[no_such_reality]

How they handle the components would be critical on a front house installation.

Having panels on the front roof wouldn’t make me necessarily walk away from a house, depending on how diligently they were installed in consideration of the aesthetics of the house, could seriously impact curb appeal.

Done cleanly, and you won’t really see much more than the panels, not so cleanly and you see funny looking conduit runs that will just make it look haphazard.

That said, if electrical projections hit the 30%+ they’ve been saying in the next few years and we have weather like today, no one may care if they walk into your nice AC cooled 75 degree Fullerton home and you tack an electrical bill up next to thermostat saying $1.77.

[no_such_reality]

Yes, the human race is at crux point. We’ve seen forerunners of it before but not to the extent we’re seeing now.

The primary issue is as CDMA points out, we can have wealth without labor. And more importantly, provide the necessities without labor but not without capital.

The best example of it is that farm. In the 1800s, a single very large (think 13 kids type), would have 40 acres and bust their but farming it in cotton, wheat, corn, etc.

Today, a single smaller family can have 25000 acres, and with couple trucks and harvesters, do it all themselves and due to fertilizer, science and crop improvements, generate 2-10X/acre more.

The combine can cut and thresh an acre of wheat in under 6 minutes, by hand farmers could only cut 2 acres a day. And in the 1800s when the first rudimentary cutter/combines came out it was a dramatic improvement to 8 acres a day.

With a couple combines and trucks, 4 people can do 300 acres a day of wheat harvest.

That same change is happening across all industries and now moving into services. Computers read your medical scans, automated service systems process your payments, change your accounts and even change your services.

In the past, there was always work to do an hard physical labor was exceedingly valuable. It took the vast majority of physical labor to just feed ourselves. That’s changed.

Unlike the past in which the workers provide all the labor and were necessary, today, workers are quickly becoming unnecessary.

[no_such_reality]

[quote=The-Shoveler]It’s all about the margins, next guy up the ladder needs a little more to differ from the guy below etc..
Effect would probably be a lot less the further you go up the ladder.

But these days there are a lot more people being reduced to the lower rungs.[/quote]

Actually has you go up the latter the effect is more pronounced. The reality is sans buying entire businesses like the bankrupt Hostess for cash, the money is irrelevant past $25 million yet, particularly in public companies, and steadily creeping into top level government entities, the compensation issue is a massive ego item and has greatly become distorted and promotes short term thinking.

While the lower end has been compressed, the upper tend is trying to distinguish value from something that marginally has no value beyond a number on a piece of paper.

In general their base pay is relatively appropriate but there is increasing a perverse nepotism in executive compensation increasing compensation thru stock that isn’t performance based.

[no_such_reality]

I’d do those all direct with sub-contractors. Your biggest item is the cabinet and countertops which I’m assuming is all kitchen.

If your cabinets are really high quality, refacing may be a good way to go, if not, some of the mid-range modular systems may not cost much, if any, more with a side benefit of being able to leverage the whole thing at one supplier.

[no_such_reality]

AN, I think you did a lot of the work yourself correct?

Most things I saw were needing, roof, HVAC, kitchen and all bathrooms were a questionable if delayable. flooring was usually needed. Paint is an assumed, landscape was typically required. Many homes also really needed a few walls knocked out to open it up.

I was looking at one stories in the 2000-2500sf range, so those dead shake roofs were budget bombs.

OC’s cycle was slightly behind SD’s and didn’t go as deep, at least in the neighborhoods I was looking.

[no_such_reality]

[quote=AN][quote=The-Shoveler]Funny you did not notice it as much cause everything was going up (even your pay),

But yea it was like hitting the lottery to be a home owner in those days.
And yea I rented until the 80’s I was having too much fun to pay attention though,[/quote]If that’s the case, I wonder if it’s also not noticeable if it happens again today. $3300/month rent for a 2/2 in Mira Mesa!!! wow, You’re getting me salivating if renter didn’t really care seeing their rent went up 125% over 10 years.[/quote]

Au contaire. While I was still a young child at the time, I distinctly remember my parents discussions at the dinner table about money, Dad’s union threatening to strike over the raises and COLA, mom an office worker talking about prices going up.

Working class middle income were very aware of the rising prices in the 70s. They were getting raises, but mostly driven around a cost of living increase which companies at the time were starting to phase out or underestimate and then pinch the real raise because they had 8% COLA increases.

SD, appreciated the post about inventory. The SoCal housing inventory and DOM for home for sale has been distorted to the low end for so long, that a return to historical 90-120 days to sell and 9+ months would be extremely psychologically depressing to most.

I bought during the window of opportunity. It wasn’t easy. In another blog, I referred to as like a comment the guys from Motley Crue made about getting a music contract in the 80s involving swimming through a pool of burning sewage to get to crawl through broken glass.

In the 2008-2010 window, inventory was sh*t, house quality for sale was sh*t, many deals needed vision and $50-$100+k rehab above the 30%+ down and financing to close on a place to remove it from borderline slumlord status. If it wasn’t slumlord ready, they’re were 30 people putting offers in. Yes, 30, as in that is a literal number our agent shared with us on a house on which she was the selling agent. It was common to go to a showing an wait in line to get in a house, and then see the entire kitchen counter covered in realtor cards.

[no_such_reality]

BG, good to see you are supportive of a modest proposal.

[no_such_reality]

[quote=CA renter]
In a truly free market, people would have the right to refuse something. With jobs, people do not have the ability to refuse whatever is offered to them simply because they need a job — any job they can possibly get — in order to survive. That is the figurative gun that is being held to their heads.

The employer-employee relationship has two sides, but only one (the employer) really has the power to refuse something if they don’t like the terms. [/quote]

Not true. In many of those countries without safety nets, they don’t have alternatives. They cannot open a business. Here, in the USA, sans so government red tape, getting baseline funding for business isn’t difficult. It’s almost as simple as getting a liar loan.

Having the skills to do something, that’s the hard part.

[no_such_reality]

[quote=SK in CV] Maybe, if their employer paid them 25% more, there would be much less turnover, they’d save recruiting and training costs, and their employees wouldn’t have to live 12 people to a house. They might even have enough income so that don’t need SNAP or Medicaid. And the employer would probably decrease their costs.

The short-sightedness of some business operators is truly mind-numbing.[/quote]

Yes, that’s my point. Are they that short sighted? That incompetent? Oblivious, like the person driving around ten minutes trying to save a couple cents a gallon on gas? Or are they that cynical and jaded and they’ve actually run the numbers?

I really don’t think they’ve run the numbers. Other than the most basic, if we increase wages $1/hr across 3000 employees, that’s $6 million a year.

Not stopping to think they’re spending $10+ million on new hire training a year. They’re spending how much on hiring bonuses? They’re spending how many millions on compliance? etc.

They lost a 1/3rd of their staff on the raid. New management’s response was a massive media campaign, newspaper campaign, billboard compaign, pound the pavement town visit campaign, refugee hiring campaign, hiring bonuses, rework the operations to support multiple languages to replace ~600 workers and then expand another 1000.

All that instead of saying “hey, let’s try $2/hr more, it’s only $6 million and maybe it’ll slow down our $12 million new hire training expenses due to attrition and cut down on our 6% injury rate”.

[no_such_reality]

At what wage would American workers start to take those jobs?

How much of that 29% turnover is due to the job paying $12 and having 3X the risk of injury of San Diego police officer?

How much does recruiting 29% of your work force a year cost?

How much does that turnover affect the injury rate?

how much does that injury drive their worker’s comp and insurance through the roof?

Americans don’t want those jobs because they know they don’t pay well and they are brutally hard. CO minimum wage is $7.78/hr. The slaughter house is an assembly line and the human cogs in it are driven as fast as they can.

When I read the efforts the business is going through is like reading about a person driving an 15 minutes out of their way to save 2 cents a gallon on gas in car with a ten gallon tank.

[no_such_reality]

As Shoveler noted, environment, external and internal is more important.

I’ve seen 3500sf homes that burn nearly a 1000sf up in the just the master suite closet and bath, not including the bedroom. I’ve seen home layouts that makes 2500 sf seem cramped while a 1500 sf place with the same number of bed and baths seem spacious.

You need to determine what functional areas do you need. What exterior space you need and what public space and access to it you need.

For me personally, with small children now, desirability of trendy restaurants and nightlife is near zero and desirability of walk-ability, access to parks, grocery stores, libraries, old downtown areas and child friendly public space and a community garden is high.

[no_such_reality]

[quote=SK in CV]

To quote the most interesting man in the world “when you find something you don’t do very well, don’t do that thing”. Government doesn’t outsource very well. Hell, even private industry often doesn’t outsource very well. [/quote]

Most people don’t do amputations well. You may find yourself in a situation where you need to do one. In fact, you may find you need to do it with a dull multi-tool and not a nice clean surgery center after being stuck under a rock for 127 hours.

That’s actually why most corporations outsource to. They know the service is broken and inefficient and bloated. Like a 400lb person, they could go a the biggest loser, start a multi-year regimen of serious exercise and diet or, they could do surgery.

They opt for surgery because they know the organization, much like many people do not have the stamina and fortitude to deal with all the hard work of fixing it themselves.

Most importantly, though they never openly admit it, they really do it because they know they cannot control their own demand for services unless there’s an immediate cost. They know can’t say no to an extra cookie.

[no_such_reality]

It has potential but needs serious modifications. At present printing something as simple as a smart phone case takes close to two hours.

[no_such_reality]

Privatization runs into many of the same problems outsourcing does. They fail for a very simple reason. The entity that is privatizing or outsourcing doesn’t allow the provider to improve or change the process.

They take a broken process, move it to a new provider and keep a management layer to oversee the new provider and then wonder why it isn’t cheaper and service is decreased when the new provider needs to follow the exact same procedures that the original provider followed.

[no_such_reality]

BG, I think the house being paid off is crucial for a secure retirement. If it’s not paid off, or at least on the last legs of a very modest loan, retirement is simply tenuous if even at all possible.

I doubt many retirees are carrying payments on a $400K loan in retirement. By sunk cost, I meant it’s money, an asset you have, that you can’t really afford to leverage. Leveraging it, by taking money out essentially introduces more expenses.

It’s an asset that keeps giving. You’re still living there, but you’re not making a $2000 or $3000/month rent payment. That’s $30,000 or so of after tax income you don’t have to generate.

If your house is paid off, if you’ve got $30,000 from investments to spend each year, it’s actually like have $60,000 or more of ‘income’ since you’re not making house payments.

Outside of a good secure pension, you need a very large nest egg to generate the cash flow north of $50K/year. A few rental properties that are paid off or cash flowing strongly and a sizable portfolio. As individual, the sustainable withdrawal rate is surprisingly low over a long term. You can buy annuity today, if you’re 55, it’ll cost you an up front $500K for a $25,000/yr annuity, and that’s not index to inflation.

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