patrick.net

goldboy

It's only a conundrum if you don't look past the statistics.

Elites like the rich Asians here and also a handful of techies (sometimes the person is both at the same time) can still buy for cash or borrow on great terms, and have the income to service the loan and property taxes. So the nominal prices reflect what they are able or willing to pay.

But, as you pointed out, there's a lot of homes on the market, so even though they pay the same or slightly more than last year, they get more house for the money. That's why the Shiller index will keep going down but the median won't.

"part of the Gold Rush mentality"

And I'm o.k with that. I don't have anything against people that have more money than I do? If someone can truly afford the finer things in life I say more power to them! (It's the other 99.9% that p1ss me off).

Bloomberg's had a great article about all of the "binge travelers" (their term, not mine) and what a dreadful impact it's having on the environment. The guy that wrote "Lonely Planet" researched it pretty well. No so good but if it makes you feel like you're rolling BFSTOC hey whatever!

One of these days someone like Ameriprise (TM) is going to do a commercial about a retiring boomer couple and they're going to say that their "dream" is to occupy a bar stool for their golden years and I'm going to keel over clutching my chest. Call 911! :(

Dinor,

There's a lot of wealthy people here.

But his comment was about his colleagues who are working themselves to death to maintain their standard of living.

There's a lot of people like that here, too.

The price for the same house sold last year is lower this year. This is what the Case-Shiller index is saying. What the median price going up is saying is that the low-end market is drying up because of the credit crunch. Palo Alto, Los Altos & Mountain View went from 9% of total SCC sales in February to 25% in March, although the actual sales volumes went down during March in those towns. All this sais that the crash has begun and it is imploding from the base of the pyramid, which is the low end. In fact, the crash is already progressing at about 2x the rate of the 1989 crash. This is very consistent with the fact that we are sitting on top of a double-bubble, the bubble in 2001 + the reinflated Greenspan bubble, so price decline this time, will completely erase all the gains since 2001 + half of the gains of the 1996-2001 bubble (50% fibonaci retrace), which should take the prices back to the 1998-1999 levels.

Goldboy,

You're saying with statistics what I'm seeing and saying with anecdotes.

Exactly, and my estimates may be on the conservative side too, because it doesn't take into account the implosion of the tech boom, and the return back to the dirty 30's. Once, the apples and the googles go away, this town is going to look like Detroit in a 3rd world country.

goldboy,

Exactly. It wears me down endlessly wether it's in person or from the MSM to hear that the housing bubble is strictly a "post 9/11 event". Especially when it comes from realt-whores. By confining the debate to 2001/2/3 (depending on how much they have at stake) takes the unthinkable (pre-2000 prices) completely off the table.

(I'm gonna be keeping an eye on you)*

*Sam Kinnison in "Back to School" w/ Rodney Dangerfield

Then factor in all the "freebies" builders are throwing in and now you have a hopelessly skewed picture. We're throwing in a POOL! AND CASH BACK! 50k in "upgrades"!

Was that scene hysterical or what!

Rodney is shoe horned into this desk and Sam asks the class what happened in Viet Nam. One girl gives a perfect textbook answer and is obviously content with her own explanation. Then Sam builds slowly into that patented RAGE howling about being knee deep in a rice paddy and ripping desks apart!

Freaking classic!

azrob,

Your last post once more proves that you don't know much about Chinese culture and wasn't qualified to comment about it as an expert - and you were holding out your several months' visit there as evidence of your expertise. When that happens, don't be surprised when your expertise gets called out when you made an inaccurate statement.

FYI - the Han Chinese have maybe 200 surnames - that's it. Of those, maybe 10 or so are very common and another 40 are fairly common. That's why there are a lot of Wangs and Chens out there.

I just come back from SF. Looks like they have new construction condos every direction eyes can see.

Hi Peter, just got your email. Left a message for you as I can't send email from the hotel server. Oceanside is the looking the same way as well, new condos everywhere.

Peter P-

We'll try Sawa; I'm in Sunnyvale. Not sure how to send an email(?), but feel free to e-mail me if you have moderator privledges and I'll keep a closer look at my spam filter for a few days.

Thanks,
Brent

We’ll try Sawa; I’m in Sunnyvale.

If you love lots of good fish, it is a good restaurant. You need to call ahead to make arrangements or the restaurant may not open.

Honestly, I go there less than once per year.

@astrid,

After having spent 39 consecutive months and countless ports of call along with vacations in "The I" (Peoples Republic of the Philippines) I know... just about... zilch? 7 of the 9 years I was "in The Nav" were in the Orient. Just like here in the states the game changes with regularity. I know enough to be social and can get by without having to point but the minute you make the assumption you know what's up and push things is when you wind up a statistic.

And this is the Philippines! (The world's 3rd. largest english speaking country? At least that's what Mayor Gordon claimed. Stanford grad. Nice guy. He really took over after Pinatubo blew and made sure all the volunteers that stayed and didn't just chuck it in were rewarded, no matter how long the line was. :)

Brent, I have just sent you an email.

goldboy Says:
What the median price going up is saying is that the low-end market is drying up because of the credit crunch. Palo Alto, Los Altos & Mountain View went from 9% of total SCC sales in February to 25% in March, although the actual sales volumes went down during March in those towns. ... The crash has begun and it is imploding from the base of the pyramid, which is the low end.

Curiously enough, I posted a couple of weeks ago that my friend 'predicted' something like this. He said the lower end would be hit hard by the credit crunch and could see huge drops - I was a bit surprised by his statement at the time because I expected the crash (yeah, I said it) to be more severe at the mid-upper (1.8-2.2M) level because I had already seen examples of 300K drops in that range.

SP

SP,

Yep, the Sydney Australia example is very instructive. High end areas have already started back up again, mainly due to the financial effect of the mining boom.

The far-out low end suburbs are still suffering 2 years after the bubble burst (and we had a VERY soft landing, to the point where pollyannas in the US/UK point to us as an exemplar).

I have colleagues here in the East Bay who have not been to the beach for 6 years.

That's probably a good thing - skin cancer, blah blah blah.

Licensed real estate agent complaining about the high prices

Allah, fWIW, I posted some San Jose house prices and pictures on the LIFamilies board.

Someone replied that it must've been a joke, and since then my account has been disabled.

:(

That’s why there are a lot of Wangs and Chens out there.

Not to mention all the have funs out there.

ahahahahahaha

oh my, I think all this housing talk is making me giddy.

I'd pay the downpayment, he'd pay the mortgage.

Assuming 20% down, since when can a guy "who just graduated college this month" afford a 680K mortgage?

:) Sheesh, somebody's mind is not far out of grade school. I've heard of a case of Mr. She marrying a Ms. He.

I suppose it's all karmic. The Chinese really garble up foreign names and make a most assinine assumptions based on translation.

I would put 35% down ozajh. His payments would be around $2,500/month, which is a lot, but considering his base is $65,000, and bonus will be $30-70,000 next year, he can manage. I’m making him get a roommate too.

Wow, aside from the disconnect from reality with respect to housing prices, you sure have your son on a short leash... You've got yourself quite a momma's boy! I'd hate to be the woman he eventually wants to bring home to meet the momma...

Happy mother's day, btw!

I would put 35% down ozajh. His payments would be around $2,500/month, which is a lot, but considering his base is $65,000, and bonus will be $30-70,000 next year, he can manage. I’m making him get a roommate too.

May I ask how you are going structure the downpayment tax-wise? I know someone who is in a similar situation but he wants to be careful about it being a tax event, in particular, gift tax.

?? or will the 50%-of-base-bonus happen each and every year for the life of the loan??

For many people, the bonus is a good portion of their total compensation. 50% to 100+% of base is not uncommon.

WealthyWoman: What does your son do? That's quite a hefty bonus to get every year.

WealthyWoman,

Do you intend to take out an ARM or I/O mortgage?

$850k X 65% = $552,500 (remaining mortgage after 35% down)

At about $600 per $100k of mortgage (for a 30 year fixed), this is $3300/month ($2500/month as you state).

After Federal, state and FICA withholding, your son making $65k will be bringing home just enough to make the monthly payment.

The roommate who will live with him will probably just cover the property taxes.

Throughout the year your son will be forced to borrow from you for all living expenses. At the end of the year I'm sure he will be happy to hand his bonus back over to you.

While someone might conceivably make $65K + bonus in IB or similar, it boggles my mind why they would do so. If they were frugal, they have student loans to pay off and Roth IRA/401K to dump their money. If they were extravagant, they're in a good position to live it up and enjoy it. In either case, an IB associate is likely to go to business school or law school in a few years, so why tie himself or herself to a McAlbatross?

Exactly, and my estimates may be on the conservative side too, because it doesn’t take into account the implosion of the tech boom, and the return back to the dirty 30’s. Once, the apples and the googles go away, this town is going to look like Detroit in a 3rd world country.

I love the imagery. Care to back this up with any real macroeconomics aside from correlative chartism? We really have no way to compare or predict what would happen in another secular deflationary depression period, because historical precedents probably rest upon outdated assumptions. For example, this area and most of inhabited CA fared quite a bit better in the 30s than did the Midwest or NorthEast.

Anyway, there is not going to be a deflationary depression in my lifetime, and probably not for at least another 100 years, if ever. More likely is a long period of sustained stagflation and high unemployment. "Great Depressions" are like "World Wars". They can happen again, but the stakes have risen so high that previously unthinkable alternatives have become preferable.

astrid: Maybe WealthyWoman's son is a recent MBA grad, who will soon marry another recent MBA grad. There are a lot of those couples in the Bay Area.

(Brand calls it right now: MPFRCROPBBWW)

Those salaries and bonuses are not in line with Ivy / Ivy Plus according to any data I've heard of or seen.

http://www.ft.com/businesseducation/mba

Full time MBA grads certainly make good money, but no where near that much even averaging 3 years post graduation from the top-5 global schools. It takes a couple years to work up to anything near a $50K bonus, even in investment banking/strategy consulting.

I just interviewed a couple MBAs last week (Haas & Stanford). Both Beta Gamma Sigma honors. Neither is making that kind of money and both were applying to work for me for equity-only pre funding.

What is the deal with people buying apartments? Condos have never made any sense to me at all. Buy an apartment so I can have people living ontop/below/beside me all the time?

What's next? Buying hotel rooms and just eating out forever?

What’s next? Buying hotel rooms and just eating out forever?

You can do that in Hawaii. You purchase the hotel room, and then they rent it out like a hotel when you're not there. I stayed in a studio for a week that had no kitchen.

Hey, it's better than those kids in Tokyo just renting out little cubicles in the cyber cafes!

That got me thinking, probably some units available in the place I stayed at last year. Sure enough, the Aqua Aloha Surf down by Waikiki Beach has some units...

http://www.hawaiiinformation.com/REsearch/IDX/mlsHawaii/IndividualListing.asp?page=1&MLS=2708951

I was wondering that too, Hermann. Things must have sure changed a lot from when I was a kid, lower middle class (and occasionally poorer), growing up in rural Ohio -- yet unable to get anywhere near enough scholarship money to even think about attending the prestigious East coast school which had accepted my application. All for the better. Big state school for undergrad then elite Ivy for grad gives one a real sixth sense for bs.

And for anyone wondering, the weighted 3-year post degree top-MBA school salary data, as of 2007:

1. Wharton: $160K
2. Columbia: $149K
3. Harvard: $157K
4. Standford: $167K
5. London Business School: $136K
6. Univ Chicago: $139K
7. Insead: $140K
8. NYU Stern: $131K
9. Dartmouth Tuck: $145K
10. Yale: $135K

***Note: the top end salaries in this list are skewed by the large number of graduates who work in Manhattan. The median salaries are about 15% lower, across the board.

why do people think its really that important to buy a house right away after college? Having that huge mortgage payment really kills any kind of financial freedom and limits your choice in life. I would understand if he's married and has kids, but he's fresh out of college. Its a time to be independent and enjoy the single working life in the city, not live paycheck to paycheck just to have a house.

if you give your son $262k (35% $750k) of to invest conservativly in the stock market, the gains will be higher then the $12k a year in rental income.

serpentor: Have you factored in the cost of renting? It would be Stock Gains - Rent vs. Mortgage Tax Refund + (Roommate Income - Tax on Profit) + Appreciation - Mortgage Payment.

Just making sure we're apples to apples.

It's silly to own a house right out of college, unless you know exactly where you want to live, who you will marry and what you will be doing for the next 5-10 years. And if you are a rookie college grad who is that sure, you have a 50% chance of being wrong just thanks to your inexperience.

If I understand the Bay Area rental market, the former side of the equation wins. Even if it was slightly negative, one cannot underestimate flexibility. If you suddenly decide to go back to school or take off a year and backpack across Europe, now your options are hugely limited. Young people should be willing to pay a premium for financial flexibility until they have major commitments.

Why not have him rent a a place for year and see if he really likes living in SF. Let him discover the city life of a young successful professional, pay off debt (if any), go on dates or go out with friends, enjoy restaurants, enjoy life! If the mother is so wealthy and so optimistic about the RE market, why don't the mother buy the house and have him rent it from you for a year. If he likes living in SF, then he can buy it for you for a good price later on.