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There are real 100oz silver bars that people inserted lead slugs into. this is pretty hard to detect as they are still going to be silver in the outer portion.

A silver plated fake coin would be easy to spot and require the mint’s die to be replicated.

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I would never buy a 100oz silver bar. Fakes of them exist, and if I want to resell I would need to first find someone wanting to buy $1500 worth of silver and then prove that it is not a fake.

Much better to get a mix of 1oz rounds and coins and maybe a few 10oz bars. While fakes exist of 1oz coins too, the incentive to do so is very small and people can sacrifice one to test with acid or just cut them with hedge clippers.

Best deal on silver right now IMO is Silver Brittania or Prospecter here:
http://www.providentmetals.com

Or Sunshine Rounds here:

http://www.jmbullion.com

Apmex is fine too but their sales now are not very good.

Both are no sales tax and free shipping above $99 orders.

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Listing also sometimes disappear in late December without being sold and are relisted a week or two later in the new year.

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Point Loma 92106 is at 2.5 month SFH inventory.

However, nearly half of inventory is $2 million+ that sits on the market forever.

Sub-$2 million inventory is about 1.2 month supply compared to both Dec and Nov sub $2 million sales.

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92107 is now at 15 SFH on MLS and 20 SFH closings in December. The cheapest 4 bedroom is 1.55 million!

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the county records are the correct ones. both my properties exactly match the boundries on my deeds.

if you want better maps use the plat maps which you can get for free usually but if not cost about $2 online with the county recorder website.

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Flu, what bank? What type of loan?

“If you really have extra money, you are probably better off paying down your principal and making your regular payments on time.”

For me the issue is my income is bumpy and unpredictable. I have money now, I know I need to pay $50,000 in mortgage payments over the next year, might as well make a year’s worth of payments now.

Maybe I can pay even more down, maybe not, but at least that $50,000 reduces the balance I am paying 3.75% on rather than sitting in a 0.1% checking account with auto-bill.

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I do have autopay, but that means I have to either (1) keep a bunch of money in a checking/savings account making 0.1% interest or (2) keep it somewhere with a higher yield but transfer it a bank account all the time.

I want to make a large payment now, reduce the amount of principle I am paying 3.75% on, and not have to worry about the mortgage in the slights for a year or three.

Now that I think about it, both my car loan and student loan worked this way.

As for principle/interest, if I paid an extra $20,000, it would be counted as an extra principle payment, and interest would accrue as normal on the lower balance. The new payment date would be based on when my growing loan balance, absent any further payment, would equal the balance if I had made regular minimum payments. A double payment would only delay the next payment by one month, but a 20x payment would cut the principle enough that the loan balance would take about 22 months to get back to the balance on the amortization schedule.

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[quote=joec]The 2 terrorists in the San Bernardino attacks had a prosper loan[/quote]

PR disaster… or opportunity?

“Listen team, it is only a matter of hours before the press is going to get wind of the fact that we loaned $25,000 to the perpetrators of the most deadly terrorist attack in America since 9/11.

We’ll need to get a statement ready that expresses regret for the victims, but at the same time tells the Prosper Story of peer-to-peer bank disintermediation micro-loan revolution.

Today is our biggest day ever, and will be millions of Americans’ first impression of the company, and an opportunity that only comes around every fifteen years.”

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As for Lending Club, this appeared on their initial homepage:

xxx
Financial Innovation

The San Francisco company, which made nearly $100 million last year, is hoping to seize on the success of the online lending industry as it grows into a robust alternative to traditional loans, and validate the industry as a high-tech, quicker version of bank lending that is here to stay.
xxx

But Google Finance shows that the company had a net loss of $32 million, and an accumulated deficit of $80+ million on its balance sheet.

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:LC&fstype=ii&ei=eBNyVqGwJMOkjAGCiZP4CA

Now that’s a quote from a newspaper, not directly from the company. But the way they feature it right on the front of their home page, and not even close to accurate, makes me mistrust them.

Also the whole idea of some start up kids with a “P2P platform” outsmarting banks at consumer lending seems dumb.

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Credit cards have 15 month intro offers at 0%.

Short term HELOCs are 2 or 3% right now.

If someone is willing to pay 6-12% for money backed by real estate, you are getting people rejected for HELOCs. I would not personally lend to such a person at 6%, probably not 12% either.

Reading between the lines, it seems like this company will not foreclose on defaulters, but “help you work it out” with the defaulter. You going to do that yourself? Do you just these guys to have performed a full title search to make sure LTV is really under 75%?

I keep my speculation to high yield foreign government bond funds, which I personally think are quite undervalued right now. Bought a few hundred shares of this fund yesterday:

http://www.morningstar.com/cefs/xnys/ehi/quote.html

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–If I were you, and wanted to buy now, I’d look at new listings everyday. If you see something priced well, that you like, drive by, look at the outside, put in an offer immediately sight unseen with the listing agent.–

Good advice for both hot and cold markets.

This is what I did for my first house, used someone in the listing agent’s office as my agent after my short sale offer was accepted. Made my offer better than any other full price offer that way. And full price was underpriced by about 5-7% or I expected competing offers.

My second house neither of us used an agent. Paid $750 each to my mortgage broker to draw up the 278 standard form disclosures.

I have nothing against agents but the work to price ratio is not fair to customers buying/selling standard $700,000 San Diego houses.

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[quote=FlyerInHi] I was at a Chinese owned granite store in Vegas. They sell slabs for $120 and up ($79 holiday special) That’s cheaper than Formica. There aren’t too many choices and everything is pre manufactured. So many colors are bullnose only and you can’t get it any other way. But prices are cheap so there’s no reason not to have granite countertops.
http://www.builderelements.com
[/quote]

Have you used them before?

I used Home Depot a few months ago for new granite kitchen counters at $35 a square foot installed. I am very happy with the result. They only had 5 colors at that price, but I found a dark green one that I liked.

I actually have five different bathrooms in two houses that all could use some nice new counters, and two of them could use new showers.

I know you say you want your properties to feel like high end hotels. I like my living spaces more rustic, but that sounds perfect for bathrooms, with new metal fixtures and polished stone everywhere, perhaps with double shower heads, a steam feature, and side water jets.

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My understanding is that with tax exempt minis, the very rich in the top brackets will bid them up to risk adjusted parity given their high bracket, so unless your taxable income is also extremely high, you are better off avoiding tax exempt munis.

I’ve been in BBN since 10/2013 and my average price is 0.3% less than the current price.

“I don’t know. I don’t think even if someone were able to buy into BBN right now, that they would be looking at the great returns it did have from the past decade. Thoughts?”

The scenario where BBN does really well is (1) no major wave of muni defaults not covered by bond insurance (2) rates drift down in the USA toward the savings glut/demographic decline levels in Western Europe and Japan.

I happen to think both of these will be the case.

For #1, in the depths of the recent recession muni defaults were still extremely low. Historically, they are much lower than corporate. There is a bias in the ratings agencies in how they rate the two groups. Munis rated “B” have a default rate 90% lower than corporates with the same rating.

(Puerto Rico is a unique situation and near default. BBN does not own any PR bonds at all.)

For #2, here’s bloomberg’s page showing major economy 10-year bond rates:

http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates-bonds

Rates may feel low right now in the USA, but we have a long way to drop.

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“Depending on the size of a household, the standard deduction can be substantial and a better choice.”

Once you make about $70,000 or so, just your CA income tax alone is larger than the standard deduction. That’s almost everyone who is in the market for a house in CA.

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