Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
Doofrat
ParticipantIf I was planning on staying in San Diego for a long time, I would. I’d be buying at a reasonable price and at the same time taking advantage of historically low interest rates. I wouldn’t be paying outrageous property taxes either. I think your “catch” is really not a catch, it’s what has happened over longer periods of time.
ParticipantThis is one of the good/bad things about the Internet. When you write something like that, it will linger forever in “cyberspace” and you will either look like a complete idiot, or a genius in the future.
Participanthttp://piggington.com/images/primer/flattening.gif
Maybe massive inflation?
February 20, 2007 at 12:51 PM in reply to: California Coastal Housing Market Will Not Collapse #45833ParticipantCoastal real estate won’t deflate as much as the outlying areas and as much as condos and condo conversions but it’ll be affected by the burst. An unreasonable valuation is an unreasonable valuation no matter where it is or how nice the location is.
The place I used to rent was a condo on the water in North County. The landlord offered it to me for a price in 1999 and the landlord sold it in 2005 for almost triple that price. What changed that made it worth so much more? Interest rates went down, crazy loans came into style, and mania set in. I can’t really think of much else. What happens when these things go away?
February 16, 2007 at 10:13 PM in reply to: How will the IT community handle the coming housing crash/recession? #45675ParticipantA good way to get into IT now is to learn a skill that is difficult. Don’t even think you can get an MCSE and just walk into a six figure job. That only happens in microskills commercials.
One of the biggest problems for new people is getting that first job. In the late 90s and early 00’s, anybody could get a job. Now employers expect you to walk in and start producing. They want to see experience. One way around this is again to learn something that’s difficult that not everybody is willing to learn, and then putting in your time in the trenches.
I would put more into getting a certification and experience rather than getting a Computer Science degree. Whenever we interview for positions, the degree doesn’t matter much. What we look for is: Are they qualified, can they do the job, will they work well with us and with others.
Look in the classified ads this sunday and look at dice.com and see what people are looking for.
February 16, 2007 at 1:24 PM in reply to: How will the IT community handle the coming housing crash/recession? #45620ParticipantAfter college I switched to a career in IT instead of what my degree was in.
The career has been very good to me for the last decade, but I see it maturing now in both good and bad ways.
The advantages of a career in IT are that you can work just about anywhere there are businesses, there is a wide range of specialities in IT and there is the possibility of changing to a different specialty if you get bored. The pay can be really good, and you get alot of industry standard training paid for by employers that is applicable no matter where you go.
You can always make yourself more valuable by getting into the more difficult fields in IT.
There are definitely disadvantages to IT.
In most organizations, IT is not their core business, therefore your job is an expense to the business, so you have to keep a perspective of where you fit into the organization. Alot of the infrastructure has already been built and so there is not alot of the “hey look, if we implement this neat system, it’ll make this dept. more efficient”, now it’s more like “we’re spending how much for this, how can we cut costs there”
IT is a 24/7 job. Depending on what you do, you can and will get called after hours and on the weekends. Very few IT people work 9-5. On the other hand, alot of things can be handled remotely. (oh, and my own saying is “If it can be done remotely, it can be done from India”)
Management. I know management is bad in alot of places (otherwise Dilbert wouldn’t be funny), but IT seems to attract alot of bad management at the top levels. Many of the top managers don’t have IT experience at the lower levels, so they are easily swayed by flashy sales brochures and demonstrations without realizing that there is a large gap between what the sales guy says and what the product actually does.
Entry into the field can be difficult. Unless you’re lucky, or in management (I’m bitter, I admit it), it can take years to get the knowledge base and experience to make a decent salary.
My take on your concerns about the safety of IT during a recession is that it is a valid concern. Right now things are pretty good, but if you look back at my first paragraph about the disadvantages of IT, you can see that IT is a big budget expense, so guess where they’ll cut when things are bad.
ParticipantThe only difference between the owner selling to you directly or selling on the open market is the savings of the commission and the hassle of the owner having to list, which doesn’t amount to much. In fairly priced market, this would be an advantage, in this market, it’s more like a a Ferrari dealer giving you a free CD player with your purchase.
I’d look at it like that. It’s just another listing with a slight discount.
ParticipantIf it were me, I would not count the assumption that you and your wife will start a successful home based business into your decision. I’d assume that you will be the only one working, or that your wife will have to take what job she can get in a town of less than 100,000 in the middle of the midwest. Then you can sprinkle in whatever optimism you want.
It’s a tough decision, but personally for me, I’d go to school.
ParticipantThis article posted by another reader on this site http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article320.html states that there are $1 trillion worth of ARMs resetting in 2007. Don’t know the accuracy of the statement.
ParticipantI think it differs depending on the person. For my wife and I, I think we’d have to agree with “the breeze” that being wealthy for us would be not having to work for a living, but have enough money to travel when we want to.
ParticipantI don’t pay. Once paid for a message board, but with so much free stuff out there, I don’t see a need to pay. With the message boards, there was an advantage and disadvantage to the pay part. The advantage was that since it was pay to post, there weren’t alot of yahoo’s spouting off or spam, but since it was pay, there isn’t alot of content either. People had great advice and comments to your questions though, but in the end, it wasn’t worth it.
I think an information site is very difficult to get people to pay for because they are relatively easy to set up and there are alot of them out there. The professor had a premium section to this site that was pay for awhile, maybe ask him for his thought’s/advice directly.Participantbut where are the people who are going to make a run on these rentals going to come from?
Who is going to be able to sell their house and move into a rental if everybody thinks renting is better? They won’t be able to sell their house, the only people who will have the choice to rent or buy will be people who have not bought yet, but I think the majority of people who could have or wanted to buy, have bought.
Conversely, the only people left who haven’t bought at least one home didn’t qualify (because they were deceased), or didn’t want to (the people on this board). Of course there are others who for whatever reason didn’t qualify (newly released from prison, presently incarcerated, and people in vegetative states) and are renting but I think the majority of people who wanted to have bought and are locked into their houses for awhile, so I don’t think you’ll see a large migration out of houses into rentals.
My guess would be that more houses will move onto the market as rentals next summer. I’ve seen several places in my area that have been sitting empty for months and have a for sale sign on them and a list price at their previous purchase price. Eventually, these owners will have to give up and rent these out.
Of course, I think that rental prices will probably rise, but more because of overall economic growth and not so much because housing costs more now and people want to rent instead of buying.
I think we’ll see the price to rent ratio come down not because of rising rents but because of falling home prices.
ParticipantWhy not buy a house, and sell it to your brother for $1. Then have your brother buy a house and sell it to you for $1. Then you’ll both have houses for $1 and can pay them off for the price of a small slurpee.
ParticipantIn my immediate area, the sales history is as follows:
Sold 02/X/2006: $610,000 1600 sq ft
Sold 07/X/2006: $644,000 1600 sq ft
Sold 10/X/2006: $512,000 1400 sq ft
Sold 10/X/2006: $482,500 1400 sq ft
Sold 11/X/2006: $485,000 1400 sq ftThe funny thing is that the unit directly connected to the last entry for $485,000 is a 1600 sq ft unit and is currently listed for $669,000. Going to Zillow, you can see that they paid $649,000 for this townhouse. So they are even trying to get their 3% commission back on the sale and trying to break even by selling it for $20,000 more than they paid.
My guess is that they will reject any offer below what they paid ($649,000) because they are already bringing a check to closing at $649,000. What other choice do they have except to reject offers below what they paid?
I can’t believe they haven’t taken it off the market yet, but I’d guess they’ll reduce the price to $649,000 and then give up and take it off the market until next spring when everybody realizes that it’s a good time to buy.
-
AuthorPosts
