patrick.net

I haven't had a chance to peruse it yet, but today's Sunday NYT has a "new" magazine section (very thick): "Keys" or something like it - all about real estate! Should make for interesting bathroom reading later today.

astrid,

On the other hand, compare AT&T’s prices and services in the 100+ years before the breakup and all the great stuff we have now for a fraction os the cost.

Big telecom happens to be my strongest industry of expertise. While that is a quite common popular conception, the reality is much more complex and much different. In fact, US telecom has fallen significantly behind Euro & Asian telecom's in those regards since dereg, while they were never deregulated and are still largely monopolies.

Also, you are confusing natural monopolies from socialized/state-run monopolies. The two are seldom one in the same.

I missed participating in the last thread's discussion of Boston as a leading indicator for the bubble so I thought I'd add my perspective now.

The pop has definitely hit the MSM here. The Boston Globe and Boston Herald both run articles on a weekly basis. The Mass Association of Realtors admits to a ~4% YOY median SFH decline, while the Warren Group (local analysts) come up ~6% decline (they include FSBO's).

On a square foot basis there is no doubt that a 10% decline has occurred for many neighborhoods, some of them very nice, such as Newton.

In the best downtown neighborhoods such as Back Bay and Beacon Hill (where we rent) sales have been sporadic enough that I cannot yet perceive a decline. I think this confirms the theory that the best neighborhoods will be the last to go. When we were looking to buy in Fall 2004, prices were about $650/sq ft, and we are not yet back to those prices.

Still, when I compare the rent on our apartment ($2360/month) to the approximate sale value ($750k) I cannot help but feel a cumulative 30% real decline will occur eventually.

When I talk to coworkers they are evenly split. Half believe declines will continue, half think things will level off. I do have a couple friends who bought two years ago and have been unable to sell without bringing money to the table.

The most interesting recent news is that there will be an auction for unsold condos in a new highrise on the waterfront:

"The developer of a new luxury condominium project in Boston's financial district is resorting to a tactic last seen in the real estate bust of the 1990s: It's holding an auction for the 34 remaining, unsold condominiums...

...A minimum bid will be required for each unit. A one-bedroom currently offered for sale at $480,000 will be sold at or above its $325,000 minimum price. The most expensive unit to be auctioned, a $1.76 million, two-bedroom with a wraparound terrace on the 14th floor with a waterfront view, has a $1.025 million minimum price..."

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/09/06/going_once/

Randy,

I'll defer to your vastly superior (since I know almost nothing about these markets aside from some rather old Economist article) knowledge in this area. Though I will note that the Chinese cellphone service charges went down dramatically after the entry of a second player in the market. While I understand that multiple competitors in a single market can present technological challenges and bad for the companies involved, I'm far less convinced that the presence of competition is bad for the final customers.

"Also, you are confusing natural monopolies from socialized/state-run monopolies. The two are seldom one in the same."

Huh? I assume natural monopolies are utilities & railroads & airline & phone service and state run monopolies are patent monopolies & radio/TV stations given out to serve a stated public interest.

Rat_Patrol,

That's some great footage of Ronnie Montrose and the boys. I'd love to be able to get my hands on the version of Ronnie backing Edgar Winter doing a timeless classic "Tobacco Road" on Don Kirshner's Rock and Roll in Concert. All 17 minutes of it!

The version of "Bad Motor Scooter" on their first album had a "slide guitar" intro that was out of this world. Unlike Tom Sholz of Boston that leaned heavily on artificial "sustain" Ronnie was just fine with the raw sound of his Les Paul straight through a Marshall stack. I'd pay money and stand in line to see him play today.

"Oops, I guess armageddon hasn't hit yet"

Are you from this planet or just visiting?

Almost made it to 9:00am on a Sunday morning without a troll parading ONE STINKING LISTING where some GF got his manhood taken away. Sheesh!

Huh? I assume natural monopolies are utilities & railroads & airline & phone service and state run monopolies are patent monopolies & radio/TV stations given out to serve a stated public interest.

MSFT is a natural monopoly (despite one's feelings about their products). Natural monopolies are also very common within local markets. Even pre-big box store competition, nearly all small rural towns only had one hardware and one discount store. The irony was that Walmart entered as a competitor, driving down prices due to breaking the local monopoly (or duopoly in bigger towns). This is an example of competition lowering prices for end users, but simultaneously reducing value to end users.

I don't want to come off defending monopolies (monopsonies, duopolies, cartels, etc.) In fact, they are usually a bad thing for both consumers and innovation.

But there's one thing to keep in mind:

Monopolies are not illegal in the US. Most people mistakenly believe antitrust laws prohibit monopolies. That is categorically false.

What is illegal is:

1) Explicit collusion
2) Price fixing
3) Direct harm to end-user consumers

Therefore, if Cisco were to become an established natural monopoly, did not collude with would be competitors or any other vertical player, did not fix prices for non-economic reasons, then it would not be guilty of violating antitrust laws. Cisco has few end consumers in non-competitive markets, so the Justice dept. doesn't care about their B2B monopoly impact.

That is a common theme. The US Justice Dept. sets an extremely high bar for the argument that any monopoly harming other businesses is relevant to protecting consumers. Almost no such cases make it out of the gate. Therefore don't expect to see SAP, Oracle, etc. ever embroiled in an antitrust suit.

(The standard in Europe is much more liberal, and allows companies to be challenged for merely "having a commanding market position". Ironic, given that Europe is the poster child for illegally subsidizing inefficient, inferior, defacto monopoly industries with state funding, but I digress.)

Bap33,

Big oil in the US has been found guilty of all three on various occasions in the past. At this point, it is pretty unlikely that they engage in collusion or price fixing, at least within the US. They employ a different tactic, common of lots of big industrial, mature concerns. They send all their managers to the same MBA schools, where they all take the same economics classes and learn the same game-theory pricing strategies. Then, they are able to engage in something that looks a lot like price fixing, but is in fact completely legal and justifiable in our legal system.

It's like this: say there are 25 of us in a condo development who intend on selling in the next year. For simplicity, assume we are the only condo development in the area, and no other substitutes exist. Let's also pretend that we are not allowed to talk to each other to fix our sales prices, and we in fact can't talk to each other about anything else that would result in our cooperation on pricing.

Normally, we're screwed, because someone will figure out, hey if I price a little less than everyone else, I'll get the best price because everyone else will have to follow suit on the way down. In the end, we all lose because we didn't cooperate.

Now, we all spend 2 years in school somewhere on the East Coast, where we learn how to play theoretical pricing games. This time, when we run the scenario, no one defects because everyone knows that we'll all get much higher prices by not defecting.

As for international oil, or other cartels, there's little the US can do about it. Diamonds, Oil, bananas, sugar, about everything you can think of is controlled by some type of int'l cartel outside the US, often impacting our prices here, and often even in the vehicle of US multinationals.

And oil companies are a good example of a natural monopoly (oligopoly, in this case). That's because there are enormous natural barriers to entry:

-massive capital investment requirements
-substantial know how and technique implications
-regulatory hurdles
-resource barriers (tie up reserves in long-term contracts)
-capacity barriers (dissuade entrants by increasing existing capacity)

Behold, a lower unit flat selling after 2 weeks on the market for full asking. Oops, I guess armageddon hasn’t hit yet.

Wow when the trolls gleefully post that condos in PRIME areas are going for asking, you know the excrement has hit the cooling device.

Randy,

Absolutely agree. I don't think the government should be breaking up companies unless they can demonstrate a pattern of anti-competitive behavior that ultimately harms consumers. I'm not opposed to monopolies per se, but given their track record, I do view them with prejudice.

I don't think of Microsoft as a monopoly though. They are currently very dominant, but I think that dominance could quickly go away at any time. There are numerous (arguably superior) OSes in existence. The main stumbling block is consumer inertia. I'm 100% Windows based, but MS software is buggy (formating with Word is especially frustrating) and I definitely keep an eye on better software and flatforms on the horizon. Firefox and many of the Google packages weren't even on the radar 18 months ago, but now almost everyone I know uses Picasa or Firefox ahead of other things.

On European monopolies: well, monopolies are legal as long as the State explicitly allows for them. In the US, regulated industries like broadcast TV stations act a lot like oligopolies until cable stations started challenging them for market share.

PS - I'm always surprised by where apparently benign monopolies and oligopolies can show up. There's only one Kingsford charcoal, Clorox is synonmous with bleach, Kodak has 80+% of the 35mm film industry, and allegedly, the Boomers grew up with only campbell soup for their canned soup selection. It seems like technological innovation is the best way to bust a monopoly.

It is full with compliant Indian and Chinese ….

Just find a company with the right culture.

I don’t think the government should be breaking up companies unless they can demonstrate a pattern of anti-competitive behavior that ultimately harms consumers. I’m not opposed to monopolies per se, but given their track record, I do view them with prejudice.

I have nothing to say.

Is that good or bad?

Boston Transplant,

Thanks for the update. I saw that Globe article about the auction for that downtown condo development. What's interesting about that is the place looks like reasonably high-end finishes, and if units get auctioned off at anywhere near the minimum acceptable bid, that's over 30% off original asking price! The folks who already bought the "old-fashioned" way are going to be "wicked pissed!"

Ha Ha,

"Compliant Indian and Chinese"? Do you mean they're legal? Or that they only produce X units of CO2 per thousand lines of code?

Hey location3,

Did you just crawl out of a cave or something? Or did you just happen to "miss" all the actual hard data about where prices are heading? For example, SF prices down YoY July -0.6%?

http://dqnews.com/RRBay0806.shtm

One example of an idiot late into the game, or even someone who wants to buy for whatever reason doesn't disprove actual data.

Is that good or bad?

Neither. I do not understand enough to have an opinion. I think monopolies are natural products of a free economy yet it is harmful to the free economy.

Hmmm, for some reason I feel no pity for the McDebtors.

tinyurl.com/po4qc

Am I evil?

No, you're not.

People who sign their life over without reading the fine lines (or at least get a relative or a legal fiduciary to read the fine lines) had it coming.

Randy,

LOL! Blame it on the game theory profs!

Hmmm, for some reason I feel no pity for the McDebtors.

Am I evil?

--Mister Ecks

Answer:

Yes you are eevul, but not necessarily for those given reasons.

LOL! Blame it on the game theory profs!

It's a bit tongue-in-cheek, but...there is something to be said for "educating" management to speaking the same implicit language based on the same shared theories and interpretations. For example, has there been any MBA student who hasn't studied at least one HBR case involving Murdoch, and how his successes have been to the detriment of the overall potential benefit for everyone in the media industry, including himself? That sends a very powerful message over time to managers and certainly has an impact on how they make strategic competitive decisions.

>> Like, if all the notes came due tomorrow, does that much money even exist?

My guess is NO, WE DO NOT HAVE THAT MUCH MONEY IN THE SYSTEM …

More than that amount of USD exists in the central bank of China, alone. Most likely more than enough are in circulation as petrodollars as well.

There are a lot of USDs flying around the globe.

so, by proxy, a mass default results in China owning a bunch of houses in Cali? In a nut shell, is that pretty close?

That's a pretty far-fetched proxy.

a) All the notes don't come due tomorrow. Nowhere even close. They can't be called. And even foreclosure doesn't so cleanly "transfer the ownership to China". The US exercises sovereignty over property rights and laws within its own borders, just like everywhere else.

b) Americans own over 60% of the equity in residential real-estate, excluding rental-income real-estate (owned by businesses).

c) Take that remaining 40% that is financed. A nuclear meltdown scenario would be maybe 20% of that defaulting. That gives China (if they theoretically owned ALL outstanding mortgage debt in the entire country) 8%.

d) I don't have the figures, but let's be generous and say China really owns 33% of all outstanding mortgage debt. That gives them 0.26% of the housing stock.

I'm not going to stay awake at night worrying that China will become our masters anytime soon. It is a fear that's popular to overblow, because the absolute numbers are big and scary. But, if I'm not mistaken, the UK still "owns" much more of the US than anyone else. And, the US still owns more of the world than everywhere else, by far.

Anyway, I'd be much more scared of petrodollars from oil exporting countries. Those are more free to use the EUR as a reserve than goods exporters like China, they cause massive inflation in the USD globally, and they are generally held by countries not so generous to the US.

Final figure should have been 2.6% (but I'm still not going to have nightmares).

The US is kind of like one giant Walmart to China. They need to tread really really carefully to get out from under this behemoth, or they're gonna get squished.

If US really gets itself into serious trouble, China will be way too concerned about its own problems to gloat too much over the US. It is in China's interest to pray that US/Japan/EU demand for cheap goods will suck up a good chunk of the surplus labor, give China breathing space to develop (or steal) its own R&D and service based economy.

It's one hell of a tightrope. I really admire the post 1978 leadership for doing so well, considering the enormity of their task.

It’s one hell of a tightrope. I really admire the post 1978 leadership for doing so well, considering the enormity of their task.

China had access to excellent astrological and divination systems. Once the cultural revolution was over, decision-making became easy again. :)

SFWoman,

The problem isn't Chinese production. The Chinese are capable of assembling pretty great stuff. Plenty of designers (including European fashion houses) make their stuff in China, especially stuff intended for the Asian market. Almost all our portable electronics are now assembled there - some good, some great, some bad - it depends a lot on the specs of the American designers and their QC.

The problem is that Walmart chose to sell cheaply made goods. They sell this stuff to stupid people fooled by the low prices and doesn't realize how crappy the stuff is and that they'll break within the week.

Falling off and passing the 52nd floor of the twin 54 story condo towers under construction in Sacramento and as you drop past all you can say is;”So far, so good?”

:lol:

SFWoman,

It's okay. I can occasionally sound like Fox News (shudder) and I'm a self proclaimed progressive-socialist-believer in social welfare state!

Believe it or not, a good chunk of the Chinese are not happy about turning swaths of the Chinese countryside in sweatshops. The long term cost of pollution and sweatshop conditions outweighs the short term burst of productivity and revenue (much of profit gets channeled to corrupt local officials as kickback). New York Times occasionally reports these problems from rural China - those are just the very tip of the iceberg, the problem is huge and the common people are not happy about it.

There's not much you can do about the lack of respect to intellectual property. Even India, with its history of Common Law, still have trouble respecting intellectual property. In China, the concept of intellectual property is still very alien and taking a free ride on other people's intellectual property is irresistable. They're like teenagers with late 90's Napster - they don't think it's wrong, they really like it, they can't really afford that much otherwise and they can only be reined in by fear of getting caught.

SFWoman,

(Oops, the last one got caught on Sism again)

It’s okay. I can occasionally sound like Fox News (shudder) and I’m a self proclaimed progressive-soci ali st-believer in social welfare state!

Believe it or not, a good chunk of the Chinese are not happy about turning swaths of the Chinese countryside in sweatshops. The long term cost of pollution and sweatshop conditions outweighs the short term burst of productivity and revenue (much of profit gets channeled to corrupt local officials as kickback). New York Times occasionally reports these problems from rural China - those are just the very tip of the iceberg, the problem is huge and the common people are not happy about it.

There’s not much you can do about the lack of respect to intellectual property. Even India, with its history of Common Law, still have trouble respecting intellectual property. In China, the concept of intellectual property is still very alien and taking a free ride on other people’s intellectual property is irresistable. They’re like teenagers with late 90’s Napster - they don’t think it’s wrong, they really like it, they can’t really afford that much otherwise and they can only be reined in by fear of getting caught.

My boyfriend accused me of having both cat and sheep in my family tree, but I've yet to develop a taste for clover flavored catfood.

SFWoman,

Your view of Chinese manufacturing competition has quite a bit of truth to it. But, as others have pointed out, the issues are pretty complex; especially vis-a-vis Walmart's sourcing strategy.

The real "absolute advantage" that China has (they have no competitive advantage to the US; in fact a huge disadvantage) is easily explained by their currency peg. Even the legal differences, environmental regs, workers' rights, etc. wouldn't be so relevant if the RMB floated against the USD. What China is doing, instead, is taking inflation out of the US economy, hiding it internally amongst their GDP growth, and creating an unfair trade landscape.

But, it's actually a better deal for us than them in the long run. I realize displaced workers won't agree. But, those workers have been displaced because US industry has been unable to compete even given our competitive advantage. So, while China eats dollars and uses this game to advance growth on an unsustainable export-led expansion, we use their cheap products and inflation escape valve to restructure our economy and consolidate our industries to become more productive and more even more competitive. When the music stops, some day, they will be no match for US, hyper automated, industry. Meanwhile, we get a free boost to our standard of living because they're so willing to sit on top of green pictures of dead presidents.

SFWoman,

The US has increased its share of total global mfg output over the past 10 years. Meanwhile, Japan and Germany have both lost global share. The US produces an order of magnitude more global mfg. value than China, though China is growing the fastest. Even at their rate, it would take 40 years for them to equal US share, assuming we don't continue to grow also.

It is a myth that "nothing is made here anymore". What has happened, is that we've lost mfg jobs and agriculture jobs. But somehow, our output has increased, as has the value of that output. If that isn't due to automation then it's the mystic ether.

To be fair, what the anti-globalists always quote is either in units or tonnage, both of which the US has lost dramatically (in mfg, not agriculture). But, that's primarily due to Korean hyperscale steel industries (tonnage) and Chinese cheap-plastic-thingies (units). Neither of those are terribly high in output value. In fact, even in materials mfg, the US has experienced a renaissance in custom micro-plant fab, most of which are almost entirely automated and unrivaled in most of the rest of the world.

I'm no fan of Walmart or low-quality Chinese dohickies. But I'm not ideological, and I don't buy the protectionists' arguments that the US is going down the drain either.

ajh,

With respect, that sounds like a RealtWhore explaining why prices can never fall.

With appropriate respect, at least I made a reasoned argument instead of indirectly just calling names with nonsensical analogies. I enjoy disagreement, but calling me a "realtwhore" because I disagree with whatever it is you believe (which I cannot divine from the above), isn't very convincing.