patrick.net

OO Says:
If you build your house properly in BA, you don’t need AC.

Pfft... forget Bay Area, I have been in buildings in Harare and Nairobi that were designed for natural temperature control and did not need air-conditioning even in mid-day at the equator. It can be done, but it does not look like the bastardized Tuscan Garage-Mahals with Mission-style accents and Ionic columns that are so popular around these parts.

# northernvirginiarenter Says:
ONE in SEVEN mortgage holders are worried about making their payments within in the next 12 months.

That sounds _low_, actually. Just One in Seven mortgage-slaves?

The other six are all good, or are there a few Alfred E. Neuman's among them?

It can be done, but it does not look like the bastardized Tuscan Garage-Mahals with Mission-style accents and Ionic columns that are so popular around these parts.

Word.

You mean to describe 90% of new construction in Palo Alto, Los Altos or Los Altos Hills???

The alternative is the ubiquitous 3000sf+ McCraftsman on a 4000sf lot.

I hate Tuscan, Mission, or Mediterranean architectures.

Craftsman and Tudor homes are so cute. :)

I don't want McAnything. Architectural details are everything.

Bap33 rants:
listening to thump thump music so loud it is vibrating the windows of the store

Yesterday, on Lawrence Expwy, I was at a light next to one of these cro-magnon blokes whose car - some kind of eighties-vintage Pontiac sedan, with an exoskeleton composed of equal parts bondo, paint and scratches - had the 3 kilowatt audio WMD going....

...so loud that with each thump-a-whaka-thump, the windows and mirrors palsied to the extent where it was difficult to see through the rippling glass - and the excess air-pressure inside the car was expelled through the panels with a violent, rubbery-fart.

Does a car that sounds like a flatulent buffalo actually impress whatever female demographic that these buggers are trying to mate with? Has it occurred to them that their courtship may actually be improved if they actually spent the money/effort on buying/stealing a better class of automobile? Or is the intended audience for this display not a female, but instead similarly retarded examples of the male?

Sorry for straying off topic, but it isn't any worse than getting Steamed about Rice just because it isn't White. :-)

"F" for sentence structure.

The other six are all good....?
Let's see: you, me, OO, Jimbo, Malcolm, surfer-x

Sorry for straying off topic, but it isn’t any worse than getting Steamed about Rice just because it isn’t White.

Outstanding!!!

Some anecdotal evidence from Fort Collins, CO. Since April 1st, inventory appears to have climbed from about 2100 to 2350 homes, condos and land for sale. I think there might be some CRE mixed in, but that's relatively light.

If anyone recalls (not that I'd expect that), I predicted that condos and townhomes had been overbuilt thanks to the Fort Collins zoning laws that require a certain amount of high density housing in every development. In my personal favorite development, the Lodge at Miramont, I've watched a few 2bd/1ba condos with 1 car detatched garages go for $129K-139K. Circa 2003-2005 those were selling for into the $160K range and above. A significant amount of REO is pushing the comps lower. I suspect that many of these newer condos and townhomes were pushed to subprime borrowers by buildings using pocket brokers and ARMs. Some are just sitting on the market, I suspect so far underwater that they will eventually be foreclosed or never sold.

Nice homes are still selling in the $200-300K range, but only when the price is reasonable ($95-100/sqft seems to be a magic number) and the property quality is excellent. Anything overpriced is languishing on the market for months.

Up near CSU, there seems to be a definite dynamic of 100% cash buyers picking off the REO around campus whenever there's a bargain. You can tell when something is underpriced, and it always ends up in Backup about 2 days later.

Lots more listings advertising "short sale". As observed much earlier, the REO no longer gets listed with any keywords indicating bank owned property. Some of the builders are cutting lot costs, but since I don't want to get roped into their contracts, I've ignored those. Plus Fort Collins has an asinine rule where if the raw land is improved with water tap and power, your property tax moves into the 10%/year assessed value range. There are $130K estate lots in town with $3.5K/year in taxes.

To my great frustration, there seem to be quite a few folks in my cash-rich position looking in the same nice neighborhoods. It's sufficient that the really prime, correctly priced properties get snipered off the market in a week or two. But if you're outside those small zones... fuggedaboudit. You might as well be walking on the sun.

LOL @SP

Very entertaining stuff there. :-)

In honor of WaMu's $1.14 billion loss, here a are couple of the listings from the "it can't happen here file":
First, let's start off with this one: $929900 CUSTOM BUILT 3.5 STORY HOME IN THE BERKELEY HILLS. Was sold in 2006 for $1.6 million and a year later WaMu took it back for $1,066,217. Oh, and the Relitter isn't wasting his time (err... money), listing it on the MLS. A bargain all around.

There is also a newly constructed home at 1871 Tunnel Road that is owned by WaMu. Appears that the lien was for $750k, so they might come out even as it is offered at $815k. As the MLS listing says: Contemporary 3 bed 3 bath in Oakland/Berkeley Hills. Bank's Loss is your gain.

if the raw land is improved with water tap and power, your property tax moves into the 10%/year assessed value range. There are $130K estate lots in town with $3.5K/year in taxes.

When I was recently looking at house prices in C-Springs and Castle Rock, I noticed the tax rates on property with houses was much less than that. Does Ft Collins lower the rate once a house is built on the raw land?

Does Ft Collins lower the rate once a house is built on the raw land?

As completely ridiculous as that seems... yes.

Comparison of a 1/4 acre improved lot with a decent house in the same subdivision. The locations are Harbor Walk Estates and Warren Shores, respectively; both are around the perimeter of Warren lake and do not have lake access. You can find both properties on Colorado HomeFinder.

1106 Devon Way Fort Collins, CO 80525
$180,000 - Land
Subdivision: Harbor Walk Estates
Property Type: Land
Property Tax: $3,772
Tax Year: 2007
Lot Size: 11,520

3701 Gull Way Fort Collins, CO 80525
$325,000 - 2495 sf, 3 bed 3 bath, 1973 Single Family
Subdivision: Warren Shores
Property Type: Single Family
Property Tax: $2,377
Tax Year: 2007
Finished Square Feet: 2,495
Car Spaces: 2
Lot Size: 7,971

This woman is a total Bay Aryan (warning: biodynamic farming alert), but you have to admit her 3,136 square foot pad in Napa is pretty sweet.
She is not home for the day's warmest hours, but with the insulation of the 18-inch pisé walls and ventilation from transoms atop the dining room doors, she didn't even consider installing air conditioning.

"It never gets hot, it never gets cold," she said. "It's a very efficient home."

OK, the shit just hit the fan. Fresh off the press from KGTV channel 10.

San Diego County median home price is $395,000 down from $490,000 in March 2007. (That was down from over $600K)
Sales down 35% (Last year was down 40%)

Craftsman and Tudor homes are so cute.

Peter, did you ever get my email forwarded from administrator? I was wondering if you looked down on the local architecture of the faux-craftsman houses.

Malcolm:

Link please!

Dennis, I got your email. Thanks for the pics. (Sorry for not replying earlier. Got distracted.)

I don't look down on any architecture, since I live in an apartment.

But I am free to hate. :twisted:

I hate Eichlers and I hate Ranches.

Link please!
I cribbed this from the HBB:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20080415-1114-bn15housing.html

I am envious of her Napa retreat. The pictures were quite inspiring; I've saved a few as reference. I loved the open living room. I've toyed with many diagrams of earth-sheltered and earth-bermed retreats. One green building site detailed shotcrete airforms that yielded dome-like structures with reinforced steel skeletons.

I've also thought that it would be awesome to basically just have a near-town summer mountain retreat that basically just have an elegant bathroom plus a little storage. The outside would have pillars for erecting a semi-permanent tent and shade. Cooking would be firepit, minimal power would be photovoltaic, hot tub would be solar. The view of the lakes and city lights would be exquisite.

I would love to have a large garden as well, but it's high and dry in the foothills. Haven't figured out how to solve that one yet. I did see a site where a local guy was experimenting with genetically toughened varieties of wine grapes.

Wow relative to latest San Diego numbers.

That's Armegeddon.

We should all keep in mind that this is all occurring on the front end of the downward cycle. We haven't even really seen much in terms of employment softness yet. Man, once that hits....is CA looking at an over correction from historical medians? 70% off peak? Yikes.

SP,

Tuscan Garage-Mahals is a great one, you're very inspired today.

But on the topic of Rice, I'd say her main traits are that she is double-minority, smart about being ruthless, not very principled, and not the least bit afraid of pandering to older white men that are part of the conventional power structure. These are all negatives for a leader in my book, except one that is neutral. Guess which one. Go Aunt Jemina.

OO,

Do you have specific knowledge as to what is the best solution to turn a BA crapshack (per building code) into something that is livable without forced cooling, 24x365?

Thanks for the link EB. I DVRd it.

My source for the high above 600K is from the CAR. Their figure is for single family homes. Their data has the median above 600K from April 2005 to at least April of 2006 which was when I stopped graphing it.
I should note that Dataquick data is for the county of San Diego whereas CAR's data is for all the regions of the city of San Diego and it's suburbs.

its

justme,

The most efficient way is to re-insulate the house. Double-pane windows, doors, insulation throughout, you can use wool or fiber glass if you want to be fancy. I believe that you can even get some tax break on your insulation cost.

Then you may want to see if you have enough windows and openings facing the right direction (south, east), and if you can find ways (adding covered porch) to reduce heat dumped into your house in the afternoon if it faces west, or reduce your windows and openings to the north.

justme Says:
Do you have specific knowledge as to what is the best solution to turn a BA crapshack (per building code) into something that is livable without forced cooling, 24×365?

One of the simplest ideas I know of is vents.

In the northern hemisphere, install vents low to the ground in the southern wall, and high near the ceiling (preferably under eaves) on the northern wall. In summer, this results in cold air getting sucked in near the floor from the south while hot air gets expelled from the top to the north. That alone drops your peak room temps by 5 degrees - which is a big deal because over the course of the day, that 5 degree temperature difference adds up to a huge amount of trapped heat. The vents can even be in different rooms, as long as there is some way for air to flow from one to the other.

You can increase the effect by having some kind of water-feature just below your south vent, which cools incoming air even more dramatically. The longer the air-way over water, the better it gets. And a couple of slow fans on the exhaust side can help too.

I have seen variations of this trick used literally all over the tropics - central and southern africa, Tangier, Iraq, Lebanon, Ceylon, Indonesia, Turkey, etc.

Forced cooling? In The City you almost never could imagine needing cooling. Maybe a few days out of the year, but on those days, I just go to the beach.

We have our house very thoroughly insulated though, per OO's suggestion. A breeze blows in almost every afternoon and it used to get chilly before the insulation.

Malcolm/NVR,

link please

StuckinBA gave you the full link at 10:41 am. It's the March SoCal numbers from DataQuick.

Alright, I know median is not the best measure available,

BUT

EVERY county on the DQ SoCal list has a YOY median down 15% plus, and the SoCal aggregate median is down 23.8% YOY.

Plus sales have taken ANOTHER big seasonally adjusted fall (up 18% from February when the normal Feb/Mar delta is 38%).

March Bay Area DQ numbers are due out in a few hours. :twisted:

SP,

Interesting summer venting idea. But why have the air intake on the hot southern side of the house? Why not draw in the air from the cooler, shaded northern side of the house?

Zephyr Says:
why have the air intake on the hot southern side of the house?

In the tropics, the sun's arc is to the north in summer. The base of the southern wall is usually in shade in summer because the sun passes overhead to the north.

However, I am not an expert :-) so there may be another explanation too.

I'm sure Different Sean would rig his vents differently.

Meanwhile, here I am in flyover country, sitting here bitter - bitter I say - and clinging forelornly to my guns, my religion, and my hatred of swarthy foreigners. ;)

I think the best ventilation in the tropics is to be in a hammock under a shady tree by the beach, with a cool drink...

Meanwhile, here I am in flyover country, sitting here bitter - bitter I say - and clinging forelornly to my guns, my religion, and my hatred of swarthy foreigners.

Here I am, sitting here bitter and jealous, clinging to blogs. ;)

I think the best ventilation in the tropics is to be in a hammock under a shady tree by the beach, with a cool drink…

The tropic is too humid regardless.

It is probably nicer to get an outdoor massage in Sedona right next to the red rocks.

Thanks for the responses detailing insulation and ventilation. Interesting reading. The ventilation technique was news to me.

The big question about insulation, to me, always has been whether non-invasive retrofitting techniques really are as good as the invasive methods, or how significant the differences are.

Probably so. The massage would be good. I don't like humidity, but I do like the ocean to moderate the temp. So I think San Diego and Santa Barbara sound pretty good.

Probably so. The massage would be good. I don’t like humidity, but I do like the ocean to moderate the temp. So I think San Diego and Santa Barbara sound pretty good.

I like Santa Barbara. San Diego is a bit warm.