patrick.net

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

-ed

Actually I did see in the last week, some more listings came online with raised pricing, even for the same house that were sitting for a few months. Peninsula, South Bay, East Bay, such whacky pricing does exist. Now, this is only what the sellers want, it doesn't mean jack until the house is cleared at that price.

We will see very soon if these sellers can be saved by the *spring*.

Which is more terrible: Katrina? Or Hiroshima?

I've been to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nice photos of dead babies etc. The only mention of the Japanese STARTING the war in the Pacific is in Nagasaki, and I quote, "The war in the Pacific was a direct result of the Marco Polo bridge incident".

The atomic bombings were bad, but the firebombings of tokyo were worse.

Oh come now, kindly delete email address from post

surfer-x, my apologies but I don't have the power to remove what I have posted.

[previous post edited]

I think what happens is that if you post a topic all replies get emailed to you, perhaps there's an issue on the wordpress end.

Unalloyed, no worries :)

Sean, I have asked many people if there EVER was a law requiring owner occupication in brand new sub-division homes here in Ca. The reason I ask is because this crud of investors buying up 3 or 4 single family homes in a brand new sub-division has never went on before.

This is like a new form of capitalism that has spread down to the middle-middle class. Spruikers are running courses telling people how to do this to 'get rich quick'. So people who have enough equity in their existing place can get an approval to buy more and more investment properties. It can backfire and burn them, however, if they pay too much for a place and can't get enough rent. Same as flippers can get burnt if prices don't go up. However, it's creating a wealth apartheid of sorts - a new class of life-long renters who missed the boom - it's as though the market is being manipulated by self-interested individuals buying up property to create a class of landlords and a class of renters - people who would ordinarily have been able to afford a dwelling. Affordability is still quite good in a lot of parts of N. America however, as posters and www.demographia.com have pointed out, and I'm not quite sure why the disease hasn't spread everywhere - the high demand areas like CA, NYC, etc seem to have most problems with this kind of investing.

I personnaly think the welfare backed section-8 program is covering the note on many on the “straight to rent” homes around here as the occupents happen to be full-on welfare folks using section-8 to pay their rent. That bothers me because that means tax payers are making the note payment for some rich investor. That kinda stinks. Section-8 is supposed to be for low income and not to support the wealthy.

I don't know how much of the note the Section-8 would cover. I assume landlords can only charge 'reasonable' rents and Section-8 may be capped at a limit? In which case the landlord has to make up any shortfall out of their own pocket - which is where they can come unstuck. Prices in Australia got so high that they calculated it would take 35 years just to break even on a 100% loan at, say, 6% interest, assuming you stayed in the country throughout to earn maximum tax deductions. What sort of 'investment' loses money for 35 years? But the bubble wasn't helped by the Federal govt allowing tax deductions on any losses (effectively being equal partner in a loss, and forking out Treasury money to the landlord) and also capital gains tax was halved...

Given that it's the nominal and arbitrary cost of land, not the cost of construction, that causes housing inflation, it's a rather cruel trick...

Unalloyed, Surfer-X

I edited the post with X's email. This is my thread and I'm not getting any bad email responses, but I use gmail like Peter P so maybe it's rejecting them as spam.

SFWoman had posted something in the previous thread about someone trying to use her email address to reach X too. It may indeed be that someone is trying to spoof email in order to email our favorite boomer sympathizer, but I'm inclined to think it's a worldpress config issue.

I would be really worried if the economic fundamentals like affordability weren’t so out of whack.

I agree. So long as the educated class can do as well or better by renting then there is little tension between them and the owning class. The worry would be that, over time, the land-owning segment acquires so much land that they can effectively charge "economic rent" in addition to opportunity over the renting classes. I don't really see this happening except in rare situations in the US. When things get that out of whack there tend to be reactionary backlashes politically and economically, as people leave the area or vote in restrictive tenant's rights laws (usually a bit of both).

It's probablay more cyclical than secular. The asset side of wealth accumulation in this country is not by-and-large land accumulation, but corporate accumulation (which includes commercial RE). I'm much more concerned that nearly all the future annuity cash flow streams are going into the pockets of 1% of the people in this country.

Randy H,

Thank you for the editing.

Section-8 is supposed to be for low income and not to support the wealthy.

I know a guy who has an administrative job at the local welfare office. He also owns rental property and brags about how he manipulates welfare to pay for upgrades. Here's how it works. He screens for tenants who qualify for Section 8 and/or CalWORKs (formerly AFDC) cash aid. Once the tentant occupies, regulations allow for the owner to apply for assistance to obtain repairs at government expense. He brags that he has had a new roof installed, windows replaced, new paint etc., all at taxpayer expense. You would think it was a conflict of interest, considering who his employer is. But then here in the central valley corruption is the rage.

Spring Bounce, Spring Bounce, now's your chance to get in before the normal 20-50% yoy appreciation.

Get in, buy now, Spring Bounce Spring Bounce.