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Diego Mamani
ParticipantI was having difficulty waking up… (I’ve been in front of the computer since 8 am) but Drunkle’s superhero comic satire made me laugh loud and now I’m fully awake!!
ParticipantI was having difficulty waking up… (I’ve been in front of the computer since 8 am) but Drunkle’s superhero comic satire made me laugh loud and now I’m fully awake!!
October 4, 2007 at 8:59 AM in reply to: Biggest percentage loss in San Diego, purchased price vs. list or sold price #86933ParticipantAre you guys deducting the 5%-6% agent commission from the asking price when computing the % loss?
ParticipantMy employer offered me a similar deal, but also offered me a 1-month paid rent in case I wanted to rent instead of buying. Ask your employer for something similar, or 2 months, etc.
I sold my old house in 2005, invested the proceeds, and rented a house at my new location. My new employer paid for the 1st month rent (in the high $2000’s) and I’ve been a very happy renter since then.
Had I bought a house in mid 2005, I would have lost close to $100K in equity. It’s like I’m renting for free!
ParticipantDelusional seller who lists with a “value range” yet thinks he’ll get the upper range limit.
The house looks awful from the outside: more like an industrial building; it’s essentially a garage with some construction on top of it. And what’s with those tiny windows? Is that for safety?
ParticipantLast fall the owners listed the home for sale at $1.125 million. “The agent told them to reduce it to $999,000, and at that price it probably would have sold,” Gilman says. But they didn’t—and by early this year the lender had taken possession of the property.
Classic “chasing the market down” behavior…
And now the lender is selling this ancient house to a knife-catcher for $610K. I hope this buyer is not a late-to-the-party flipper, as his house is sure to depreciate below the $610K “bargain” he got.
Participant“Without value preservation, paper money is just paper and not money anymore”
Given the current easy-money policies of the Fed, our paper money will soon be worth less than used toilet paper.
What a crappy state of affairs!
Participant“I don’t care what happens as long as it produces 10% or better returns on CD’s.”
You’re kidding, right? If I put $1M in a 1-year CD paying 10%, I have $1.1M a year later, or only $1.06 once Uncle Sam taxes my interest income.
Problem is, in the high-inflation environment Ben Bernanke is concocting, the price of gold, oil, Euros, gasoline, new cars, etc., etc., may well increase by more than the 6.5% after-tax return that you get from your 10% CD.
What’s the point of having more dollars in 2008 if they’ll have less purchasing power than in 2007?
ParticipantI had an account with them back in 2004. I opened it to get airline miles (AA or UA, can’t remember). It was a good deal (the miles), and service was reasonably good. I closed the account a few months later once the promotional miles were safely stored in my airline frequent traveler account.
ParticipantIndeed. The easy money policies of Alan and Ben have resulted in our dollars (what we get in exchange for our labor) having less and less purchasing power. And for what? To bail out irresponsible gamblers and speculators who take us from one bubble to the next. The text below summarizes the situation nicely.
From:
http://themessthatgreenspanmade.blogspot.com/2007/09/cowboy-keynesianism.html
"US public and private debt is hugely out of equilibrium. There are four ways equilibrium can be restored. US consumers and the US government can cut their expenditure to repay the debt. They can default on some of the debt. They can renegotiate some of the debt. Or the Fed can inflate away the real value of the debt.
Mr Wolf recognises that inflation is the easiest course. Realistically, it may be the only option open to a country that finds it difficult to live within its means. The US will have traded toxic debt to China for lead-painted toys."
ParticipantCashman: Renting rocks!
I see two serious problems with your situation, at least one of which you brought upon yourself:(1) You are waiting for prices to drop. Now, don’t get me wrong, we do know that RE prices are dropping and will continue to drop. However, this is a very slow process! I know my clothes dryer takes close to 45 minutes, yet I don’t sit in front of it waiting for the clothes to dry! I go and do something else in the meantime. Waiting for RE cycles to bottom out is like watching plants grow. No wonder you’re desperate. When you rented, you should have planned on doing so for at least 4 years, if not longer. The fact that you haven’t unpacked completely after 2 years tells me that you naively thought that prices would correct in only 6 months. It could take 6 years my friend! (Look at the last down cycle: 1989/90 to 1996.)
(2) You are renting from a FB who can’t wait to unload the house and hence has it listed for sale at a ridiculously high price. I’ve been renting for a little over 2 years too, but my landlord is a retired gentleman who also owns his primary residence and has no intention to sell the house where I live. You have to put up with realtors and looky-loos. No wonder you are desperate! I suggest doing the following: move to a house without that problem (like mine), OR, offer the landlord to pay him extra $x per month in exchange for taking his house off the market for another year or two. Tell him that RE will boom after 2010 and that he would be a fool to sell now for $900K or $1M when he can get $2M in the next boom. (I’m half joking here, but you get my point).
Good luck, and invest your cash wisely. Do a Google search for David Swensen for ideas on diversification.
September 27, 2007 at 1:51 PM in reply to: “If you want to sell your house then you list it at the market price and you sell it,” he said. “If you don’t really want to sel #86136ParticipantNoone: thank you for educating people in this forum. All the article says is that if your house is worth, say, 200K today, then you are a complete moron if you list for 220K just because that's what you need to break even.
ParticipantKomrade Borat: That graph is pretty useless. Using nominal dollars is the worst option. Better to use real (inflation-adjusted) dollars. Best option: measure debt as a percentage of GDP. This last measure shows that debt has been dropping (non lineraly!) since WWII when it peaked. See the blue line here:
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/debt_gdp.png
Participantsdr,
The impression that I have is that apartment rents are going up in large cities. However, where I live (L.A.-Ventura County Line), rents of SFRs and townhomes have been flat for the last two years.Many of the houses that I see “for lease” today around here, are “also for sale”. The funny thing is that asking prices for these houses are in excess of 280 times the monthly rent. I think the historical ratio is about 120 times! Well, at least prices are not over 300 times monthly rates as they were only two years ago.
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