[gzz]

My primary is under 300k, something like 270.

I am also “self employed” which may be a hit. At least some online lenders don’t take us. I also locked about 7 days ago.

For a specific example of “looser” underwriting, last mortgage the lender asked me to show proof of rental income on bank statements plus wanted the lease. This time, no. Maybe they are just on top of things and figured out the rental stream from the two months of bank statements.

[gzz]

Redfin defines “high end” in that link as averaging $440,000.

Perhaps this is the first SD bull market where the high end does better than the mid and low end, but I’d want to see SD specific data first.

Factors than hold back the high end:

1. harder to rent out/lower cap rate if you do
2. new supply is mostly high end
3. the number of people who can buy and drive up the price of a high-end place is increasingly limited. low end places become the “new middle class” tier as prices rise, and also can be purchased as rentals and renovations/redevelopments.
4. Loans are easier and cheaper if under the conforming limit.
5. Foreign investors favor property they can leave vacant sometimes with low/no landscaping/pool worries and costs. While some high-end condos and townhomes fit this bill, overall high end tends to be on larger lots.

Favoring high end:

1. The rich keep getting richer
2. Work from home means higher demand for larger residential spaces
3. Supply of good location/large lot homes goes down every year (even while distant location and small lot high end keeps being built)

[gzz]

The deviation I believe is explained mostly by the expectation that high rates will go down, and the very powerful behavioral economic concept of sticky downward prices.

The weakness of my first point is that the high long rates in the late 70s and early 80s reflected market expectations. The counter to this is that expectations of homebuyers and investors are not the same as major bond buyers, and also that the homebuyer only needs to hope rates dip once so they can refi. Further, lower liquidity in RE means marginal buyers expecting rates to dip have more power than in liquid bond markets.

Another thing keeping RE high when high rates make it unaffordable was the concern about runaway inflation. Those long bonds with 13% coupons were great in retrospect, but had a much worse downside than RE if inflation had moved into the 20%+ range.

[gzz]

You have some places with expected rent and demand for housing generally expected to decrease over time. That completely changes the PV of housing, especially when rates are low.

This is very good work xbox.

[gzz]

Observations:

1. The best method remains starting with Zillow’s comparison tool, and talking with 2 or 3 of the best offers it brings up. Not necessarily through Zillow.

2. The best rates are all from small companies in California.

3. The flashy FinTech companies are overloaded and seem like a big hassle to deal with based on reviews and horror stories of problems like 6 months to close.

4. Maybe because my LTVs are now very low, but I got a general feeling of loose money and easy underwriting. Not even one time did I get a “can you explain X?” or “can you provide more statements?” or “why does you bank account show this transfer?”

This was still a full doc loan, but it just went very smoothly. And they didn’t even ask for or care about my brokerage account asset. Maybe these annoyances are just back loaded with my lender right now.

[gzz]

I have been on two fun off road trips to Baja with a friend who has a similar vehicle (an early 2000s Lexus version of the land cruiser, can’t remember if it is gx or lx).

The more recent trip was late 2019 to Ejido Eréndira. We stayed at the only hotel there:

Home

So remote there was no cell service half the time, not even slow 2G/3G!

[gzz]

Aren’t you both cheap and retired?

Big Sur is expensive and boring.

Go to Thailand and Laos, which are full of Buddhist monks and $25/night luxury hotels. Outside of cities basic hotel rooms are often $2 or $3 a night.

Here’s a collection of random tourist photos in Laos:

https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/luangprabang/

[gzz]

Sell and buy back would have been a lot better for a condo that dropped 60%.

[gzz]

Sellers can simply choose the highest offer even if it has a loan contingency.

I never got the whole “cash offer is king I’ll take that over the higher financed offer” thing.

If I get an offer that includes a bank statement showing the ability to easily put 25% down and a preapproval letter for the whole amount, I will take that over a cash offer 1% lower.

Maybe “cash offer” is being used as a short-hand for “very firm no-BS offer” and the buyers who complain about losing out to lower cash offers have shaky finances and picky contingencies.

I also have some solidarity with people who don’t have huge piles of cash, as long as they show me strong evidence they can get financing.

[gzz]

David, I enrolled in community college full time when I was 15 and it was a good experience. Over the years I have met quite a few other people who have done this and they too appreciated the faster and less rigid college experience a few years early.

[gzz]

up 46% from 3/2020 sale. $485k to $707k in 14 months.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2501-Navarra-Dr-UNIT-126-Carlsbad-CA-92009/16659785_zpid/

[gzz]

I ended up getting an HP Omen 25L with Ryzen 7 3700x and 16GB of ram, new other than the GPU was stripped out. I will add my 2060 RTX, and the most taxing thing I will probably do is use a USB cable to my Quest 2 to run VR games.

My girlfriend likes the Quest a lot more than me, especially BeatSaber which she plays until her arms are sore.

I was disappointed to see all the Oculus free apps like Google Earth that require a physical link, which in turn requires Windows 10 to run the Oculus windows app.

I’ve been looking forward to VR this good since like 1991 when my cousin had the awful Nintendo Virtual Boy. I think he ended up returning it since we only used it a couple times.

[gzz]

I have no need for a high end PC, but I hate switching PCs and getting really high end ones in the past has served me well in getting very long useful lives from them.

I have first and third gen i7 desktops that still work really well and perfectly fast for most desktop tasks. They have added RAM and newer SSDs, but otherwise are stock $1500 gaming PCs from (if I remember right) 2009 and 2012.

The 2009 is now a media center, and the 2012 is in daily work use but ready to go out to pasture as light duty office server.

The most taxing tasks are doing OCR of 300 page scanned documents and light video editing.

[gzz]

I’ve been hoping to upgrade to a new PC for about 8 months now but can’t because I can’t get the parts I want.

People are buying high end gaming PCs, stripping out the GPU, and then selling the gpu-stripped desktop as “New (other)” on ebay.

Any thoughts on them? Here’s one I bid on earlier and came in 2nd:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/254974531256

My situation is I have an ancient 8 year old PC ready for replacement, plus the 1 year old GPU that’s amazingly worth $750 now.

If you search ebay for PC desktops that are both new and have “no gpu” you’ll find more than 100 like this. Some of them are PCs that cost $2000+ selling for $900.

[gzz]

In the metro area I grew up in, Dayton, the southern suburbs were much nicer than the northern ones. The nicest small suburb is Oakwood, due south of the city of Dayton, and the nicest of the large inner suburbs is Kettering, also due south.

I agree with the article that North sounds more upscale.

In the US, France, Spain, Mexico, and Italy the north is wealthier. In England, Brazil, China, and Germany, the south is wealthier.

[Author]

Posts