It’s been longer than 14 years. I’ve been on piggington since the white background. Since way before the forum started. Since the paid content. Since 2004. (There was a glitch way back when where you got dropped and had to sign up again.)
In 2004, very few people thought that San Diego housing was in a bubble. In retrospect, it seems completely obvious. But back then only Rich and a very few others (including me) thought it was obvious. I scoured the web for confirmation of what seemed obvious to me, but there was almost none. Virtually everybody was convinced that housing would just keep going up. I kept googling variations of “san diego housing bubble” and piggington was one of the very few, lonely sites that consistently came up. I eagerly read everything Rich wrote. It all made perfect sense to me, and the stuff I found elsewhere really didn’t measure up. Rich’s data and analysis gave me the confidence I needed to make the leap. I sold my house in 2005 and rented. In 2010, I bought the house I own now. I bought it for about the same as I sold my other house for, but the property is much, much better. And worth about 15-20% more (prices in Carmel Valley dropped somewhat less than in most places). I found a financial advisor – Rich himself – through piggington and got through the 2008 crisis in very good shape. I invested the money from the sale of the house in 2005 in some other things as well, and was able to buy the house in 2010 with those earnings and pay it off completely (although I kept a mortgage on it until very recently while I invested that money elsewhere).
I am retired and my $1.7M house is paid off. That would definitely not be the case without piggington.com. Which is to say without Rich.
