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bearishgurl
Participant[quote=flyer]. . . Got the house in RSF for a song years ago. . . [/quote]
flyer, believe it or not, I saw a one-story house that needed updating (cosmetic fixer) in Fairbanks Ranch in either late ’93 or early ’94 for $274K! IIRC, it was just over 3K sf on a 20K+ sf lot. I KNOW great deals were to be had in the RE downturn of the ’90’s (when many longtime residents fled the county for other locales).
We could have easily qualified to buy it at the time but it would have been a VERY inconvenient location for us and we were averse to “covenant rules” and the addt’l cost of living within it.
Participant[quote=AN]I love some of the Rolex too. Maybe I’ll pick one up in the distant future. But so far, I LOVE my Omega Constellation: http://www.omegawatches.com/gents/constellation/chronometer-35-mm/12320352002001
[/quote]AN, your watch is very beautiful, IMHO.
Participant[quote=squat250]…and yarmulkes indoors.[/quote]
Do you wear them while you’re lifting, scaredy?
Just wondering . . .
ParticipantBack on topic, I’ve always been partial to Citizen. I prefer the mixed gold/silver band with white face or gold band with black solid face and mini-diamond at 12 o’clock.
My next watch will be a Citizen Eco-Drive gold/silver “Signature Diamond.”
ParticipantCAR, I know you won’t be selling any year soon, but I think you might be surprised if you were to obtain a current appraisal. Quality remodeling is actually WORTH something in areas which are more than 15 years old (not sure if yours is). It seems the vast majority of today’s buyers want “turnkey” property and are willing to pay for that. Hence the continued (irrationally exuberant) interest in *new construction tracts* by the younger cohort of Gen X, as well as Gen Y. This appears to be true, no matter WHERE these new tracts are located (i.e. adjacent to fmr landfill, out in lizardland, in boxed-in warm inland area, etc).
Truly, you have the best of all worlds … location, lot size and extensive updating! It doesn’t get any better than that!
Participant[quote=paramount]…I still think a decent point and shoot has it’s place and is much better than any cell phone camera.[/quote]
Agree … except for the (exceptionally high-quality) Cybershot phones (no longer in production).
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_c905-pictures-2427.php
These phones are actually cameras (first and foremost) and a phone/wi-fi/music player secondarily and hold 8G of memory. A fantastic daily “tool” (unlocked and debranded, of course) :=]
Participant[quote=Jazzman] . . . I bought in a new development in Maui, which recently seems to be doing OK. A few vacation buyers, but the majority appears to be FTBs persuaded with tempting offers of “$1,000 gets you in”. When you speak with these buyers it is very clear many have very little understanding of the market, because bubbles, cheap credit, and high prices are the new normals, and is all they (FTBs) know. . . .[/quote]
I thought it was a good article, too, Jazzman. But I honestly don’t think there is a huge percentage of homeowners “married to their house” in CA. I don’t think the established parts of the state turned over as fast as other parts of the nation, due to Prop 13 and its progeny. Many of the “heirs” who “inherited” these properties have no employment skills or net worth in their own right and couldn’t/can’t qualify to move up. In any case, they wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) “move up” due to having artificially low property taxes, which is all they can afford. Granted, a small percentage of ignorant “heirs” have mortgaged their parent’s property to death and may be in danger of losing it to foreclosure, but I believe these owners are in the minority. I have no doubt that there will be many more “Prop 13 heirs” (Prop 58) in the coming years who will elect to buy their siblings out (if they have any) and raise their families in their childhood home.
There is absolutely no cheaper way to live in CA, ESP in a coastal county.
The vast majority of the owners in CA who currently still have negative equity purchased in the last eight years, likely with little or zero down and an “exotic” purchase $$ situation or purchased in the last 15 years and refied/HELOCed their property to death, IMHO.
The massive new-tract developments in the interior counties of CA which are more than 40 mi from a decent job base are screwed, IMO. This includes the majority of those tracts situated within the counties of No RIV, SB, Stanislaus, interior Monterey, Fresno, SE Placer, Merced, Madera, San Joaquin and NE Sacramento Counties.
The recent new developments in the above counties also advertised in Alameda Co, LA Co and out-of-state billboards and radio stations “$3,000 gets you in” and “Vets 0 down.”
I envision the state’s eternally-distressed interior tract developments possibly eventually being turned over to HUD for Section 8 housing.
I’m divided on whether a High Speed Rail running parallel to SR-99 will bring well-paying jobs thru some of these counties. The jury is still out here, and, in any case, the completion of this proposed project is many years away. Perhaps CSU Merced and CSU Fresno will churn out hundreds of graduates with skills highly sought after which may eventually encourage tech and biotech companies to build campuses there (on much cheaper land).
My personal experience with natives of these counties (as well as those from the other side of the sierras) is that they would *prefer* to stay in their county of origin for a lifetime (to be near family) but cannot find decent paying jobs so migrate to the CA job centers near the coast for employment.
July 14, 2012 at 3:00 PM in reply to: OT: San Bernardino votes to file for bankruptcy protection #748016Participant[quote=no_such_reality] . . . Tax proceeds may have fallen, but they haven’t fallen that much. It’s a sign of the massive over building, over staffing cities have done.[/quote]
Actually, NSR, tax proceeds to CA cities and counties HAVE fallen a great deal, due to downward adjustments made by many CA county assessors in accordance with Proposition 8. This was done en masse to prevent a HUGE backlog of assessment appeals, for which no assessors had the staff to handle.
By law, an assessment appeal made by a property owner must be adjudicated or settled within two years of the assessor’s date of receipt of the appeal (CA Revenue and Taxation Code 1604(c)), or the valuation sought by the appellant automatically stands.
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=rtc&group=01001-02000&file=1601-1615
Where there is a decline in value, the current full cash value of real property (as of lien date) is less than the factored/trended base year value (also referred to as a Prop 8 value).
http://boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/faqs/prop8.htm#1
Proposition 8 requires the county assessor to annually enroll either a property’s adjusted base year value (Proposition 13 value) or its current market value, whichever is less. When the current market value replaces the higher Proposition 13 value on the assessor’s roll, that lower value is commonly referred to as a “Prop 8” value.
Although the annual increase for a Prop 13 value is limited to no more than two percent, the same restriction does not apply to values adjusted under Prop 8. The market value of a Prop 8 property is reviewed annually as of January 1; the current market value must be enrolled as long as the Prop 8 value still falls below the Prop 13 value. Thus, any subsequent increase or decrease in market value is enrolled regardless of any percentage increase or decrease. When the current market value of a Prop 8 property exceeds its Prop 13 value (adjusted for inflation), the county assessor reinstates the Prop 13 value.
See sec 2b: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/.const/.article_13A
See sec 51: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=rtc&group=00001-01000&file=50-54
The “overstaffing” was done by the cities and counties who permitted the massive overbuilding. After these new tracts were nearly fully occupied, cities and counties felt they “needed” this additional staff to serve the new residents. They (erroneously) figured the proceeds from the new property taxes would cover all the costs of the additional staff. When these new areas went bust (due to all the units being originally OVER-financed during the “millenium boom” with “funny money”), this massive “crash” took the valuations of nearby long-existing communities down with them and hence, negatively affected the property tax proceeds from long-existing properties. Had all these tracts in the stix not been approved, new buyers in these areas would have had to buy existing homes (using Stockton and SB, for example) or look elsewhere. They likely wouldn’t have come at all. This new construction attracted many thousands of buyers who would not otherwise have purchased that far away from their hometowns/jobs had it not been that the homes were **new** and cheaper (at the time), since there were no other redeeming qualities to these areas in comparison to more established coastal areas.
Had these negatively affected cities not grown by 100% or more in the last decade or so, they would have had no need to hire additional staff. In any case, the vast majority of the staff they DID hire after 2005 and have now laid off did not even stay long enough to vest in their municipal pension plan (union rules dictate the “LIFO” doctrine when layoffs are enacted [last-in, first out]).
As it stands, the remaining municipal employees in these now “distressed” cities (the vast majority with 10+ years seniority) are now having to “pick up the slack” to service many thousands of additional residents (who were not even there just ten years ago) IN ADDITION to the existing residents who were always there. The existing residents have lost their level of services (tree trimming, sewer repair, library/pool hours, etc) in favor of spreading the existing personnel out to the newer areas. Everybody loses … all due to City Council/County Supervisor greed and shortsightedness.
The CA county/municipal employees who have retired in the last decade and will continue to retire planned all throughout their careers to retire in 2002, 2007 or 2012. The “millenium boom crash and resulting recession” really had no bearing on their plans.
I’ve heard here a few times that there is simply not enough existing housing in CA to serve its current population and find that argument to be ill thought-out and disingenuous. The truth is, Stockton and SB’s new subdivisions were mainly purchased by families from outside those cities and counties and even outside of the state. Many were lured in by billboards placed in NV cities and lower-income parts of CA coastal counties, as well as thru heavy radio and TV advertising. There was NEVER enough of a well-paying employment base in these cities to lure new residents in of this magnitude.
Had their been no new “cheap” tracts built in SB, RIV and San Joaquin Counties and simultaneously “funny money” available to purchase them, these buyers would have stayed in NV, Compton or Tracy. For every buyer who leaves an older home (whether rented or sold) to move to an outlying new home they just purchased, that leaves the older home vacant. And older homes (especially those in VERY desirable CA locations) are much more “thinly traded” than newer “lookalike” tract homes (as sdr has mentioned). These now-distressed cities wouldn’t have needed nor paid for hundreds of new employees and wouldn’t be in the fiscal mess they’re in and ALL their residents would have far better services.
Besides local governments, a huge ripple effect of urban sprawl in CA has adversely affected the ability of its hospitals, court systems, state-provided local services (such as DMV offices) to do their jobs and even services from local Federal offices/courts.
Case in point: SF was not affected by the “millenium boom” RE crash solely due to not having any buildable land (which was not small-plat infill) and has remained solvent and steady through it all. Their workforce hasn’t fluctuated much, if any, over the years and services have remained steady. SF even has MORE services available to low-income residents than all other CA cities, has rent-control in place and a VERY LARGE portion of its longtime property owners (both residential and commercial) have property tax bills protected by Prop 13!
Go figure.
And guess what? If a SF homebuyer is seeking *new construction,* they will be VERY hard-pressed to find it from 45 miles south of the city to 25 miles north of the city on the west side of all bridges. These lizardland-seeking buyers will have to go elsewhere. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It is as it should be and should have been for the more unfortunate inland cities we seeing in the news today.
CA never needed this massive infusion of tract development in the stix to begin with and we don’t need it now. One only needs to study the similarities between San Joaquin and SB Counties and compare them to SF, San Mateo, Marin and Contra Costa Counties, for example, to see why. :=0
July 11, 2012 at 6:02 PM in reply to: OT: San Bernardino votes to file for bankruptcy protection #747722ParticipantAnother sad tale of unchecked, runaway residential development, likely all in tatters now. When the PTB in SB granted the formation of all those new CFD’s in the last 15 years, where did they think all these new homeowners were going to WORK? Did they think everyone who bought in a windy, flat tract in the shadows of Cajon Summit were actually “retirees?”
LOL. No one in their right mind would voluntary “commute” every day from there to East LA, Corona, Pasadena, etc.
Now they have 20% less employees to service likely 140%+ of their original city area. This can’t end well.
This is what happens when you elect politicians with stars in their eyes and sh!t for brains who bow to the All-Powerful, Deep-Pocketed, Almighty Developer. Like other CA cities with land to spare (nevermind they have been lizard habitats since the dawn of time), they fell for the bond-money-generates-property-tax-income ruse (Mello Roos, that is). Now they must sleep in the bed they made.
Sad …. the Piggs would do well to take note of the similarities between SB and Stockton.
Participant[quote=sdrealtor]…The bitter old lady knows plenty about raising kids in a working class community and nothing about doing so in an upper middle class white collar community…[/quote]
Our resident Daily Lush/”Realtor” residing in Gridlocked Nirvana obviously knows nothing about the “demographics” of “south bay” and/or whether or not my kids were raised in an “upper middle class white collar community…” (hint: they actually were and are). He thinks everyone who resides in “south bay” is “working class.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
This is a rather ignorant statement coming from an actual “Realtor.”
ParticipantThe cookie-cutter-tract and lizardland advocates on here are forgetting some minor details.
Pot and other drugs are EVERYWHERE … yes even in Gridlocked Nirvana and that, ahem, “highly rated” Poway Unified School District (PUSD). Why don’t you ask current students in these areas if they have ever been offered pot or other drugs at school??
There is actually MORE drugs flowing in schools where the students carry $20-$50 or more on them every day. Why? Because they can easily be sold!!
In many of the schools where the bulk of the students are from lower-socioeconomic backgrounds, it is unprofitable to waste time selling drugs as the students don’t have the money to buy them. These students VERY often own only three uniforms, a backpack, a few school supplies and a “free lunch” card :=]
Participant[quote=spdrun]OB has good sidewalks and has the ability to walk to interesting places (downtown, beach, etc) without 4 or 6-lane roads being involved. Those kind of areas are generally safer from a traffic perspective.
I’d say pot is kid-neutral, neither friendly nor unfriendly. Unless someone was air-dropping bales of it on a town, in which case the town has bigger problems.
Kids aren’t monks. They don’t need isolation and shelter to grow up, nor is it good for them. Seems like bearishgurl is one of the few posters here who “gets” it.[/quote]
LOL! I just dropped two 16 year-olds at the curbside (my kid and a friend) at the airport to fly to SF for a week. They’ll be staying in Portrero and taking public transportation to shop. They can lunch at the local delis which are walking distance to the house they’re staying in. They’re free to shop at Union Square and hang out in nearby SOMA while the relatives work.
If their parents had raised them in Lizardland behind a gated community, micromanaged their classrooms (as much as they could get away with, lol) and vetted are their friends and acquaintances all of their lives, these kids wouldn’t even know how to conduct themselves on such a trip! My own remaining kid has been flying to SF by themselves since they were 11.
I think we discussed here recently that your kid may end up in Beserkely (spdrun’s reference :)) or other similarly-situated public college campus and witness a fellow student in the dorms or apartments looking at porn on their laptop (heaven forbid)! If they don’t know anything about it because they have been “sheltered” all of their lives by “helicopter parents,” how are they going to react to this??
You are NOT doing your kids any favors by making sure they always have a plain vanilla, generic life in cookie-cutter land, IMHO. The world that they’ll have to make a living in is nothing like that. They may as well learn this fact of life early on.
Participant[quote=livinincali]Here’s a good blog post that shows the progression of FHA defaults. It’s been steadily rising ever quarter and Q2 2012 should be out soon.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/04/lawler-comments-on-fha-single-family.html%5B/quote%5D
I could have predicted this years ago. The FHA loan ceiling is much too high almost everywhere in the US. The FHA 203(b) program was initially put into place to assist first time moderate income buyers in getting a “leg up” into homeownership. It was NEVER intended to enable buyers to purchase luxury housing and/or housing in highly desirable areas for only 3.5% down.
Even with the several increases in up-front and monthly MIP premiums in recent years, this extra MIP will prove to NOT be enough to insure the inevitable tide of defaults (by borrowers who never should have been approved for those mortgages) and subsequent foreclosures, IMO.
The FHA mortgage “ceiling” in SD County should have always been =<$300K. It's not supposed to be a "major player" here and never was. This is a MORE THAN ADEQUATE mortgage for the purpose the program was intended for.
Participant[quote=DaCounselor]I’m glad you are enjoying raising your kids in OB, spdrun. Most people would not agree with you that it’s a great place to raise a family and the OB demographics support that, but to each his own.
Unfortunately you have taken to bashing people like me who have chosen to raise their family in one of many very nice north county coastal suburban areas. You present the typical boilerplate and frankly tired argument that we are “fraidy cats” as you say. To the contrary, many of us are former OBecians or emigrated from South Mish or PB to the quite idyllic north county coast where the schools are top notch and the family lifestyle is amazing.
We still visit the old neighborhoods, with our kids, and we also travel with them to points around the country and the globe with far more (ahem) ‘character’ than OB will ever have, so the kids are plenty exposed to all walks of life. We simply choose not to live in a cramped high-density somewhat run-down area with a considerable hodgepodge population of homeless, drug users, transients, 60’s relics and young singles where the properties and lots are small and the public schools are not very good. That’s it, and it’s really pretty simple.[/quote]
This is inaccurate, DaCounselor. In fact, many, many lots in OB (ESP upper OB) are large, MUCH larger than a buyer could get in a typical north county tract. Many also have alley access and addt’l alley parking. Those “relics” you are speaking of hang around down at the Newport St shopping corridor and outside the beach restrooms. The 1000+ family homes up the hill are situated up to one mile away and there aren’t any corner liquor stores up there! There is Dog Beach, where dogs can run free. There is a fantastic skateboard/trick bike park within walking distance at Robb Field, as well as ALL KINDS of activities for kids there!
In addition, there are three VERY family-oriented enclaves in neighboring 92106, Fleetridge, Roseville and Pt Loma Woods. The fabulous location and bay/city views of 92106 are absolutely bar none in the county. The whitewater views over Sunset Cliffs (upper 92107) are absolutely bar none in the county, ESP in comparison to the tracts you are directing rired to east of I-5 up there!
The local elementary schools in 92106/92107 are highly sought after, so much so that SDUSD teachers must have at least 15 years seniority to even place a “bid” to be assigned to one! The MS’s/HS’s are also very good and one, SD High Tech Middle/High, only admits students by a lottery system. Students all over SDUSD travel up to one-hour each way (in rush hours) just to attend HTM/HTH.
I will concede that the average family home in the OP’s price range is likely 2100 – 2700 sf in 92106/92107. A family of six can very comfortably live in this size home. And it is possible that a larger home that needed a bit of work could be found there, as well.
A 3000+ sf home is not a “need,” except for perhaps a family of 10 or more.
There is NO MELLO ROOS in 92106 except for Liberty Station. This newer area just north of the airport is undesirable in that its streets are very crowded, it has no view and has deafening jet-takeoff noise. There is NO MELLO ROOS in 92107.
rired, these two zips are so valuable (exempting Liberty Stn) that their housing inventories have experienced very little devaluation (in some pockets, none) in the recent recession/RE downturn. For this reason and a few more, these areas are very good investments for sound properties on good streets. The “lifestyle” in these areas cannot be duplicated anywhere in the county.
DaCounselor, many of the TOP (and I mean the most accomplished with the MOST RE education and experience) brokers and agents in this county have been working 92106/92107 for more than three decades. I suspect if you “fire” one of them, they’ll (happily) send you on your way :=D
rired, you really DO need to come to SD and see for yourself all the varied housing choices in your price range.
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