[ocrenter]

[quote=flu][quote=utcsox]Is the 30-year mortgage rate going to drop to new low?[/quote]

I guess more appropriate question is…When is UK going to introduce negative interest rates, like the Swiss…And more importantly, are we ever going to attempt that here? Lol…

BUT, I think I just found where to go on vacation next…London…Seems like now that the british pound just nose-dived 10-11% overnight, things are looking pretty appealing for the USD, lol…[/quote]

LOL, was having the same convo with the wifey just now!

[ocrenter]

[quote=scaredyclassic]vons is my least favorite supermarket. id rank them at:

sprouts
ralphs
roots
stater bros
albertsons
vons.[/quote]

traditional supermarkets are all in bed with the processed food industry. they are major players in the current obesity crisis.

[ocrenter]

[quote=flu]

Its ok, not great. Its in my category of safer things to do. I don’t see many of the CA munis it holds defaulting, lol. It’s also tax free both federal and state. I figure since I already pay a lot of CA state taxes, I might as well get some back, kind of like the idea of paying more taxes and buying section 8 housing to get some of it back. 🙂

In all seriousness, it was where I was parking my money arbitraging against my previous 2.5% mortgage and 4% rental mortgage, before I paid the former off with Broadcom RSU stock after I left.

(I don’t end to keep investments in the sector I work in, lol)[/quote]

well, if your tax rate is up to 45% (ca + fed), a 4% return turns into just over a 7% pre-tax investment.

not sure I can find a 7%+ investment vehicle in this climate of perpetual low interest.

[ocrenter]

[quote=flu][quote=ocrenter]Would just buy the individual muni bonds, why buy the funds? What’s the rate?[/quote]

http://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/VCAIX/quote.html%5B/quote%5D

Not bad, not bad at all

[ocrenter]

Would just buy the individual muni bonds, why buy the funds? What’s the rate?

[ocrenter]

[quote=spdrun]As a straight man, I like gay men. Anyone voluntarily taking themselves out of the competition for dating has my blessing :)[/quote]

each gay man actually take two men out of the competition.

wait, by this logic you must hate lesbians. LOL!

[ocrenter]

[quote=ltsdd][quote=ocrenter][quote=joec]Some one else here has paid it off I think, and may comment, but they may have been in a different CFD area. I think they paid closer to 60k or so.

I think Del Sur has the highest CFD rates compared to any of the other 4S areas so it should be higher, but I don’t know if your house is in both CFD districts?

One of those payment sounds more correct to me.[/quote]

Just checked a few random Del Sur homes, they are in two CFD districts. The high CFD rates was a major turn off for us back in the days as well. But then again, that high school looks like it could put most of the community colleges in this country to shame. That cost had to come from somewhere…[/quote]

Del Sur does not have a high school built. The kids will either go to westview or Del Norte. The thing I don’t understand about Del Sur is with such a high mello-roos, it built exactly 1 school – Del Sur Elementary. Their website lists Oak Valley & Del Norte in 4S Ranch as their middle & high schools.

As for that K-8, Design 39 school, you must also be paying the secondary CFD No. 15 in order to be able to send your kids there.[/quote]

Did not imply there’s a separate high school for Del Sur. Comment was meant for Del Norte, which I’m sure some of the money from Del Sur CFD went to. PUSD pretty much spent the CFD dollars however they wanted throughout the district.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/taxes/

[ocrenter]

[quote=flu]you guys are lucky… in Carmel V, asked if I can pay off my MR early, since I’m already hitting AMT. San Dieguito and Del Mar MR you cannot pay off early. However, I believe my MR is done soon anyway, and MR in CarmelV isn’t as much as where you are.

As far as tax deductibility: if you are hitting AMT, property taxes deduction doesn’t help that much since it’s not counted as part of AMT deduction.

I believe you would be better off either cash out refinancing or if your HELOC has a ceiling, using that… I believe in those cases, you can write off your mortgage interest on the money you borrow, up to $100k i believe.[/quote]

Agree. Tax advisor said he does consider the HELOC for MR payoff as “home improvement.” We actually took out a HELOC to pay the MR off.

[ocrenter]

[quote=ltsdd][quote=plm]http://piggington.com/paying_off_mello_roos

this thread had the info about paying to get the payoff amount calculated first. I wanted to pay it off a couple of years ago but I wanted the tax break that year and was afraid that paying off the whole thing would not count. Seems like it might have worked but now I’m in the AMT so no reason for me not to pay if off.[/quote]

IIRC, ER mentioned about paying $500 for the assessor’s office to do the calculation and provide the exact pay-off amount. $500 is excessive for some arithmetic.[/quote]

It is a way to discourage pay off.

They don’t advice early pay off and certainly does not make it known as a possible option for homeowners.

They have the option of extending the CFD bond to raise more funds, too many people opting for early payoff and it would limit the number of “eligible properties.”

[ocrenter]

[quote=plm]

ocrenter,

Thanks for the mello roos info. I’m in Stonebridge as well with mellos roos of about 6200 for the two CFDs. Seems to me from your data, the payoff amount is increasing (maybe because of the 2 percent increase per year?) so I should pay of the mello roos now instead of later. Love Stonebridge so planning on staying in the home forever so I suppose there isn’t any reason not to pay of the mello roos now. Been using savings to pay down the mortgage but seems like it makes more sense to pay off the mello roos first. No regrets paying off the mello roos, right?

When I bought the house, I was told there was three different rates for Stonebridge based only on the square footage of the home.

Thanks[/quote]

Yes, no regrets at all. Here are the reasons why:

–the interest rate on the two CFDs were 5% and 7%, my mortgage is at 3.7%
–for me my mortgage is deductable, my property tax isn’t (due to AMT)
–I knew we were going to be here for 10 years if not longer. Selling the property as a non-MR property is only going to give you a leg up.
–every April and November when we pull up our street on the SD county assessor site to pay the property tax we see a nice little reminder of why we did what we did.

I think my friend falls in the $6200 MR bracket.

[ocrenter]

[quote=joec]Some one else here has paid it off I think, and may comment, but they may have been in a different CFD area. I think they paid closer to 60k or so.

I think Del Sur has the highest CFD rates compared to any of the other 4S areas so it should be higher, but I don’t know if your house is in both CFD districts?

One of those payment sounds more correct to me.[/quote]

Just checked a few random Del Sur homes, they are in two CFD districts. The high CFD rates was a major turn off for us back in the days as well. But then again, that high school looks like it could put most of the community colleges in this country to shame. That cost had to come from somewhere…

[ocrenter]

We paid off our MR in Stonebridge about 5 years ago. We were in two CFD districts, one was at $2500 and another close to $3000. The combined pay off was $59k.

Because of the built in annual 2% increase, ROI was about 10 years.

My friend in a different tract of Stonebridge with just slightly larger acreage and sqft but with a home about 3-4 years older reported payoff of $70k just a couple of months ago.

Just like mortgages, the principal doesn’t change much over the first 10 years as you are just paying interest.

2000 sqft homes in Del Sur should have a MR burden of roughly $5000 +/- $500. Very shocked to see the payoff as reported here. That is about 2.5 times the payoff for similar yearly burden.

Why the difference?

Find out the individual interest rate for each CFD.
Find out what was the original bond maturity date, and find out if the maturity date was extended due to additional money raised. (Yes, they can decide to generate more funds by extending maturity date).

[ocrenter]

[quote=SK in CV][quote=FlyerInHi]
I was always under the impression that Vietnamese-Americans were staunchly anti-communists and could not stand even a whiff of socialism. [/quote]

Or it might just be because they pay attention. And they know that Bernie Sanders’ version of democratic socialism has zero resemblance to communism in Viet Nam. So support of Sanders and being staunchly anti-communist are not the least bit mutually exclusive.[/quote]

Plus the label of socialism and communism have been so overused here that they have lost all meaningful sting and is more of a joke than anything. For example, Obamacare is communism? LOL.

[ocrenter]

[quote=FlyerInHi]OCr, are you sure Asian-Americans are natural republicans? I have read that long time Asian Americans in the Bay Area and Hawaii were democrats. Hawaii for sure.

The Vietnamese were stauncly republicans because Gerald Ford, by executive order, allowed refugees into the country despite popular protest. But that’s changing with the younger generations.

Maybe Chinese immigrants from Taiwan and immigrants fleeing the cultural revolution lean republican because of anti communism. But again that’s changing with the younger generations.

Cubans were the most diehard republicans, more than any group, but they are turning democrat.

Seems to me like anti communism is not the number 1 issue anymore. Maybe we can look at precinct data from Asian areas from the last presidential and compare to this November.[/quote]

Natural republicans in regard to views in regard to limitation in government’s role and personal responsibility in one’s own success.

Of course, this is a very general stereotype. And certainly have eroded throughout the last decade or so as the GOP cry of limited government has proven to be hollow with its support of intrusive government in personal rights, big government in anything defense related, and lastly just an overall racist feel to the entire party.

[ocrenter]

[quote=SK in CV]AN and Flu and others….I meant to post this here when it first came out a few weeks ago.

Results of the annual Asian American voter survey…

snipped from the executive summary:

• Asian Americans are shifting in party identification towards the Democratic Party, and
exclusionary rhetoric is a likely cause
o There has been a 12-point increase in the proportion of Asian Americans who identify as Democrats from 2012 to 2016 (pp. 27-28)
o Bolstering evidence from 2014, our survey indicates that Asian American registered voters, including Independents, will punish candidates with antiimmigrant and anti-Muslim views (pp. 17-18)
• On the presidential candidates:
o Hillary Clinton has the most net favorability, while Trump is viewed very unfavorably (pp. 8-9)
o A large proportion still have no opinion of Bernie Sanders (p. 9)
o Many Republican candidates were viewed unfavorably this year, highlighting the challenges for a party trying to attract immigrant voter support amid exclusionary rhetoric by many presidential candidates (p. 10)

The whole report is here:

http://aapidata.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Inclusion-2016-AAVS-may23web.pdf

Curious whether Asians on the board have seen it and have any feedback on the results. My first reaction was that I was surprised at how similar (with some exceptions) the results were across countries of origin. But I’m just a white guy without much insight on the subject, so data is all I have.[/quote]

I’m pretty much a Democrat after voting Dem for several election cycles. Kept my Republican registration so I can vote for the more moderate elements within the party. Although the last few years moderates were run out of the party, leaving just the excuse of pure laziness as the only reason why I’m still registered Republican.

Asian Americans are natural Republicans, but then the Republicans went down the deep end with guns and god and race, naturally most decided to leave.

[Author]

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