patrick.net

CA Civil Code 1950.5(C):

"A landlord may not demand or receive security, however denominated, in an amount or value in excess of an amount equal to two months' rent, in the case of unfurnished residential property, and an amount equal to three months' rent, in the case of furnished residential property, in addition to any rent for the first month paid on or before initial occupancy."

While security deposit is somewhat reference/tied to rent, it is better to just give an absolute dollar amount (within code) so there is no expectation that the security deposit will be used in lieu of last month rent.

rental, that is a great deal, congrats.

rentalinvestor - do you rent it out personally or do you use a property manager? The reason I ask is that Antioch is far from us, Cupertino. There aren't good investments around here, so if we picked up something in your area we'd probably need a property manager.

Not for me, but 300K is quite possible with couple of credit card limit over 100K. My father in law got credit cards like that.

Back in 2003, this 23 year kids posed himself as a 44yr old senior engineer, opened 20 new credit cards, max them out, took cash out of them, bought a house, then ask her mom file bankruptcy. The same crook she is, she borrowed money from everyone she knew including her 3 boyfriends, hide her cash somewhere eles, changed her home title under her daughter's name who live outside the state, then filed bankruptcy. As one of the creditors I was, I got dumbfaced and it made me even more stunned when I found that during the discovery. I made the judge revoke the bankruptcy decision at the end. But they took away, nowhere to be found.

So, yeah, the world needs ditch diggers too.

TT says

It’s the fault of whoever loaned the money in the first place. Due diligence, suckers.

That's a load of crap. There's such thing as personal responsibility.

Ya, loansafe can be fun to read. Have you ever read anything about their God, Mo Bedard? http://www.mfi-modsquad.com/would-you-hire-this-guy-to-do-your-loan-mod

And wasn't there some guy (probably many) who advised in seminars to us cc debt to put $ down on homes and either flip or refi? $300k is amazing.

during the crash interest rates fell and so did prices
so I dont like to rule out the possibility that rates could rise along with prices.

Actually I expect that to happen at some point. Employment a demand will be much higher
and those have a stronger correlation with prices than the actual interest rate.

So if rates are at 6% in a strong economy
which is historically still pretty low I would expect prices to be higher too.

TT says

It’s the fault of whoever loaned the money in the first place. Due diligence, suckers.

Blame goes to all parties. Don't let deadbeats off the hook that easily.

I can't only thing Obama has done right....he's revitalized the Republican party and made it the biggest political party again.

We are essentially experiencing Jimmy Carter's second term, in more ways than one.

What an incredibly dumb question to ask, RayAmerica, but here is the answer:

Let's see, 18 months into the Bush presidency, he had presided over one extremely deadly terror attack and started an illegal war against Iraq and a misguided war against Afghanistan.

Yeah, is there any doubt I still prefer Obama to the alternatives? No, there is not. The only choice I prefer more than Obama being president now is Obama being president in 2001-2008.

I prefer more than Obama being president now is Obama being president in 2001-2008.

Chances are we'd have made some of the same mistakes. Maybe not Iraq (much of the Army wasn't really enthusiastic about this idea), but Afghanistan most likely. Plus the same Congress would have done the same spending and deregulation and I think Obama would have gone along with it, just like Clinton did in the 90s.

The main difference would just be the 4,000 KIA in Iraq not being dead now and the hundreds of billions blown on that neocon misadventure. Plus also somebody other than Roberts and Alito, probably better.

justme says

Let’s see, 18 months into the Bush presidency, he had presided over one extremely deadly terror attack

Using your logic, I suppose you also blame Clinton for the WTC bombing and FDR for Pearl Harbor.

justme says

started an illegal war against Iraq and a misguided war against Afghanistan.

I agree. But I have to ask the question: what exactly has Obama done regarding the “illegal” war in Iraq? He campaigned on bringing the troops home in his first 16 months (he also at various times said “immediately,” “within the first 6 months,” “within the first year,” etc.).

As far as Afghanistan, Obama's policy has been to EXPAND the war dramatically. Bush was "misguided" and Obama enhances this misguided mistake. Yep, Obama is way better and different from the inept Bush.

Another point to consider: Obama kept Robert Gates as Sec. of Defense ... the same Sec. of Def. that Bush had (i.e. in order to keep and expand Bush’s policies). I've said it all along; Bush was a horrible president, and Obama is Bush on steroids. And all this time you fell for all that “CHANGE” nonsense.

You're good friend is very optimistic. It does make sense in some ways but I will guarantee that the economy is going to tank BIG TIME very soon. His theory would be possible if the economy was booming again. That is not going to happen within 5-7 years.

Robert, that is exactly why interest rate is not going up as well.

I'm sure it will once the massive inflation kicks in from all the money printing.

RobertShiller says

I’m sure it will once the massive inflation kicks in from all the money printing.

It's one or the other Robert. If inflation kicks in because of money printing, then there will be wage inflation.

Well, if interest rates go up and wages don't, there will be blood in the streets, running from the carnage at every retail banking location. This is not going to happen. The Fed will print money for the Treasury to lend to homedebtors before this happens.

And it's safe to say that ANY wage inflation will be met with rising interest rates. This accompanied the 1970s price-wages spiral.

Call me Mr Pessimistic, but I just don't see middle-class buying power coming back this decade. Too many headwinds, and no real tailwinds that i can identify.

Gov't, medical services, and finance have been pulling a lot of weight as far as jobs go since these haven't been outsourced or offshored that much (tough sending lab work to India or the Philippines I guess).

California has a $20B budget shortfall to close, and the rich of the state can sit behind their 'no mas' front and have the bulk of the balancing come out of the middle class who either use the subsidized services or cash the state paychecks.

Interest rates I think can go down more, to 3%, should buying power continue to evaporate like I think it is. This will just stabilize prices for the most part tho. Japan has 3% rates (35-year fixed) last I checked!

It is also possible for buying power to go down without interest rates going down more. This will put downward pressure on prices.

If inflation kicks in because of money printing, then there will be wage inflation.

Not necessarily. SOME sectors have pricing power -- energy, government, medicine, insurance -- some don't. Overall the system has J6P over a barrel and his pants pulled down.

10% unemployment does wonders to keep wage inflation away.

tatupu70 says

RobertShiller says

I’m sure it will once the massive inflation kicks in from all the money printing.

It’s one or the other Robert. If inflation kicks in because of money printing, then there will be wage inflation.

If Paul Krugman is correct and we are heading into a third depression then the "wage increase" won't be as effective when unemployment is 20%+

Let's see:

Obama's 1st 18-months:
Health Care Legislation
Wall Street Regulation Legislation (Financial Reform)
Credit Card Protection Legislation
Economic stimulus
Tobacco regulation
Student loan reform
Responds To Gulf Disaster In Timely Manner

And coming soon: A Real Energy Policy

G.W. "The Shrub" Bush's 1st 18 Months (First term)
Fail to recognize warnings of an extremely deadly terror attack
Preside over the extremely deadly terror attack
Start an illegal war against Iraq
Start a misguided war against Afghanistan
Reverse budget surplus and start running deficits

And coming next term: Katrina - The Complete and Total Failure To Respond
And for the finale: Economic Disaster of Epic Proportions

Simcha, much more diplomatic than me, aren't you. I just dont have much patience with Ray-Ray.

Definately not living up to the "change we can believe in" slogan. Steady but unimpressive. Certainly has not embarrassed black people. If that is not PC then I appologize in advance and take it back, but thats my opinion lol.

Unfortunately, the political machine that is our government makes it hard for anyone to change anything. But I admire his efforts and only wish that he'd ushered in socialized medicine rather than the shitstorm we got.

I like him.

Troy says

I spotted him coming in that he would be a “conservative” Democrat, meaning cautious, in the Clinton mold of triangulating towards the middle on things.

Contrary to the Right’s propaganda about him, he’s not the second coming of Marx or Che. He’s basically Clinton, or a little more to the right of him perhaps.

Except Clinton is an experienced Statesman, and he's nothing like Clinton. Clinton did more than razzle dazzle lip service.

Obama! is the most defeatist man I've seen in a public office of any degree.
He's great at telling us what we want to hear, but sucks at telling us what we need to hear.

On is terms leading a Pep rally blaming past administrations for his short comings and he's on fire like a daytime talk show host.

Comes time in a National crisis like the wet land gate way for 40% of Americas waterway system, is under threat from the crud being the crude in the Gulf. Millions of barrels a day being pumped into the Gulf, and he
has little to say. Much talk little action the one time in his administration where he could have acted on something; rather than promising to delegate, in some transparent transaction nobody knows about. He grew gray hairs the last two or three months.

Clinton loved low hanging fruit, Obama can't be bothered, he takes action through monologue.

Tenouncetrout says

Comes time in a National crisis like the wet land gate way for 40% of Americas waterway system, is under threat from the crud being the crude in the Gulf.

What are you talking about?

elliemae says

Tenouncetrout says

Comes time in a National crisis like the wet land gate way for 40% of Americas waterway system, is under threat from the crud being the crude in the Gulf.

What are you talking about?

Tenouncetrout says

Millions of barrels a day being pumped into the Gulf, and he
has little to say. Much talk little action the one time in his administration where he could have acted on something;

Using your logic, I suppose you also blame Clinton for the WTC bombing and FDR for Pearl Harbor.

Re Clinton, wIth less than a month in position for the WTC thing, no. His people weren't even fully threw the Senate confirmation process yet.

The second WTC attack came a little later (seven months later) into Bush's new admin, and the security apparatus under Bush was moving pretty slow about the growing intelligence they were getting. The week of 9/11 was when they were going to have their first pow-wow about the AQ threat. Bush's neocon team was a bit too hidebound about its core areas of expertise -- Soviet containment, China, that sort of thing. Counter-terrorism wasn't on the menu, even though we'd been attacked over and over again by AQ.

As for Pearl Harbor, while the civilian commander-in-chief thing can be a little overdone (the military prefers to run its own ship, TYVM), it is a fact that neither the Army nor the Navy *in DC* did a very good job defending the nation, and of course Roosevelt was into his THIRD TERM by then, so whatever blame the executive gets in these situations FDR would own all of it.

Much talk little action the one time in his administration where he could have acted on something

it's f---ing 8,000 feet below the surface. While the admin can be criticized for allowing use of Corexit, interfering with local protection desires, and inability to get more sweepers into the disaster area, talking down on the man personally just makes you look psychotic about the dude.

Dude's got to deal with a massive bureaucracy, and people like you would ride him even harder if he started getting too big for his britches.

RayAmerica says

But I have to ask the question: what exactly has Obama done regarding the “illegal” war in Iraq?

Deaths are going down, from 300 in 2008 to 40 this year.

And all this time you fell for all that “CHANGE” nonsense.

You guys have so many mixed messages I can't even deal with it any more. First Obama is Che Guevara. Then he's Bush's lost brother. Whatever. The fact of the matter is that this nation is on a knife-edge of partisanship and there's a lot of heat but very little light.

I'm hoping the Obama team is playing a deep game, but I don't think it's going to be enough. The forces of darkness are too strong, and too many Americans believe our own bullshit for any "CHANGE" to find purchase in the national will.

Troy says

Read it and weep, you trolling hyperpartisan crackpate. Was that impolite? My bad.

It wasn't impolite, in that you were grammatically correct. Had you gone on to state that he is reactionary and lacks the propensity for independent thought, that too would have been grammatically and substantively correct. Furthermore, if you were to discuss his and abeabe's continuous attempts to reference Adoph Hitler in a pertinent manner, that would be correct as well. Certainly not impolite.

Perhaps someday they'll learn the difference between discussion and regurgitating other's thoughts in an attempt to spew forth hateful messages.

I do think it's cute the way rayray writes my name, adding a little here & there and how he can't resist mentioning me every time as he immerses himself into conversations and attempts to hijack them with his same, tired message, claiming to be the victim of a man who is much smarter than he and who doesn't know or care who he is.

But, as I mentioned before, you weren't impolite.

During the bubble (and I would argue even still where I live) people are “monthly payment buyers”. In that they figure out what monthly payment they can make and that determines what they can pay for a house.

Makes some sense - add to that the fact that with loose lending standards many stretched themselves so thin that they are one unforeseen event from disaster.

Looking at the numbers for my area in 1999 roughly 20% paid over 35% of their income to hosing costs. By 2008, that number had jumped to over 40%.

I want to believe that prices will come down more, but wanting it and having the data to support the argument are two different things.

For the record I do not think that we will see rampant inflation. My theory (and its is only a theory goes like this). All of the big banks had bad loans on their books, to the point that some of the major players were insolvent. We all know more or less what happened.

The money was given to the banks under the guise of "priming the pump" but in truth it was a back-door way to keep all afloat, without divulging which banks were truly on the brink of collapse.

Fast forward to today - much of the so called "printed money" has not found its way into the real economy. Why? Because it was never intended to.

With the money not finding its way into people such as you and I, I do not see inflation as being a concern.

Troy says

Not necessarily. SOME sectors have pricing power — energy, government, medicine, insurance — some don’t. Overall the system has J6P over a barrel and his pants pulled down.
10% unemployment does wonders to keep wage inflation away.

That's the point though. You can't have monetary inflation with 10% unemployment.

RobertShiller says

If Paul Krugman is correct and we are heading into a third depression then the “wage increase” won’t be as effective when unemployment is 20%+

Yes, and there won't be inflation. It will be deflation.

Tenouncetrout says

Millions of barrels a day being pumped into the Gulf, and he
has little to say. Much talk little action the one time in his administration where he could have acted on something;

This made me laugh. First you say "he has little to say". Then in the next sentence you say "Much talk..."

So which is it?

in my most humble opinion:
Whoever the Prez was after this last election was going to have the economic train wreck meet them on their first day here. It is my gut feeling that the R's didn't want to lose anyone good to a gaurenteed bad term, so they put up Grandpa - knowing that he would not win the election. It is the same thought that put Barry in the race and not Hillary. The D's did not want to lose Hillary to this round of crap that was already in place.

Just as 9/11 awaited whomever was in place.

Now, as for what started this round of economic crap that was handed off to Lord Barry -- it goes back decades, and 9/11 was just the starting bell for the final round. The effects of liberal/progressive/socialist - isms took their toll on America, put us in a horrible place globally and locally and so here we are.

As for R's or D's .... they are all snakes, and will be viewed as snakes by all clear thinking people, until such time as they can be proven to be non-snakes. And on this point we may have some disagreement, because I am of the mind that a conservo does not accept part-snake just because the snake tends to vote pro-coservo. OTOH, a progressive/liberal/socialist does accept part-sanke as long as the sanke helps the push through incrementalism. For some reason, conservo's like me do not play the long-game as well as the other team. One thing that is obvious, the progressive/socialist/liberal team has lots of patients.

tatupu70 says

RobertShiller says

If Paul Krugman is correct and we are heading into a third depression then the “wage increase” won’t be as effective when unemployment is 20%+

Yes, and there won’t be inflation. It will be deflation.

They don't call Bernanke "Helicopter Ben" for nothing. The FED will fight deflation at all costs. When you fight massive deflation by printing money out of thin air, you will probably get hyperinflation instead of inflation. Deflation is possible if the FED fails to create enough money. Some people argue that the printed money is not circulating. This money is going to the banks and the banks are buying US treasuries. They are loaning the money back to the US gov't.

So the UN is saying to scrap the US dollar because it has been "unable to safeguard value". Isn't deflation suppose to make the US dollar strong? Isn't the UN trying to tell us that the US dollar will be weak therefore we'll be in an inflationary depression instead of a deflationary?
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65S40620100629

Do you know something that the UN doesn't know?

justme says

Simcha, much more diplomatic than me, aren’t you. I just dont have much patience with Ray-Ray.

Translation = justme has nothing to say. LOL

Robert--

No--I didn't mean to imply that deflation would happen. Just that if Krugman's scenario comes to pass, then we'll have deflation.

I don't presume to know where the economy is headed in the next 5-10 years. I can only look at the latest reports just like everyone else.

RobertShiller says

Isn’t deflation suppose to make the US dollar strong?

No--where did you get that idea? Deflation means prices will decline--but it doesn't mean the dollar will be any stronger against foreign currencies.

No, Ray-Ray, translation is:

Many other posters already have pointed out the multitude of flaws in Ray-Ray's "thinking", so there is no need for me to elaborate at this point, but I would like to extend a hearty "thank you" to those who took the time and made the effort.

justme .... keep drinking that Obama Kool-Aid and everything will be just fine. Funny how people like you opposed the "illegal" wars under Bush, but are quiet as a church mouse under Obama.

lower prices is just the result of a stronger dollar.

I liked him until he was questioned by someone about where the money for the stimulus would come from and he said “umm it’s just paper money and chuckled”. After McCain picked Palin for VP I didn’t think he was fit to be President and voted 3rd party. At this point I just want him gone, and would like to see someone as president that I actually like which has never happened.

> Funny how people like you opposed the “illegal” wars under Bush,
> but are quiet as a church mouse under Obama.

Yeah well actually, not so much. The thing that gets me the most bummed about chatting with you folks about these left/right issues is how you guys just pull statements that have no basis in fact out of your asses and present them as the absolute truth.

For example if you go to DailyKos, which I'll count as a representative 'left' leaning site, and do a search simply for "Iraq" and limit the parameters to within one year you get almost 600 front line articles, many of which have titles such as "The Afghan Speech Obama Should Give (But Won't)" and "We Must Stop Not Talking About Afghanistan". But I don't want to cherry pick, go and make the search for yourself and do a bit of research before yammering some silly platitude.

One thing I've noticed about the 'left' and the 'right' in the US, and arguably this is a generalization but I think it'll hold, is that the left is willing to self-criticize while the right just attacks the left & pretty much blindly accepts the rationalizations and actions of its leaders. And I find its interesting how there's now this attempt to turn that failing back onto the left by presenting them as cult followers...

And here's a fun quote I'm fond of when talking about stuff like this:

"You can have your own opinions but not your own facts."