patrick.net

jojo says

What about you?

I own, I am holding, and I don't believe real estate prices will decline. If I did, I would be selling.

jojo says

I am not a real estate speculator and when taking the time, energy, and fees
of the transactions into account that does not make sense for me (a 1031
exchange might). I have a portfolio; RE is just one part of it.

You have lost transaction fees the moment you purchased the real estate - you should not avoid selling based on fear of fees incurred. Transaction fees are incurred on purchase, only not realized (as with gains or losses) until sale.

Transaction fees should have been factored when purchasing, not selling. That is, when doing a rent vs. buy analysis - you should have added transaction fees into cost of ownership.

jojo says

I look at real estate like buying a variable annuity. The day to day
fluctuations market values do not affect my cash flows. If prices dip then I
look to buy, otherwise I hold what I already own.

You do not understand risk, return, or opportunity cost then.

You cash flows would be unaffected by 10x increase in asset value - would you look to sell then?

jojo says

You also fail to take into account the opportunity cost of my time; this is is
different for everyone. I make more money doing what I do than spending time
trying to time the RE market and scalp a few points in one direction or the
other.

You generate income every waking second? You should like consultants I interview that are applying for full time positions.

"My billing rate is $200 per hour, I won't accept total comp less than that, including benefits." Great - and you bill 25 hours per week. I'm paying you for 40.

jojo says

You are right. And if I never sell I will never realize those fees.

Someone will realize those fees. Your estate. Your children's estates. Yor children's children estates. Someone.

jojo says

But within reasonable market ranges its not worth my time.

How much money do you make posting to p.net?

Why would I shit into a running blender?

HeadSet says

You would have needed an attorney or title company to "do the title" whether you had an real estate agent or not.

Yes and No.

I shouldn't NEED one, but unfortunately I do.
People are still liable for previous liens, levies, fines and back taxes.

They do the investigative work to get a clean bonded stamp, and title insurance. They will also go over your mortgage to let you know of any verbiage in it, that you should pay very close attention to.

Their take on my mortgage at the time I got it, was they've never seen one so lopsidedly lean toward the buyer in every almost every classic way that they normally inform the buyer. But at the time I bought, the nation was in the middle of Mortgage volume identity crisis, and the Law makers when they were working the FHA laws and tweaking them in real time by the minute. I got 7 GFE, while at the time FHA was demanding no Loan should not even be submitted for processing until a "SINGLE" GFE had been generated signed and returned. I signed 7 of them. My mortgage has only one single late fee, and that's it. No interest rate hikes. Not that I have missed a payment, or plan on it) but it's nice to know if things get tough, my house wont be one more thing, ratcheting up the screwing while I'm down.
My title Insurance is pretty solid, it protects my house from getting frivolous liens.

But they only cost me $275 for the whole thing.

So I would say, yes a title company is good. I don't know how much I would have liked them, had I bought in a time, that all of those normal "Be careful" gotchas that they were saying to people before they started tweaking the FHA rules. I don't think I would have liked to have listened to a long list of how people could legally fuck me out of my house.

Even with all of that other stuff that I felt was above and beyond what I expected out of them as a title company and RE lawyer, the volume of paper work that they had, hundreds, and hundreds of pages. And not just empty blank form pages. Each already had all of the unique inormation already filled in and ready to be signed.

I could have never collected, filled out, and signed and gotten notarized all of that paper work. Not while I working my ass off every day to prove to the loan officer my finances. Only to wake up every day like it was ground hog day, and the appeasing the loan officers would start all over again.

Plus working my job trying to make money at the same time, so I could even buy the house.

WOW! The UNtrustworthy are certainly in control of what information is apparent to the people!

Say hey! This was in the Wall Street Journal on March 30, 1999. Note "... how much it will buy."

Holy cow/interesting/compelling ...!

And where is it up to date??? Right here ... see the first chart shown in this thread.
Recent Dow day is Friday, March 28, 2014 __ Level is 103.9

WOW! It is hideous that this is hidden! Is there any such "Homes, Inflation Adjusted"? Yes! This was in the New York Times on August 27, 2006:

And up to date (by me) is here:
http://patrick.net/?p=1219038&c=999083#comment-999083

WOW! The UNtrustworthy are certainly in control of what information is apparent to the people!

And http://patrick.net/?p=1230886

Call it Crazy says

The survey also found that 50 percent of the uninsured plan to remain without coverage, even if they do know about the upcoming deadline.

This is great! Even the poor getting Obamacare for free don't want it.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/JFvujknrBuE

Increasing FSBO is a leading indicator that the SWHF soon, very soon

Should't the buyer pay his realtor?

Buyer's agents are completely useless, and a liability in fact - you can act yourself faster than with some realtard in tow. I don't understand fools using them.

There is one exception, in a seller's market like ours: but that's not really a buyer's agent, but dual agent, which not all states allow. We just used this trick and are in the process of buying our first house (after nearly 10 years on this site, this is something! :).

We walked into a "broker open house", without an agent of course. We decided to make an offer on the house and approached the two realtors showing the house. One was the listing agent, the other was her "buddy". The buddy (from the same agency) become our buyer's agent, which means they will cash the entire fee. Needless to say they worked hard on sellers to accept our offer, which they did the next day before the first open house (to public). Interestingly enough the open house took place, 150+ people came, they got offers well above ours but that was too late. The sellers were not happy, but they seem to have gotten over this by now :)

Call it Crazy says

This should be good for a point or two rise in home prices!!!

Prices will probably fall, they've overly speculated them lately. But it's not bad if you live outside the city. Smog is bad within the city though, so we stay out.

Damaged homes become Fixers & then Flippers.We'll be rolling in the dough.

Ceffer says

I'm waiting for YouTube videos of Japanese mutant squid dragging movie stars into the Malibu surf for supper.

Maybe Godzilla is real?

It's raining here on the central coast.

Earthquakes bring in the buyers like lemmings. What is life without a bit of flavor of danger?

Buy now, or be priced out forever.

Ceffer says

Earthquakes bring in the buyers like lemmings. What is life without a bit of flavor of danger?

Buy now, or be priced out forever.

North Fullerton had the most minor damage including water main breaks destroying roads. Most Americans are already priced out of this area. Somehow I think you are right, and by the end of tomorrow's open houses, the rest of America will be priced out after thrill seekers bid up prices.

Call it Crazy says

These hiring managers also said they were three times as likely to hire a worker over age 50 as a millennial.

Senior citizens seem to be replacing younger workers in entry level grocery store jobs. Bad sign on two fronts
-it means the senior citizens don't have enough to retire and must work
-the younger generation doesn't get any job training or make any money

Call it Crazy says

Also because the store owners are trying to run a business... The senior citizens show up every day for work, the younger ones, not so much...

clearly the owners make a choice on whom to hire and they pick the older worker

Stay where you are, a Liberal will be long shortly to tell you you're wrong. Well... that's what they've been telling me for about 5 years now. When I mentioned that the work force is getting older, all these years.

I was always told I needed a link. But it's hard to give a link, when you report the news before the Press(Such as it is) takes notice.

ugh....
Michael Snyder?

Software pork barrel, that doesn't even work, a great way to fashion the future of the great socialist paradise.

At least Michelle's school buddies are rich now, just like she is!

If it's on CNBC it must be true

Absolutely!

jojo says

FortWayne says

Because it changes how insurance works JoJo. You are forced into the system of pre negotiated fees, you are forced to buy a product while real insurance is forced out.

All it does is force individuals to buy an insurance policy from the same companies.

It's not the "same companies". What you are buying isn't insurance, you are buying into a system. Insurance has no provider contracts or network. What you buy today, is a contract with a provider group that certain "insurer" will pay out prenegotiated set of fees for services.

Call it Crazy says

I would suggest that no more than 5% of the resumes that I see show the simplest understanding of what a hiring manager is looking for, and no more than 10% of those people that I bring in to interview have the simplest understanding of how to interview.

Most of the boomers were dirty hippies and pot heads at the same age.

You still don't get it. When we say millennials are screwed as a generation, it obviously doesn't mean there are no slackers among them. It means, on average, as a generation, they will have far less opportunities than boomers did. Bringing anecdotal evidence does absolutely nothing to disprove that fact.

Plus, someone that claims that 90% of people are inept is probably himself a nut case looking for some kind of idealized slave labor. How someone dresses, uses social media, and what people do in their private lives is mostly irrelevant as to how they can handle a job. These are just stupid prejudices.

CaptainShuddup says

Stay where you are, a Liberal will be long shortly to tell you you're wrong

As predicted, he arrived.
Heraclitusstudent says

How someone dresses, uses social media, and what people do in their private
lives is mostly irrelevant as to how they can handle a job.

Not quite - if he uses drugs (including alcohol) to the point that affects his behavior while he is on the job. It is relevant. If his appearance makes customers decide to stop coming to my store - it is relevant. As are things like the hygene, the language that is used (swear words), putting attention to the cell phone instead of the customer, not showing up for work because (fill in the blank). Yeah, there are a LOT of things that a person's appearance, behavior, and what is done in the personal life DO affect how and if they can handle the job.

"Recent price changes, by themselves, cannot tell us whether this is a housing bubble; neither can a simple comparison of nominal price levels today to where they were in the past. "

Call it Crazy says

Yep, Heraclitusstudent is the perfect example of the "Millennial attitude" that expects the employer to change his business to suit the Millennial, instead of the Millennial changing his behaviour to blend with the business...

And in typical "blame game" by this generation, it's always someone elses fault...

No I don't expect businesses to change their attitude.
And yes, the current situation is boomers fault, not personally, but as a generation. It's not a question of blaming someone else. It's just a fact.

to the moon

Call it Crazy says

You're entitled to your own OPINION, but your NOT entitled to your own Facts..

- Did debts at all levels of society (households, government, financial and non-financial companies) grow exponentially throughout boomers adulthood? YES, FACT.
- Did this money boost the economy in the past at the expense of the future? YES FACT.
- Did the cost of housing grow much faster than inflation during boomers adulthood, helping boomers but screwing millennials? YES FACT.
- Did the cost of education also grow much faster than inflation during the same period? YES FACT.
- Was a large part of the US production off-shored during the same period, giving boomers lower prices while hollowing the economy in the longer term, screwing millennials? YES FACT.

etc, etc...

Sorry these are facts, not opinions.
It's funny to see boomers trying to rationalize to avoid the inescapable blame.

mmmarvel says

Not quite - if he uses drugs (including alcohol) to the point that affects his behavior while he is on the job. It is relevant. If his appearance makes customers decide to stop coming to my store

- If an employer looks at a Facebook page, sees someone drunk, and concludes this person is an alcoholic, this employer is an idiot. Let the one who was never drunk cast the first stone.

- Most jobs are not customer facing and don't require fancy attires. It used to be everyone was wearing a tie, luckily that's no longer the case. But hey, to old people, if the business is not good, it must be the fault of comfortable shoes.

As predicted, he arrived.
Heraclitusstudent says

How someone dresses, uses social media, and what people do in their private
lives is mostly irrelevant as to how they can handle a job.

Not quite - if he uses drugs (including alcohol) to the point that affects his behavior while he is on the job. It is relevant. If his appearance makes customers decide to stop coming to my store - it is relevant. As are things like the hygene, the language that is used (swear words), putting attention to the cell phone instead of the customer, not showing up for work because (fill in the blank). Yeah, there are a LOT of things that a person's appearance, behavior, and what is done in the personal life DO affect how and if they can handle the job.

Even mcdonalds would not hire someone like that when there are plenty of decent and responsible youths who would be glad to work for McDonalds.
The teens and 20's need to realize if they want a job, it's the employer who makes the rules. You either do what it takes to get a job or live in your parents basement until you grow up.

Heraclitusstudent says

If an employer looks at a Facebook page, sees someone drunk, and concludes this
person is an alcoholic, this employer is an idiot.

Maybe, maybe not - I'm offering the job. If I have reason to believe that you may not do a good job for me due to being drunk, then I have the right to not hire you. If you're stupid enough to post (for the world) to see when you're stupid - well, you've just shown me two examples of stupidity. First by getting drunk, then by posting it for the world to see. I have a business to run that I don't need to be run down or in any way made to look bad by the actions of my employees - be it on my time or not.

Heraclitusstudent says

Most jobs are not customer facing and don't require fancy attires.

I don't really care if the position is one where you meet customers or not. If you come to an interview (even for a warehouse job) in a tee shirt and torn jeans ... sorry, you made a less than good impression and I'll keep looking. You have one chance to make a good impression, so do it. If you're attitude or thoughts or whatever doesn't allow you to dress up a bit for getting my job, then you don't really want it. I work construction, BUT, I dress up for interviews. When I get hired, I KNOW not to wear my suit to the job site. Oh dang, there I go using common sense again.

Yellen just reported that the jobs picture still sucks, 6 years after QE1 was initiated...................

For those in their teens and 20's - lots of good advise here about landing a job.
When I was a teenager, I thought I knew better than the more experienced folks. I learnt the hard way just how wrong I was.

anonymous says

I retired from a very large international company and if your behavior in your private life draws unwanted or adverse attention to the company, you will do so as well. Regardless of traveling on company business etc. or just day to day living you are a representative of the company you work for

I think it was some 10 years ago but I'd heard of a story about an ex-pat, who'd lost a huge job because of his internet postings. This person was a management consultant, assigned to a big client in Seoul, S. Korea.

Well, instead of being discreet about his personal life. He went on a drinking spree & banged tons of women, night after night, and bragged about it, sending emails, posting on forums, etc. Well, not using an alias (plus a VPN service), a friend of a friend sent copies of his exploits to the employer, and the consultant was fired.

So yes, how you're perceived by employers, esp when you represent your nation's HQ office for a client, does matter.

Call it Crazy says

Strategist says

For those in their teens and 20's - lots of good advise here about landing a job.

When I was a teenager, I thought I knew better than the more experienced folks. I learnt the hard way just how wrong I was.

How about the one's in their 30's here... Don't leave them out...

I would guess those in their 30's would have learnt from their mistakes.
If you're still in the basement there is no hope for you, you'll just get buried there one day.

mmmarvel says

you've just shown me two examples of stupidity. First by getting drunk, then by posting it for the world to see. I have a business to run that I don't need to be run down or in any way made to look bad by the actions of my employees - be it on my time or not.

1 - Most young people get drunk sometime. There is nothing stupid about that, unless you think most young people are stupid or having fun is stupid - which I suspect is the case and doesn't reflect well on your own view of the world.
2 - (1) not being stupid means that there is nothing stupid about posting pictures of a party where you happen to have been drunk.

mmmarvel says

u have one chance to make a good impression

So basically you are telling us, in your opinion, other people should assume you judge them on appearances, therefore they should act like you do, and so as a result you feel entitled to judge on appearances.

Do you realize how stupidly circular this logic is?

Hopefully a good candidate has other strengths, in which case he has every reason to dislike bosses who judge people on appearances.