patrick.net

Jimbo in SF says

Quigley says

guns in the hands of citizens can check federal power and overreach

One thing about America, the Govt. has to think twice before firing on it's own citizens.

Ask the protesters in Kiev, Ukraine how they feel about Govt. snipers firing on them.

And a yahoo with a pistol and assault rifle is going to do what exactly against a trained sniper team?

Chances are the yahoo will be a headless pink cloud before he can disengage the safety.

There are only two ways that any government has managed to successfully govern a population:
1) with consent of the populace
2) with fear

Most governments use both strategies, but second strategy is limited in the USA by the Second Ammendment. Push too hard, commit obvious injustice and enforce it with jack booted thugs, and an armed populace pushes back.

However, if we were more like the workers' paradise of North Korea, the government would be able to use strategy #2 to invoke strategy #1!

My personal suspicion is that Obama has been sending his homie Dennis Rodman to North Korea on political research missions.

New Renter says

And a yahoo with a pistol and assault rifle is going to do what exactly against a trained sniper team?

Looked to me like there were way more "yahoo's" than Govt. agents in Nevada ... and the Govt. backed down.

I'm speaking of a situation with a mass protest like Kiev (or even Nevada) where the citizens are armed, not a 'crazed' individual against a sniper team.

New Renter says

Jimbo in SF says

Quigley says

guns in the hands of citizens can check federal power and overreach

One thing about America, the Govt. has to think twice before firing on it's own citizens.

Ask the protesters in Kiev, Ukraine how they feel about Govt. snipers firing on them.

And a yahoo with a pistol and assault rifle is going to do what exactly against a trained sniper team?

Chances are the yahoo will be a headless pink cloud before he can disengage the safety.

Way to entirely miss the point! It's not whether they win or lose that particular skirmish. It's that the government firing on its citizens would inspire armed revolution.
Obama backed down from that precipice because if he had ordered the Feds to start shooting, he'd be impeached as a start, and probably lynched later on. Do you possibly think the government can govern with any significant fraction of the population in armed revolt? It wouldn't be as nice a separation as North and South, either.

I haven't seen anything by Ryan I wasn't interested enough.

The U.S.A. has sufficient natural gas and oil probably for hundreds of years, so we could avoid buying anything from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc. and keep that $500 billion/year in our own economy.

You guys would also benefit, since I bet you own mutual funds so those dividends from Chevron/Exxon will enrich you more than presently.

Much of the attention we have in the middle east is also doing the heavy lifting for Europe, a PERFECT example was us bombing Libya. We have zero economic nor energy interest in Libya but Europe does.

You solar and windmill guys obviously need to spend a few winters back East, nothing will help you in upstate NY or New England in the winter except burning something to warm your house, or nuclear to light it.

You could produce some natural gas with your waste and garbage, I doubt many people would but towns could if they wanted to spend money in this area. I also don't think it would be competitive of the stuff from under the ground, but it all adds up.

But the problem is that the assholes and idiots in Washington haven't the brains to allocate money correctly so I say cut them off their addiction to our money.

Like all blowhards, Bundy stoops to pathetic hypocrisy, claiming ancestral rights to the land. Of course, if Native Americans reclaimed the land Bundy says is his, I am sure he would have no problem with that.

I still have a question about 9/11. How does one take down 3 buildings with 2 planes? Damn good pilots? lol

There are a couple of lines here that cover a lot of territory.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/mn60YWO218k

Stocks had a much better rally than houses, and they're much more liquid.

Not a bad list. Like many others, I sat and waited, thinking housing prices would drop or stabilize. Instead I just watched rents and housing prices go up and up. Seems like 2011/2012 really was the year to buy.

I see all these charts posted here that talk about housing prices going down, inventory up in California for example. Yet in the Bay Area, all I see is prices going up, houses being sold and snatched up usually within 2 weeks. Rents keep climbing as well.

Oh well. Sat in the sidelines too long. Made the same mistake with the stock market by partially switching to cash/bonds after DOW reached 13,000, thinking there was no way it could go beyond that again. Boy was I wrong, QE-infinity wrong.

Landlords. It's always a good time to rent.

Hedge funds. people shorting housing stocks, etc.

For reasons #s 1,2, and 5 and the self-selection of readers, it was clear that the majority opinion on Patnet would miss the boat. There were plenty of people on Patnet arguing that things were turning around, and there were plenty of people who bought and dropped off of the site.

People don't want to believe something that is painful to them. Many perspective buyers sat it out not believing they would or should pay so much for the house they wanted. So, I don't think these people were lying. They most likely believed their book. At this point, it's pretty clear that they were wrong. Some hold onto their beliefs despite getting smacked in the face with contrary evidence. I'm not sure why that is.

Housing may very well take another dive in the next few years, but for now, the bears have been wrong and denial runs strong here.

YesYNot and CaffeineAddict I just moved you into the sane and on Pnet category. Great insights and comments. Thank you.

YesYNot says

Some hold onto their beliefs despite getting smacked in the face with contrary evidence. I'm not sure why that is.

Check out this link ...
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/

"...when new evidence was interpreted as threatening to their beliefs, they doubled down. The corrections backfired." Meaning, when presented with facts/opposing views that contradict a held position, often people become more firmly attached to their position. Core beliefs and things held close to how people interpret the world are very difficult to change.

I think the new speed with which rushed "news" and opinions can reach the masses, via new media/internet, has caused a serious growth in this and may be greatly contributing to the polarization in the U.S./world.

Also, confirmation bias is at all-time highs as groups of like minded people can now so easily find one another and communicate.

I think the only thing a person can do is really challenge themselves and ask why they believe something. Also, when interacting with others, trying to understand where the core of their beliefs and perspective comes from is the means to finding common ground.

CallItCrazy and I, for example, don't agree on much with regards to housing. He has a different perspective on housing as he isn't in the bay area. So I read his comments with that in mind and things make more sense.

Anyone from Austin? It appears to be hotter than SFBA.

Good counterpoints. Particularly 1, 2 and 5.

Although I now am a homedebtor and don't post much, I still lurk.

I'm thankful that I pulled the trigger when I did.
I'd like to say I made a data driven decision based on all the great feedback here at this site - but truth be told I just got lucky.

That said, this place does have it's pulse on where things are, and more importantly, where they are headed next.

(Trolls and permabears notwithstanding)

Call it Crazy says

EastCoastBubbleBoy says

That said, this place does have it's pulse on where things are, and more importantly, where they are headed next.

OK, you're on the East Coast and not in bubble land of CA... Where do YOU see the market heading???

It will drift upward due to
1) Tight inventory
2) Rising mortgage rates
3) Rising rents

Taking the 10,000 ft view - all of the foreclosed people had to go somewhere. Some moved in with family, some moved away, but may transitioned back to renting. More renters and less rental supply caused the current rise in rents. This combined with mortgage rates generally rising results in a certain amount of sideliners finally switching to the buy side of the "rent and wait or buy now" ledger.

****

Further, the price appreciation will not be even. I think of it more along the lines of a dart board, with a job hub / desirable urban area as the center. As you get further out prices will appreciate slower than in the center = until you hit that magic "suburbia" zone - the inner ring of the board. It's the area we all love to hate. 20 minute commute, good schools, mcmansions on acre + lots - that sort of thing. Appreciation in these areas will be quite high - almost eclipsing that of city centers in some areas.

(Aside - this depends on the long term trend... historically there's been a long cycle of "move out to the country followed by "the city's where it all happens". Right now we're sill in a "city life's better" trend, so I expect this will be where the most price appreciation is until the pendulum starts to swing back to suburban living.)

Then you hit the outer suburbs. Commute time goes up so appreciation goes down. In some areas I'd suspect you'd barley edge out inflation - but its choppy since school quality is uneven from one town to another.

Finally the exburbs. Here at the limits of commutability (about 1 hr) are the city people who decided to "get away from it all" or suburbanites who were "priced out". This outer ring will see decent appreciation over the next year or so.

Beyond the exburbs you see a sharp decline in appreciation, as well as a general deterioration in the economic landscape.

If I had to put numbers on it YOY appreciation would be roughly as follows

City center (desirable areas): +12%
City outer limits: +6%
Prime suburbs: +10%
Outer suburbs: +5%
Exburbs: +8%
Beyond: +3%

With the average appreciation for most MSA's running about 6% over the next 12 months.

Just my two cents.

Not to defend the crap Obama is shoveling, but he didn't really get a chance to shovel it: everything was blocked by the radical GOP.

But the GOP is depending on the ignorance and short memory of voters who don't know (most likely) or don't remember that January 20th, 2009 was the day GOP leaders met and vowed to oppose everything Obama tried. Records were set for filibustering (look it up), and once House majority came in November 2010, Obama was cut off from control of the economy.

Also, total government spending through 2012 (and maybe today) is nearly flat under Obama - the federal sector had some increase, but state and local spending has shriveled.

We got Austrian austerity.

Call it Crazy says

Iosef V HydroCabron says

everything was blocked by the radical GOP.

I was waiting for the first one to post that.... Typical....

Why don't you answer with "Both sides are contemptible... I'm above it all... needs to be a third way..."

Are you feeling okay?

For someone who dumps hundreds of anti-Obamaxxx (-care, -stimulus, -whatever) threads here like dog turds in a park lawn, you sure are touchy when someone disagrees.

When did you acquire this iron-clad political correctness?

Call it Crazy says

Iosef V HydroCabron says

When did you acquire this iron-clad political correctness?

You haven't been following along... I hate both sides.... I just hate the Blue team more...

I am really having a hard time recalling a stream of anti-Boehner/Ryan/Cantor/Norquist threads from you.

I'll dig through the archives here. I'm sure they will turn up.

CaffeineAddict says

Not a bad list. Like many others, I sat and waited, thinking housing prices would drop or stabilize. Instead I just watched rents and housing prices go up and up. Seems like 2011/2012 really was the year to buy.

I see all these charts posted here that talk about housing prices going down, inventory up in California for example. Yet in the Bay Area, all I see is prices going up, houses being sold and snatched up usually within 2 weeks. Rents keep climbing as well.

Oh well. Sat in the sidelines too long. Made the same mistake with the stock market by partially switching to cash/bonds after DOW reached 13,000, thinking there was no way it could go beyond that again. Boy was I wrong, QE-infinity wrong.

I sat it out for housing, too. Probably it was a mistake. Maybe not. I didn't sit out the stock market, so maybe that offsets what I failed to gain in housing,

No one has a crystal ball. We do what makes sense to us given the information that we have. That is the best you can do.

Call it Crazy says

Iosef V HydroCabron says

I am really having a hard time recalling a stream of anti-Boehner/Ryan/Cantor/Norquist threads from you.

Last time I checked, that team wasn't running the country....

I was waiting for the first one to post that... Typical...

(The point being: your remark is precisely the point I was making in my first comment. Why is it only objectionable when I do it?)

What? The Fed is still buying like there's no tomorrow, you call this a significant taper? LOL. The market has been flat to slightly down YTD and rates have risen by a full point. The market has been fairly resilient and a small part of the recovery was organic, but the impact of the Fed has been clearly proven looking at the last 6 years and the slow-down in the market and slow rise in interest rates pretty much correlates with the smallish taper the Fed has begun.

Call it Crazy says

Come on, let's add to your 14 thread count

Go easy on him.

We can't all be uncritical, Pavlovian, "Ctrl-X Ctrl-V" automatons reposting every outrage piece from extreme rightist propaganda organs.

Rew, that link was interesting.

I bought houses in 2011 and 2013 & both are financed at 3.375. That has worked out well so far. As for stocks, I was all in with my retirement money, but too conservative with some other money. It took too long to get comfortable with the direction things were moving. Maybe the backfire effect had something to do with that.

I'm gonna need some unskewed polls here. This looks biased to me:

There's a reason we see so many desperate anti-obama posts: The GOP and their followers know they're losing big time. No doubt about it. Hell- just yesterday it was announced that even more people than anticipated signed up for healthcare, hence further making the last 5 years of the entire GOP's agenda a huge waste of time.

I got to say, it is nice seeing some people step up and take some measure of accountability about how wrongheaded this site has been for a while now. Unfortunately, it had a very large effect on my SIL & her family who are now worse off because of it.

Its funny, when she found this site (2008), she was under the (in hindsight naive) assumption that housing blogs were news/information, and that the zeitgeist here would change when the facts on the ground change. It wasn't until late 2012 that she woke up and realized she was being deluded by a self selected group who were driven more by emotions than fact.

If a fugitive is hiding in a cave, special ops procedure may involve throwing gas inside the cave in order to cause the fugitive to come out of the cave so that they may be captured. By ZIPR and QE that's what the Fed essentially done to those who wanted to remain in cash, they "encouraged" them to invest in riskier assets and they certainly did, perhaps obviously not all, but enough of them. To what extent the current total value of major indexes is due to this effect, I cannot say, but I would not be at all surprised if 20%-30% of total current value is due to QE/ZIRP. Hey, I am not complaining, my 401K is doing great and the value of my home is way higher than when I bought, but it is what it is.

Iosef V HydroCabron says

We got Austrian austerity.

The U.S. budget is far from austere. Government spending is plentiful -far too plentiful and in and of itself does not generate sustainable economic growth

The problem with a lot of those "HOUSING PRICES CONTINUE TO FALL!" type charts/stats is that it includes data from broad areas.

Once you look at the "desirable areas" such as NYC Manhattan, Bay Area, Austin, DC area, real estate prices and rents have just continued to climb. What's worse, if you look at the "nice" areas within these "desirable areas" the rate of increase is disproportionately high!

I do regret buying a little back in 2012 (or earlier). It would have been a stretch of my income to buy back then in the desirable areas, but now it's flat out beyond impossible. What I really regret though was listening to the bears when DOW was 13k and not continuing to go all-in with stocks. I pulled back and stop contributing and missed the 30% increase. BIG WOOPS there.

I think that people made 2 major errors:

1) Believing that "rental parity" would automatically mean that house prices would go down. Not many considered rents going up to achieve "parity."

2) Fear of down payment loss aka vaporization. But they didn't look at other side of the coin - house prices going up which causes future income to be "vaporized" due to continuing to rent and then buying at a higher price.

CDon says

It wasn't until late 2012 that she woke up and realized she was being deluded by a self selected group who were driven more by emotions than fact.

Don't worry we will be revisiting the 2008 situation very soon when the next recession hits, it is not a matter of "if". Any gains above the normal rate is going to be corrected whether it is a stock market or housing.

bubblesitter says

CDon says

It wasn't until late 2012 that she woke up and realized she was being deluded by a self selected group who were driven more by emotions than fact.

Don't worry we will be revisiting the 2008 situation very soon when the next recession hits, it is not a matter of "if". Any gains above the normal rate is going to be corrected whether it is a stock market or housing.

The problem is the bears have been saying the next recession is going to hit for the past 2 years. Instead the stock market went up 30%+, housing market went up, rental market went up. The only thing that didn't go up was wages (for people that actually work).

The "correction" could be 10 years from now. By then your real wage may be 2/3 of what it is now.

These types of analysis are so deceptive. They fail to take into account historical and potential real estate appreciation. Throw that into the equation and all the colors get reversed.
Ask yourself why the rich Chinese are not buying in the best place to buy according to this map - Baltimore, but instead buy in the worst place - San Francisco. These rich Chinese got rich by being smart, they must know something.

Strategist says

These types of analysis are so deceptive. They fail to take into account historical and potential real estate appreciation. Throw that into the equation and all the colors get reversed.

Ask yourself why the rich Chinese are not buying in the best place to buy according to this map - Baltimore, but instead buy in the worst place - San Francisco. These rich Chinese got rich by being smart, they must know something.

They're buying where there are other Chinese people (Bay area, NYC, DC) and where the good universities are at. Why the hell would anyone buy in Baltimore. Aside from JHU and inner harbor, that place is a dump. Also the demographics aren't attractive to east asians.

Actually I used to see mostly east asians (75%+) at open houses in the bay area. Lately, it's basically all Indians. The last open house I went to consisted of me (asian), my spouse, a white guy and his asian spouse....and 20+ Indians (I didn't bother counting all the kids they had there). NYC real estate remains white and east asian central.

CaffeineAddict says

The problem is the bears have been saying the next recession is going to hit for the past 2 years. Instead the stock market went up 30%+, housing market went up, rental market went up. The only thing that didn't go up was wages (for people that actually work).

The "correction" could be 10 years from now. By then your real wage may be 2/3 of what it is now.

At least, you admit that correction is in future. Even couple of bulls have admitted 2017 could be it. It seems like you are totally oblivious of the national debt and decline in government revenue. On top of it they come up with more taxes on folks....all this just does not add up. Correction is inevitable, we can debate all day as to when that is gonna happen. Until then enjoy the good times.