patrick.net

SP,
Not sure if I'd equate flyers in the box being grabbed to the sucess of a home being sold. People are like little raccoons. They like shiny things, so naturally, they'll grab something that's just sitting there. The boxes in front of all the homes that've been sitting for sale all winter always stay empty, yet there they sit, unsold. Sometimes I wonder if some of these yuppity people have been so obsessed with housing that driving around looking at flyers and homes is their only form of self entertainment.

- whoops. I meant to say that of the friends of mine who BOUGHT, they seem to be the ones that buy more stuff.

SP,

Take heart! I think the fact that this was a rental is the cause for all of the interest. It just seems to want to scream distressed property! I haven't been there so I can't say for sure but my guess is your "lookers" are wanna be flippers just gravitating toward it b/c they are in "survey mode". Like I say the specuvestor is very much a mom and pop operation. To my knowledge there are no national chain, franchises or major players in the business of flipping houses. No evil corporate types. These were your neighbors.

SP- one more thing about foolish money. The fact that construction companys can still get away for passing a loft off as a house that can be sold for 600k is proof enough that if you can sell what a few years ago was considered starvin' artist housing to uber-yuppie SF metropolitanites that people are easily brainwashed.

WWII,

Your comments regarding consumption are spot on and appear to be fairly universal. Btw, I really dug your restoration job! I definitely know what you mean about going back and re-doing some of your earlier efforts. In the process of restoring my boat I learned that laying fiberglass is very contingent on temperature, humidity etc.

Dinor, thankee.
The car was way more time consuming than I imagined. I didn't do a complete teardown of it, but if I had, it would've been twice the work. Luckily, it was in good enough condition to start with without killing myself. I had never done any bodywork before, so it was challenging. I had to do most of it in the street and a small driveway. No fun!
I'm now helping my housemate restore a 63' Corvair convertible. This is his first classic too, so mistakes were made, just as I did on mine. My biggest mistake was putting the thermostat in backwards, which caused the radiator hose to blast off a mile from the house. Luckily it was fine.
2 nights ago, my housemate drilled 3 holes right throught his gas tank. So I helped him drain 13 gallons of gas out of it at 11:00 at night and hopefully not pissing of the neighbors. It's good to have something that's totally opposite of an office job. I highly reccomend an old car or something of the like for anyone stuck behind a desk all day. very rewarding!

WWII,

What makes installing a thermostat incorrectly frustraing is that there are only two ways that it can go in so it's a fifty-fifty deal! We've all done it. I thought the Corvair was an "air-cooled" engine though like a Volkswagon?

Dinor,
Yup the Corvair is air-cooled. I put the therm in backwards on mine. It makes you feel like an idiot because the thermostat can only go in one way, and it's super-obvious. I don't tell mecahnics I did it either.
The Corvair engine is actually pretty cool. It is actually very lightweight and has been used as a substitute for a cheap airplane engine for hobbyists. There is a healthy following for Corvairs. Parts are still made for it by small tooling companies, except the parts they make are good quality vs the crap GM made. A few fully revamped corvairs I've seen are all new parts, complete with a new suspension system that compensates for the problems the original had. A fully restored Corvair gets great gas mileage, is easy to repair, and has few problems.
The biggest complaint I have is that this engine has 2 carbs connected via a single connecting rod. They must be perfectly synced and tuned together.I had never done that either. The eventual solution was sticking a rubber hose in your ear and listening for the hissing sound the carbs made, and adjusting them until they sounded the same. Silly, but it worked. All in all, it is a shame that Nader trashed this car. It could've meant a totally diffrent direction for american cars. The same same can be said for the Fiero, which just like the Corvair was penny-pinched to death by GM bigwigs.

WWII,

You know I never really thought of it that way! The Corvair definitely had a loyal following even in it's day. They were impractical in northern climates b/c it was difficult to keep windows defrosted and have adequate heat in the winter months. However they could have had a completely different application in warmer climates and were just fine during the summer months. I understand that the Fiero is a favorite for conversion by "electric car" enthusiasts.

I absolutely hate when they put the “curbs in!” We all understand the implications of programmed trading but this is a FREE MARKET damn it! No one is held captive here against their will. If you want to sell….. then sell.

yeah, it's all good fun until somebody loses an eye....

DS,

"yeah, it's all good fun until someone loses an eye"

Sean, if we are going to have a "superior" market, truly the top of the food chain (one not dominated by empty nester house wives) we need to play hard ball. If that means issuing eye patches, canes and German Shepards with really nice dispositions then that's what we need to do. Total transparency, total liquidity!

28 more foreclosures on Craigslist Austin... up to 428. Sweet!

George,

So sorry to hear of your loss. I must say though that you may have set your sights a little low. There was no mention of guest quarters, seperate entrance for the "domestic help" and no pool in sight! I want one of those places they used to film an episode of "Miami Vice" or at least Weekend at Bernie's 2. If I'm going to sell my home pre-crash, and weather this whole mess in a rental I want a pool damn it.

WWII,

How do you find that on C/L? Just plug in a market then search foreclosures? Can it really be that simple?

goober,

Now did I say I was actually going to swim in the thing? That's funny b/c I don't recall saying that. Just kidding. How many people actually use their pool anyway? My point is simply that by keeping "our powder dry" a little longer, all will be possible. I remember after the stock market bubble a lot of clients said this would actually be a great time to BUY! In truth many were already very over leveraged and had no liquid left to play with.

All of us can play this one of three ways:

1. Good. "Well at least we didn't buy at the peak in 2005"

That's great it leaves you with your dignity, but not much else.

2. Better. "We held out long enough that we just bought a modest place for bargain basement prices and paid it off cash (or have mortgage payment about equal to an SUV payment)

This is probably the most sensible approach.

3. Best. "We hung in there until the RE market over corrected to the downside and now have a pool (that we hardly ever use) guest quarters, a seperate entrance for "Lucinda" and have a mortgage payment BELOW an SUV payment.

Dangerous? Fanciful? Perhaps, but is it any less a fantasy than buying at the peak with an IO?

George,

OK, OK....... we'll just scrap the whole "pool fantasy" for now. But how about this? An indoor waterfall! Yeah, a 3 story indoor waterfall with the whole tropical jungle thing goin' on. Exotic birds (to entertain the ever present exotic swimsuit models that are invited to stay on after the "staging" and oblige of course) and ceiling fans (high end of course)?

Dinor,
Just go to CL austin, plug in "foreclosure" in the search.. and BINGO! also- try HUD. Lotsa those too.

WWII,

Cool! Thanks.

Yup,
I've actually met another person on an Austin Forum and he told me that there are likely thousands of foreclosures. Austin is totally diffrent than SF in that barely 15 minutes outside of the city, the prices drop like a rock. Kinda cool if you ask me. I'm all about buying a mini-ranch for a cool 150k, 30 minutes from Austin.
I get a feeling that severe indicators of a downmarket as evidenced in places like Austin will be contributing factors to downgrading property in SF. I think the mindset that "thank god I don't live anywhere except California" is at this point the only thing that's keeping california from totally crashing.

Amen to Foreclosures. My favorite word too... which means: Cheaper housing.

Scott C,

What an amazing turn-around! You've managed to go from "perma-bull" to saying foreclosure is your favorite word? Well this is at least a step in the right direction. When you come to the realization that realtors from coast to coast are having EXTREME difficulty making a 6% commission stick you will be truly on the road to recovery! When the "boom goes bust as it inevitably will" it will hurt everyone and realtors especially. Please read George's post regarding the "future" for big banks in RE and paultry commissions. Start liking it!

Scott C,

Oh btw, once you've actually lived through a true crash you won't need a hairdresser any more. You will (as I have already done, pull your hair out in clumps) making the services of a "hairdresser" completely unecessary. Please do not make any future references to the stock market bubble. You are not qualified to address this topic. You weren't there man! You weren't there. But you will find out shortly. Keep in touch.

Wahahaha! All I can say is that it is time for the empire to crumble!

I absolutely hate when they put the “curbs in!” We all understand the implications of programmed trading but this is a FREE MARKET damn it! No one is held captive here against their will.

The curbs were theoretically supposed to break "feedback loops" caused by programmed trading along with all the psychological stuff. In theory, it wasn't a bad idea since program trading can feed on itself and cause exponential growth of momentum in a frighteningly short period of time.

The only problem is that curbs don't work. I've read research that curbs actually compound program trading related problems. Because program trading isn't going to go away (actually only get worse as even amateur retail investors can use some limited program mechanisms now), but we don't want the market to fail due to "synthetic amplification", we're probably stuck with curbs and market shutdowns.

What someone should do is work out an intelligent program trading AI that knows how to spot market feedback and arbitrages that. That would make someone tons of HaHas while helping to solve the market-curb problem.

Scott wrote:

> The 6% commission rate is not going to go
> away. As a business, no real estate company
> can operate profitably at below that rate.
> Those that try, go broke and out of business quick.

If you sell an average home on my parents street you will make about $300K with a 6% commission, one home a month is $3.6mm a year so it will not be hard to keep the lights on in a one man office for half that….

Stanley Lo is a guy that sells a lot of property near my parents does very well only charging 3.68 (All the Chinese buyers go with him since his fee is not only cheaper, but it has a "lucky 8" in it)...

http://www.greenbanker.com/

tannenbaum,

The DQ article makes less than no sense. In all nine BA counties sales are down 20 to 30%+ yet median price has risen an avg. of what, 2.6 to 16.6%? Sure! I always enjoy the language they use and apparently get away with. "Down payment sizes are stable". Stable. Uh, O.K what does that really mean? "So honey, how are things at work?" "Oh....... stable". I'm sure every wino in downtown San Diego at one time had a "stable" job.

"The use of adjustable-rate mortgages over the last 4 months has decreased". No. The use of mortgages has decreased over the last 4 months, adjustable or otherwise. We could go on but.........

DinOR Says:

> The DQ article makes less than no sense.
> In all nine BA counties sales are down 20
> to 30%+ yet median price has risen an avg.

Remember most real estate "current sales" data is 4 to 6 months old.

The property that "sold" at the end of April is still in escrow, and may stay in escrow for a couple months then it takes the county a while to actually record the sale and release the data.

I hate to get hyper-sensitive about these issues but with all of the half truths and carefully worded spins the RE marketing machine is spewing out it's kind of hard not to get negative about it. From now on though if anyone ask me "How's it going?" my answer is "stable".

FAB,

How can I "remember" something I never knew to begin with? I did not know that. It's hardly the first time anyone here has questioned "current" median sales price, why didn't someone corrected me before?

make that (correct)

@Bap33,

No problem --we go OT here all the time. Remember the "Huh?" thread?

Time Saver

"Indicators of market stress are still largely absent"

John Karevoll and Marshall Prentice seem to have mastered the art of soothing language. John gets torqued off any time someone questions their market analysis. I've read articles where a financial journalist is quite literally getting their head bitten off with some stinging comments whenever they begin to flirt with the truth. Who does this guy think he is Neutron Jack for crissakes.

I can not affix my name to a report where reductions in sales have exceeded 20 and even 30% and still say that "Indicators of market stress are still largely absent". Sorry.

bc,

Randy H is the answer man when it comes to contending with programmed trading. I definitely see where he is coming from when he talks about "amplification". I'll just say that either we should do away with curbs or do away with programmed trading. You can't be "just a little bit pregnant". Either you are or you're not. Since (as Randy suggests) programmed trading is only getting worse, I suggest we do away with the curbs.

Median price in Santa Clara county rose 1K! Big deal.

Did you guys notice that higher priced counties (SF, Marin, San Mateo) are still going up while lower priced ones are going down (Solano, Contra Costa)?

The uppend-end of the economy is probably doing fine in the Bay Area. But credit-dependent markets seem to be hurting.

No problem –we go OT here all the time. Remember the “Huh?” thread?

Huh? The whole point of the Huh thread is that it is impossible to go OT.

DinOR,

I'm not sure you could do away with programmed trading. Unless we go back to all open outcry pits, the technogeist is out of the bottle.

In theory at least, this is just the kind of volatility that the big Hedge Funds are supposed to soak up. Maybe the market is just too large now, and we're suffering the results of essentially "endless resources" when it comes to feedback loops.

Zillow says my neighbor’s condo is worth $579k ($509k - $700k) and he just sold for nearly $699k. Don’t tell me Zillow’s numbers are generally too high.

Where do you live again? Is it near a beach?

Is Almaden Valley a nice place to live?

It seems prices of townhouses in South Bay are essentially unchanged from last year. I do see softness in them.

he lives in $anta Cruz, $anta Cruz is immune to any price pressure other than up. Ahhh Almaden Valley, what suckers tell themselves in order to believe they don't live in San Hosebag, "I live in Alamden" oh really what's your mailing address, SAN JOSE. If you put a dress on a pig what do you have? A dressed up pig.

I love the crap posted here, truly.

I have noticed that houses in ______ are still selling like hotcakes

What exactly is the point of posting this oh so tired diatribe at this stage of the game? here is what truly truly annoys me about the "housing market", there is no housing market, all a "housing market" does is let scum ruin things like community, family etc because the only thing they are interested in is living in a house long enough to flip it and make some green to buy more crap.

I have noticed that houses in ______ are still selling like hotcakes

I have noticed that houses in Hyperabad are still selling like hotcakes

I have noticed that houses in Hyperabad are still selling like hotcakes

Sorry to correct you, but the houses in Hyperabad are still selling like naan