patrick.net

toothfairy says

where’s that guy who told me I’d be sorry if I dont buy silver.

He sold his silver last week!

I always thought the main reason to live in Fremont was because it's cheap. and now house prices reflect that.

The houses will eventually get down to 1977 prices. My parents were divorced in 1976 as part of my parent setlement; my father had to by my mom a house. He bought her a brand new 6 bedroom 4 bath house for around $18,975. By the end of the 80's it was valued around $1 million and sold for about $2.3million during the boom. Thats where the prices need to be headed, and eventually they wil become cheap once again.
Maybe

Its not the zestimate. Thats plain to see thats no good. They are holding homes back that have very low prices because of the comps. The one place you can compare this to is HUD homes.

That may not apply in California because it costs Warren Buffets fortune back then to get a loan for a 2 bed house.

HUD homes are lower priced but they are setting records. Even they are holding houses back. I am talking about houses that are fairly nice to nice for 7k to 35k. Check Detriot, Fla, St. Louis etc. At HUD homes.

See anyone that knows anything about lenders they won't even make a home loan below 50k. That was the case till 08. They may have adjusted a little. However its not a loan they like to make because it is not worth it to them.

E-man says

You and I will never see home prices in SF and SJ areas hitting that inflation line ever in our lifetime unless the Bay Area will become the next Detroit

They didnt call it the Booming 80s or Go Go 90s for nothing... Today, not even close.

Vanishing Public Companies Lead To The Incredible Shrinking Silicon Valley

http://www.siliconbeat.com/2010/02/17/vanishing-public-companies-lead-to-the-incredible-shrinking-silicon-valley/

One of the most significant trends I’ve been watching over the past decade is the dramatic drop in public companies in Silicon Valley. Naturally, that number was artificially inflated during the dot-com bubble when it reached 417 in 2000. For our purposes, Silicon Valley includes San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and the southern half of Alameda County.

But the number of public companies has dropped for nine straight years now. Even when IPOs briefly reappeared in 2006 and 2007, they weren’t enough to overcome the net loss of public companies through acquisitions or bankruptcy.

In 2008, the number had fallen to 261. We just updated our records and the latest figure is 241.

That’s not just less than the dot-com era, that’s well below the 315 public companies the valley had in 1994 when the Mercury News started keeping track.

shrekgrinch says

They have been paying interest only and when the reset happened they were suddenly up the creek

These loans were very common in the BA post 2000. I have friends who live a two level condo in SF who's upstairs neighbor is in a similar situation. They've know for quite a while they will have to move this summer when the loan recasts, since they will be unable to refinance. Don't know how it will play out with the lender.

Carl1 says

There has been a global push towards cities. The Bay Area is just part of that. Which would suggest an increase in real value of San Francisco and San Jose relative to Vallejo and Stockton.

There is some truth to this. I did an analysis of property values in different bay area counties from census data over the last 4 decades. Basically I figured the ratio of median home values with SF being 100. So if the SF median was $100K and Contra Costa median was $50K, then CC would get a value of 50.

The result was somewhat surprising to me. The trend is clearly that over the last 3 decades median home values have gone up more in core countries like San Francisco than they have in the outlying counties.

I had previously thought that these ratios would remain constant over time, and revert to a mean. Not so sure about that anymore.

E-man says

gordongecko says

Ardenwood Fremont New Home

Thanks for proving my point. The home is in Ardenwood, not Mission San Jose Fremont. Can you find a home in MSJF school district has that kind of price drop?
Thomas,
Your graph demonstrated the divergence. They were pretty in line in the 70’s. The gap started to get wider in the 80’s and even wider now.
You and I will never see home prices in SF and SJ areas hitting that inflation line ever in our lifetime unless the Bay Area will become the next Detroit
Be formless, shapeless, like water - Bruce Lee

Wait another 2-3 years .
Even NASDAQ took 3 years to bottom from the 2000 top even though stocks are more liquid than real estate.

Also another point is coming into play
Gradually Ardenwood and other Fremont area schools will approach Mission

Ardenwood
http://api.cde.ca.gov/AcntRpt2010/2010GrowthSch.aspx?allcds=01611766104723

Mission
http://api.cde.ca.gov/AcntRpt2010/2010GrowthSch.aspx?allcds=01611760135244

I met one lady in flight who has been living in Bay Area since long time.
She said Cupertino School District was not as good when they lived there

shrekgrinch says

thomas.wong1986 says

That’s not just less than the dot-com era, that’s well below the 315 public companies the valley had in 1994 when the Mercury News started keeping track.

That is Sarbanes-Oxeley at work for ya. Nowadays, the startups go for being acquired instead, mostly.

Amazing how the right-wingers always think that anything can be blamed on some law or legislation that they do not like.

For the record: Lots of startups would love to go public, but their revenues, profits and the market valuations simply do not allow it. SarBox has very little to do with it, except of course that SarBox does prevent some accounting frauds that otherwise might let some fraudulently inclined company go public.

Ouch!

CME Hikes Silver Margins By 17%: 4th Hike In 8 Trading Days
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/cme-hikes-silver-margins-17-4th-hike-8-trading-days

OUCH! OUCH!

Silver Has Biggest Three-Day Drop Since 1983
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-04/silver-has-biggest-three-day-decline-since-1983-leading-commodities-lower.html

shrekgrinch says

Hell, good luck trying to build one in San Francisco even today.

Acutally, SF is very developer friendly. We've had tons of high rise residential buildings go up in the last 10 years.

Most famously this the Rincon One that was completed a few years ago.

shrekgrinch says

That’s good then..for SF. The rest of CA needs to follow…especially San Jose.

Indeed. South Bay is the main jobs center for the bay area, but housing situation there is atrocious.

See the price range you are talking about generally does not have a lot of stability to begin with. Thats a very touchy loan for a bank to get into. As one or two of those can drag a bank under quick. So price swings in that price range are common. At any time. Take 2005 or even 2004. A 1m dollar house discounted to 600k or 500k is no big doing. See. I can get those houses all day long no matter what year the economy good or bad. See. The payments on those can drag you under quick. Doesn't matter if your a bank or an individual.

The real indicator here are houses that cost 187k and downward. Even that is a high figure. A real pro would never deal in those types of houses. Except to flip them very quickly. As those payments will drag your business into Chapter 13 before you know it. Flip is a tricky word. Not an illegal flip. Just turning a house quickly.

So what your talking about 610 to 350 is no big digs. That happens all the time even in the best of times. Its no shocker at all. Those kinds of houses in that price range cut to even half price. Is way more common than you know.

Where the real meat and potatos are. Would be in the lower price ranges. Payments are lower. They don't suck you under. That house may be fine after youve made your fortune. It sure ain't the way to get there.

Perhaps unwind triggered by "War on Terror is OVER!" ?

I dunno, the general stock market seems sliding though too.

This morning's BL&S number probably didn't help either - 474K initial claims.

What does unemployment have to do with silver going down? I don't get it. People losing their jobs were not the ones buying silver anyways.

@Vicente

Perhaps unwind triggered by “War on Terror is OVER!” ?

Are you kidding? Even most of the teapartiers still want to up military "defence" spending to !get those terrorists!.

Vicente says

What does unemployment have to do with silver going down? I don’t get it. People losing their jobs were not the ones buying silver anyways.

Rising unemployment is an indicator of economic slowdown. Demand for commodities typically drops during economic slowdowns. Today's BL&S number was way above expectations (~410K). That said, it is just icing on the cake of many other recent US economic indicators over the past month or so (Q1 GDP, manufacturing indices, ISM non-manufacturing index, the high price of oil and gas, etc., etc...) that suggest a slowdown in Q2-Q3.

Note that commodities across the board have been taking a beating over the past few days.

If we hit $25, I'm picking up a monster box.

In the bottom half of the article it says: "There’s a big difference, however, between finding a job and earning a decent wage as an artist. The study found that stable, salaried jobs in the arts are rare — 63 percent of arts alumni were self-employed. Nearly 60 percent of working artists said they hold at least two jobs; 18 percent are working three or more jobs." Sure, but self-employed doesn't mean well paid. " Very few of those surveyed were satisfied with the income they were making: only 12 percent of graphic designers or illustrators said they were happy with their pay, while 13 percent of writers, authors or editors were content. Even for web designers, which are in high demand, only 24 percent said they were satisfied. The survey found that 60 percent of working artists made less than $40,000 in 2008. " If you pick the Debt & Earnings tab at the SNAAP website, you'll see a salary of around 30k/yr looks pretty typical. http://snaap.iub.edu/snaapshot/index.cfm

did you post every single link from the fiscaltimes you could find? Couldn't you just put them all into the same thread?

shrekgrinch says

What seals? Show me the seals? What? Can’t? Wow! How convenient.
Do we EVEN know that Seal Team 6 even exists?
As for other ‘countless people’ they are all politicians. I’d like to see some retiring general say whether it is all true or not, myself.

There was a Pakistani talking about it on twitter as it happened. He heard the helicopter and the gunfire. Or was he in on the hoax too?

I'm not surprised at all. There are a lot of houses and fences out there that need painting.

RayAmerica says

I’m not surprised at all. There are a lot of houses and fences out there that need painting.

I was thinking that a lot of these Starving Art Grads were asking you if you wanted fries with that.

shrek, we already know they were wrong about talking up the economy for the "Summery of Recovery", and that's largely why the Dems got tossed out of the House and lost big in the Senate last November.

Old news is old.

I lean towards the opinion that they really didn't understand the importance of the credit bubble to the general economy, 2003-2007, and without getting that bubble going again (not that THAT is a good idea) we're not going to be able to get the employment numbers we had during the Bush Boom.

This graph:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=pA

charts the credit bubble (blue, year-on-year growth in household and business credit) vs. the stimulus (red, Y-O-Y growth in government spending) vs. Y-O-Y growth in personal consumption.

We've recovered somewhat, but we are just running to stand still now.

Consumer debt: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CMDEBT is still an immense burden.

There has been some job recovery:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=pB

but things go so fucked under Bush's watch that it's buried by how bad the Bush team made things for Obama.

to illustrate this, here's M-O-M change in employment since 2005:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=pC

notice that the job market is growing at the same rate it was during Bush's 2nd term.

Given the $1T+ deficits we're running:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=pD

this is neither good nor bad. It is what it is. Of course, trying to reduce the deficit spending will just send this economy back to the 1Q09 days, if we're lucky.

In this graph, you can see the mortgage credit bubble, red, being replaced by the deficit spending (blue), as the monetary injection via home debt went from $1.8T/yr in 2006 to negative $300B/yr in 2010, while the deficit went from $500B to $1.5T+:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=pE

I find it striking that nobody in the entire world right now is using the St Louis Fed's graphing facility but me.

Another graph:

makes it clear that Biden's optimistic numbers were taking advantage of the census hiring boom since the dotted red lin is ex-census jobs.

Eyeballing that chart, we're going to be needing 15 more months of the current hiring rate to get back to the worst of the Tech recession.

Yeah.

Then look at company earnings and figure out if people are working more or less by the earnings of many companies. Their spending habits are a pretty good indication of what is going on.

Companies have been reporting for the last 18 months their results, and they're not heading down, they are recovering. Look at other figures, and figure out where the markets are heading. If you're unwilling to believe the government numbers, start digging into the financials of companies and figure out what is going on.

pkennedy says

Companies have been reporting for the last 18 months their results, and they’re not heading down, they are recovering.

The national debt today is $14.3T. 18 months ago it was $12T. $2.3T of new government debt, $1.5T per year.

That's enough to support THIRTY MILLION $50K/yr McJobs.

We've just substituted one "stimulus" for another, though a falling dollar is probably necessary now to bring some job growth back.

shrekgrinch says

All politicians are bad at this…but this particular crowd displays total incompetence.

The mistakes have been piling up since NAFTA, MFN with China, really.

The 2009 response was about right and I'm overall happy with the interventions and ideas that were floated.

The 2010 election shut all that down now and the nation is in a holding pattern until 2013.

The only "incompetence" thus far has been presenting an insufficiently pessimistic front to the people.

Of course, when Carter tried that in '77 he was pilloried as a defeatest who didn't understand American Exceptionalism, the exact same bullshit conservatives sling at Obama.

People worried about a weaker dollar don't understand that it's been the strong dollar that has hollowed us out.

But the primary mistake -- incompetence if you will -- since Reaganism swept the country has been seeing the top 5% collect an ever-increasing share of the national income.

This top 5% isn't really doing the work any more, their money is -- compounding interest is a beautiful thing.

And the stimulus was too small, and too much of it was a concession to the right for tax cuts. A large infrastructure investment would've produced bigger gains.

^ yeah but its' tough to go from the full-on stupidity that was 2001-2006 to smart policy.

We can extemporize and apply ameliorative patches, but to actually fix things is not something we can really do, for as you say we were not in FDR '36 or LBJ '64 territory in 2009 WRT Congressional majorities.

We only had a filibuster-proof Senate for less than 2 months in 2009, between Franken finally being seated in July and kennedy's death in August.

I don't think the administration expected so much pushback from the Republicans over one of their own conservative initiatives (PPACA).

But I don't think it was "incompetence" for the admin to get that through over the Republican dead bodies in 2009-2010.

The bullshitters here say PPACA distracted government from fixing the economy, but of course this completely cuts across their parallel bullshit narrative that the government can't do anything positive.

The actual solution needs to be cutting the DOD 50%, capping Medicare cost inflation (which is many times more than the natural demographic increase) via a stricter single-payer system, and raising taxes on everyone to start actually paying for government again.

Problem with raising taxes of course is that millions of households have dialed in their housing expense based on their nice Bush tax cuts. Remove the tax cuts and you really stress everyone's budgets. Medicare is the third-rail still as the previous election demonstrated. Can't cut hundreds of billions out of the DOD with unemployment so high, either. BRAC in the 1990s was like a $15B cut IIRC.

So, there really is no solution. Hence my sig.

Nomograph says

Is it too late for RayAMerica and shrekgrinch to get a refund on their pre-paid copies? Will this tome of knowledge even see the light of day?

No one has been able to offer an explanation as to why Obama spent over $2 million in legal fees in order to fight the "release" of his long form birth certificate. If he had it all along, why on earth did he fight it?

shrekgrinch says

And then, as Ray pointed out, there was the matter of Obama spending $2 million in legals fees to fight this. What gives? And who paid that $2 million…the taxpayer?

No, that was not to fight the birthers. And NO the taxpayer did not pay for it. Obama for America paid for it out of campaign contributions of $750M. McCain also had lots of legal fees associated with the campaign at $1.3M.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/apr/12/donald-trump/donald-trump-claims-obama-has-spent-2-million-lega/

Why do you continue to repeat bullshit over an over even after it's been show to be false. Have you no integrity at all?

ding ding ding

MarkInSF says

No, that was not to fight the birthers. And NO the taxpayer did not pay for it. Obama for America paid for it out of campaign contributions of $750M.

What exactly did Obama's NOT releasing the long form birth certificate have to do with the campaign?

RayAmerica says

MarkInSF says

No, that was not to fight the birthers. And NO the taxpayer did not pay for it. Obama for America paid for it out of campaign contributions of $750M.

What exactly did Obama’s NOT releasing the long form birth certificate have to do with the campaign?

It doesn't. Defending against frivolous lawsuits claiming ineligibly does. They didn't even require much defense. The plaintiffs were laughed right out of court.

In any event the $2M figure was for all legal fees. The amount spent defending against the birthers was almost certainly negligible.

Of course I expect Shreck will not admit he's wrong, and will likely repeat this lie again. It's just the kind of person he is.

"Racist enforcement of civil and voter rights laws at the Justice Dept (letting those Black Panthers off the hook), list goes on."

I agree. Bush was a complete racist for not prosecuting the New Black Panthers. We should demand answers from Bush!

http://blogs.ajc.com/cynthia-tucker/2010/07/12/bush-doj-decided-new-black-panthers-no-major-case/

Death panels! I can see death panels from my house!