper than AL --though there were fewer skilled job opportunities.

"it is like buying a maxed out credit card. Except they are buying someone’s maxed out real estate and hoping for an increase in the credit limit upon their purchase."

Perfect analogy

"Luckily, Nature is never as brutal as man "

I don't know...Katrina was pretty brutal....and recent mudslides..terrible.

I don’t know…Katrina was pretty brutal….and recent mudslides..terrible.

Which is more terrible: Katrina? Or Hiroshima?

Do the people buying now in San Francisco think the world was created in 1995?? Some sort of amnesia? No ability to read a simple article about bubbles or price cycles? I just don’t understand it.

According to Bertrand Russell, the world could have been created five minutes ago when all memory and traces of the past.

Perhaps, for these people, they have not been created with such memory.

Can someone wake me up when the real estate market crashes?

I assume you're aleady awake unless you're a sleep troller. Consider yourself hereby informed.

It’s not late for you to finally own the american dream!

Yes, you can own your dream. We all do.

Unless people no longer think that real estate is a great investment without any possibility of losing money, they will pay any price to participate.

Let me repeat, when people begin to see that they may lose money in real estate, they will no longer buy.

Sure, there's an irrational exuberance effect among investors. And govts put no controls on owner-occupying vs investing to try to make things fairer - it's treated as an income-producing asset rather than human shelter to be owned and controlled by the occupier. For that reason, house prices doubled in 1 year in Sydney in 1987-88 due to the stock market crash.

But owner-occupiers don't buy to make money, they buy to obtain social security and the power of ownership over their dwelling. Owner-occupiers are generally not acting as speculators.

But I should warn you that printing money yourself is not legal in this country.

But this is a great country. One can simply file for bankruptcy. No one will put bullets in your head for mortgage delinquency. :)

I also think a very large bomb set off at Mt. Diablo nuke station will trigger the San Andres fault and things could get yucky.

There will then be more waterfront property and that will bring back speculators! :)

Davis_renter Says:

"I work with social economists and human development researchers. My degree is in a totally unrelated field, just wanted to get that out there.
My group, under the direction of Rand Conger, has begun a study on Mexican origin families here in Sacramento."

Most of the immigrants to the US from Mexico and Central America today have a lot in common with the immigrants from Ireland and Italy that came over 100 years ago with my grandparents (strong work ethic, family values and the Catholic faith). I was talking to my Mom recently about how much harder it is for the immigrants today. My grandfather was an orphan that came here after an Uncle that worked for the railroad agreed to take him and his five brothers and sisters in to their home in San Francisco. He met an immigrant girl in SF whose peasant family sent her here since they could not feed her. The two got married and after saving for two years with their combined income from a track maintenance guy and cleaning lady and they bought a home in SF (that would sell for about $900K today) and put four kids through private Catholic Schools, High Schools and College. I don't know how the immigrants today make it since most of my friends from college and even business school can't buy a home without help from their parents and most don’t even dream of having a wife that stays home with the kids…

We almost moved to Charlotte, N.Carolina. We sold our 4bedroom house in LA for a great profit, found a house we liked in South Mecklenburg and then realized that it was WAY too Bible Belty for our family(among other dissuading factors). So...we're renting here in LA and waiting, waiting. We coulda had a great 3200 sq ft Gerogian McChateau on 3/4 acre if only we felt we have fit into the community. Our 13 year old son is relieved that we didn't move. Me? I embrace the local color in LA,and hope that maybe we sold at exactly the right time. We presently renting happily in our same neighborhood at a fraction of what it costs to own. Just lucky,I guess.

Just lucky,I guess.

Give yourself some credit. It could be your instinct.

Here's a message I received via email:

"This is a Delivery Status Notification (DSN).
After several attempts,
I still haven't been able to deliver your message to
[private email removed by RandyH].
I will keep trying for a few more days,
but I thought you would want to know."

surver-x, apparently someone is playing games with my email address. Whatever you receive from "[private email removed by Randy H]" is not from me. I'm not trying to contact you. To the individual spoofing my packets:
#include
while(1) { cout

The rest of my code was cut off, but basically said, "knock it off." Thank you.

Only registered users can see other people's email adresses. Perhaps we can get some clues from the mail header and IP address.

- surver-x
+ surfer-x

Wait, the site will send the threadmaster a copy of the comment on behalf of the author. If the registered email address of a threadmaster no longer works, won't the author get such notification?

Peter P, that's what it looks like:

To: [edited out private email]
Subject: [patrick.net] Comment: "Big Fat Stacks Vs. Housing"
New comment on your post #178 "Big Fat Stacks Vs. Housing"

Maybe x keyed wrong address, or changed his email address?
I feel like an idot, but that's nothing new.

Yes, probably the messages were generated by the site (which somehow gained intelligence and awareness) :)

Stange, I do not get such messages. Perhaps because I am also using gmail.

Peter P.
We did feel it was the top of the market...so Perhaps we can take some credit. But, our overall plan to blow this popstand ulimately failed, so we take responsibility for that too.

Peter P, thank you for troubleshooting. Wow, the paranoia hairs on the back of my neck were 90 degrees off the skin. So much for calmly considering the possibilities.

. Wow, the paranoia hairs on the back of my neck were 90 degrees off the skin.

Were you thinking that it was David L or Alan G?

Wing Commander Ben B and his squadron of black helicopters targeting my Digital Angel chip. My bloodied aluminum foil cap skidding along the pavement.

I haven't sent any emails out, other than to HARM who correct my Agave induced bad spelling.

Thanks HARM