patrick.net

Don't know how respectable this journal is, but the facts are pretty much correct.

http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/40/5/28-a

From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, Hong Kong experienced a breathtaking economic "upper," or as Alan Greenspan would say, "an era of irrational exuberance," where properties increased 600 percent in value and the stock market soared over 400 percent.

In 1997, however, as Britain handed control of Hong Kong over to China, Hong Kong plunged into a severe, unexpected recession, accompanied by psychological repercussions. Between 1998 and 2000, more and more Hong Kong residents killed themselves, and many used a novel tool to achieve it—carbon-monoxide poisoning created by burning a charcoal grill in a small, sealed room.

Between 1998 and 2000, more and more Hong Kong residents killed themselves, and many used a novel tool to achieve it—carbon-monoxide poisoning created by burning a charcoal grill in a small, sealed room.

Are you sure they were not trying to make yakitori? If my mortgage was upside down I would surely want some grilled chicken.

interestingly enough, Hong Kong's real estate bubble had not played itself out at that time. Real estate had just turned negative, but did not hit bottom to 2003. If you thinkg the usa has the worst housing bubble, I invite you to compare price to rent in Hong kong, Shanghai, Beijing, or even Bangkok.

Maybe the strawberry picker could get financing for this fixer-upper (on 5.87 hectares which is about 15 acres).

http://www.propertylook.com.au/listing/default.asp?lk=80093

(And I'll admit I do expect that site to fetch beaucoup, beucoup bucks.)

I thought 'La Raza' was Wolfowitz's girlfriend that he organised the big pay rise for. She would just about be able to afford $725K.

If you thinkg the usa has the worst housing bubble, I invite you to compare price to rent in Hong kong, Shanghai, Beijing, or even Bangkok.

AFAIK rent in Hong Kong is not cheap. My friend told me a decent apartment costs $5000+ / month.

Huh? My uncle in Shanghai rented out a flat for 2000 RMB that he sold in 2006 for 700K RMB. It's really hard to find decent places in Shanghai though, you either go ultra high end or really low end.

ajh,

She was paid nearly $200K after taxes or equivalent of $400K pretax.

@ randy

please think this over and tell me if it's plausible

all of us for free log onto 2nd life and get reborned
then you tell us where we should all meet as a group
since cbanker won't sell to you, perhaps 1 of us could buy a cheap home in their development
then all of us could teleport there and move in
we could assemble and hang out and drink kool aide
then you could direct our group activities and we could assemble like the upcoming immigrant march in may
or just hang out where newbies come into the linden village and just be pests perhaps like krishna's panhandeling?
we would be like a cult with you our leader
you speak german which would be helpful
also would be like LOST which alot of people hear claim to watch
kind of like the hippie days in the 60's but utulizing the lindens platform for a revolution of sorts

thought i would throw this out and am interested in the brilliant collaborators here to pick it up to perhaps having a great deal of fun with it as it seems to be a better use of time then reading about some strayberry picker or eating where they treat you as a dsyfuntional family

can you picture your avatar leading a group of 50 avatars into coldwell banker's virtual office ??

OO Says:

> A $160K household on this blog will consider themselves
> losers and wonder how they get by for the rest of their lives.

When I used to caddy as a kid I used to look at the home in the video below and think if I worked real hard I could buy it some day. Over the years I’ve mentioned wanting to buy that specific home and after all these years there is still no home in the Bay Area that I would rather own. A friend (who bought a tiny $1mm+ Burlingame home from Anne Riley) sent me the video.

At the current $18.8mm list price $160K will cover about ¾ of the annual property tax bill. If I bought a more modest home near my parents for 1/3 the cost I would not have enough cash to pay the property tax and maintain the home with my after tax take home pay if I made $160K. A Gross salary of about $300K will just about cover the tax bill every year…

http://www.anneriley.com/annes-listings.php?show=all

I second FAB's idea.

Maybe we should make it a criminal cult. Racketeering, extortion, rape, pillage, all that. Would that be plausible?

Jimbo Says:

> I agree that people who post here are too conservative
> investors. I am pretty sure that I am the most aggressive
> investor of them all, or at least amongst those who talk
> about the financial risks they take. You should take more
> risk when you are young, when you have more time to
> catch up to recover from your mistakes. I lost half my net
> worth in the dot com crash, but I recovered it all in a couple
> of years.

Not many people would describe me as a conservative investor especially since when after losing my life savings buying apartments I bought a couple more (pile of crap) apartments less than 10 years later.

The one thing I learned the first time is that (unlike what the gurus tell you) is that buying investment real estate without a lot of cash is a bad idea (even a worse idea if you don’t have a lot of cash and you have a 100% commission sales job tied to real estate).

There are good deals in any market (if you have a plan) and I actually thought we were closer to the top when I bought in Sacramento a few years ago. In the first year when I was evicting a lot of people I carried pepper spray in one pocket and my Derringer in the other every time I was at the property.

P.S. If the NASDAQ peaked at ~4500 and was down to ~1500 two years after the peak how did you recover so fast (my net worth peaked in ~1992 it took me over 10 years to “recover” and start moving higher)?

azrob Says:

...I believe that housing prices in AZ will decline drastically, I am not selling my last 2 homes...So, even if PHX takes a 50% inflation adjusted hit, it may not be evenly distributed...I will buy more...

Peace all
_____

Peace out, bro!

Umm, I'm in Phoenix. The NW valley.

Phoenix is expanding like Pam Anderson's bosoms under an arc light: People are pouring in here like strawberries on a shortcake (what, 100K people per year?); however, that 50% adjusted-for-inflation number doesn't seem that wacky, since houses exploded upwards in price in the summer of 2004.

You know, thousands of jobs are being created here each year, but 93% of them (I heard this on the news) are service industry related and pay in the $8-$13 an hour range.

Woe unto the inhabitants of this hot, hot desert!

I wonder if FEMA will buy more trailers for the homeless FBs.

Katrina cottages! Same cost, but a real little home. The humility would do them good! :)

If I recall, FAB utilizes one or more hedge funds. That is hardly conservative investing. Actually, I think a large portion of us here are far more aggressive in our investing than average retail investors. Just look how many here deploy options strategies.

Bruceb

I actually like your idea, though I'm not sure about the whole cult-leader part. But if there were ever a group of folks who could run the table it would be us here at Patrick.net. All it would take is about 50-75 of us willing to be active maybe once or twice a week, and we could move in and cause havoc with the whole cartoon "land" market. For example, one of the more nefarious ways to buy land is to intentionally devalue valuable land, then buy it and repackage it for sale to other clueless fools. To do this you either need unlimited money you're willing to risk, or a good sized group of collaborators.

Of course we could also just be a pain-in-the-ass group that would grab a fair amount of media attention from time to time. I'm not sure what that would accomplish besides a bit of dark side schadenfreude. But in that case I would propose something completely satirical and provoking like creating a Cult of the JBR, where we go around begging and trying to get L$ so we can afford to someday buy real homes in the real world. But then as satire we would make sure we own a lavish Second Life island and castle estate fully appointed with virtual servants and virtual concubines.

I think gentrification is a very risky, longterm bet.

I was the one who brought up this topic originally. Maybe it would be a good thread topic sometime?

Anyway, my observations are based on a few areas around the country that I've seen firsthand change significantly in the past 20 years. Around the Bay Area, Jon's right about Emeryville - a perfect example of local government "forced" gentrification that hasn't worked out quite as planned.

In SF, I'd bring up as examples of gentrified or gentrification-in-progress areas as Noe Valley and Protrero Hill, respectively. In NYC, the examples are too numerous to count. In Manhattan, there's Soho (going back to the 70's), more recently Tribeca, parts of the East Village, Meatpacking district. In Brooklyn, there's (older time) Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, and more recently DUMBO. In Boston, the South End, Jamaica Plain, Charlestown come to mind. There are many areas in these cities in the "midst" of gentrifying, where housing is overpriced beyond the level of gentrification IMO, that will suffer greatly during the downturn.

Just look how many here deploy options strategies.

Some options strategies are not more aggressive than buy-and-hope.

Not investment advice

Muggy that photo is very telling. I'd like to propose a thread to discuss the bubble spillover into other sectors. Certainly granite slab sellers are not liking life right now.

I take it you are in FL.

I’m curious if anyone here puts money in foreign/oversees banks,

Jon, simple ...go to an currency exchange center and trade 100 USD for euros or yen hold and go back and exhange it. You will find many in SF.

“victims”

Some victim.. for how long have we been hearing NAR and other vested interested how foreigners were the fastest growing segment of homeowners
with deep pockets. Well guess what .. everyone was a victim of all this nonsense and marketing misinformation. Chickens are coming home to roost.

I support the ACLU. I don't always agree with them, but I appreciate that they fanatically attack any degredation of constitutional rights. I would much rather live in a county where our rights were determined by the ACLU, rather than by an administration that passed a pseudo-facist bill like the Patriot Act.

Those who would sacrifice a little freedom for security, deserve neither freedom nor security.

Bap33

You can make your points without racial slurs. They would certainly carry more weight with me. You don't need to resort to calling groups derogatory names; it only makes your arguments appear weak and reactionary.

Bap33

They supported the NeoNazi's right to public protest. So I guess your statement is false, .... right??

Does the ACLU support an individual's right to own guns?

Bap33

What exactly did you mean by (side note: I personally love the empty streets on national wet-walk day)?

I googled "Wet-walk day" and "National wet-walk day" and it failed to find anything other than a site related to duck watching. Am I to believe that is what you were referencing? Otherwise, don't feign naivety. I don't mind your points of view, just hold off on the slurs is all I ask.

I'm not a fan of political correctness. I don't care if anyone uses any particular term. But I do follow a simple *American Value*, which I learned growing up in the *American* Midwest:

If you wouldn't feel comfortable calling someone something to their face on the church steps, then don't call them that behind their back either.

According to the Political Compass, Hitler was a center-right (though extremely fascist).

http://politicalcompass.org/analysis2

They have an interesting quiz.

@Peter P

To be honest, I don't know, and don't really care that much. My point was there are plenty of cases where the ACLU has represented non "liberal" entities. I'm positive they've defended religious rights many times, though I'm not engaged enough to go googling for the cases. It should be the burden of the accuser to do that, rather than just regurgitate talk radio banter.

And to say they're "anti American" is one of those perversions of the modern day scream-fest media. The American legal system has always been about allowing for intense debate and reliance upon constitutional interpretation. The irony is that blogs wouldn't even exist without civil libertarians through the years fighting on behalf of First Amendment causes. Fitting enough someone uses a blog to bemoan civil libertarians.

Randy, you are right. It is actually important for both sides to fight. This way, we can all find truths.

Peter P

If you look at the quadrants towards the bottom mapping current leaders I think we can see the problem. The entire lower right is empty. That's where many of us would be. Right-leaning libertarian views, but no so far right to be neo-liberal.

Actually, this visualization describes something Bap33 and I argued over about a year ago. In fact, many "right wingers" today, namely the neo-cons, are actually neo-liberal as a political definition. Nation building, as it were, is not a conservative undertaking. It is distinctly an interventionist, and thus liberal undertaking.

That’s where many of us would be. Right-leaning libertarian views, but no so far right to be neo-liberal.

There is Milton Friedman. But he is not running for presidency.

The map tells us that top-right is the best place for one's political career.

In the bottom-left quadrant, you can talk all you want but no one will ever listen. :)

Arms control is a difficult topic. It is very similar to issues like anti-trust and patents. It is all about balance.

It is rather obvious that individuals should NOT possess WMDs. However, should they be allowed to own automatic weapons? Or should they be restricted to one black-powder muzzle-loader per household? It is not easy.

I believe that debates will be very helpful.

Randy, if the ACLU supported the Nazi’s, that makes my point exactly. I think.

No, it doesn't. The ACLU argues for ultra-liberals, for neo-Nazis and anyone else who has their freedoms infringed. I am a moderate conservative, but I am all for any group that fiercely defends First Amendment rights. And that is not to say that no laws against certain behavior is invalid. But in a democratic Republic, we should be very concerned that people are allowed to talk however they wish, until they infringe upon some more fundamental right (i.e. to life, property, etc.). To restrict that fundamental freedom because it seems distant to oneself, is to one day, years later, wake up and find your own rights bound hand and foot, declared "too extreme" to be part of society.

Peter P brings up the point about second amendment rights. I don't know if the ACLU promotes guns. But they would for sure support all discussions about the validity of guns, and object to any suppression of that discussion.

Randy H says: The irony is that blogs wouldn’t even exist without civil libertarians through the years fighting on behalf of First Amendment causes. Fitting enough someone uses a blog to bemoan civil libertarians.

It is a testament to their dedication to freedom of expression that libertarians would defend even the truly ironic. :o

You want the truth? A less humble man might be inclined to say, "I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way."

I believe that *I* should be allowed to own anything I want, because *I* will only use those weapons responsibly. However, I don't want lots of *you* to have access to so much as a butter knife.

Therein lies the problem with this debate.

calling the folks that jump the Rio Grande “wets” was not my idea, but due to it’s historical value I tend to use it.

Bap is apparently right. At least according to some definitions in the urban dictionary.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wetback

However, that term is slightly out-dated I would say.

I believe that *I* should be allowed to own anything I want, because *I* will only use those weapons responsibly. However, I don’t want lots of *you* to have access to so much as a butter knife.

If I am allowed to have all the food I want, I will weigh 300-lb by the next blog party.

However, I don’t want lots of *you* to have access to so much as a butter knife.

Another problem is that those who cannot be entrusted with butter knives will try to obtain illegal full-autos if they can.

The best "solution" is to uninvent all weapons. It is as good a "solution" as buying a house now at a *reasonable* price. :)

Bap33

I don't approve of "Realtwhores" either, and you'll notice that I and many others never use that term. I don't complain about it because real estate is the specific focus of this blog, but truth be I'd be happier if people didn't use it at all. I think when a newcomer picks up on the bubble and comes by here for their first visit, they judge the maturity of the blog by its civility. If they happen to catch a bunch of realtwhore this and realtwhore that, the new reader couldn't be blamed if they concluded reading here wasn't worth their time.

I don’t approve of “Realtwhores” either, and you’ll notice that I and many others never use that term.

I hated that word.

Prices have fallen. I can get you a full auto McMansion in a nice area tomorrow, if you can qualify for the financing.