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exeunt
Participantbuy now,
before you get marriedthat way,
when you get divorced, you’ll be in better shapeParticipantphase-faze……………
Phase: A period or portion of time, as in “that was a lively phase in his life, every day brought a new woman to his doorstep”.
Faze: To break ones composure, as in “it took much more than that to faze her – she was determined to be the last woman to cross his threshold”.
f’you cannot spell
you cannot sell
‘cept to the person
who aint bin lessoned!I recommend y’all to the “Calculated Risk” blog, to the poster named “Tanta,” for a lesson in erudition…
Participantactually, an NC story here…
Asheville, NC…
.
semi-rural in the hills, close to state/national parks.
very liberal, organic, hippie-in-them-hills kinda place.
i lived in a small co-op housing community when i visited, when i was crewing for a film location shot. beautiful people, very friendly. most were transplants from elsewhere, usually colder climes – portland, eugene, wisconsin, maine etc. they had this lovely artsy community in the middle of THE SOUTH…
.
then i remember the actual shoot, which included a lynching scene. we came out that morning to this field outside of town and over the morning something really unsettling happenned. a whole crowd of people began to gather at the edge of the lot – some came with the extras who were part of the scene. when the dummy was hauled up on the tree, you’d hear this loud cheering from the crowd! This was in the late 90’s…Participantwell…………….
if you are so convinced, then i urge you to invest appropiately. i’d buy puts on every subprime lender still standing on one foot. i can guarantee you that whether markets go up or down, the money always gets taken from someone and given away to someone else. i woldnt be surprised at all to learn that hedge funds have been raking it in on the way up and are raking it in by shorting these same MBS’s on their way down…Participantyes we all know that…..
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subprime lenders and their supply-chain are being squeezed. nothing new there. there are bound to be a plethora of imbecilic loan stories that can be touted as “the expected norm” in the future.
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but tell me this, what percent of the total loan base out there, out of ALL the people who have taken out loans over the last 30 years and share their beds with mortgages of all shapes and sizes, what percentage are sub-prime taken out in 2003-2006? tell me about millions of people paying on 30 yr fixed loans with no interest in selling their homes or seeing them as anyhting more than a roof over their heads. perhaps a holistic view of this problem might help to see if the effects of a sub-prime are being magnified or not.
}….Participantcheapest will never be best……………..
…………….and the best will never be cheapest.
these seem mutually exclusive.the cheapest might be rural mississippi or someplace similar, and you can get real cheap by living in a tin shack.
the best might be urban san francisco, new york, portland, or smaller cities like austin, boulder, etc.
for a californian, it might all be accessible.
for others, i might suggest a college town attached to a state capitol. the suggestions for austin may make sense; so might madison(WI) davis(CA) corvallis(OR) hartford(conn) etc etc etc. you’ll get some diversity, educated folks, cheap food, potential investments in student rentals, access to countryside, the opportunity for community – a possible escape from suburbia without being in the boonies…Participantbig deal
why do the media, and folks like you, latch on to this marginal titillation? consider that the majority of people do not fall into these freakshow-sideshow categorizations that trolling news media have to constantly “update” us with.March 8, 2007 at 3:40 PM in reply to: California real estate prices versus North Carolina and Florida #47158Participantjuice
though every single one of your “translations” is merely a caricature of my riposte, converting a questioning commentary into a set of stark misrepresentations, i take your point about the tone of my note – i will be more charitable on my future forays…
March 8, 2007 at 1:43 PM in reply to: California real estate prices versus North Carolina and Florida #47147Participantsridhar,
regarding those steel homes…
how utterly ugly and unbelievably gauche those “homes” look!
more like barns or warehouses than light and bright places to live in.
i’d much rather have an old craftsman or victorian to restore, with large windows and open beams.i kinda agree about those bostonians; perhaps their covert racism is worse than the overt sort, which one might be able to avoid.
its the OTHER sort of bigotry, that driven by illiteracy and evangelism, lacking an appreciation of peoples diversity of belief or lack thereof, their sexual orientsation, their questioning of fossilized thinking that glorifies war and reduces the rest of humanity to simple “evil”, that is rampant in the South and in all of suburbia
i cannot really follow the references you make to steel bolts and “bikes”. i’m not sure how germane to the conversation it might be – perhaps some fantasy of machismo that one has to flaunt? My own bikes-n-bolts story has more to do with adding a kid-trailer to the seat-post of my bicycle.
March 8, 2007 at 11:00 AM in reply to: California real estate prices versus North Carolina and Florida #47141Participantweather: +CA : winter, spring, autumn
+NC : spring, summer, autumn
housing: +NC
jobs: +NC for growth
+CA for income
education:+CA for the best public universities in the world
-everywhere for the dumbing-down of public-ed
crime: +inner cities everywhere
-suburbia everywhere
arts: +CA, by miles
racism: +NC, you’ll know once youre on the receiving end
bibles: +NC, if you’re a thumper – welcome home!
evolution:+CA
greens: +CA
vegetables:+CA
meat: +NC
race cars:+NC
museums: +CA, by miles
fat: +NC
yoga: +CA
nature: +CA for public lands set aside
+NC for greenery/trees (if you live in desert)
gays: +CA
bigots: +NC
flags: +NC
churches: +NC, by miles
buddhists:+CANC is small compared to CA. Within hours you could be in SC, which is one of the most racist backward bigoted bible-blot bubba places on earth. its not NC, but if you were to live in charlotte, as opposed to RTC, you’d feel it. Then again, you drive just as far out of LA and you’re in Bakersfield, which might be similar…
CA is crowded, expensive, superficial, and damn large. Its economy is among the largest in the world. There are lots of “illegal” “mexicans” here. They are a foundation of the economy and work harder for their keep than most. In NC, black americans have still the overcome the legacy of enslavement in an environment that condemns them to a prenially marginalized state.
Every place has its merits, stereotypes and little niches of humanity. Generally, suburbia anywhere disengages people from interacting with those who might differ from them, perpetuating sterotypes, resulting in human automata rather than critically thinking folk.
ParticipantCAVEAT EMPTOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. Your agent will be the best friend you’ve ever had until your transaction is complete. After this, you he/she will not give you the light of day, unless you put them on retainer.
2. I would rather pay for a boat in MY driveway rather than the boat in HER (the agents) driveway, wouldn’t you?
3. Believe me, realtor folk don’t have too many clients right now who can deliver the goods – there are fewer listings, closing volume is way down, and many of these folks are the ones living highest on the hog these past few years. They need the money. If they don’t serve you, fire them and get someone else, like a Redfin or some other fixed-fee agent.
4. The fixed-fee agent wont give you much time until you get serious about an offer, after which I think he/she will be better at negotiating a close than a freelancer. Also, use other tools to gauge the state of the neighborhood: the best of these is walking around the neighborhood, knocking on doors, and meeting and talking to the neighbors. Indeed, one such conversation alerted me to a drainage problem with the property that I used to advantage in negotiations.
5. You can also hire a lawyer to go over the paperwork for you. The local title/escrow companies can refer you to such folk, or you can find them by yourself. I used my own lawyer on one recent high-$ transaction to ensure that the paperwork was kosher. You pay them by the hour, and use them at the end. I had done this abroad, where escrow companies dont exist, and its just as doable here.
6. It’s all kinda up to you – just like when you hire a painter to paint your home for $8K, but then next time you try it yourself with a few friends and it only costs $300 for materials. Your own state of readiness to take on the responsibility defines the solution to the problem.Participantfrom an older post by, ahem, cow_tipping…
Submitted by Cow_tipping on February 13, 2007 – 3:54pm.
Maybe someone show show Mr Fisher the definition of dead cat bounce.
And yes global economy is accelerating, mostly as all the work accelerates its way into India and China.
Wages are deflating, and worse yet, cities used to be high wages and in a real recession cities where people with higher wages worked will start lay off’s while the small towns start hiring and people will move to those towns where they will do the same job for 1/2 the $$ cos their cost of living is now less than 1/2. The last few years, there has been no difference in wages from big cities to small towns. Now we are begining recession. Fasten your belts, this is going to be erratic and painful.
Cool.
Srinath.uhhuh S R I N A T H !!
dude this place is filled with indian dudes slaving away at qcomm and the like, who cant afford even an apartment here, who’ve missed the RE boom in India, and are gettin desperate…Participantin the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king…
Participantranjan, yaar:
i’ve been buying and selling residential RE for years. When I started, I used realtors. My first house, I bought with a buyers agent. Over the years, I came to realize that when buying a house, an agent really isn’t required at all. Frankly, I think the realtor dude who replied to you is being quite disingenuous. What guides buyers agents to particular homes to show are the seller-side incentives offered. The buyers agent will invariably guide you to those listings which offer a greater commission percentage to him/her. Realtors are not bound by any legal fiduciary duty to you. Indeed, when you begin to sign a boatload of paperwork to close on the deal, your so called buyers agent will pull out a bunch of stuff which he/she will ask you to sign that does nothing but protect them from being sued by you! You see, the whole business of realtors is to skim both sides, the buyer and seller, and make good.
OK…so much for my bias. Today, with various internet tools, you dont really need the services of a buyers agent. Here’s how I’ve done it the last couple of times (within the last 6 months, in Ventura county and in Santa Barbara):
1. All MLS listings are available on the internet. Sign up with realtyTrac, or use any of the following: yahoo realestate (updates daily), trulia, realtor.com, etc.
2. Research the areas you want to live in. You can get all school scores from greatschools.net. Then you can go and drive around the towns you want to buy in and get a feel for them.
3. Now here’s the cool part: sign up with a discount realty service. like Redfin. You pay a flat fee, they hook you up with a local guy who will handle the paperwork of the transaction. For a newbie this works great. I used them in my last transaction in SB, and they credited back 2/3 of the buyers-agent commision to me, which I used as part of my down payment. I saved more than $25K. This is a sea-change in the way RE is conducted, and will likely sweep all the RE chaff off the floor within a few years. See, YOU are paying for your buyers agent AND for the seller agent. What not take at least one of these skimmers off the books?
4. Make appointments to see the homes you like directly with the selling/listing agent. Redfin charges you per home shown, so its not worth using them for this. But who cares? Every selling agent is dying to show you their home directly – the greed factor (getting both buying and selling commissions) kicks in, you see!
5. To make an offer on your home, use the Redfin guy – he’ll do all the paperwork and help you with escrow. I found their system to be clean, relaible and no-nonsense. Do not use services provided by the seller. If they insist – walk away fro the transaction. The Redfin pre-negotiated value is better, in my opinion.
6. Remember, the REAL people behind the trnsaction are the escrow and title companies. You can deal with them directly, but if you are doing this for the first time, learn by using someone like Redfin.
7. Always, always bid lower than what the seller wants. My last purchase in SB was in a good part of town, lots of interest, but the house needed work. So I summarized what needed to be done to the house on a spreadheet and the Redfin agent submitted it with my offer at 12% below. They rejected it, of course. I then came in again at 7.5% lower, having already seeded the sellers mind with what ought to be done to the property, and my bid was accepted. Remember, when buying a home, especially an older one, there are PLENTY more where this oe came from…so be prepared to WALK when things aren’t going your way. It may take a couple of times for you to get used to this, but you’ll figure out how much bargaining power you really have.
8. Over the years, I have come to have a rather low opinion of realtors. Out fof 8 transactions, I was involved with only one couple who had some integrity, and that was because they were both 7th-day Adventists – very sincere folk. The rest were people like high-school jocks, ex-car salesmen, housewives looking to make a fast buck, bible-thumpers, and whatnot. The more educated ones were cynical and actually the worst – they were smart enough to know how to make the most money. There are very few requirements to becoming a realtor. My gardener became one last year (he was a house flipper!), and he had no formal education beyond grade school.in any case, remember…zara dekh ke chalo!
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