patrick.net

Randy,

that's why you need the owner name. It is not perfect, but it is quite amazing how much information you can dig out on the internet.

I found out the loan profile of one of my neighbors, who just purchased a home on a $1M convertible loan, and $2xxK fixed, with about 10% down 2 years ago. Then I found his resume online, just a senior engineer. And since he listed his position at different places, I sort of guestimated whether he hit the jackpot with these companies, nope. Eventually I figured he couldn't carry this house for long, and he listed his house on the market about 3 months ago, lucky for him, he got rid of it, making almost no money on the deal.

Armed with a bit more google skill, you can really zoom in on someone's profile. In your example, if I look up homes owned by the mommy on propertyshark (a feature only available for NY so far), I will have a better idea of the situation of the owners.

If a buyer wants to be really nasty, he can even pay $50-70 for some web detectives to dig up the borrower's credit scores, employment history, previous addresses, marriage history, etc. Most of our personal information, unless guarded fiercely to begin with, is already out there.

I don't put a whole lot of stock in online insta-petitions, but this one speaks directly to this blog (and may have been started by someone here?). It's at least worth a click:

http://www.petitiononline.com/bailout/petition.html

Most of our personal information, unless guarded fiercely to begin with, is already out there.

This is why real people hold assets in havens like CI and BVI.

Kinda "glad" that I am still fake.

sfbubblebuyer :

I have stopped paying attention to the DQ reports ... and even their unofficial archive at viewfromsiliconvalley.com site. Much better information is available at http://www.rereport.com/scc/.

They break down the information by SFR and condos. Also include historical trends. And sometimes they even admit the problems with median. It's an RE site, so they of course try to spin it as much as they can. But once in a while you see a glimpse of honesty.

SBA,

thanks for the link, that seems like a really comprehensive site. How come the San Mateo county numbers are only updated till 2005?

Randy:

I wrote some bad checks a few years ago because of sloppy bookkeeping. Rather than ruin my credit, the bank honored them and then just gouged me with some fees.

Learned my lesson.

Haven't written a check since, exception for two things: charity donations (use cancelled check for proof) and income tax payment.

It's liberating, really, to use cash. The bank makes it easy with all the ATMs, and nowadays I can pay all but one of my bills without a service charge by typing numbers into the keypad on the phone. But that one bill, a utility bill, has a liquor store payment center that I drive past on my way to work. So I pay them cash there.

Except for the bills, nobody knows who I am or what I am buying. I can buy all the liquor or nails and nitrate fertilizer or racy videos or admission to the Kit Kat or gifts for an elicit relationship that I want, and there's no trail or paper nor data bits.

Cash.

It's great.

sybrib

That is until I help co-found the company that sticks the chip -- I like to call it the BMARK2 -- in your hand (or optionally forehead), as required to conduct any monetary transaction.

:evil:

Randy,

It's coming...

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/134

I was going to try to defend biometric tagging; but instead I'll just scroll back to that thought about a road trip with SFWoman.

8O

OO: I had a whole post typed up about how freakish it is that you were "investigating" your own neighbors' finances without any due cause. But I realized that it would ultimately be pointless. If you don't understand why that's in such poor taste, you probably never will. I hope that someday your children come to grasp the American concepts of privacy and community.

astrid Says:
We packed two (!) camera tripods.

Why two? Ever since I got my fast VR lens, I have only used my tripod once for nighttime shots. The lens is very sharp even at wide open apertures, and I rarely stop down to less than f/16 on digital cameras. And the DSLRs have very good quality at higher ISOs, so I can always get a good shot at 1/15s or less.

Tripods are a hassle for composition, and for mobility. Am curious what kind of pictures you intend to use the 3pods for.

Sorry for the OT.

SP

sfbubblebuyer Says:
Cupertino is officially not the bay area anymore.

Good riddance, can we physically move that soulless shithole someplace else?

SP

Randy H Says:

Congress will try to weaken the Fed independence. All those who have criticized the Fed as some “private” bank that controls the fate of millions may come to regret the US under a Congressionally controlled monetary policy. Imagine a world where inflation spikes into the high teens the year before every major election.

I'm talking to the Federal Shadow Minister for Housing, Families and Stuff, and she or her lackeys have put in writing to me that the Labor party will make housing affordable by 'keeping interest rates low' as their policy platform. I wrote back asking how this can be guaranteed, given the arms length status of the RBA, the interaction of international trade and finance, and so on. Besides which, low interest rates helped trigger the boom. I think they just trot out the interest rates lines to the sheeple as a simple kneejerk policy point so that people think they are responsible 'managers of the economy' (being the non-business party), while yet another canard is that the govt of the day (GOD) 'manages the economy'... I pointed them to the Greens housing policy and politely suggested they just lift that and use it instead of their pseudo-marketese, pull the wool crap...

And the DSLRs have very good quality at higher ISOs, so I can always get a good shot at 1/15s or less.

True, but they do not have good quality in long exposures. A shutter-release cable is a still a must.

Am curious what kind of pictures you intend to use the 3pods for.

I can never take good pictures without one. Perhaps my hands are shaking a bit too much. I think it is great for composition. However, mobility is definitely an issue. Oh well, the DSLR itself has mobility issues. And I still think medium format has prettier black and whites.

Now I am way OT.

Good riddance, can we physically move that soulless shithole someplace else?

We can make it an extraterritorial city of China, on condition that good, authentic Chinese food be provided at all times.

Peter P Says: True, but they do not have good quality in long exposures. A shutter-release cable is a still a must.

My point was that I won't need the long exposure when the lens is sharp at wide aperture and a DSLR has good quality at ISO 800. I can get exposure down to about 1/15 or 1/30, which is fine with VR. Nowadays, I only drag my tripod out when I deliberately want a slow exposure (light trails or moving water, etc).

Obligatory housing reference: Cupertino down 20% is most likely because of condos, as well as larger number of cheapo flip-sales in the run-down western area (bordering Lawrence/Bollinger).

SP

Brand,

I don't think is unAmerican and poor taste to browse through readily available data, I am not the one to put these data on the internet to begin with, you should blame the service provider. The fact that such service exists proves that there are plenty of people, and most of them are Americans mind you, are doing so.

Why is it without due cause? Maybe I want to sell my house one day and I would like to see how many desperate sellers there will be during bad times. How is it different from people checking up the addresses of their friends and colleages on zillow? Do you think zillow's biz model is entirely based on people checking on their own property value and transaction records?

What I am doing is perfectly human and American. If you want to guard your privacy, do it the legal way. Shut down these sites, that is the ultimate resolution of guarding your privacy, American way.

Peter P Says:
We can make it an extraterritorial city of China

Maybe the Chinese can use their dollar reserve to buy the whole thing and we can help them move all of it including the current inhabitants (*) over there.

SP
* getting the Cupertinoids to move would be easy - First move Monta Vista to Suzhou. They will all go chasing after it by themselves.

I don’t think is unAmerican and poor taste to browse through readily available data, I am not the one to put these data on the internet to begin with, you should blame the service provider.

But renting is un-American.

http://tinyurl.com/yupvgf

Some simple-minded idiot called Kathleen Pender wrote in the SF Chronic-le today that "Higher jumbo-loan limits would help borrowers in the Bay Area". http://tinyurl.com/ys8wa7

No mention of the fact that "Lower jumbo loan limits would help buyers by bringing home prices down to sensible levels." If you have a login at the site, I would recommend adding a comment to point this out...

SP

Cupertino once had a soul: an Italian soul. It was named after their homtown back in Italy. www.laterradipuglia.it/ing/wines/copertino.htm Those old-time farmers are now sadly long gone.

OO

You have too much time on your hands. Rather than feeling better about yourself by seeing how badly other people are doing, you may wish to do PRODUCTIVE things to make yourself feel better.

SP,

(Apologies for everyone for, ergh, doing what I usually do)

The main reason is that we're bringing two D80s with us, so for night time photography, we want to have two cameras running long exposures. Also for waterfalls, since we can't get the silky water effect with handheld. Also for small aperture landscapes.

We do have an 18-200mm VR but all our other lenses are non-VR and our 70-300mm is pretty slow.

Finally, one of the tripods has a (non-detachable) pan head that we already hate, so that one will probably be left in Iceland. That might be the main reason, so we can justify dumping a perfectly nice $40 tripod.

astrid,

I have left umbrella strollers on baggage carousels all over the world. Perhaps your tripod will go live with them.

Temporary OMO: Fed adds $2.00 billion with overnight RP

@Original Bankster,

I flagged that one for... "Best of CL". ;-)

[we have a new topic, so I hope the OT isn't an issue... :-) ]

astrid Says:
The main reason is that we’re bringing two D80s with us, so for night time photography, we want to have two cameras running long exposures. Also for waterfalls, since we can’t get the silky water effect with handheld.

Ahso! That's pretty much the two cases for which a tripod is still useful with a dslr. The third is when you want to set-up to photograph remotely. I used to lug a 3pod around for a while, but got tired of fiddling with adjustments in 3 planes to get a good composition.

Also for small aperture landscapes.

Only in low light. Otherwise f/8 or f/11 has still given me about 1/30, which is fine on a handheld VR lens.

We do have an 18-200mm VR

That is one sweet all-purpose travel lens. (I assume you mean the Nikkor 18-200).

SP

Only in low light. Otherwise f/8 or f/11 has still given me about 1/30, which is fine on a handheld VR lens.

For landscapes, don't you need 1/32 for the field depth?

18-200mm

OMG, it that a DSLR "only" lense?

SP,

Yep, that's the one.

Peter P,

Yeah, its a dSLR only lens. It only works on 1.6 crop factor sensors.

You can read more about it here: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/18200.htm

Surfer, this ones for you.

Dammit - they've already taken the post off of CL. What was the deal?

It was about a woman advertising her numerous charms.

Peter P Says:
For landscapes, don’t you need 1/32 for the field depth?

Not necessarily so. A smaller aperture will give you more DOF, but if you focus at the hyperfocal distance, everything from that point to infinity will be in focus. On older lenses, this used to be marked with a little infinity symbol on the focus-ring - on newer ones, it is not always marked.

For my 50mm lens, set to f/16, the hyperfocal distance is about 21 feet. If I focus at 21 feet, pretty much everything from 11 feet (about half of HFD) to infinity is sharp. And on my old 28mm lens at f/16, I used to get hyperfocus from 3 feet to infinity.

Not photographic advice :-)
SP

True. This is why compact digital cameras (with tiny lens) never have DOF issues. :)