patrick.net

HARM Says:

> FAB, Are you being snarky or serious here? Did
> Snowflakaroo really meet with D.S. Down Under?

I was checking in on America’s Favorite Flipper today and read:

“All the hostels in the CBD (downtown) were taken up so I came here to King Cross and found a pretty descent place after walking around for a bit. Earlier had dinner and some beers with Sean Reynolds of Housing Affordability Blog and he drove me around to help me find a place to stay. Thanks man!”

And

“By the way, I just looked up Sean’s original emails to me WAY back when I first started blogging. He found me via Patrick.net. Sean knows Randy H too, who used to post frequently on this blog back in the day. (The long time fans will remember Randy’s persistently frustrated tone of voice and critical but not too hater type of comments)”

Wow. I really need to write Sean and ask him to send us a photo of the two of them together. A socialist and a sociopath -- that oughtta be a keeper. ;-)

Casey is certainly playing off his celebrity. The important thing about fame is that it's only as good as the income or free stuff. Since only one fan at a time can buy someone a free dinner, you can be a relatively minor celebrity and still have an easy life. But his time upon the world stage will be short, at least until his book deal is out and he vaporizes from relevance.

The Patrick.net collective never got through to either one of them.

HK

A number of active home buyers often go visit open houses without their agent. They do this because either they're more comfortable doing it without the chauffeur, because the agent is busy sitting their own listings on Sundays, or because they're just trying to pre-screen things, sometimes even before they call their agent to engage her/him. On the increasingly rare occasion I actually see someone else at an open house and overhear the listing agent ask the obligatory "are you working with anyone yet?" question, I always here them say "yes".

By the way, a little easy-to-forget warning in light of HK's post:

If you're trying to work without a buying agent like I do (so that you can just work directly with the selling agent thus turning the commission entirely in your favor)--

Be sure to slowly, deliberately and specifically ask "are you the listing agent?" Even recently we made the mistake of assuming the open house sitter was the listing agent and ended up with an unexpected intermediary (though it came to nothing because the selling agent "gently" encouraged us not to offer at my price).

Have I mentioned recently that Marin sucks. I'm watching a half dozen homes now that all fall into 2 categories with pretty much zero middle ground:

1. FBs who tried to list at half a million more than their purchase price. I'm talking about $2mm types who barely have $250k in equity. Then, they cut and cut and cut prices right up to the $0 equity loss price, and let it sit for 100 DOM. Sad thing is I won't even pay -$250k, so I can't buy the house or they'll go negative equity.

2. Old folks -- usually sweet old ladies who've lived in Mill Valley for 172 years -- sitting atop $2.0mm. The problem is that the sweet old lady's 172 year old high school best friend down the street sold in 2005 for $2.5mm, so she'll be damned if some slick real estate agent is gonna cheat her out of her rightful money. After all, poor old sweet old man -- rest his soul -- worked for 152 years in Mill Valley paying off this house and he was a pillar of the community....

Randy: Couldn't you just offer the old lady her asking price, with the condition of $500K cash back? That would be a sweet deal, and then she doesn't look like a looser!

(sic) ;)

btw to all: In my immediate area, I am seeing a lot of nice SFHs move through the $100/sqft mark. If we make it to $85-90/sqft, we will have regressed to mean from 1996 with 4-5% per year.

Now how far will it swing through, since things always seem to over-correct? Should I look for 100% of the spike from mean, 50% of the spike or what?

In my limited experience, some real estate agents tend to *send* clients to open houses as a matter of efficiency. For a while, we had a part-time-mom-part-time-Realtor(TM), and she was a great one for letting us know about open houses, but not so much on the driving around--hard to schedule appointments around the soccer practice and all. She is gone now. But I got the feeling from that experience and from friends with similar experience that Realtors are a bit accustomed to not working too much with any given set of buyers, at least not recently--too many possible deals, and the opportunity cost of spending too much time with one buyer could be high. One way to maximize efficiency is to say, "And I'm tied up on Sunday, but I saw this great place on broker's tour that reminded me of you, and they have an open house this Sunday...and there's this other place nearby that you might want to look at while you are in the neighborhood...."

i wish surfer x would go dish out a couple of "upper tankers."

The Patrick.net collective never got through to either one of them.

Oh, I don't know. I think D.S. gradually toned down a bit and started listening a little more, if not always agreeing with everyone else. Snowflakaroo, on the other hand, is a completely lost cause. An incurable case of willful ignorance and malignant narcissism.

sweet old ladies ...sitting atop $2.0mm

'Sweet old ladies' my ass. More like crotchety, tight-fisted old greedbags. Fortunately, though, mother nature has a plan for them. :twisted:

Ok, that last comment was a bit over the line --my bad. (don't want to invite bad karma). :-)

I always found D.S. to be quite entertaining. For someone who complained vehemently about straw men, he was quite the constructor of straw men. If we could have kept him within 1000 words or less per post, the exchanges with Randy might have been considered witty repartee! :)

mm-hmm, i'm here now...

The Patrick.net collective never got through to either one of them.

hmmph, early onset of Grumpy Old Lady Syndrome...

You can read my blog to determine my stance on the housing crisis and post comments freely... further policy documents are available on request...

Randy H Says:
I’m going to hopefully meet DS next time I go to Sydney for business (we have an office of our startup there). We have a long standing commitment to have a beer together

yes, definitely... there's an austrian restaurant called una's nearby i've taken a liking to... but i would recommend finding a pub with james squire ales on tap -- i have conveniently pieced together a handy map for those after much painstaking research...

casey experienced said james squire amber and golden ales firsthand, and pronounced himself well chuffed...

more on the casey persona later, he's 37% less ignorant and malignant in person... ;)

2 + 2 = 4

since when?

more on the casey persona later, he’s 37% less ignorant and malignant in person…

Well I'm sure most con-men appear to be quite charming in person --at least at first. I bet Chuck Ponzi was a real dashing man-about-town.

And, BTW, Mr. Reynolds,

Where's my reply? ;-)

hmm, no photos were taken of the clandestine summit meeting -- none that i'm aware of, anyhow, altho the next table may have been occupied by an ASIO spook whose bowtie was really a camera (© S&G) -- i might post my serious blogger face pic on my blog in compensation tho... the impossibly professional photography taken by CS alone didn't occur...

@DS,

Too bad. Given that Snowflakaroo manages to get amazingly good (and evidently staged) snapshots of himself everywhere he goes, I would have guessed he brings his own photographer with him in tow.

Photos aside, I'd still like to get the juicy details, if any.

Photos aside, I’d still like to get the juicy details, if any

All will be revealed -- in a series of tantalising excerpts revealed in stages designed to maximise traffic and revenues to my site... I'm going tabloid -- and monetising every opportunity from now on... you will have to tune into my next (first) podcast...

latest blog post:

Surge in families forced to sell their homes

HUNDREDS of families have been forced to sell their homes, or lenders have repossessed and auctioned them, in Sydney's west and south-west in the past year, property experts say.

There were a record 1400 auctions in the region in the year to March 31, nearly double the number in 2005, Australian Property Monitors figures show.

Michael McNamara, an analyst with the company, said the spate of auctions pointed to a big rise in distressed sales and repossessions in the region. Mostly, sellers in Sydney's cheaper property markets were going to auction because they had to, not because they wanted to, he said. "The big rise in the number of auctions isn't because the market is going well," he said.

"It's jumped because auctions are the preferred method of sale of trustees in bankruptcy and mortgagees in possession. I think that's a very disturbing figure."

The median price for an auction in south-western Sydney in the March quarter was $318,000, $22,000 less than the overall median house price in the region.

"This just brings home the fact that most of these are distressed sales," Mr McNamara said.

Mr McNamara and Mr Dhillon estimate that hundreds of families in western and south-western Sydney had been forced to sell their homes, or had had homes repossessed and auctioned by lenders, over the past year.

Meanwhile, the total debt burden on Australian households topped $1 trillion for the first time last month, Reserve Bank figures published yesterday showed.

Debt on housing accounts for about 86 per cent of household debt, with the remainder personal debts like credit cards and personal loans. The ratio of household debt to household income has reached 160 per cent, one of the highest in the world. Interest payments now soak up a record 11.9 per cent of household income, nearly three percentage points more than in 1989 when mortgage rates were 17 per cent.

I don't go to open houses (yet). Due to the slow deflating of the bubble, I don't plan to buy before 2009, and there is plenty of time to getting used to look at houses.

HARM Says:

> Oh, I don’t know. I think D.S. gradually toned down
> a bit and started listening a little more, if not always
> agreeing with everyone else.

I really did think that D.S. was a trust fund kid and DNC staffer when he first started posting and I’m impressed that he does listen to what we have to say.

Different Sean’s Latest BLOG post Says:

> Surge in families forced to sell their homes
> HUNDREDS of families have been forced to sell their
> homes, or lenders have repossessed and auctioned
> them, in Sydney’s west and south-west in the past
> year, property experts say.

Last time I was in Sydney (about two years ago) I was sitting with a bunch of Australians (a friend that works for a railroad and his 30’something friends that were mostly IT professionals) watching the people walk by on the big open area in Darling Harbor after dinner when my friend mentioned that I was “in Real Estate”. I was surprised to find out the Australian Real Estate bubble was even bigger than the Bay Area Real Estate Bubble. Compared to the Bay Area Australian’s seem to make about half as much for comparable jobs BEFORE you factor in that the A$ is worth a lot less than the US$ ($0.75 a couple years ago and $0.85) today and BEFORE you factor in that Australians pay more taxes than we do. With huge numbers of people in Australia making A$35K (before paying high taxes) that were buying homes for A$450K two years ago (12.9x income) I’m not surprised that Australia (like the US) is having a “surge” in families forced to sell their homes…

For the last couple of months my wife and I have been halfway serious lookers at real estate. Mostly I am trying to convince her that we can afford to get something bigger, though to tell the truth, to get anything that would be worth moving for, we would have to sell our present place, which neither of us really wants to do.

We were not serious shoppers though: we are not pre-qualified or anything and our timeline is years, not months, but we would have bought the right house at the right price in the right neighborhood. This was almost close to being true in Claremont, in Berkeley, but nowhere else.

Now my wife has decided to move on from her present job, so we are definitely back out of the market.

Peter P

We are staying away from Open Houses also. I have a tendency to fall in love with certain homes so it makes no sense to pine after a grossly overpriced object.

By the way, I had family visiting from the East Coast and introduced them to another lifestyle - renting. They were stunned at first, but within a few days, liked the rent-a-townhouse lifestyle - especially when the landlord showed up to do the gardening.

Yes, it's a little known fact that my (imaginary) middle name is curmudgeon.

FAB,

Is that $35K each or $35K per family? The latter would indeed be scary high. (though perhaps not quite as high as Scandinavian beer prices...)

@D.S.,

:lol: So. I see you've turned to the Dark Side (naked capitalism).

@Bap33,

Most CDs and bank or credit union accounts are federally insured for up to $100K per account, per tenant (account-holder) and are considered one of the most conservative investments out there. The NCUA covers credit union accounts, while the FDIC covers bank accounts. U.S. Treasuries are even safer --backed by the people who also happen to print the money, so, yeah, I'd rest easy.

Average salaries in Oz are something like $40K or $45K per annum, I haven't checked for a little while. The breakdown of women in the workforce is that something like 1/3 are FT, 1/3 are PT, and 1/3 aren't working at all, but worplace participation can vary over time within a family's trajectory due to children's ages, etc.

There was a time when a police sergeant's family on 1 wage with 4 kids could buy a Californian bungalow close to the city, now 2 doctors can't afford to buy the same place 60 years later...

Which reminds me of another recent posting to my blog, they seem to come in bursts -- check out the related articles if you follow this link, e.g. 'families forced to live in flats', 'poor isolated in outer suburbs as car costs rise', etc

Housing costs squeeze budgets
SOARING housing costs are squeezing family budgets in Sydney, even though incomes in the city are higher than almost everywhere else in the country, figures from the 2006 census show.

Mortgage repayments in Sydney are 40 per cent higher than the national median and rents 31 per cent more, even though incomes in the city are only 12 per cent higher.

In the central valley of California it is Section 8 welfare that is forceing the rents and housing through the roof / or helping the bubble float down vs bursting. IMO

I see...

@DS--
Section 8 welfare is a strange beast. Section 8 essentially guarantees rent payments to landlords who accept Section 8 tenants--so, for example, the tenant might pay $600/month, and the government might pick up the other $850 that would bring the rent up to market rate ($1450, not atypical for where I live). The government will also give extremely favorable loans (1%, say) to potential landlords to remodel a space, finish a basement, or whatever--so long as the landlord agrees to rent the space to Section 8 tenants for 25 years.

So Section 8 does have the potential to impact the market by pulling housing units out of the market (creating scarcity) and by holding rents at an artificially high level (if nurse's aides can really only afford $600/month, but Section 8 will kick in another $850 for those lucky enough to qualify, that distorts the market, yes?).

For the record, I do think that everyone deserves a place to live. I'm not sure that this kind of interference is the answer, though, since slightly-less-poor people who do not qualify for Section 8 end up paying big taxes in order to subsidize the program that is keeping market rents painfully unaffordable for them, and Section 8 tenants are discouraged from improving themselves and their lives for fear that they might lose their homes by making too much money. I mean, why work harder to make an extra $500/month if you would then face moving and a rent increase of $850?

There must be some better way to do this.

Oh, one other impact of Section 8. I used to work with a woman who was in Section 8 housing with her kid and her boyfriend. She could not formalize the relationship with the boyfriend because she would lose her Section 8 housing--that is, if they were married or domestic partners, their family would look too rich and too stable, and they would have to go out and pay market rate rent, which they could not afford. This clearly represented a strain in that particular relationship. So there are social impacts, as well.

On the other side, you get couples that don't marry in order to keep their Section 8 housing, but perhaps they actually *are* doing well enough to afford market rate or better. So they end up taking up Section 8 housing that someone else might really need and having their housing subsidized by everyone else's tax money. There are problems in the way Section 8 housing is assigned.

Different Sean Says:

> Which reminds me of another recent posting to my
> blog, they seem to come in bursts — check out the
> related articles if you follow this link, e.g.
> ‘families forced to live in flats’

I laugh whenever I read families “forced” to live in flats.
No one is “forced” to have a family.
I “want” to own a McLaren F1 (just like some people “want” a family).

If I “choose” to buy a $1.5mm toy car (just like some people “choose” to have a family) I will have a lot less money to spend on housing and may have to live in a flat.

No one is forcing anyone to have a family and the government (and groups like Planed Parenthood) will actually go out of their way to help people not have kids…

astrid Says:

> FAB, Is that $35K each or $35K per family?

When I was in Australia I was hearing about individuals that made A$35K buying homes for A$450K…

Then Different Sean Says:

> Average salaries in Oz are something like $40K or
> $45K per annum,

At $0.85 to the USD that is only $34-38K in US money before paying taxes…

Eliza Says:

> So Section 8 does have the potential to impact the market
> by pulling housing units out of the market (creating scarcity)
> and by holding rents at an artificially high level

Section 8 just keeps getting bigger and bigger every year. The more people they put on the program the more new people they get to hire and the workers get promoted and make even more money. The people that run Section 8 don’t care what the rents are since they don’t pay them (the taxpayers do). Smart landlords can play the Section 8 game and fill a building with people paying 50% above market rents. Landlords also like Section 8 since the program will pay for damages. If a Section 8 tenant has a boyfriend thrash the place Section 8 just pays to repair the place again and again (it would be wrong to take away the free rent and welfare of a single mom just because she brings home crack addicted gang members who thrash the unit breaking windows and putting holes in the walls every couple months). Section 8 is also a way for politicians to “give back” to their donors. In San Francisco over half the people on Section 8 have some connection to a politician (e.g. cooks, nannies or cleaning ladies of big donors or relatives of political organizers).

Hey, does anyone still have the link to that great rent-vs-buy calculator posted a few weeks ago? The one that allowed you to enter about a zillion variables, including rent increases and the like? I'd appreciate it if you could post it again.

Ah, here it is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/2007_BUYRENT_GRAPHIC.html?ex=1183435200&en=708854c361919ea7&ei=5070