patrick.net

Housing prices never fall because no more land is being made.

Huh?

Yeah, but heck, I’ll tell it at least once to everyone I care about. Ain’t about to hear how I knew “all this” was coming and didn’t say squat to ‘em.

Do you guys remember the Will and Grace "I told you so" dance?

Just throwing fuel on the fire Peter since MP was here winding you guys up. That condo looks very nice. $682 / sf is a good deal? Jesus.

It is not for myself, of course. Is it a good deal? I do not know.

Considering that a San Jose condo next to the airport is selling for $480/sf with no view...

Shit that condo is SUPERPRIME. 1.15mil? Why not buy 2 and be twice as prime?

Multiply any prime number by two and you get a non-prime number.

How do you guys approach this one?

Depends on who the person I am talking to. Sometimes, I just pretend to be a bull in order to avoid "awkwardness".

"This is a MIRAGE vs ILLUSION question (see glossary). If the market is as speculative as we have thought, sustained non-appreciation itself will be sufficient to trigger a crash."

Thanks Peter.

But all of my friends have heard my bubble throey at least once.

"How do you guys approach this one?"

Well, I'm a big jerk with no sensitivity, so when the nosey neighbors asked about the sale, I'd get real loud and aggressive and say,

"this whole market is a giant bubble and you've got to be an idiot to buy real estate at these prices. Me, I'm going to pawn this big overpriced piece of ___ off on any sucker who will take it."

No kidding. Maybe a little less nasty, but I tried to get my point accross. Part of that was 4 years of having to put up with "this area will always be in demand because it's such a great place to live," and "the Redskins are going to win it this year."

1. Other than the schools and the good assortment of people, the place was a god-awful place to live. Traffic, high price, bad weather . . .

2. The Redskins suck and will never be any good with an old man at quarterback. Don't let the 2-0 fool you. They're going down.

Yeah, but heck, I’ll tell it at least once to everyone I care about. Ain’t about to hear how I knew “all this” was coming and didn’t say squat to ‘em.

Agreed--but anyone buying should go outside their realtor for ample cautionary information. That said, a coworker discussed how they want to buy a bigger home right now, despite knowing that prices could easily fall. He actually said he "worked the numbers" and they were in his favor. That is, until we did some calculations together, taking a moderate bust into account--and oops it didn't look so great after all. (I also cautioned this guy against buying Worldcom stock--to no avail)

I suspect a lot of home-buying decisions are not rational at all. It's just like someone eyeing that new sports car in the showroom. At first, it seemed out of the question; there were a hundred reason not to buy. But later, after thinking about the car, it becomes a "necessity" of sorts, and we concoct arguments to rationalize the decision. Been there, done that myself. The same goes for houses. They're are such visible examples of our self-image, financial standing, and daresay "self-worth" that people will do anything to "move up". It's just a part of the "ownership culture" that many people will pay dearly for.

Peter P? You "try to avoid awkwardness?" That must be a Cali sensitivity thing. There's nothing I like more than blasting the RE idiots.

"Yeah, you think house prices are going up?" I ask them. Then I reel off about 10 statistics that say otherwise. They never have an answer. It seems that 100% of RE bulls are either Realtors or clueless people.

I won't talk about realty with my friends, who on average own 2.5 homes per family, and most of them picked up the homes in the last 2 years. I just made my case earlier on and keep my mouth shut. There is no point talking about it once the deals are done. With my close family, all of us turn out to be quite financially prudent, so no worries there.

I bought my current home 9 years ago so unless my neighborhood loses 65% of the current value, I will be fine. This is my primary residence, and I am locked in with a low property tax.

I also think selling your only residence is kind of a gamble. If you buy in the last 3-4 years, it is worthwhile to do it. If you are like me, bought early at a low point, you'd be better off sitting through the bubble.

If you have an investment property, it will be stupid not to unload at this point. But don't talk too much about it until your transaction is done. You do want the buyers to think the party will last forever.

Kurt S, your post was dead on. Well put.

Do you guys think it make sense to take advantage of the price compression and move from a crash-prone/less-desirable area to a more desirable area?

I am trying to help out another friend who lives in a "sub-prime" area. Selling and renting is not a feasible solution.

Multiply any prime number by two and you get a non-prime number.

lmao!

Peter P? You “try to avoid awkwardness?” That must be a Cali sensitivity thing. There’s nothing I like more than blasting the RE idiots.

Not really. I am not sensitive at all. I just try to avoid unnecessary confrontation because it does not serve me any better.

Bud or bud light, sir>?

And I will do the "I told you so" line after the fact. :twisted:

Test

The problem is not reversing 47% on the stock of inventory of 3 years ago, it is about reversing the 47% on the much larger stock of inventory TODAY. That is entirely different beast from just rewinding backwards in time. The biggest time bomb is a lot of homes sold in the last 2 years were 60% interest-only loans at the current valuation, think about how many bad loans that will create for our banks!

That is why I said NOMINAL value won't drop that much, American government would rather depreciate USD to sustain the nominal value than upholding USD but letting many banks fall on bad loans. When the last S&L failure happened, the national savings rate of US was hovering around 7-8%. Our savings rate is negative if adjuted for tax today.

What I meant to say was, 60% of the homes bought in the bubblish areas were based on interest-only loans. Therefore, a slight dip in the valuation wipes out the equity for the owner completely. When Tokyo's bubble deflated, Japanese had an average household savings of 700,000 USD! What do you think the average household savings of Americans is? I would venture to guess, even for the high-earners of Bay Area households, if you don't count the CEOs and high level executives, the per household savings will not be over $100,000.

At this point, the Fed has no choice but to increase the interest rate. If it doesn't right now, when things turn really ugly, it will be running out of amunitions to use. What interest rate cuts can you give if you are at 2%? It is trying to manage a soft landing through signaling that we are going to enter an era of high interest rate, if RE will land at all. But when things go really bad, Fed will have to lower its rate again, that is why the yield is inverted, because most people still see the inevitable fate of the Fed's lowering its rate sometime in the future. At least that is the bond buyers' conscent.

Surfer-X sleeps with boomer port?

Well I may as well butt-in with some OT stuff:
Today I spoke w/obviously inexperienced realtor about a condo she's selling; I went to the open house on sat & she said offers were being accepted until monday. She mentioned early in the conversation that they were still accepting offers, they currently had 3 offers, and that the owner was counter-offering one of them.
Later on in the conversation, she mentioned to me that all the offers were over the asking price. So I says, "Maybe I'm not experienced enough in RE, but it seems odd that the owner is counter-offering a bid that's above the ask price". She replies: "Oh, did I say we were counter-offering?"
Am I missing something? Is this a common practice? Or did she get caught in her own BS?
I should also comment that the list price was 3% below the sale price of an identical unit (sold in August; 369K vs. 380K). At the open house, she told me that the owner was aware of the discrepancy, to which I replied: "well I should hope so". LOL she also made a comment about how the toilet flushed really powerfully which is good for guys. WTF? It was kind of twilight zonish.

RE agents full of BS? No way! Funny story.

How long do they have to be flat to “trigger” the crash?

Perhaps, long enough for people to realize that negative cashflow does not make sense when appreciation is zero. ;)

It is not really wishful thinking. I much rather have soft-landing with mild depreciation while income catches up.

Answer: Mabye, if making one-time long term move, but really cant say unless you tell more specifics about that person’s situation. I am out for tonight. Nite all.

Friend is planning to move to nicer neighborhood anyway and is not concerned about possible losses.

Good nite.

Mr. Right, why do you call yourself Mr. Wrong? Why not Mr. Left? ;)

Here's an email I got back from my Realtor in DC. . .

"As for business, things have definitely slowed around here. In fact, I was just thinking of you the other day and how you guys really lucked out to sell at what I think was the top of the market. Somebody is definitely watching out for you! There is much more inventory now and though the houses are selling, it's definitely taking longer and buyers have become much more picky; offering less money, home inspections, even asking the seller to pay closing costs...Looks like it's becoming a buyer's market..."

"but it’s like there really MUST be a rather large slowdown in activity for the paper to feel the need to address it in such a manner as they did. I would think the market is the market and thats that, but here is the Chronicle almost taking sides"

Agreed--it completely read like damage control; it's beyond ludricous to suggest RE prices are pegging everyone's salary increases, or the economy for that matter. I sent an email to that journalist to that effect. Consider one source: "Todd Sinai, associate professor of real estate at the Wharton School" (per the article)

""LOL she also made a comment about how the toilet flushed really powerfully which is good for guys."

LMAO! If she weren't a real estate agent, I might think she was insulting the male gender in a roundabout way, but, um, it sounds more like she's just stupid. I think we'll know the market has turned for good when we see "extremely powerful toilets" listed among a home's amenities in real estate listings. :-)

"“Oh, did I say we were counter-offering?”
Am I missing something? Is this a common practice? Or did she get caught in her own BS?"

Could it be that maybe the highest offer has something attached to it that the owner didn't like (paying for repairs or something), so maybe the could have counter-offered that they would accept the offer minus that contingency?

Or she could have just been full of it. Which would explain her fascination with toilet power.

I've been wondering about the negative (and positive?) social impacts of a real estate market gone out of control. Are there positives for society as a whole? I can think of quite a few negatives, and we've already discussed many of them. How is the current real estate market changing our cultural mindset?

Does that sound like touchy-feely BS? :-P Not sure if anyone is interested in this as a new topic of discussion, but since we seem to be reaching new levels of bloatedness on this thread, I thought I'd throw it out here. Or we can just bloat on. :-) (Anyone remember that song? I'm technically too young to know it, but I listen to a lot of 70s music.)

"lots of folks who think saving and being free of debt are Good Things. That right there will be a positive change in leadership."

I hope you're right. That's certainly a positive future to look forward to.

"I don’t think we have a “cultural mindset.” What we have is human nature, which hasn’t changed any that I can see"

One negative change I've wondered about is the degredation of values that (I think) takes place when people are stretched to more and more desperate ends. If, like in the case of California, it becomes harder and harder for people to survive on an average income, do they become more likely to steal, lie, and cheat to help themselves survive? I think they do.

There are people with strong moral backbones, there are people with no backbones at all, and then there are most people somewhere in the middle, who will do the right thing if it's an easy choice. But if the choice means having something for themselves that they couldn't otherwise have, then they might make the immoral choice.

These can be really small things, but lots of small things build up to create a more morally lax society.

I was talking to a few acquaintances recently, who'd both found expensive jewelry in store parking lots. They were BOTH proud of the fact that they'd found the stuff and were WEARING it. I was shocked that neither of them had thought to turn the jewelry over to the store management (most stores have a lost and found box). They simply thought, finders keepers. This is the kind of relatively small thing I'm talking about.

New thread Social effects of the bubble for Jamie. :)

Cindy:
Is your Realtor just an honest person or a friend of yours or something

Long and interesting story. I'll give you the short version.

I picked the guy because I called him in early March 05 in response to an obvious bait and hook "what's your home worth" thing on line. I was more curious to hear the pitch than anthing else. The guy calls me that night. I like him already. Then I tell him I'm thinking about selling in 06, and he says, well, what the hell, I'll come over. So he does. We hit it off. About the same age, culture, etcetera.

2 Weeks later I can't sleep. I've just been told by a friend/realtor that 90% of his clients are interest only. I wake my wife up and tell her we have gotta sell NOW. Not next year. This not only puts huge pressure on us to prep the house and find a new house, but it also cuts of a bunch of stuff in DC for us that was only rejigged with a lot of difficulty. After 2 weeks of fighting, she finally agrees.

I call this guy, who I know is 99% condo business and has little experience in my area, and I tell him if he takes 1% commission on the selling end, I'm putting my house on the market. He agrees. He asks me why the urgency, and I tell him, "because this ship just crested the top wave."

So we spend a lot of time chatting about real estate, contract law, contract theory, and such and such. And I'm educating the guy, because everytime the other realtor says Boo, I tell him "yeah that'll never hold up, and here' why." And everything goes according to plan and we get a fat check and he gets a fat check and famousness is rampant.

And so he knows I know. He knows I see through 99% of the bullshit that's out there, and the 1% I can't see through is always coming out of the mouths of hot chicks who I can't resist, and there seems to be so many of them. Damn.

And so, you see, he has no reason to lie to me, because it would do nothing for either him or me.

I did find it interesting that he described me as "lucky."

I guess I've been lucky my whole life.

"This is not my beautiful wife. This is not my beautiful house."

“”LOL she also made a comment about how the toilet flushed really powerfully which is good for guys.”

What can't thay install industrial toilets (like those in office buildings) that can flush down half a roll of toilet paper in every home?

Should I buy a business so i can bring money home to support family or should i invest money in stock, bond, gold give me an idea? I live in BA. Any suggesttion greatly appreciate.

Focus on finding a job first.

Buying business for cashflow does not usually work out. I have friends we got burnt multiple times trying. If a business is truly profitable, why is it for sale? Unless you can definitely add huge value to the business in ways that the previous owner could not do, there is no point doing it.

(Not investment advice.)

There is no jobs out there, that’s why i want to buy business.

I thought hiring is picking up. My friend went to a Stanford job fair yesterday and he said it was much larger than last year.

I would be very suspicious of any number quote by a business being sold. Is the number net of hired help (which may be necessary) and a modest salary for yourself?

BTW, you may want to try to look for work before thousands of real estate agents and flippers suddenly realize that they need to do the same.

I’m a machinist.

Have you looked into buying a small machinist shop (or a related business)? If you are in the business, at least you will have a better understanding of the work and you can better avoid potentially bad investments.

Just want to add...

Many business owners may tell you that they have cashflow off the book for tax reasons. Beware.