[El Jefe]

No recommendations, but insight says that you may be fighting an uphill battle. My knowledge is more on the commercial side, but it seems that the only deals going through right now are negative risk for the banks… at most 70%LTV with unencumbered collateral at least equal to the project value.

I would expect to put up collateral that could be easily liquidated by the bank, and valuable enough for the bank to be made whole should they end up with a half developed chunk of lizzardland on their books.

*disclaimer* No lizzards were injured in the drafting of this comment.

[El Jefe]

I’ve been using the nicer harbor freight sets for years, the ones in the metal cases. If you take care of them they are no better/worse than any of the other mid range taps & dies. In my experience, just about all sae cars can be nearly completely disassembled with 7/16, 1/2, 9/16, 5/8 wrenches and 1/4, 5/16, 3/8 taps & dies. Metric cars with 10mm, 12mm, 14mm, 17mm wrenches and 3mm, 4mm, 5mm taps & dies.

If it was me, I would get the Harbor Freight, or other inexpensive sets, and the few you use enough to break or wear out, you can replace just those taps/dies individually with nicer stuff. More than half you will probably never touch so not worth spending a lot on a full set of really nice stuff.

[El Jefe]

[quote=XBoxBoy]In the end I think the case basically comes down to the homeowner saying, “hey I want to do this, I’ve got money, and if you want to litigate I’ll bury you in costs.” Since it’s unlikely the community will pony up the cash to fight this, my hunch is it’s a done deal.[/quote]

Unfortunately, this is pretty much the truth. Even with iron clad covenants and iron fisted HOA’s, design review boards can only really enforce the form of the form/function ballance. They can stipulate height restrictions, color pallettes, general architectural styles, coverage ratios, etc…

They can’t stipulate the function side of the equation being what you ultimately design to fit your needs and where you put it on your property as long as it does not violate any of the form requirements.

In the absence of a specific deed restriction on a particular property, in california there are no view guarantees for properties around you. That does not mean in places like La Jolla or Del Mar that you won’t spend a LOT of money in court to be proven right.

[El Jefe]

[quote=Kishy]… north San Diego has the right mix of culture …[/quote]

Wow… it’s been almost 20 years since I’ve heard “north county” and “culture” together in a sentence that wasn’t ironic, disparaging, self-aggrandizing, or some combination of any/all of the above.

[El Jefe]

A friend of mine decided on artificial grass during his remodel after a long, involved process of pushing beans around in little piles, calculating theoretical savings based on reduced water usage, reduced gardening cost, opportunity cost of reclaimed time spent watering and gardening… etc.

Now for the reality… his lawnmower was only worth $20 on craigslist, his fake lawn uses more water than his real lawn as his kids spray it down to cool it down 10 times a day during the summer to play on it, and all that time savings is now spent walking the dumb dog around the neighborhood to get it to poop in other peoples grass as it won’t set foot on the plastigrass.

Sometimes I wonder if the people pushing the plastigrass have ever actually used plastigrass.

[El Jefe]

Affluent communities, like Carmel Valley, will probably weather it the best since foreclousures are less likely.

I would not be so sure about that. The wife of an associate of mine processed loans in CV for Wells Fargo Home Loans form ~2002 through ~2005, and they were processing a much higher percentage of Alt-A stated income loans in CV than the county wide average. Her branch dealt almost exclusively with CV and in 2004-2005 2 out of 3 loans were no/low doc stated income. You can do the math on that one.

[El Jefe]

i need a good place for jambalaya. gulf coast’s sucks.

Try Magnolias in Lincoln Park, Euclid south of 94. Same lady that used to own Bessies Garret in La Jolla. Best cajun/creole I’ve had outside of the gulf.

Also…

Jamaican takeout from Fargo’s BBQ in Encanto. Best Jerk chicken and curry goat I’ve had east of puerto rico. One of the few palces where “make it hot” really is HOT!

[El Jefe]

I think that the above statement is more applicable to Del Sur than 4S Ranch. That’s because they didn’t start building in Del Sur until 2006. Where as, 4S is 75% completed. Am I right ?

You may very well be corect. I really do not know any particulars about 4S. In fact, I didn’t even know where it was on a map until about 6 months ago. Mmost of my comments were more directed towards SEH as I am much more familiar with the situation there. If 4S is indeed nearly complete, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that the money has already changed hands for the remainder of the lots and the builders will suck it up and finish building hoping to break even.

[El Jefe]

I *think* I recall reading about this a month or two ago. In the past, Realty Trac numbers were derived by listing the number of notices filed for NOD/NOT, and they were listing all NOT filings as bank owned. Someone called BS and they changed their reporting to list “unique addresses”. When they changed their reporting criteria, that number of NOD/NOT fell due to properties that had had several filings (1st & 2nd loans). These would be reconciled to the single address. I think that they also started tracking Bank Owned by the title transfer, not not the NOT.

That would account for the pretty big jump in numbers realtytrac has been reporting.

[El Jefe]

I *think* I recall reading about this a month or two ago. In the past, Realty Trac numbers were derived by listing the number of notices filed for NOD/NOT, and they were listing all NOT filings as bank owned. Someone called BS and they changed their reporting to list “unique addresses”. When they changed their reporting criteria, that number of NOD/NOT fell due to properties that had had several filings (1st & 2nd loans). These would be reconciled to the single address. I think that they also started tracking Bank Owned by the title transfer, not not the NOT.

That would account for the pretty big jump in numbers realtytrac has been reporting.

[El Jefe]

I *think* I recall reading about this a month or two ago. In the past, Realty Trac numbers were derived by listing the number of notices filed for NOD/NOT, and they were listing all NOT filings as bank owned. Someone called BS and they changed their reporting to list “unique addresses”. When they changed their reporting criteria, that number of NOD/NOT fell due to properties that had had several filings (1st & 2nd loans). These would be reconciled to the single address. I think that they also started tracking Bank Owned by the title transfer, not not the NOT.

That would account for the pretty big jump in numbers realtytrac has been reporting.

[El Jefe]

IIRC, you can have up to 100K of single accounts insured AND additionally contribute up to 100K of FDIC insurance toward a joint account, totalling 200K/SSN.

IE

You(single acct): 50K checking + 50K CD

you + wife(joint acct): 200K CD

wife(single acct): 100K CD

All Insured.

[El Jefe]

IIRC, you can have up to 100K of single accounts insured AND additionally contribute up to 100K of FDIC insurance toward a joint account, totalling 200K/SSN.

IE

You(single acct): 50K checking + 50K CD

you + wife(joint acct): 200K CD

wife(single acct): 100K CD

All Insured.

[El Jefe]

IIRC, you can have up to 100K of single accounts insured AND additionally contribute up to 100K of FDIC insurance toward a joint account, totalling 200K/SSN.

IE

You(single acct): 50K checking + 50K CD

you + wife(joint acct): 200K CD

wife(single acct): 100K CD

All Insured.

[El Jefe]

No… current Roth limits apply to both contributions AND conversions.

BUT… the good news… the most recent changes to the tax code will lift the income limit for conversions from traditional to Roth in 2010. That means you can make non-deductible donations to a regular IRA now, and then do the conversion in 2010 assuming that the law does not change between now and then.

Also… IIRC… All of your non-deductible contributions will move into a Roth in 2010 tax free because they were after tax contributions.

Keep your fingers crossed that congress is too busy spending money in Iraq to close this loophole before 2010.

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