patrick.net

I sold my first house for $254,500. I remember the price because it was an odd price AND because that very house came up for sale 10 years later for EXACTLY the same price. Real Estate does NOT always go up and if people didn't learn the first time around...well that's nobodies fault but their own. If they're too young to know this...well then the're young enough to build their wealth back up again. I had to. I learned a HARD lesson the last time around. Good money can be made in real estate, but you must understand the cyclical nature of the market. I'm sorry, but this stuff is OBVIOUS. You'd have to be a fool to not get it.
I was speaking to a developer last week. They build SFHs all over CA...about 700 per year. She is very well aware of the market shift and they are preparing for it. They have made so much $$$ they are flush and are slowing down their business as we speak. They have the $ to send their kids on European vacations etc.(I know the kids)
My hesitation in investing in some other market is...I am not INTERESTED in another market, so I may not notice the signs of a shift. I AM interested in real estate and watch it very carefully, so therfore, at some point, I will own again...and hopefully profit.
Remember when we were advised AGAINST owning the biggest house on the block? What's with these sheeple? Perhaps they're too young to remember when that was a bad investment? Perhaps they've been afflicted with affluenza.

"I’ll hire them if they agree to move somewhere like Poland where I can fire them when they get lazy."

Excellent, we can hire Polish students to buy designer bags as second jobs. I smell an ebay business here.

-second
+summer

LiLLL,

That $254,500 house actually lost value, perhaps quite a bit of value depending upon when this 10-year period was, due to inflation.

This is a reason when I say real-assets are a hedge against inflation I am careful not to say "a house" is a hedge against inflation. Sometimes it is not.

Excellent, we can hire Polish students to buy designer bags as second jobs. I smell an ebay business here.

Getting around VAT will be the key to making this scheme work. I think there are punitive tariffs also for exporting such things in excess of the "personal allotment", but I'm not up on such rules.

In general, the EU is *not* an open market, not even within itself.

Robert,

Friggin' hilarious post! However, you MUST cut back on the weed.

"punitive tariffs also for exporting such things in excess of the “personal allotment”, but I’m not up on such rules."

Really. I was more concerned about Chinese import duties but I hadn't given thought to EU export duties. Also, I thought the EU was a free trade zone within its boundaries.

Linda,

My concern with the current crop of young buyers is that they're committing to huge loans compared to their earning capacity. Unless they discharge it in bankruptcy, they will be carrying a loss that will take ten to twenty years to make up.

Randy,
It was 1988 when I sold it, and 1997 when it was bac up for sale.
I remember being glad that I hadn't bought several properties and held them hoping for appreciation as several friends were VERY property poor.

I think the EU only has export duties for luxury goods (like designer bags and such), but my knowledge is a bit dated on EU tariff specifics. There's been all kinds of WTO junk in the last few years, so it could have changed.

Ask Polish Plumbers if the EU is a free trade zone. Ask any French company trying to source from EU eastern labor markets. The FT had a great opinion piece yesterday about the future of the Eurozone. It is great, except for France, Germany and Italy, who happen to be over 60% of the Eurozone's GDP.

SFWoman,

Seriously, a school colleague and I were, at one point, trying to set up something similar (but not high-end designer) based in Mauritius, targeting China. We backed out after Mauritius got clobbered by the WTO.

Robert Cote'

Excellent post! The "Dr. Evil" analogy is so perfect for the HB because that is what we are about to hear from homedebtors in a big way. I actually had a fellow explain to me that the "tech wreck" was a gov't plot to prevent boomers from retiring too early! He wasn't kidding either. The turn at the top of the RE cycle was going to look ugly any way you slice it. I don't think we could have recovered from ANOTHER summer of free money. We'll be lucky to recover as it is.

SFWoman,

Excellent insight. The great unthinking masses will buy any piece of crap as long as they think it's cool.

I was thinking of the designer handbags as an arbitrage solution that (1) gives me a free ride on their brand equity and (2) break up their questionable practice of segregating their markets.

SFwoman,
the house we rent has a large back yard with a patio. We have several lounge chairs, a garden, 4 flower gardens, a deck, garage, and several fruit trees. I'm now utterly spoiled by this. Previously I lived in apartments with no yard and a parking space. We spend every sunny afternoon after work and the whole weekend outside( which hasn't been often in the last 3 months) but I could never go back to not having a yard.That's why when I see a large condo or apartment in the city with an asking price of over a mil, I can't fathom paying anything close to that without a yard. I could care less about the house as long as it is comfy and clean. The yard is what I'm after.I think it comes from the fact that when I was growing up, we had no TV reception, no cable, and no internet. Entertainment came from being outside, so that's just my prefrence. I can see how someone who lives and works in the city might find a more metropolitan situation such as a shared building more ideal though. Now those prices just need to come down about 40% and maybe... just maybe I'll be able to afford at least a small house with a yard. I can't even imagine having a vacation home unless I won the lottery, but perhaps someday this too will be possible on a decent income. Cmon crash!

SGV Patience,

It's a wonder this thread reached over 200+ posts before one of us made that observation. We indeed have a long way to go before any one here has need to feel guilty about anything. I will though take exception with those that feel a gov. bail out is inevitable. Homedebtors/Lenders may be all for that but I can't ethically see a way for any legislation of that nature to pass when we still have New Orleans and the Gulf Coast suffering from wounds that were NOT self inflicted. Where exactly would these imaginary dollars come from?

nomadtoons,

I think SFWoman likes this arrangment because she spends her weekends in the country. Thus, she gets the best of both worlds.

Also, one of the nice thing about the property SFWoman was looking at was its proximity to huge tracts of public parkland.

Ask any French company trying to source from EU eastern labor markets.

at least Ikea can manufacture cheaply in yugoslavia and the czech republic... definitely some manufacturing arbitrage going on between east and west...

i've got a few import/export ideas for oz tho... there are commodities here that i could make cheaply in china and undercut everyone else... do a richard branson...

i could make cheaply in china and undercut everyone else -- Like what?

ooh hoo, that would be telling... apart from the fact everything is being made in china at present, there's a few niches that would be easy to get into...

The interesting thing about the EU is that the same thing that is occuring here is happening there. Formerly poor, less desireable places like Yugoslovia, Romania and The like are becoming hot spots for business, vacations, and in-migration due to severe cost diffrences between these locations and the likes of France, Britain, and Germany. Some of the weather in Romania is actually very nice along the coast. The same can be said for parts of the US with the exact same reasons for the shift.

That's okay. I don't want to get involved in the export aspect of the Chinese gold rush. There are about a million overseas Chinese who got in before me, and dealing with the Chinese officialdom at all levels is a pain. Plus, with rampant disrespect of intellectual property there, everything becomes a commodity very quickly.

I'm much more interested in creating interesting and valuable services to the Chinese and expats living in China.

Ideally, I could just partner up with an Indian with good ties to India and we can work through the same suppliers and share ideas. Yuppies are essentially the same, the world over.

I remeber as a kid, we used to poke fun of people who lived in the suburbs with "postage stamp" sized yards. Our yard was almost 12 acres and mowing it took days. I sort of grew up with the notion that a house wasn't worth anything unless you had a signifigantly sized yard. Perhaps in some ways I still feel that way and view people who live in the city as being somehow being shortchanged even though in reality, the city itself serves as their back yard. My Wife lived in the Sunset, and frankly, I couldn't stand the fact that the weather was awful there year round.. and COLD! The microclimate in SF still blows me away, with hot, humid weather in oakland and the total opposite just 10 miles away.

Mr Vincent
Don't you mean 'casualty effects'??? :)

Nomad
Here is a castle in Prague for sale. Only 9 mil with 60 bedrooms!
Nice little vacation home....

http://www.historicproperties.com/detail.asp?detail_key=eurcz001

60 rooms huh? One of them could be the "Ping Pong table" room. Hell- for 9 million, you could rent all the rooms and probably make dead even.

George
What a tough situation to be in. My heart goes out to you guys . This hardship is through no fault of your own.
After the Northridge quake, here in the San Fernando Valley, every house had their private pile of rubble on the street in front of their homes. They just kept adding to their pile. The aftershocks kept coming and coming for weeks . I can't imagine it going on for months.The good news is, however,that it passed...people seem to have forgotten about it and have built and built. Earthquake insurance never covered anything that really breaks anyway...it's only for a total loss. I had earthquake coverage for years and it was a waste of $$$.
Be heartened...at some point people will forget about the terrible losses of the hurricanes of 05. We do hope, and I think I can speak for all of us, that this season brings only a sweet summer breeze to all of you in Fla.

Nomad
That's 60 BEDROOMS! Plus all the other rooms. It'd be fun to purchase with a couple of other families and we could each take over our own private wing!

DinOR, horror as you invite Surfer X and his “buds” over to “break in” your blender?

?????

The shaker perhaps, but the blender drinks....too much headache.

So yeah, it’s basically all about picking your natural disaster.

Sacto is relatively free of natural disasters... except thick fog.

That’s 60 BEDROOMS! Plus all the other rooms. It’d be fun to purchase with a couple of other families and we could each take over our own private wing!

Can we convert the castle into "luxury" condos with pergraniteel?

I am still exploring karmic astrology, but what you said made sense.

SQT, you must have done something good in your previous lives to deserve a loving family in this one. ;)

WRT to Sacto, I seem to recall hearing about people building in floodplains. "Oh, but it doesn't ever actually flood."

/ Remembers looking out from my backyard in Modesto and seeing nothing but water with trees sticking out.
// The house was on a bluff overlooking Dry Creek.
/// It dried up on occasion.

WRT to Sacto, I seem to recall hearing about people building in floodplains. “Oh, but it doesn’t ever actually flood.”

Parts of the Sacto area do flood...

5.05% yield….bloomberg analyst predicts 6.5 yield by EOY.

Mortgage rate may return to 8.0% soon.

So rejoicing in someone else’s pain (or even feeling smug and self-satsified) cannot be considered good karma

This is why I'm not a Buddhist.

I've had to put up with f@cking smug-assed Troll "I'm a genius, you're a JBR" bull$hit for the last 3 years, and this is my well deserved payback. Just like they were "entitled" to rub their 20%/year perpetual gains in my face, I'm "entitled" to my Schadenfreude and I really don't give a rat's ass about karma.

SILSIH, Trolls!
(And you better start getting acquainted with this new sensation called "ass-pounding". You will be experiencing it on a regular basis from now until the end of the correction.)

well deserved payback

I am no longer sure whether paybacks are warranted. Whatever needs to happen will happen.

HARM
I love your outrage.
I feel it too.