patrick.net

sybrib Says:

> The USA is becoming like so many other places,
> children of the elite families are overrepresented
> in the elite universities. Whoever said life is fair?

The USA is becoming MORE like most countries in that the elite families control more of the wealth, but LESS of the children are going to elite universities.

In the 1950’s when my parents started (but didn’t finish) college they said that the kids who had Dad’s in the Bohemian Club the PU Club (or even the Olympic Club) could get in to Cal or Stanford even with a poor High School academic record.

In the 1980’s when I was in college it was much harder for kids from elite families to get in to Cal and Stanford and it was almost impossible without a good academic record (or a huge donation).

Today it is almost impossible for all but the small number of the most elite families to pull strings and get their kids in to Cal, Stanford or other elite universities without a massive (seven figure and up) donation that again a very small number of families will write a million dollar check to get a kid in to a good school…

Glen (in a good post) Says:

> A common situation is that one of the kids will attempt
> to buy out the others. However, very few of them can
> afford to do so in today’s market. Imagine a typical
> scenario: mom and dad own a $750K house and have
> 3 kids. The parents die leaving the house (paid off)
> and $150K of other assets. One of the kids decides they
> want the house so they can keep the parents’ low tax basis.

Where I grew up on the Peninsula (with the average home price around $4mm) and where I live now in Presidio Heights (with an average home price that might even be higher) it will be tough for most kids to buy out their siblings no mater how much they want the low tax basis…

As far as dropping home prices go it looks like San Mateo will soon have a couple low comps since I have convinced my parents that we have seen the “top of the market” and it is time to (quickly) sell a couple crappy little rentals that they bought in the 70’s for under $50K each for over a million each (while they still can)… Prices in San Mateo seem to be dropping fast with current “asking” prices more than $100K less that the “selling” prices of similar homes last fall.

As I have said in the past it will be interesting to see how people react when they see a couple years of home prices dropping by $10K a month. People act differently when numbers are bigger (and the ARM resets and sales by long time landlords will only help to drive prices lower faster)…

DS,

I'm not ann coulter in disguise. I do consider myself a liberal and a progressive. However, I am indeed not your typical "liberal" or "progressive". I think governments serve a vital function in society and are capable of much good. But I don't believe problems can be solved just by throwing money at problems, and I am weary of too much government intervention because I've seen law of unintended consequences work a little too often.

As I said, people have free will and there are limits to any society's resources. It's best to focus the resources in a manner that encourage good behavior. Social engineering is a dangerous thing, and has a habit of coming back to bite society on its ass.

There are two reasons why people in America are poor:

1. They are Lazy
2. They are Stupid

"god must have loved the common people, because he made so many of them."

so what if they're stupid? everyone is stupid. middle class people are stupid for speculating in google and the nasdaq. upper class people are stupid for needing esteem markers. so what?

lots of inheritance kids are lazy and stupid. lots of successful business people are lazy, they leverage other people's time.

people generally aren't allowed to choose their intelligence genes before birth... and sometimes it may because they've had mental illness, or couldn't pay a $100,000 medical bill due to unexpected illness and no insurance...

so people are stupid. so what? they still have basic human rights. no more or less than you.

see john rawls on the 'original position' and 'justice as fairness':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_as_Fairness

is this just more US fatalism and disregard for the plight of others? devil take the hindmost, because i got mine? is that how you want to be treated if you ever have a setback?

But I don’t believe problems can be solved just by throwing money at problems, and I am weary of too much government intervention because I’ve seen law of unintended consequences work a little too often.

this is just silly. i'm proposing govts don't throw money, rather that they control expenses and curb expenditure using covenants and legislation.

and that they cut out fat developer profits (25-30%) by doing PPP developments of their own on govt owned land. that's the third arm of reducing costs.

it's all been done before, it's just that today's market-obsessed govts have forgotten about it.

i could talk forever about unintended consequences and so on, but you have to look at each project on its merits. the govt here just did a PPP tolled roadway that was completely disastrous because they're idiots -- they basically sold the road to a consortium. a child could've told them it wasn't going to work -- and i couldn't make it to a focus group i was invited to in advance to tell them...

DS,

Nobody here is advocating depriving poor people of their rights. However, they, as taxpayers, may wish the divert their tax dollars elsewhere.

As for objectively lazy and stupid people. Before the twentieth century, society had a way of clearing them out of the system. Maybe this society should also get out of the way.

enough! govt lobbying awaits...

and my two posts awaiting moderation -- can someone free them?

DS,

A well organized government housing scheme, with the proper restrictions and oversight, might do very well. I'm more dubious about the government as a mortgage holder. Wouldn't housing estates that evolve into pseudo-property be treated like property by the renters?

astrid Says:

> Working in meatgrinders like Wal-mart and McD’s
> nowadays is a deadend of poverty and despair.
> The working class jobs nowadays aren’t enough
> to raise a family.

You will learn a lot working at Wal-Mart and/or McDonalds just like I learned a lot getting up every morning to do my paper route as a kid and when I got a little older getting up early to caddy.

Working at McDonalds or as a stock clerk (or having a paper route or hauling golf clubs) NEVER paid enough to raise a family. We just seem to have more stupid people today trying to do it…

As for objectively lazy and stupid people. Before the twentieth century, society had a way of clearing them out of the system. Maybe this society should also get out of the way.

that's very bloody progressive. see what i mean? completely anti-progressive by any conceivable measure. you have no idea of the history of all that -- what did they do to lazya nd stupid people exactly? england used to deport stupid and lazy people to america, and when they lost that, to australia. their only sin was being born during a population boom during the agricultural revolution and then finding there was no work for them as adults, so they resorted to nicking things in desperation...

i'm afraid all are equally righted under the law, and welfare is there for a reason -- re-check the john rawls link above on 'the original position'...

let's go all the way back to small scale hunter gatherer societies where everyone was pretty well uniformly intelligent and all survived and no-one was branded stupid...

DS,

I've read your comments (but can't free them). I do agree with your observations. However, as I've mentioned before, what the "people" want in much of the states is to keep the RE prices as high as possible. The political process will not lead to lower overall prices. We will have much better luck waiting it out via the free market.

FAB,

My mom worked many years as a waitress and did tons of other near minimum wage jobs. It is possible to barely support a small family on two minimum wage jobs in the middle of the country. Definitely not the case in pricier areas though. My mom got a summer job at Costco one summer. Even though they paid a starting wage of $10/hr and pretty good benefits, a lot of her co-workers were working two jobs and stacking on overtime just to stay above water. A lot of these people were forced to live an hour from work and they end up sleeping like 5 hours a day and never seeing their kids.

yeah, what the existing holders want is to keep RE prices high. the next generation wants to get them back down to something sensible.

govts are too afraid to do anything, and have always left it in the open market so they can't get the blame for anything.

i'm offering them an out position of developing 'affordable housing' for the masses but saying they are leaving the existing market arrangements alone... altho a few people will complain their place is losing value cos of the govt. sometimes govts have to show some outright leadership, preferably of the right sort...

A well organized government housing scheme, with the proper restrictions and oversight, might do very well. I’m more dubious about the government as a mortgage holder. Wouldn’t housing estates that evolve into pseudo-property be treated like property by the renters?

doesn't freddie mac or fannie mae effectively hold mortgages? regardless, it's just a hypothetical. these would be low-priced places, so not too much downside for any lender OR borrower. currently, the state govt acts as landlord to a bunch of pretty wild tenants, and wears the loss...

e.g. the bridge housing people would have some suggestions for obtaining finance...

we have to be careful to distinguish between low-middle income earners trying to get a foot on the ladder vs traditional public housing tenants -- remember a lot of low-middle income earners could easily handle a $150K mortgage, it's the $500K mortgage they can't do...

Someone wrote:

> But I don’t believe problems can be solved just by throwing
> money at problems, and I am weary of too much government
> intervention because I’ve seen law of unintended consequences
> work a little too often.

Different Sean Says:

> this is just silly. i’m proposing govts don’t throw money, rather
> that they control expenses and curb expenditure using
> covenants and legislation.

I can tell that Different Sean Does not does not live in San Francisco…

My cost for renovation of a SF single family home = $26,000
Government cost for renovation of SF apartment unit = $220,000

Recent cost for a private developer to build 350 units = $73,000/unit
Recent cost for the new North Beach 341 units = $316,000/unit

P.S. the private developer cost per unit includes the cost of the land while the government project does not….

hmm, we'll edumicate you eventually, astrid -- might start you on the communist manifesto... :P

DS,

It depends on how much you think you can change people and engineer society. However, if your definition of progressivism means supporting a solution that leads to more and more people relying on government subsidy, then I am not your kind of progressive.

DS,

Sorry, read it already, and read tons of Mao's writing too. You'll have better luck with me if you quote from the Labor movement.

Economic rights and legal rights are different things. You've confuse the two when you talk about economic rights for the poor in response to my comment that the poor have only legal rights. I personally think all rights are mallable according to the society's resources, but I know others will disagree with me.

yeah, you keep saying that FAB, altho the govt here regularly renovates and constructs public housing cheaply.

you recently claimed it cost Willie Brown $250 M to renovate 100 apartments in SF in an existing building -- that's $2.5 M an apartment! do you expect me to believe that it cost $2.5 M to renovate each simple little apartment in a public housing project with new carpet, paint and some light switches? you can source your claims from now on...

absolutely the govt project excludes the cost of land -- that's the beauty of the whole thing. the govt would partner with a responsible construction firm to do the work in a PPP, but cut out the fat 25-30% developer's profit -- i'm sick of seeing billionaire developers driving mercedes maybachs off my back... just pay honest workers for an honest day's work...

the land is owned by govt, and gifted to the people at a nominal cost. they may even exercise eminent domain over a few people if they like the look of an area...

did i mention real estate agents and apartment brokers wold be excluded from the deal as well? sorry about that...

I wrote:

> There are two reasons why people in America are poor:
> 1. They are Lazy
> 2. They are Stupid

Then Different Sean Says:

> what if they couldn’t pay a $100,000 medical bill due to
> unexpected illness and no insurance…

It is stupid not to have health insurance (I don’t think that even Different Sean can argue that it is “Smart” to be uninsured)…

Then astrid wrote:

> My mom worked many years as a waitress and did tons of
> other near minimum wage jobs. It is possible to barely
> support a small family on two minimum wage jobs in the
> middle of the country.

Not to give astrid’s mom a hard time (since it sounds like she was not lazy), but it is not smart to have kids when the only income is coming in is from near minimum wage jobs…

the communist manifesto IS the labor movement. but not so strong on mao tse-tung, leninism, etc. things have to tempered with human rights after the glorious revolution. altho FAB might be the first against the wall before the human rights kick in... :x

It is stupid not to have health insurance (I don’t think that even Different Sean can argue that it is “Smart” to be uninsured)…

maybe they couldn't afford it? i wouldn't know, because here health care is free and guaranteed as a citizen's right for all by the govt...

FAB,

Hmm, except the part where my mom is an electrical engineer and she had me while holding a good job in Shanghai. She was working those minimum wage jobs because my dad was working on his Ph.D in the US. My dad was university lecturer on the fast track to a full professorship when he left China for grad school here.

Unlike lots of women, my mom continued to work even after my dad got a pretty good IT job. Her English was never good enough for white collar jobs, so she worked various blue collar jobs, including her current one. Her current job, because it came with good health insurance and was stable, came back to save both of them when my dad got laid off and took about two years to find another permanent position.

It depends on how much you think you can change people and engineer society. However, if your definition of progressivism means supporting a solution that leads to more and more people relying on government subsidy, then I am not your kind of progressive.

why not? the role of govt is arbitrary... they have a duty to regulate, i.e. 'govern' in the sense of a regulator. they have a duty to the 'commonwealth' and the 'welfare' of the people -- the common wealth and to fare well.

would you rather see a society where a handful of people screw more and more out of everyone else? those people only have the same 24 hours as you and me -- they don't work 10 000 times as hard as you and me in order to get 10 000 times as much, so they're hardly deserving, are they? they've just learnt the trick of leveraging suckers like you and me -- and then created a myth around how important 'hard work' is, etc. capital begets capital. etc.

i'm not actually proposing that govt spend any more than it already is, as a matter of fact, just to create a space for affordable development. it would be pretty well cost-neutral to the govt, that's why it's such a great idea and will work so exceptionally well.

about reading the communist manifesto or any other labor movement thinking -- i met someone who was raised as a buddhist who never 'got' buddhism, just learnt to recite the whole thing without thinking -- and they hated it, it was like forced piano lessons as a child...

DS,

Marx was only a part of the bigger labor movement. His idea of the revolution and utopia was also fanciful and didn't quite work out. He didn't have deep insight about how the mass of humanity worked. Marxism is more useful as an analysis tool for what has occurred than to predict what will happen.

Different Sean Says:

> FAB, altho the govt here regularly renovates and
> constructs public housing cheaply.

That’s great, but the government her in the US NEVER EVER builds ANYTHING cheaply. It does not matter who is in charge or what they are building. Every time the government has a big project the politicians use it as a way to pay off the people that put them in power.

> you recently claimed it cost Willie Brown $250 M to
> renovate 100 apartments in SF in an existing building

In the late 90’s Willie spent about $250,000 per unit (not $2.5mm) to renovate a crappy WWII era housing project that was and still is one of the worst high crime areas of SF. I did a little Google searching but could not find the numbers from 10 years ago.

> you can source your claims from now on…

Below is info on the newer over $300,000 per unit housing project in North Beach that did not include the cost of land (it was built on the site of an older housing project). Private developers can buy land “and” build a luxury homes for less than $300K but in SF it costs over $300K/unit just to build the apartments…

http://tinyurl.com/zqduz

you know that marx was knocked back at the 1st international with his proposal for a state-based communist economy -- everyone else said that it would create a totalitarian regime every bit as unpleasant as the capitalist one they were replacing -- and they had more foresight than marx ;)

the other option was a kind of 'communist anarchy', from memory, as a sort of velvet revolution which would abolish centralised govt altogether instead...

DS,

I already conceded that some public housing schemes could work and work very well. I'm not saying government is never the solution (though good oversight and properly aligning the administrators' interests to that of the public's best interests is necessary).

I just don't think government redistribution is the best way. A government that works best ought to leave as few marks as possible, doing as much as possible via regulation and the market.

FAB,

I think the problem with SF housing authority is with the incentive structure. That doesn't mean that public housing can never work. It has worked relatively well elsewhere without the same kind of cost overruns. SF does tend to be a city where liberal excesses run extreme, so perhaps you have an exaggerated perception of the overall problem.

DS,

Is that agreement I'm hearing ;) Marx was not a good clairvoyant, Communism ended up taking hold in the less advanced European and Asian countries, he is probably still spinning in his grave from the agarian nature of the Chinese Communist Revolution.

In the late 90’s Willie spent about $250,000 per unit (not $2.5mm) to renovate a crappy WWII era housing project that was and still is one of the worst high crime areas of SF.

OK, but you originally said $250 M and said it cost a developer that to do 100 houses including roads and infrastructure. So you multiplied the refurb cost by 10 and THEN compared it??? isn't that a bit intellectually dishonest?

the crime rate has got nothing to do with anything, so it was and is a bad area -- that's the nature of public housing locations...

still, it shouldn't cost more than, i dunno, $80K per unit just to refurb, unless they replaced all the lifts, wiring and plumbing in the building, and removed all the asbestos... how does that compare with the cost of demolition and rebuilding, i wonder...

I note that Bridge Housing is a non-profit developer, which makes all the difference... one less Mercedes Maybach on the road...

it looks as though the north beach development was a demolish and rebuild exercise in New Urban style. i think $300K per unit is reasonable for that sort of construction, including demolition and site remediation. you claim a developer can build a luxury house for $300K including the land, i don't accept that figure, a large luxury house would cost $300k in materials and labour alone, not counting the land. and, of course, as we know, the further cost of the land depends entirely on location...

astrid,

yeah, communism was very attractive to poor peasants in pre-industrial countries like russia, china, south east asia. marx intended it to be a post-capitalist phase for heavily industrialised societies... altho it was all just theory...

his idea of a 'revolution' being necessary to effect it was only a theory also, based on his observation that all social change around his time seemed to be by revolution -- he was a man of his time... the fabian social-ists came a bit later...

he actually thought he was discovering the 'laws of social history' as a science, in the mode of thinking of his time also -- much like 'modernism' is the dominant paradigm today... as in, the history of man is the history of class warfare, there have always been 2 sides only locked together to make a socratic synthesis that gives rise to 2 more parties, etc...

I wrote:

> It is stupid not to have health insurance (I don’t think that
> even Different Sean can argue that it is “Smart” to be
> uninsured)…

Then Different Sean Says:

> maybe they couldn’t afford it?

I just filled out a form at:

https://www.ehealthinsurance.com

And I can get Health Insurance for as low as $56 a month (with 10 other quotes under $100 a month). Every time I hire a couple day laborers to do yard work I always pay them more than $100 a day in cash. In America if you truly don’t have an extra $100 a month to pay for health insurance you can get on a government plan that will give you health insurance. In America the real poor are almost always insured it is the Stupid that don’t have insurance. I was recently talking with a tile guy (that I paid $4,500 to replace the tub tile and plumbing in an apartment bathroom) who said that he didn’t have health insurance. This is a guy who makes at least $500 a day (using a tile saw and other power tools) and he does not have insurance, stupid…

sources of finance for the north beach development:

Equity from 9% federal low-income housing tax credits and California housing tax credits syndicated by Related Capital, with Bank of America the main investor: $48 million
Citibank mortgage financing: $23.7 million
HOPE VI grant: $20 million
City of San Francisco, Mayor’s Office of Housing: $10 million
HOPE VI demolition grant: $3.2 million
San Francisco Housing Authority, ground lease reinvestment: $1.4 million
Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, Affordable Housing Program grant, through Citibank (West): $1 million
Developer equity: $451,451
Miscellaneous reimbursement: $183,251
Total development cost (residential and commercial components): $108 million

how much would prime properties at fisherman's wharf retail for in the private sector? some $500-600K per apartment? and they built these for $300K per unit on average (including the cost of lifts, common spaces, etc, plus demolition and site remediation costs).

so they've developed these and valued them at about half retail price. given the normal developers 25% profit margin, it would have cost the developer at least $400 K per apartment to construct...

note that the financing is all 'for profit' private sector though -- so they took their cut, no difference there...

I can get Health Insurance for as low as $56 a month

what do you get for $56 a month?

"The project was nearly 100% occupied at the beginning of July. Demand for the apartments has been strong, but officials have been busy with a verification process to qualify renters. The team filled the tax credit apartments from a waiting list for which 2,100 people applied during a three-week period. The John Stewart Co. manages both the residential and commercial components. "

Hey, this way we can cut out all realtors and apartment brokers from the process as well... even more savings without all those bloated commissions to pay and expensive press ads to take out...

DS,

Marx's misperception about the science of history is shared by many of his contemporaries. Indeed, many twentieth century revolutionaries still did. The early members of the Chinese Communist Party attempted to ferment revolution amongst the urban proletariat, with disasterous consequences. They started living off the land and moving into agarian areas because they were being slaughtered in the cities.

Messianic revolutionary movements occurred with great regularity in Chinese society and probably elsewhere. The peasants greeted the CCP and the Red Army as saviors and attributed quasi-religious devotion to the organization. Mao became a godhead. To understand that is to understand the essence of the Cultural Revolution.

that's cos they were doctrinaire, astrid... they completely failed to exercise their own judgement and common sense or to critique marxian theory, but literally 'took it as gospel'...

the interplay of religious thinking is interesting -- this is taking place in a pre-industrial country which did not have the european 'enlightenment' and 'age of reason' behind it...

north korea was, and is, very devoted to kim il sung as well, i believe, in a very similar way...

bet you're glad you're out of there ;)

Happy Independence Day to all!

To me, this day would be extra sweet, if I were independent of my neutron bomb mortgage. I was one of those duped by the realtors, mortgage brokers, and the professions of the creative financing gurus. “Real estate always goes up…. The best way to build wealth is OPM, other people’s money. Leverage is the best way to build wealth quickly. Everyone needs some place to live…they aren’t making any more land…. Location, location, location…. Today’s high prices are tomorrow’s bargains. Don’t miss the boat…. There are haves and have-nots…. Secure your future by getting your foot in the door. Inflation and appreciation will make it all work out. “ @#!$#%$@#$

I openly confess my ignorance, and bought a $699K Mcmansion, and put in $115K in upgrades. The place has 2550 square feet, granite counters, tile throughout, upgraded custom paint, solid core doors throughout, drip system, a large flat yard, quiet street, great location, fabulous school district and lots of other bells and whistles.

The broker said, “never mind the negative amortization. Even if you neg-am $15k per year, the projected appreciation of 8-10 percent per year will greatly overshadow the neg-am. You will be making huge gains, although in a neg-am. Most people sell or refinance within 7 years, so an ARM is an attractive option.”

The UCSB finance guru supposedly projected a “healthy” continued appreciation of a conservative 8-10 percent, “he has never been wrong”. Lol….It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

In the previous couple of years, close to 70% of the new mortgages in California were ARM’s. I now realize that we are facing a bubble of unprecedented historical proportions. The option ARM gives options all right. One Option is to sell now at a steep loss. Another option is to live in the place for four years, then hand the keys over to Countrywide Mortgage when most of the state is upside-down. Other non-viable options are suicide, homicide, bank robbery or alcoholism. CARNAGE is on the horizon, and percentages reset, mortgage brokers downsize or go out of business, builders are out of work, real estate agents have no sales, and foreclosures are the norm. When the market is flooded with foreclosures offered at a steep discount, no one will get close to 2004 or 2005 prices for their real estate. The “soft landing” of the market is apparently headed for a “Titanic” sort of soft landing, on the bottom of the Atlantic.
Greenspan’s “irrational exuberance” of our “frothy” market was a horrific understatement. He has watched out for the interest of the big banker cronies, but they will be bit in the butt when they are sitting on a TRILLION dollars in defaulted properties. What then?

The old Chinese curse comes to mind, “May you live in interesting times.”

DS,

Most people are into easy one sentence mantras. That's certainly the case with this housing bubble. While housing valuation and situation is actually quite transparent and fairly easy to for a layman to understand, most people don't bother and buys into "RE never goes down" without hesitation.

The spirit of science of the 18th and 19th century made a lot of "wise men" believe that truth is measurable and knowable. Marx and his ilk wasn't simply doctrinaire, they thought they had found the scientific method (of course, their testing wasn't all that rigorous) for society. This sense that society is knowable continues even today in Communist societies, including China. The CCP still puts out publications on Communism orthodoxy, but nobody really buys into them anymore, except maybe my revolutionary Commie grandma.

I just don’t think government redistribution is the best way. A government that works best ought to leave as few marks as possible, doing as much as possible via regulation and the market.

Why's that?

you're right, you're better off with Enrons and Worldcoms running the show... robber barons and fly-by-nighters are much more accountable...

of course, this 'minimal govt' conception is textbook right-wing marketspeak which is in vogue and attempts to sideline govts wherever possible so the private sector can get on with gouging innocent dupes...

That's no good, Option Dude, you seem calm about it now...

unfortunately, mortgage brokers and realtors will continue to get work in a collapse, as they take commissions for reselling properties and writing new mortgages on the way down. but they've been doing exceptionally well out of the boom as their commissions have stayed at a fixed percentage of sale price...