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You tell young lawyers to sound like radio preachers? Few problems with this advice:
1 Most young lawyers don’t get to speak in court 2. Median age of a judge is about 70. You have to speak Loudly and Clearly. 3. If you start speaking quickly cause the Holy Spirit has got into you, the court reporter will tell you to slow down. 4. Majority of judges interrupt you before you get out two sentences.

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Flyer, government inserting itself into industry is standard around the world in all capitalist countries when the company is as big as Qualcomm.

We sometimes will make an exception for Canada and UK because of 200 years of good relations and reciprocity for our companies, but there are just no examples of a huge and profitable US co getting taken over by an Asian company, especially one with strong China ties. Obama would have blocked it, the French would block it for any of their many giant companies, etc.

Broadcom management screwed up, they should have fully moved HQ to California first.

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Interesting list of top local companies. Never knew some had their HQ here.

I like Jacobs idea of a big paid underground garage in Balboa. The acres of ugly surface parking is an eyesore and confusing. I would like to see Qualcomm stadium used for a huge corporate office to attract a big tech co office or HQ. Not another stupid subsidy-sucking pro sports team, and especially not soccer.

With a trolley stop and freeway access very close, could be a great place for high density upscale development that will result in the city making rather than spending money. Imagine a new modern smaller stadium for SDSU ringed by condo towers full of tech workers who will become fans watching for free and grad student renters. Then tons of sparkling new trophy office buildings built by Bay Area companies who do not want to deal with anti development local govs in SF/SV.

The worker parking that does not get used on the weekend much can be used for stadium parking. Much better than normal football stadium parking that sucks up valuable real estate and gets used 6 hours per week for part of the year and is empty 98% of the time or more.

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My tenant who is about 5-10% below market is repainting many rooms that need it at her expense. She also paid to replace the furnace vent and move part of it to a more logical location.

I may do a 5% increase if it gets to be more than 15% below market, nothing betond that.

When I rented in OB I did the same thing. I had a good deal from the first day, and 5 years later when I moved out I was 30% below market. Kept it sparkling inside and out and paid rent 15 days early every month. Only maintenance request in 5 years was when the 1940s oven range started belching black smoke.

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Flyer’s places are generally high end condo renovations. No need for repairs between tenants that cost $$. He probably does not get handy tenants that fix and improve things themselves.

You can think of the below market rent a good tenant earns as a property management fee.

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Delaying a foreclosure that long is almost routine when you have a homeowner intent on delay and a disorganized bank team. More common in the 2008-2012 period however.

Ultimately the bank benefited by getting the property in 2018 instead of 2013. The homeowner might even get some cash after the sale if it covers the loan and costs.

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SPDRUN, i am sure there are a few out there, I never met a long term investor who buys with an ARM. And I think I speak for most of us in saying we now feel like our 3.5% fixed 30-years as assets we are almost as attached to as the appreciated property and locked in low tax valuation.

Nate,

We had these very low inventories and bidding wars in 2017 too, and only came in at 8% gain for the year.

The tax advantage of owning your principal residence is still large and makes owning better than renting, and the tax bill has other new provisions benefiting REITs, who mostly focus on large complexes. But the value proposition we saw 2010-2017 where most San Diego properties outside the very high end made sense as investment rentals to people with access to prime financing and basic property management skills just isn’t there with rates this high.

I hope I am wrong and we go up 20% instead. And in fact San Diego’s price gains have come in well below other major cities, so it is possible we see some of the best price growth in the USA as we get revert to our historic premium or discount to other parts of the Western USA. It is kind of shocking to see how much rent is now in metros that used to be cheaper than here, and now are about the same (e.g., Miami, Denver). Even famously cheap metros like Phoenix and Austin and Dallas are getting expensive.

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Flyer, that was probably me. My childhood home was purchased in the early 90s by my parents for around 120k, sold in the mid 2000s for 125k, and the zestimate is now 131k. Solid brick 4/2.5 on flat grassy low traffic 9000sf lot in a good school district in a suburb that looks a lot like Midway/Point Loma without the palm trees. (But with factories and cornfields surrounding it. The old shuttered giant car factory might become a casino, but lots of small high tech factories with 15-100 employees doing things like custom machine tools, defense, and lasers).

The house my mother grew up is worth about $80,000, same nominal price as in the mid-80s.

I still like red brick postwar suburban homes but they are rare here. Wonder how much they cost over stucco and wood frame, or if earthquakes are the issue. So many Midwest transplants I bet they’d sell here.

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[quote=yipla]Anyone ever vaulted an 8 ft ceiling? I wonder what the ballpark cost would be in this area. We would one day like to vault the living area of our ~1500 sqft house (not the bedrooms, which are all on one side).[/quote]

Wait until the next recession. Dealing with contractors is hellish and expensive in the middle of a boom.

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To scaredy on his OP:

1. Don’t assume you will be in the 45% bracket forever. Unless you have scads of passive ordinary income for life. Few people do. At retirement you will probably have a lot of 15-20% incomed taxed as dividends.

2. If you have piles of cash in the bank making .5% and are saving more every month, some repayment makes sense.

3. It is quite possible if not likely you will never have a partly tax deductible 30 year loan at 3.375 offered to you ever again. That cash that could now be used to reduce the 3.375 balance you might wish you had later to reduce the 4.6% rate on an investment condo. Opportunities can appear if you have the cash to take them.

4. It is a relatively small decision to pay down the balance by about 25% so that what remains is tax deductible in theory, so if there is an AMT fix, happened a lot in the past, you then get it back.

5. The SALT provision in the tax bill could be dead as soon 2021. Why wouldn’t the dems repeal the tax cuts for the super rich to give back to blue state semi-rich? A lot of the newly elected Dem congressmen will owe their election to SALT.

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I don’t need my phone data to be any faster. I want to see an improvement in reliability and decrease in price. The improvement in peak speed from 100k to 1000k/sec, even though by a factor of 1000%, only really improved the experience by maybe 1%. On HD videos are big enough to notice the faster peak speed, and you barely notice the difference on a cell phone screen between SD and HD, even on a 6 inch HD one.

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From what I’ve seen of the typical oldster house, they should be donating some of their hoarder hoard to Goodwill, not buying more junk there.

Maybe sushi places need 55+ discounts. Almost never see older people there. My taste for raw fish has grown as I aged. I did not have my first bite of sushi until age 24.

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Rent Increase Reports for SD in 2017

6% (RentCafe)
3.4% (Apartmentlist.com)
4% (Trulia)
10.9% (Zumper – 1-bedrooms)
5.1% (Zumper – 2-bedrooms)

The various articles also seem to agree that low end, smaller units, and central locations are doing the best. So Downtown and or City Heights studios outperformed RSF houses in percentage increase.

Zumper seems to show the biggest numbers because it is SD city only and limited to apartments of 1 or 2 bedrooms. Trulia shows a lower figure because it is the entire county and inclused high end and SFH rentals.

I have one condo and one SFH rental in OB market. Very clear that the market rent on the condo went up a lot more the past year than the SFH. Very low supply in both markets.

Just learned the large new Dylan Point Loma complex is now fully rented, all 1 bedrooms at 2300+/mo. Only reason it even got built is the city closed and sold an elementary school on a large lot.

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2017 year end inflation was between 1.8 and 2.1% using the big three measures CPI/Core CPI/GDP Deflator.

Tariffs need a few months to show up in higher prices. Utility scale solar tends to be made in USA and rooftop in China. China has a glut and is slashing prices already, to keep production up they may have to cover the tariff themselves. It is a lousy business to be in, high capital and r&d costs and falling prices. We should let the Chinese have it.

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To answer the OP, I do have experience with ballot measure petition drives, I worked for a company that did them purely on the local level for three years in college.

At the low end, it will cost about $1.5 million to get something on the California state ballot unless you have a huge source of volunteer labor that is willing to be trained in proper signature gathering.

The first steps are to come up with language that the state Legislative Office will recommend, and then poll it to see if you can try to qualify it immediately versus waiting for an election that will have voters more favorable to you. Off year v presidential year, primary election v general.

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