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In my case, I had never used SF for anything, but the sellers had an existing policy. Amazingly, SF charged me less than the prior owners by about $700.

SF also required fewer hoops. Nationwide give me a bunch of tasks like taking lots of photos of the property, installing a burglar alarm etc. Try and burgle the fire-prone fringes of East County and your life expectancy is going to be pretty low.

My process of switching everything to SF is now underway. My office rental liability policy was $520 v $550 before, and workers comp for my business appears to be exactly the same as my existing policy.

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My old carrier nationwide wanted to do wrap around for 7k total but state farm did a normal policy for 4k, despite it being a gigantic 6/6 house abutting an east county scrubby canyon. This also required switching my cars as their multipolicy discount is huge.

Now I am switching everything to state farm in gratitude.

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I got my points wrong on the first post, points on the 25% fixed was 3k and 20% was 5k.

Ended up going with the arm which was a slight negative point (like 500 lender credit) at 25% down / 4.5%.

The interest and point savings will be about 16k over 7 years before the rate unlocks. Worst case I should be able to pay it off in full or nearly so if rates soar and never go down.

My other mortgages are 30 year fixed 3.99 and 3.375 and 15 year 2.625. So this one will be an easy choice to make big extra payments on.

If in 2 or 3 years rates just drop a little, I can redo as a ~4.5% 30 year with a lower balance and better LTV, and that way grab a locked rate after saving a bit initially.

I might have switched to fixed if even with these considerations, but when I called to get the exact numbers the agent said I was already fully approved and clear to close, and any changes could have a small chance of delaying closing.

I am feeling increasingly that I will never sell the property even if I move out. Being unincorporated means very low chance of vacation rental restrictions and its size and acreage and distance from neighbors mean it has potential as a wedding rental, at least according to the lady from Vacasa I talked to who said it was comparable to such places she manages. I also getting excited about taking the current 8 tree valencia orange and tangerine grove up to 20 trees, starting with my favorites, red grapefruit and gold nugget tangerines. Plus some guava and black plum which have been prolific and low maintenance for me in OB.

Direct quote from vacasa manager: “Oh that’s great we love unincorporated!”

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Appraisals done during a loan process are crap.

Zillow and redfin let you pick comps and do a pretty good job.

We are already down 10-15% from peak prices around March 2022, but still up 15% or so over last year.

If both sides agree on the comps to use, I think the zillow and redfin average is faster and about as accurate as an appraisal. Worth a shot trying, could save effort and $700 in costs.

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One positive of St George: very high per capita rate of dentists.

I don’t really have a problem getting appointments in San Diego on short notice, however prices are pretty high. I wonder what percentage of San Diegans get their dental work primarily done in TJ? I’d guess 1 in 15.

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Closing in 2 weeks!

Just grabbed some clearance pool toys and testing strips at Target and some sun hats.

Ready for the desert!

After my final inspection I walked midday on the bed of the completely dry sweetwater river and sang:

After two days in the desert sun
My skin began to turn red
And after three days in the desert fun
I was looking at a river bed
And the story it told of a river that flowed
Made me sad to think it was dead

On wet years the river is impressive however.

https://www.prints-online.com/sweetwater-dam-near-san-diego-california-usa-14251703.html

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The pizza place on Sports Arena Blvd had a sign they pay $22 an hour to start.

The immediate effect of this law is that fast food places will cut back on hours and add those order and pay yourself terminals.

Another change may be avoiding being fast food by having table delivery like Rubios.

There’s that fancy jack in the box in Hillcrest with the fireplace that was part of their failed “upscale jack” experiment. Taco Bell has a small number of “Taco Bell Cantina” with fancier interiors and sometimes beer.

Another change will be to have smaller menus to reduce labor costs from making less popular items. I get fast food only about twice a year now, and the menus seem to have fewer items than they used to, especially Taco Bell.

When I lived in Luxembourg, they had the highest minimum wage in the world, about $11.50 plus full health insurance, and 1.5 on all hours after 6pm, all of saturday, and 2x on Sunday. Most fast food was closed on Sunday as a result, and gas stations typically were closed on Sundays too rather than pay people $23 an hour in 2003, which I guess would be about $35/hr now.

Not being able to go shopping at any random time I liked was a small drag, but everyone got used to it.

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I am buying a house now for my newly retired parents to move to SD and to have a quieter area for my son. It could be a good time to buy, we had a price drop/rate spike in 2018-2019 that turned out to be a good entry point.

I certainly wouldn’t buy now as an investment given I already own 3 and am over invented in RE.

Best investment right now, by far IMO, are oil stocks. Pretty much any of them.

My portfolio now is about 1/3 oil stocks and I will go higher without hesitation on any dips. I also like coal stock BTU.

The downside on oil stocks IMO is about 25%, and that requires a recession to happen. OPEC will cut production if needed to maintain prices. And gas prices are at insane levels outside of producing and exporting nations like the USA.
Any dips I believe will be snapped up by shellshocked importers.

The upside for oil stocks is they right now have about P/E’s of about 5 based on Q2 oil prices. If they are sustained they will rise and do share buybacks and roughly double.

And less likely but very very possible scenario is 200+ oil and $15 NYMEX gas. That would result in oil majors like XOM probably quadrupling.

$200 sounds high but really isn’t when adjusted for income growth, lower energy intensity of GDP, and inflation. Obviously some sectors would hurt and consumers would grumble, but there wouldn’t be much demand reduction or 1970s level recessionary shock.

Now looking 5-10 years out, I think local RE will be a fine investment now. But at 6+ rates, prices are gonna drop another 5-10% to roughly 18-20% below their early 2022 peak.

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Oil Update: Not great returns, but still beating the market. I remain very bullish. Had to sell a little to fund a home downpayment. I replaced my first round of ultrabullish call options that expired worthless. These new calls have already doubled.

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UPDATE:

Taking a huge bath on the Trump company warrants, DWACW. Still holding. I made a crazy and realized profit the first day of trading, like 6k, but down 10k since so about -4k total.

COIN: Amazing short, amazing profits on the puts. Still holding a small short position mainly to delay capgains.

MSTR: What should have been a large profit is only a small one due to poor timing in increasing and decreasing my position.

RCL: Big profits! Closed short out completely.

UBER/LYFT: keeping small short position mainly to delay taxes. The most obvious shorts ever. The largest money incineration factories in Wall Street history.

IRBT: AMZN is buying them! I purchased thinking it would be GOOG that bought them. Small profit below market returns due to poor entry timing.

YNDX/RSX: Frozen due to Russia sanctions. At one point down 90%, now down about 50%.

INTC/GOOG between the two, roughly breakeven.

WE: Just closed the position for a large profit. Should have been even larger, the company is worth 0. But it is heavily shorted and at risk of becoming a meme stock.

NVDA: Shorted 15 shares yesterday. Closed position today, ~$220 profit!

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Another thing about tuition, is that while the “rack rate” keeps going up, the amount actually paid is not because of aggressive discounting, which schools call “scholarships” rather than the more accurate “market-based tuition discounts” or “price discrimination.”

The willingness of young people to get overpriced college degrees is going down, and soon so is the number of young people period.

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” tuition will most likely just go up 10K more a year”

It is the availability of loans and permanent forgiveness programs, not random one-off forgiveness jubilees, that sets the tuition market.

College students generally are financially illiterate and assume they are going to be rich. They just sign the forms the finaid office tells them.

A very large percentage of the loans being forgiven were not going to be paid back anyway.

They were going to be defaulted or forgiven under one of many prior programs.

By capping income at 125k, Biden made sure the relief was targeted toward people already getting public interest job loan forgiveness, not paying much back due to low income, or in default.

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What a disappointing student loan forgiveness. I won’t be getting any BidenBux, and also no SALT restoration either.

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Flyer, I don’t think the supersonic plane is actually going to happen.

A large passenger jet realistically costs over $15 billion to get to the production stage, and profits are so thin this requires massive gov subsidies to even hit breakeven.

What the market really wants is cheap, even if is a little slower and more crowded. The other big trend is the decline of hub and spoke.

Personally I don’t mind the normal transatlantic flight time. Have a meal, watch a movie, take a nap, and I’m there.

Now my two transpacific flights I’d pay extra to shorten. All four of my Transpacific legs were LAX to Taipei on China Air.

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I go to the Joan Kroc ice rink. Tip: go during a school day. Weekends and summer there are too many reckless tykes.

Used to go to the one in the UTC mall about once a year, but now it is like $24 for 2 hour session.

That’s not completely unreasonable, but it kills the spontaneity since if you get there halfway into a free skating period during a shopping trip, it becomes more like $50 for two people to skate for 45 minutes. And if I am actually planning something, might as well just plan to go to the bigger cheaper and nicer Kroc rink.

Speaking of this, I recently saw the Ray Kroc movie that featured Joan as a main character. Really well written and acted and better than “a movie about Ray Kroc” sounds.

My last year of law school Justice Kagan set up an ice rink directly outside my dorm. I got some skates on ebay and went almost every day:

“ The plans for the rink have been implemented with unusual swiftness.

Kagan came up with the plan on Monday, according to Senior Facilities Manager John Holleram, and by noon Tuesday the rink was already under construction.

The rink is expected to open early next week.

“We were trying to open this weekend,” said a construction worker at the site. “Now we’re shooting for next Wednesday.”

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/1/16/law-students-lace-up-their-skates/

Now that’s a leader!

Linda Vista’s skateworld is great, it seems to keep going out of business and then returning. Whenever I went there were some really good skaters doing tricks and dancing to disco.

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