patrick.net

Governments could possibly institute a policy of selective breeding, or prehaps favor a less intrusive policy of disincentivizing breeding for the “least fit”, but determining who is or is not “fit” to reproduce is a political and ethical minefield few politicians dare to enter.

How about a tax and welfare reform? Free market breeding.

I've had the same thoughts. Political correctness equates welfare reform to eugenics. This is similar to how I would view removing a tax break as being a tax increase I guess.

I'm all for selective breeding. Ok ladies line up I'm very selective.

SP

She did abide by my request, so let's give her a break from the harsh comparisons.

I like to entertain "theotherside" because I think she's actually quite smart. She clearly understands financial theory and application. I can buy her description of her background and credentials as legitimate. The only thing I'm not necessarily buying is her claim that she's not related to the real estate industry. I think she must have some stake in things beyond just being a homeowner. Maybe she's an investment banker responsible for selling MBS and CDOs to the market.

Arguing with her, for me, is not as pointless as arguing with some others. I get the distinct feeling she *knows* when one of her premises is invalid or fails to support her conclusion. That's why i get pissed at her, because I know she can do better than copy/paste arguments.

She is a very nice lady, and a polite debater.

I am all for selective breeding too.

Hitler was a vegetarian. Is being a vegetarian wrong?

I guess if you have starving slaves working your veggie garden, I might make a value judgement on a vegetarian.

I'm all for restricting reproduction rights by requiring licensing to suitable parents, with but one stipulation.

Stipulations:

1. I get to write the definition of "suitable parents".

If anyone else gets that job, I'm part of the underground resistance.

Peter, you can hire some illegal migrants to work the garden.

Peter, you can hire some illegal migrants to work the garden.

Huh?

That's right, any femal applying for a breeding license needs to be cleared by this panel. Unfortunately, since we will be a government agency it will be a very long and complicated process for you requiring several appointments.

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_5651482?nclick_check=1

Wow, the Mercury hopped on those DQ numbers fast.

Kidding about the migrants, the vegetarian comment.

For Malcolm:

Dr. Strangelove: "I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy...heh, heh... at the bottom of ah...some of our deeper mineshafts. Radioactivity would never penetrate a mine some thousands of feet deep, and in a matter of weeks, sufficient improvements in drilling space could easily be provided."

President: "How long would you have to stay down there?"

Strangelove: "I would think that uh, possibly uh...one hundred years... It would not be difficult Mein Fuehrer! Nuclear reactors could, heh... I'm sorry, Mr. President. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country, but I would guess that dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided."

President: "Well, I, I would hate to have to decide...who stays up and...who goes down."

Strangelove: "Well, that would not be necessary, Mr. President. It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross-section of necessary skills. Of course, it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition.

Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. Ha, ha. But ah, with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present Gross National Product within say, twenty years."

President: "Wouldn't this nucleus of survivors be so grief-stricken and anguished that they'd, well, envy the dead and not want to go on living?"

Strangelove: "When they go down into the mine, everyone would still be alive. There would be no shocking memories, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead! Ahhh!"

General Turgidson: "Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?"

Strangelove: "Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious...service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature."

Russian Ambassador: "I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor."

Thanks to skibum, I now want to try Tommy Toy's. In fact, we may be going there this weekend. The reservations situation still looks hopeful on opentables.com.

Anyone wants to join us?

"I’m all for selective breeding. Ok ladies line up I’m very selective."

Unfortunately, so are they!

Ha ha ha. Yup, I would be shattered at the prospect of throwing away monogomy, but if I had to do it for my country, well then maybe I could be convinced.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/12/BAG1JP7HOT5.DTL

Sfgate with no mention of the median price decline in SF.

So even if the genetic disease were to hit after the fact if the parents are weaker and are eaten by something the offspring die too, and then that line is broken.

Exactly. Our society today values these people as full humans and therefore devotes disproportionate resources to supporting their lives. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but we should know what we are doing in the larger sense.

However, traits we today consider "fatal" or "incompatible" with keeping your genes going like stupidity or lack of physical prowess are not much of a handicap in the genes race, even without societal welfare. Idiots and weaklings know how to procreate just as well as anyone else. Who knows. The numbnut yahoo who can't finish high school - maybe he would be the chief of some stone-age village. The playing rules are just too different today. Isn't that one of the main premises of shows like "Survivor" or "Lost," ala "Lord of the Flies?"

Headset,
Go get some tatoos, quit your job, and move to a really bad area. Also, suspend your normal daily hygene and I think you will be surprised at the number of prospects you will have. If you can qualify for an entitlement program like a section 8 you are golden. Also, go buy a POS car, with some fuzzy stained dice hanging from the rear view mirror.

If it works out let us all know, if it doesn't then that is just one less guy eyeing our herd.

lunarpark,

The article itself admits to why the price number is up:

He said the median price is being bolstered somewhat by a change in the mix of homes that are selling. In the Bay Area and elsewhere, `entry-level" homes are selling more slowly now, and are not making up as big a portion of home sales as they were a year ago. In the face of rising defaults and foreclosures nationally, mortgage lenders are requiring bigger down payments and more documentation from some borrowers, meaning fewer people can qualify to buy those entry-level homes.

This illustrates the real problem with using median price, as I, StuckinBA, and others have pointed out several times.

Just wait for the slowdown in high end homes, the median will plummet overnight. It is just a statistical smoke and mirrors show. It is funny how a slowdown actually makes it look like prices were going up, or even holding.

I saw a great realtor tick on 'Buy Me'. The realtor, he even said it to the camera, tried to get the seller to fall in love with a house before he even had an offer. The realtor's trick was to basically try and make him more motivated.

"Go get some tatoos, quit your job, and move to a really bad area. Also, suspend your normal daily hygene and I think you will be surprised at the number of prospects you will have."

I hope you are not speaking from your own experience!

No, I'm using you to try out my theory.

"The article itself admits to why the price number is up" - Agree.

The SFGate article title is just total shill work though:

"Local Home Prices Rebound: Median cost of a Bay Area home in March climbs 3.1 percent in a month's time"

Man, I have seen some couples that defy logic. What's with these chicks who go for the inmates? They literally seek them out online.

It is funny how a slowdown actually makes it look like prices were going up, or even holding.

Exactly. This is "classic" RE market behavior during the peak-to-downward phase of the cycle. Sales slow tremendously, and price declines based on median price lags. We've touched on this ad nauseum in threads about price stickiness in the past. Bottom line, sellers hold out, slowing down sales. Buyers buy at the same price point they would have before, holding up median prices, until a series of herky-jerky downward lurches in price (plus dead cat bounces) occur and the "true" trend is revealed. This statistical smoke and mirrors is accentuated by the subprime mess cutting out the low-end buyer, disproportionately drying up low-priced sales.

I'm sure, I've read some of those threads, but it never stops amazing me that news reporters can't think to just ask the logical questions that everday people even seem to grasp.

IMO overall a good post for discussion. A slightly different perspective because price really only matters when buying or selling, what it does inbetween doesn’t really matter.

The intrinsic value is what you would otherwise rent it for, so if rents (almost by natural law rise with cost of living) even if the value of your house stays flat for a long period, its value to you rises in proportion to the rental market. My concern with some of what I read here is people think there will be a crater and they will then emulate the prior flipper generation. You need to spot value, not just a huge movement in price, and I can tell you foreclosure auctions, and sealed bids can be a good place, but auctions tend to mirror the general market as a benchmark.

Malcolm,

No one really knows how this thing is going to play out, but I just think that prices are going to spiral down; people who lose their houses depress the values of other houses that cause more people to lose their houses. After the prices finally stop dropping (which may be several years), I don't think people will be so quick to drive up prices; especially when all those people who were buying each year keep seeing the value of their house fall further.

As far as rents, who is to say that rents will continue to rise? If rents only rise with inflation and house prices don't increase at all, then it is still better to rent. Just think about it, if you were paying a mortgage, you would be paying interest on it, much higher than 0% (the percentage of appreciation which would actually be negative but I'll be generous). If the value of your house even was tracking inflation (which would probably be less than your interest rate), you would still be losing money. If you had enough money to buy without a mortgage, using that to buy a house would be like stuffing it into a matress; whereas if you were renting, you would be able to invest that money somewhere else. It all depends on how high rents will go which is very area dependant. Since there was so much building and exess supply, I just can't see rents increasing so much.

As far as buying a foreclosure, I think when prices stop falling, buying a foreclosure is a good way of punching through the floor to get a price that will carry you through a long flat market.

Of course, we could have massive inflation, the dollar can crash and render all our cash useless. This scenario would change everything as we know it.

I think you can do better negotiating with a bank than at a foreclosure auction but crazy things happen. I caution you that if you don't tie your entry point to a fundamental, you can't spot value. That's why IMO the price drop like a recent poster just said is bumpy. It in essence becomes a price skimming market because each step of the way down a long drop people jump in thinking they are getting a deal because they got it for 10% less than their neighbor. If you understand valuation, you will call the bottom ahead of time.

"In the face of rising defaults and foreclosures nationally, mortgage lenders are requiring bigger down payments and more documentation from some borrowers, meaning fewer people can qualify to buy those entry-level homes."

Skibum, I would add its more difficult getting loan in SF BA since many tech employees only have 2 years job history, at anyone employer, while the banking standard requires 5 years. Not only was income history distorted by brokers but so was employee history.

The SFGate article title is just total shill work though:

lunarpark,

On the other hand, you gotta admire the chutzpah of this reporter and his editor: (A) Let's tout the increase in sales and price from Feb to March, which happens EVERY SINGLE YEAR (it's called the Spring selling season for a reason) as a "bounce back" in sales. (B) Let's then "forget" to mention that in the area that matters the most to our readership, ie, San Francisco proper for the SAN FRANCISCO Chronicle, prices actually declined.

In fact, if you look at the prices for the BA overall, the increase is entirely driven by Santa Clara County (modest increase, large volume of sales relative to rest of BA) and Alameda County (large sales volume, larger gain). It's also interesting, if you read the release carefully, that the Alameda county numbers were extrapolated from 3 weeks of data, meaning it's less reliable on top of that!

skibum,

I thought the basic premise on "Lost" was that while they have managed to circumvent many issues that have haunted man, their genetic tinkering has now created an environment where conception is impossible?

(Among 9 other sub-plots)

Yes, we could have massive anything but assign that the appropriate risk benefit value. I think massive inflation is just not happening, but use something like interest rates as a guage. For my purposes I consider my 100% safe savings rate to reflect real inflation. My money is static in a CD. If you use leverage, and can beat the debt service, even if return on assets is low, your ROI beats it. That is real wealth generation.

"StuckBA
7- And finally, the only thing standing between you cheap rental ($2500!!) and having your family on the street is the ability of your landlord not to default (except if he bought a long time ago and you cover his costs !!!)

Jimbo would disagree with this. Somehow he thinks landlords just settle for what the market will bear, and will keep renting out at a loss indefinitely. "

So how can we find out if our landlord is on the verge of default with the house we're renting?

My landlord just raised the rent (5%) as the 12 month lease ended this month. Their letter stated that they would honor this new rent amount for six months, and then "...reassess the situation, and go from there."

They have owned the house for three years, renting to me for the last 12 months. They quit their regular jobs (retail manager and construction worker) about the time they bought this house, and became full time flippers/developers.

Now that the ride is over, I suspect their letter is more telling than they intended.

DinOR,

I guess I was referring to that bald dude who used to be paralyzed in the "real world" and was a loser who is now the "man" in their band of survivors. I don't watch the show enough to know more details than that, I must admit.

Space Ace,

Can't say as I've ever thought about that way before? I had thought that even back in the bad old days if you could prove that you were in basically the same "line" of work they would usually (but not always) let that fly?

skibum,

But what of the SF decline? Are we hitting an affordability "wall", or is the mix just tilting towards condos (more sales to the low end). I wish DQ would publish the house/condo mix in their general release. The affordability "wall" theory could explain why medians in surrounding counties (Alameda, San Mateo) went up. Will be interested to see how this plays out in the S&P Case/Shiller Home Price Index in a couple of months.

BTW, their was an interesting article on Ben's yesterday that answered the question I had asked a couple of days ago: How easy is it to tell if some has several primary mortgages. Evidently some mortgages were being securitized and someone noticed that an owners name appeared several times (he had bought over twenty homes in a region). This lead to an investigation of the orginator. Needless to say, they were shutdown. I still say most of this mess could have been avoided if this was the only check done on all the garbage loans out there (goodbye specuvestors). Interesting to note that the only cases you read about in the paper are the very large frauds investigated by the feds. All the smaller ones perpetrated by individuals only seem to get noticed by the bloggers.