[DCRogers]

Man, how do you squeeze 3 beds and 2 baths into 1,100SF?? I live in an older 2 bed 1 bath home of the same size in Normal Heights, and can’t imagine giving up any space to more sleep space or plumbing. Guess modern homes are like the Tardis… more room on the inside than they appear on the outside. 😉

[DCRogers]

Not completely on your topic, but this was an interesting article on the rise of foreclosures in the starter-home market in Charlotte:

http://www.charlotte.com/523/story/58198.html

Great interactive maps also:

http://enterprise.star-telegram.com/ARCIms/Maps/clt/FC300.asp

http://enterprise.star-telegram.com/ARCIms/Maps/clt/sc_2.asp

[DCRogers]

If you want your breath taken away, try this look at the neighborhood that my mother was raised in… likely some of the homes cost nearly as much back then…

http://www.zillow.com/search/Search.htm?addrstrthood=pingree%20street&citystatezip=detroit%2C%20mi

Click on any of the homes to see the bird’s eye view, and then tell me, with a straight face, it’s anything like San Diego will ever be. $500 for a house? Sold! Nothing over 100K! Check out the deals for 40K, 30K, and 20K! Only problem… you gotta live there.

PS: Don’t be fooled by the one house listed at $202K… it’s a Zillow mistake from Scottsdale, AZ… if the actual teleportation has taken place, the owners must be still scrambling to reverse the spell…

[DCRogers]

I have a sister who lives there, and the locals talk up an area called Myers Park… older homes, nearer to downtown. That said, there’s a lot of newer high-end development going on, also, which is likely where the newer money is going.

As for downtown, if you visit, make sure you take a ride on the world’s slowest and most useless trolley car. Since they didn’t have the road crossing guards installed at the time, at every stop, a person had to run off the trolley and block off the street, wait for the trolley to pass, stop, wait for them to jump back on, then it roared off at 5mph to the next corner. Good aerobic exercise for someone, I guess…

[DCRogers]

David Einhorn: “Seasoned member of the NEW board of directors”: this photo says it all:

http://articles.news.aol.com/business/_a/hedge-fund-manager-wins-big-in-poker/20060811112109990008

Fewer chips in front of him now. Guess he (and his fund) couldn’t sell NEW as long as he was on the board… bad timing dude…

[DCRogers]

(Folks, folks, let’s keep this friendly…)

If you believe, as I do, in the risks of climate change, then we are indeed on the cutting edge… we’re not going to flood, like Bangladesh, but we rely on the Sierra snowpack to store our water for summer. It’s a big deal; without it, the snow that falls (even if the amount doesn’t change) just rushes to the sea in a near-immediate snowmelt, so the current situation is worth a few hundred dams.

Lest you think I’m just another panic-spreading liberal, here’s some red meat for the other side: many of our water problems would be immediately addressed if we just made water a fully free-market, tradable, commodity. We’d allocate it efficiently to the most economically useful use. Of course, farms growing alfalfa in the desert with government subsidies don’t like that idea… (but the Bass brothers do… they’ve been buying up Imperial Valley farms, waiting for the day they can sell off the water rights and turn the land back into desert).

Desalination?? Har har har… and perhaps Chinese investors will buy those BBB- MBS bonds and propel more no-doc clients into their first $700K homes… (whoops I forgot my own advice to play nice… better go now…)

DCR

[DCRogers]

I live in Normal Heights, and it broke my heart when my company was moved from near 163/Balboa to Sorrento Valley… what a nightmare commute on the 805. I always loved cutting off the 805 in the morning onto the 163, just as the nasty backups were starting…

[DCRogers]

Zillow claims this is a two bedoom, but boy is it small:

Bedrooms: 2
Bathrooms: 1
Sq ft: 720
Lot size: 5,061 sq ft / 0.12 acres
Year built: 1926
Zestimate: $418,916

Given that Zestimates tend to be high in this neighborhood (vs selling prices currently seen), they’re more on target with 450K, but might end up nearer to 400K. Less than 400K would be a bottom-side breakthrough for this neighborhood… more likely to happen first south of Adams.

I have no idea what the sales history means, unless someone is taking a tax loss and letting someone else eat a capital gains:

05/16/2006: $14,000
02/17/2006: $421,000

[DCRogers]

No worries on the environmental restrictions, not when you include point 5:

5. No open space until you get to Fresno

and

6. Even if Central Valley open space is built on, houses in Fresno don’t put much downward pressure on housing prices in San Francisco and Silicon Valley

[DCRogers]

Better double-check it indeed has a guarantee; the Vanguard money market mutual funds have the disclaimer: “A money market mutual fund investment is not insured or guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or any other government agency. Although a money market mutual fund seeks to preserve the value of your investment at $1 per share, it is possible to lose money by investing in such a fund.”

[DCRogers]

It’s a big house for the neighborhood… almost 2000SF, where the typical house has about half that. That drives up the $/SF calculations in this area.

However, I think this person got over-inspired. North of Adams, perhaps, where larger homes are at a premium, but this neighborhood is best described as “transitional”… OK if people think the transition is going their way, but in these troubled times, they may think it’s as likely to stay the same quality or even devolve, so I think they’ll have to wait for someone willing to pay for the extra space.

[DCRogers]

Hey, a much better job at ad placement… you’ve clearly learned a lot since the more ham-handed attempt on display in thread http://piggington.com/easy_personal_loan. The conversational tone, easy back-and-forth of the phony forum messages… nice!

Now, to make sure your ad has fully impact: meridianlendersonline.com is DECEPTIVE in its use of this space for advertising, is NOT TO BE TRUSTED, and a person would have to be CRAZY to trust any of their financial information with such a company. Go away, “darren”, or “santiago”, or whatever phony name you’re currently using.

[DCRogers]

“[You] came across a site”, huh? If you’re serious, then please tell us about more about your mortgage and what property you own. That would interest people here. Indeed, I would be interested in comparative information from your experiences with different mortgage brokers, if you had them.

However, you must be aware that the reaction of “juice” to your message will be the typical one, as your posting is phrased in such a way as to not only appear an ad for a company, but is also a blatant deception, written as a phony-sounding rube excitedly “sharing” some great find. If this is the case, than a company that introduces itself via deception can hardly be expected to show higher ethical standards if one actually needed a loan. Less paperwork, indeed.

I can only hope that anyone who googles your website name now gets to see this thread. Free advertising can cut both ways!

[DCRogers]

For JJGittes, who plans to retire to a state with no income taxes: uh, unless you plan on a really active (i.e., working) retirement, why would you leave a high-income-tax (and high-services) state just when you stop having income? You've got it backwards, methinks: work in TX, retire in CA!

[DCRogers]

The primary concern I would have is that you are taking a collection of diversified assets and betting them all on a single asset class. Whatever the "X" stands for in the sentence: "I'm taking all my cash, IRAs, and 401k accounts and putting it all into X" is a guarantee you're about to embark on the financial version of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. The first principle of asset management is avoidance of concentrated risk.

Whether you should liquidate your retirement accounts to avoid a mortgage is a separable issue. Consider this, equivalent, situation: you own a house outright, and have a chance to take a 100K mortgage loan, have to government top it up, gratis, by 28% or so (insert your tax rate here); you can invest it in an account that protects it from all taxes for 30 years. Oh, and the government subsidizes your (30-year fixed!) loan, too, so the effective fixed rate is 4% rather than 6%.

Gotta get me some of that!

[Author]

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