patrick.net

Cool. Advertise it on craigslist, etc and take some of the power away from the so-called REIC.

Is there a way to add something so that we can personally track how long something has been on the market? I swear 1800 Gough Street has been on the market for years (I looked at it a few years ago), and periodically comes up for sale at slightly different prices.

OT, but good-http://www.wusa9.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=54772

This program is fine for small scale bubblehead blogging, but I entertain serious doubts about its expansionability. Randy H was considering a similar effort last year on his blog, and I mentioned possible problems with unscrupulous posters (who intentionally lie about a property for personal gain).

Remember to put in a legal disclaimer that you do not vouch for the accuracy of the information in the database. Maybe even a checkbox for posters that what they entered is true to the best of their knowledge.

I like the op-amp graphic.

The WSJ has an article today (page D3) "Thinking Small, Getting Started as a Real Estate Investor". The article sings a different tune than the articles of a year ago.

"The real estate bubble has burst. Get over it. In areas that saw big price run-ups the first half of the decade prices are stagnant, or worse. New home inventories are up, new-home builder stocks are down.
A kind of real estate weariness has set in. Who's the cocktail-party boor? The guy still talking about making a killing on Miami Beach condos."

"Investing in real estate isn't the same as owning a house. An investment property must produce income that covers its costs and produces a reasonable return. You won't get that with a home, even one that goes way up in value over the years." (Article does not take into account that the new paradigm for investments is flipping the property indefinitely).

"Throughout much of the country the market for single family homes is seriously out of whack. As prices fall and inventories rise, that's changing. But, compared with rents, prices are still quite high, outstripping the ability of such properties to cover their mortgage and operating costs."

"Let the lender foreclose and take over the place. Then, lowball the lender."

SFWoman Says:

> Is there a way to add something so that we can personally
> track how long something has been on the market? I swear
> 1800 Gough Street has been on the market for years
> (I looked at it a few years ago), and periodically comes up
> for sale at slightly different prices

I’m sure that SFWomen knows that 1800 Gough has a total of 8 units (it was designed by Meussdorffer who also designed 2200 Washington where I hope to someday own a unit).

I’m pretty sure that the 1800 Gough penthouse that is for sale now at $4.75mm is where George Hale, Jr. (of the Hale Brothers Hales) was living when he died in 2002.

"Who's the cocktail-party boor? The guy who's still talking about making a killing on Miami Beach condos".

Ahem, SFWoman, please take my personal assurance that I found this person a crashing "boor" well prior to 2007!

"The real estate bubble has burst. Get over it".

Uh...... for Mr. and Mrs. Leveragedtothe9's this may be more easily said than done?

As far as allowing the lender to eat it and then turning around with a lowball offer that must come under; "Heads I win, tails the lender loses"? Huh? What an odd addition to the debt=wealth paradigm? Does this remarkable personal financial recovery require the use of an assumed identity and cosmetic surgery or can just any old FB play?

You can try using the Google Maps Geocoder.
If it returns you the coordinates, the address exists else not.
Again my experience is that it is not very up-to-date.
And would be a problem if you were doing the newest communities.
But since majority of the resale market is in well mapped areas, it can work reasonably well.

How long does it take to get the confirmation e-mail? I submitted a comment and haven't seen the e-mail yet.

Astrid,

My conclusion was that the idea itself is sound, even if there are some complications regarding maintaining reasonably verifiable unique "pointers" which identify each property of interest.

The main problem is one of critical mass. Without enough activity, the system won't work and will be easily gamed. With enough activity, however, a meta-moderation can be applied.

I still think it's a good idea. I just got sidetracked on other projects, like trying to arbitrage virtual money in virtual worlds/games. I wish now I'd stuck with the real estate feedback blog idea. It's all moot. With the newly re-emergent Ma Bell I'm going to be busy for a couple of years now.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070110/ts_nm/housing_affordability_dc

No way! Housing is expensive? You're kidding me.

But here's an interesting tidbit:

The study found an annual income of nearly $85,000 was needed to afford the median-priced U.S. home.

In the New York metropolitan area, a $500,000 median-priced home required a $171,000 annual salary. The median-priced home in San Francisco, the most expensive U.S. market, was $759,000, requiring income of $260,000.

As much as we make fun of this, you really don't need a $260k income to pay for a $759k house. Even without an exotic mortgage.

The study assumed home buyers needed a 10 percent down payment and could afford to pay 28 percent of their income on mortgage payments, property taxes and home insurance.

Has 28% ever happened in California?

The end is near:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ayZ9vcpxQuNM&refer=home

Person,

I believe there is a "Glossary" on the main page.

REIC = Real Estate Industrial Complex. Everyone from the Nat'l Assoc. of Realtors, the publicly traded builders, the appraisers, lenders and even suppliers like Moen, Kohler and the building supply outfits like Lowe's and Home Depot.

FB = F@cked Borrower. Anyone that went above and beyond normal definitions of affordability to get into a home (any home) before they "were priced out forever" using exotic loan products.

Randy,

Congratulations - well paying work beats blogging most of the time!

I think the critical mass and administrative oversight would have to be very high - likely to be impossibly high given the nature of real estate. The meta-moderation can work, but only for websites with very devoted followings such as wikipedia and dailykos. And even wikipedia is vulnerable to concerted attacks like Colbert Report fans on wikipedia's elephant page. And in these cases, we're dealing with general topics, not specific houses only physically accessible to a few people. Maybe this idea could work for neighborhoods and large developments, but I don't think information would be of much use at the house level.

Even in registration required for comment sites like Amazon and CNET, there's a lot of spam comments - to the extent that I usually don't trust any item rated by fewer than 10 people. The rating on comments on Amazon rarely shed much light into the usefulness of the comments. That level of participation for each house would be just about impossible to achieve.

Peter P,

Have you ever tried to live on $7.25/hr gross? On the coasts, I know people being paid $10/hr or more being forced to work 30-40 hour second jobs.

But I guess places that will be worst hit would be restaurants/fast food places, in which case I give you permission to tip 15% rather than 18-20%. :-)

eburbed,

28% occured. My wife and I bought on a typical starting salary out of graduate school several years after the bubble popped in 89, the monthly mortgage payment was 1/4 of the household income at that time. In fact, you could NOT get a mortgage loan if you exceeded 33% debt burden when the money was tight!

It will happen again, just be patient. It won't happen in 2008 or 2009, but if you have to patience to wait till 2010, you will see 28% again.

eburbed Says:

> The median-priced home in San Francisco, the most
> expensive U.S. market, was $759,000, requiring
> income of $260,000.
> As much as we make fun of this, you really don’t need
> a $260k income to pay for a $759k house. Even without
> an exotic mortgage.
> The study assumed home buyers needed a 10 percent
> down payment and could afford to pay 28 percent of
> their income on mortgage payments, property taxes
> and home insurance.

Remember less than 1% of the “households” in the US makes over $260K (way less than 1% of the individuals).

For most people in the US (almost everyone within a couple standard deviations from the mean in either direction) the 28% maximum for housing cost is a good one.

If you make $50K a year and have housing cost of 28% and a tax burden (federal & state after deductions) of 28% you only have $1,833 a month to live on.

It’s funny that so many people are surprised that subprime lenders are having problems. Throughout history most people with crappy credit who have not paid their bills in the past will have the same problems again…

Eburbed,

One hidden risk associated with high wages is that they are often less stable and/or harder to replace than normal jobs. People who buy on the expectancy of a permanent $100,000+ income may be in for a nasty surprise if they were downsized from their current position.

Have you ever tried to live on $7.25/hr gross? On the coasts, I know people being paid $10/hr or more being forced to work 30-40 hour second jobs.

I still think that this problem will go away if minimum wage is eliminated, because the economy will be more efficient. :)

BTW, Firefly is good. I am waiting for the second disc.

"I still think that this problem will go away if minimum wage is eliminated, because the economy will be more efficient."

I mostly agree. Costco start their pay at $10/hour + benefits, they have much lower turnover and much higher quality workers than Walmart.

However, what do you feel about collective bargaining? I don't think we should ignore the asymmetry of bargaining positions when looking at employee pay.

"BTW, Firefly is good. I am waiting for the second disc. "

The second disc is also pretty good. The third disc is probably the best one. The fourth is a bit uneven.

However, what do you feel about collective bargaining? I don’t think we should ignore the asymmetry of bargaining positions when looking at employee pay.

That has problems too... It may be better to remove the asymmetry with information.

"That has problems too… It may be better to remove the asymmetry with information. "

As Malcolm Gladwell points out in his latest article in the New Yorker (I read a physical copy and I'm still working on a link), there is a real limit to how much information a person (or even a large organization) is able to digest. There are compelling arguments for the proposition that there is such a thing as too much information.

28% occured. My wife and I bought on a typical starting salary out of graduate school several years after the bubble popped in 89, the monthly mortgage payment was 1/4 of the household income at that time. In fact, you could NOT get a mortgage loan if you exceeded 33% debt burden when the money was tight!

Whoa - that's craziness. It sounds like it was a black swan even though - happened just after the bubble burst.

eburbed,

No first hand experience - but based on FAB's comments about his parents' experience, I'd say 28% was pretty common in California until the last twenty to thirty years.

“BTW, Firefly is good. I am waiting for the second disc. ”

The second disc is also pretty good. The third disc is probably the best one. The fourth is a bit uneven.

Huh ? Haven't watched it. But is there anything left to be said/done in SciFi world ? I will club Fantasy with it as well. In how many made up worlds can we get lost ? Star Wars, Star Trek and LOTR ought to be enough for anybody.

I am putting on my asbestos suit now.

There's also such a thing as employers driving down wages to increase personal profit, and using 'discourses' and bullying to do it -- hence the Waltons are billionaires while their workers are amongst the lowest paid in the US, as low as $6.25 an hour. Hence the reason for strong union movements and collective bargaining in many countries.

eburbed,

by 94, east bay was down by 30-60%, all the desirable neighborhoods on the west side were down by at least 15%, the higher-end areas like Los Altos Hills were down by more than 25%. I am not referring to median value records, I am referring to how much the same house could sell for at that time vs. at the top of the bubble. Median value tracking tends to under-estimate the appreciation and depreciation going both ways, because a family's budget is dependent on the multiple of the pay, not on the median value. My budget remained pretty much the same, I just got a better house as the market trended down, or a smaller house as the market trended up. The value of the house itself swings much more than reflected by the median value. In short, most houses that I track appreciated at least 2.5x if not 3x in the last decade, while the median value only went up 2x.

At the same time, job market was picking up but housing market didn't bottom out until 96. We were lucky to be able to capture the bottom.

It was a lot harder to borrow money at the bottom. We had to borrow from family to put 20% down, and the banks were very strict about debt burden ratio. Banks were hesitant to lend money to people on work visa without green card, let alone illegal immigrants.

Hence the reason for strong union movements and collective bargaining in many countries.

I am fine with unions, so long as they are reasonable and are able to see the big picture. Otherwise, collective bargaining is just price-fixing in a very bad way.

But is there anything left to be said/done in SciFi world ?

How about a sci-fi 26th-century western?

I am fine with unions, so long as they are reasonable and are able to see the big picture.

But that's rarely the case. This is what happens -every single time- when Management/Labor contract re-negotiations come up in NYC's mass transit (MTA):

MTA to the city politicians: We're offering a very generous 5% raise over 4 years.

Labor leaders to unionists: We demand 8% raises per year for the next for year or we walk.

MTA: Screw you!

Labor leaders: NO, Screw You!

[repeat for 4 weeks - include a possible "sick out"]

MTA and Labor leaders: Ok, we've agreed to 13% raises over 4 years

MTA to city politicians: Look at what a great job we did at containing costs and countering their ridiculous demand. We won!

Labor Leaders: Hah, look what we got for you. We won!

And this charade happens every single time. Sheesh.

"But is there anything left to be said/done in SciFi world ?"

To the extent that this applies to SciFi, this applies to every other genre. Plus, I would hardly say Star Trek, Star Wars and LOTR is the end all be all of SciFi (LOTR is fantasy, not SciFi). There's much more imaginative fiction out there: the Foundation Trilogy for one.

Florida, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Diego markets seem to be already in various degrees of deep trouble with more to come. Any conjectures on how that will affect BA market ?

Is there any data on how many BA folks invested their equity into these markets ? I know some - not too many - who have purchased in Sacramento and San Diego.

Depending on how significant % of population has done this, it would add fuel to the fire of ARM resets. Like buying JDSU on margin using Nortel stock as collateral. Even if the ARM doesn't reset too high, the -ve cash flow from multiple properties might hit high-ownership BA also.

Otherwise, collective bargaining is just price-fixing in a very bad way.

This 'price fixing' is guaranteeing the quality of life of citizens by giving them enough to guarantee wellbeing and participate meaningfully in society. How is that 'bad'? Isn't this more 'market' dogma, discourse and voodoo logic? The world of work is not governed by simple laws of physics, I think that's the first mistake that's often made here.

How about a Sci-Fi house-flipping show? :)

Back to the topic, feedbacks are definitely helpful to homebuyers because this empowers them with information.

Legal issues may need to be ironed out though.

astrid :

I was just trying to start a flame war. :evil: FWIW, I bundled Fantasy there as well (in my original post). And I was referring to visual media only. Yes, Foundation Trilogy is on my list of best books. I wish he had never written the prequels. Prequel is the last refuge of the dried up imagination.

Flip That Asteroid...

Flip That Asteroid…

Or...

Home'roid
Roid is Prime

Where is Jack?

FAB,

I'll bet the penthouse has been quietly for sale since Hale died, that would explain why it periodically seems to be on the market. I looked at that unit and one other unit in the building, they are quite pretty, NY prewar style apartments. Still, $5,000,000 and no doorman?

And today the Koreans say:

"Global Real Estate Prices to Drop: SERI
An economic think tank in Korea says global real estate prices will enter a correction phase this year. The Samsung Economic Research Institute says that's due to a drop in global liquidity stemming from interest-rate hikes in the Eurozone and Japan.

Low interest rates in those regions have led more people to take out loans to buy real estate. The U.S., which was among the earliest to drop interest rates, should be the first to see real estate prices drop. "

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200701/200701110018.html