[livinincali]

[quote=AN][quote=flu](2) If you’re still mid-career in your 30-40ies and were planning an early retirement…Think twice.[/quote]
I’m one of those 30-40s who are planning an early retirement. If anything, this move by the fed to inflate asset prices will help me get to my goals easier. It would have been much harder if we’re in a long deflation period. If we see another bout of inflation like the 70s and 80s, my mortgage will look like peanuts, just like those who bought in the 70s or 80s. It will almost be like getting my house almost for free. Not to mention, if you have rentals with fixed rate, your PITI will stay fixed and when rent rises to match inflation, your ROI will be much more sweeter.[/quote]

How does inflating asset prices translate to inflating wages especially in our high unemployment globalized world. It’s certainly possible that the inflation shows up mostly in the commodities that we consume, leaving less for shelter. That’s always been the problem with the fed’s method. They can increase the money/credit supply but they can’t dictate where that inflation will show up. In the late 1990’s it showed up in the stock market in the mid 2000’s it showed up in housing. In order to win the fed’s money printing game you need to be invested in the next bubble and get out before it pops.

[livinincali]

Just do it in the middle of the night, nobody will even know. But seriously you’re not probably going to have much luck getting the city to let you add another driveway/curb cut. Add more space next to your existing driveway/curb cut or get somebody in your house to be disabled and put a handicap space in front of your house.

[livinincali]

[quote=CA renter]
Don’t project the price trends over the past ~50 years to continue. Asset owners have had the effects of baby boomers entering their peak purchasing years (they are going to be entering their peak selling years now), and continuously lower interest rates over the past ~30 years. I think there is a definite danger of a prolonged period of asset price declines if interest rates ever get away from the Fed, or even if they start rising in a “controlled” fashion.

I think this is a dangerous trap that many are getting into. Just my 2 cents…[/quote]

If you just look at how the population budge of the boomers moved over time you can really explain just about everything we’ve seen economically. In the 1970’s boomers were finishing school, getting jobs, and starting families. The demand for home was high and the demand for loans was high so we ended up with an environment where home prices and interest rates went up.

In the 1980’s private companies started realizing that there was no way they’d be able to make good on pension promises and the government created 401Ks for retirement. So people started plowing money into 401Ks and the stock market because they had a long time until retirement. Behold the stock market goes on a 20 year bull run as the boomers start investing for their retirement.

In 2000’s the boomers have to start paying for their kids college, start having to think about more conservative investments and the stock market starts suffering while income producing assets increase (bonds, rental properties, etc go up). People nearing retirement start gambling in bubbles because they are short of funds for retirement. In the decades going forward this boomer demographic will likely sell assets, and will likely drive income producing assets to microscopic yields. Boomers are in the peak asset collection phase right now. They move to a liquidation phase later as they trade assets for goods and services.

I expect stocks the suffer the most, then bonds, and finally real estate. It’s really a simple game of competing for goods and services that next generation will produce. What does that next generation value and how many goods and services are available after they provide for themselves.

[livinincali]

Mortgages rates have tended to be flat to up during the actual periods of QE. They’ve tended to drop after QE was over for whatever reason. QE1 started at about 5.33 and ended at 5.15 (End of Nov 2008 to End of March 2010). QE2 started at 4.20 and ended at 4.55 (Nov 3, 2010 to June 30 2011). In the year after QE2 we’ve gone from 4.55 to 3.57. Probably was a good time to act before QE because everybody front runs it and then sells into it. The rumor of QE is more effective than the actual QE.

As for the stock market history says it should rise during the duration of QE3. That makes sense as those front running the QE sell their bonds to the fed and put that money into the stock market.

[livinincali]

[quote=briansd1]
I think that Euro bonds are in the future. And Brussels will have the right to veto countries’ budgets, or otherwise penalize counties that don’t comply. Something that economists such as Paul Krugman predicted a while back.[/quote]

It’s possible but I highly doubt it. The German people aren’t going to go for that and the German constitution would have to be amended to make Euro Bonds a possibility. They’ll try slight of hands like they are now, where the ECB is promising to buy unlimited quantities of bonds without identifying where the money is coming from. Eventually people are going to figure out that the money (the actual goods and services the ECB is loaning) is coming from the Northern European countries via devaluation of the Euro.

As an individual you’ll bail out a family member with bad financial decisions to a degree but eventually you’re going to cut them off and move on. That’s essentially what Europe is doing right now. Either Finland, Germany, or France are going to realize they aren’t ever getting paid back and decide to leave, or Greece is going to default and leave, so they can devalue. Whoever leaves first will reap the biggest benefit.

[livinincali]

[quote=briansd1]
The bond purchases have political conditions attached so they are not unlimited.

Let politics (especially German politics) get in the way of central banking and the results might not be pretty.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/ecb-loads-the-big-bazooka/2012/09/06/a4ff5a2a-f814-11e1-8b93-c4f4ab1c8d13_story.html?hpid=z1

The key to moving markets it to take bold action and make speculators take a big bath. Speculators don’t have the wherewithal to fight the central bank.

Europeans have been dithering with half-way measures that always come too late.[/quote]

So it looks like we’ve already figured out all the excuses we’re going to use for why it doesn’t work. We know it isn’t going to work because the ECB has no idea how it’s going to sterilize the unlimited bond purchases. Therefore the ECB isn’t actually going to do unlimited bond purchases and since they aren’t going to actually do that, it won’t be long before the market figures it out and rates go back up again.

All these countries with too much debt have a solution. Default and stop spending more than you take in in taxes. Yes it will be painful but you can’t spend more than you take in in taxes forever anyways. This is very simple math and people try to make it complicated so the general population doesn’t understand they’re being looted. Governments and economists are always trying to conjure up free lunches and use complicated monetary policy so you can’t figure out where that free lunch came from, but it did indeed come from somebody and somebody didn’t get compensated for it.

[livinincali]

[quote=briansd1]The ECB action is a too late. But it’s still a big boost to the market.

This is something that economists agreed the ECB should have done. Had the ECB acted earlier, Europe might have avoided recession.

We know that investors will be testing the ECB’s resolve. Let’s see how the ECB implements this new policy.

[/quote]

I can’t wait until this action fails and the Keynesians claim unlimited bond purchases wasn’t big enough.

[livinincali]

Probably buys 2 or 3 months at best, but I’m guessing more like 2-3 weeks. Each effort has a shorter and shorter success period.

[livinincali]

Total Property Tax in CA has been rising at a pretty good clip over the years. Barring years in recession annual collection of property taxes have increased by about 8-10%. California collects a little over $45 billion in property taxes on a total assessed value of 4.1 trillion dollars. How much bigger do you think the 4.1 trillion is in real terms.

According to the LAO http://www.lao.ca.gov/handouts/state_admin/2012/CA_Property_Tax_3_12_12.pdf
the residential real estate component is 2.2 (SFH) trillion + 770 billion (MultiFamily) ~ 3 trillion or about 75% of the total property tax collected. 2010 census data says CA has 13 million homes. The median home price in CA is about $300K so if we completely got rid of prop 13 and reassessed every house it looks like we’d potential increase the assessed value to 3.9 trillion from 3 trillion (30% more than the current assessed value). That corresponds to about 10 billion dollars in additional tax revenue. Total commercial property is about 891 billion so even if we applied a higher value like 50% to those properties we end up with about 5 billion in additional revenue.

Of course in doing so property tax revenue would become more volatile as there wouldn’t be a cushion in under assessed properties. As prices rose or fell in CA the tax revenue would do the same. Right now property tax revenue tends to always increase. A lot in the boom years and basically flat in the recession years. Without prop 13 and under-assessing property values CA’s budget might have had a 30-40 billion dollar hole when the housing market collapsed.

[livinincali]

[quote=AN]
I agree with price hasn’t really gone up over the last 3 years. There are some up and down, but I think in general, when you compare apple to apple, they’re basically flat. Were you actively looking for condos back in 2010? Right now, there are only 7 condos that are active (or at least not status not changed to contingent yet) and most of them are way over priced. Supply can’t possibly be much worse than it is now.[/quote]

I wasn’t actively looking. I was more curious as to how the tax credit was effecting the market back then. I figured MM was a prime candidate for measuring the tax credit. What I remembered was probably less than 2 months inventory and I was just using sdlookup’s numbers so if you excluded contingent and other things it might have been <1 month inventory. Inventory is constricted right now but back then I think it was worse. Just look at the numbers, people actually went ahead and overpaid for what was left then. Right now it seem buyers are more willing to pass on the overpriced listing and wait for a better one.

[livinincali]

[quote=flu]Prices have definitely gone up… Significantly….So has rent…And banks are no longer as stupid…Time to go back and play in the stock markets… :([/quote]

It’s all been relative in MM. Looking at the data it feels like prices went up a ton when compared to earlier this year. I happen to have MM data handy and this is what I have.

July 2012 Avg Price 305K, Avg Price/SF $238
February 2012 (low point) Avg Price 260K, Avg Price/SF $212
July 2011 Avg Price 316K, Avg Price/SF $230
Feb 2011 Avg Price 296K, Avg Price/SF $231
July 2010 (Wee tax credit expiration) Avg Price 343K, Price/SF $262
Feb 2010 Avg Price 325K, Avg Price/SF $237
July 2009 Avg Price 335K, Avg Price/SF $246

So we’re still running below 2009 which was supposedly the low, we’re pretty much in line with last year numbers and we’re significantly below the hotness that was the tax credit expiration. I remember 80 homes/condos in 92126 back in mid 2010, we’re double that now, but how quickly we seem to forget.

It feels hot now because of the significant decline in late 2011, but we’ve really only managed to get that decline back. Context is everything and it’s interesting that we tend to have such a short term focus on asset prices that we plan to hold for a long time.

[livinincali]

[quote=ucodegen][quote=flu]For those in the know…just how doable is 3-D printing possible at a garage/personal level these days.[/quote]
Did you check the link I had on my last message?.. it is a DIY 3D printer.. and is quite doable.

It does work with plastic, primarily PET type plastics. Other people have built 3D ‘carving’ machines etc.[/quote]

Here’s 3-d systems consumer product. It’s fairly expensive and only does about 5″ by 5″ but bleeding edge technology usually comes down in price rather quickly.

http://cubify.com/cube/

[livinincali]

Not a fan of Motley fool, but buying DDD a few months back has worked out rather well. I look at 3D printing as a potential for a home run but it certainly doesn’t mean it will work out that way. SSYS might be the better play, but it’s hard to say. If you think commercial prototyping is where it’s at then try SSYS. If you think the consumer market is where it’s at try DDD. If you think both are just a bunch of hype kick back and watch it pull off a FSLR, CROX, or NFLX. They aren’t going to look good on paper from a valuation perspective, but early tech growth stocks never do. Is it a QCOM or something we’ll never remember in 2 years.

[livinincali]

There’s this from the county recorder but I don’t this it’s what you want. You can search by a partial street name (i.e. enter “a” in the street and you’ll get every record where the street starts with A).

http://arcc.co.san-diego.ca.us/services/propsales/propsales_search.aspx

[livinincali]

[quote=spdrun]^^^

Nope: if the app has access to HTTP and location data, it doesn’t need to use Apple’s map solution. BTW – I don’t like Apple’s lock-in any more than you do, but facts are facts.[/quote]

Well you could technically roll your own mapping solution to use google maps if you really wanted to, but most people programming iOS apps were using Apple’s MapKit API which used to point to Google Maps. Under IOS6 it will point to Apple’s maps. Your average iOS app will display Apple maps instead of the google maps when users upgrade to iOS6. But it’s technically true that someone could choose to code to google maps if they want to give up Apple’s MapKit API and it probably won’t be too long until somebody publishes some open source code to do that.

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