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Here’s a related story. We are #2 next to the three SF Bay markets in the number of houses that sell within 60 days. We’re #1 in improvement on this metric.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/15/real_estate/housing-markets-fastest-sales/?iid=EL

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Gas is faster and much cheaper. Less chance of a power short too if your wiring is old. Microwave plus dishwasher plus anything else was enough to short my old house. I’d even have a gas hookup installed as long as the nearest line was fairly close.

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It is wrong to assume that a recession would cause San Diego house prices to fall.

Nominal home prices have only fallen twice in modern history in San Diego: 1990-1997 and 2007-2011. They went down in the mid 90’s despite the extremely strong national economy, and they went up quite rapidly during the 2001-03 recession. Finally, they were flat in the short but very intense 1982 recession (unemployment peaked at 10.8%, higher than our recent very long recession).

San Diego has a large number of well-paying jobs, is a favored place for the wealthy to vacation, have second homes, and retire, and has basically run out of nice locations to develop.

Historical valuation matrices don’t account for the fact that interest rates are extremely low. Rich put up a chart that does, and it shows that prices right now are extremely low taking this into account:

http://piggington.com/images/san_diego_housing_valuations_12_2013-4.png

I also think it is only a matter of time before mainland Chinese buyers start branching out from their favored UTC-centered buying habits into other areas of San Diego.

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Berkeley wasted a ton of money subsidizing its football team, training center, and stadium. It was supposed to pay for itself, but it did not even come close.

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Barron’s grocery store sells Julian apples in season. They are small and a tad sour, but very good. I buy them every year. They hit the sweet spot, less sour than granny smith but more than all the other varieties.

Why are you trying to build your own home? When I’ve browsed deep-east county listings, it seems that supply is very high compared to the rest of San Diego, and you should be able to find exactly what you are looking for without the hassle of building yourself. And if the location is really good and OK for development, someone would have already built something on the lot.

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Unfortunately uncirculated 64 halves aren’t worth very much, because the combination of emotion about JFK and the end of silver coinage caused a lot of people to stock up like your father did.

I avoid silver coins that look like regular coins, so no silver kennedy halves, roosevelt dimes, and washington quarters for me.

Last time I bought silver coins about 6 months ago I got 100 mercury dimes for $150. They’ve started to become popular with prepers as they are the smallest and thus most practical silver coin people will use after Obama declares martial law and hyperinflates the dollar.

Franklin halves barely cost more than melt value and might be the best US coin to start collecting.

The down side is you either have to get them online and worry about insurance and credit card and shipping fees, or else buy them from local dealers in transactions of $1500 or more to avoid California sales tax.

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In 92107, fairly priced places over a million still take a while to sell, but they still usually do around the initial asking price. Under 600k disappears in a couple weeks by contrast. So do places under 900k on full size lots.

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My precious metal investment is low cost etfs, none currently though, and old but not rare American silver coins. Silver is still pretty cheap compared to gold, and I really just like the look and feel of Morgan and Peace dollars and Mercury dimes. A lot of people don’t like the premium for US Mint products, but it isn’t that high really, they are very liquid, and enough of us prefer them to maintain and slowly grow the premium.

There is something a bit cheesy about the coin shaped silver and gold products that are privately minted. If I wanted very low premium silver I’ll get a couple 10oz bars.

The old platinum premium over gold disappeared for a while, then the old ratio snapped back for a nice profit.

I also just can’t see dropping that much money on a little coin when I can get around 55 90% silver dollars weighing several pounds that are 90 to 120 years old.

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My plan is to put up listing for both, but I’ll probably have to decide first, since the rent on the two smaller bedrooms will be extremely competitive in a popular market.

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I noticed the Wal Mart in Clairemont now has some really nice parking lot covering solar panels. It is great to see green power making economic sense.

The amount of coal the USA burns peaked in 2005, and is down about 20% since then. Wind is also now 4% of our total electricity production and wind production is growing by 8% a year. Utility solar is growing much faster, but from a much lower base.

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It drives me nuts my office landlord does not have solar, I’ve asked him a couple times about this and offered to pay more rent to compensate for the value.

There is no “low tier” pricing for commercial property, and our big windows that don’t open mean our power bill gets as high as $400 in the summer, and we keep the AC at around 75 most of the time. With the other tenants using even more, the building probably gets as high as $1200/mo in the summer.

The roof is easy to access and there are no large buildings or other obstructions. There are already power outlets up there. It is a perfect candidate. The only small downside is that the roof is flat so some sort of platform would have to be built at the right south-facing angle.

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With rates very low, I’d guess a lot more people buying the in 700-750k range are limited by the need to come up with a $140,000-$190,000 downpayment, than people without the income to qualify for the mortgage.

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If someone wanted to test my theory, you’d make a chart of sales translations and price. My prediction is that instead of a smooth slope downward as prices increase, there would be a cluster of extra sales around $700,000, then a sudden drop in transaction count around $720,000.

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Your remodel budget seems a bit off too. I’ve spent 1500+ hours on remodel and home improvement, but by being a tightwad, using family labor, etc my cash cost has only been around $12,000.

And that includes
a complete exterior repaint with multiple coats
partial ceiling and interior repaint
small roof improvements
multiple electrical upgrades (used a contractor for that one)
many landscaping improvements
putting a floor into the walkable parts of the attic
planting trees
new cement for the driveway and parts of the yard
adding glass tiles to the shower
putting up 120 feet of quality redwood fence
replacing random exterior parts with termite damage

While of course you can spend $70,000, or even $700,000, on a remodel, my point is a lot of things cost close to nothing if you keep your eye out for cheap construction materials and do the work yourself.

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Buying in two years could mean your $450,000 house becomes a $520,000 house. That’s only two years of 7.5% appreciation. It also would mean when you do buy, the house you want to live in for life will have a higher property tax valuation locked in forever, and you be paying an extra $760 a year in taxes forever. Actually more since they go up 2% a year.

You also may have to pay higher rates. But if rates end up going down a lot, you can refinance.

I also don’t know where your $15,000 closing cost estimate comes from, that’s more than three times the normal amount.

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