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powayseller
ParticipantInteresting..have you seen any SOLD signs?
Participantrankandfile = Have you seen any SOLD signs?
ParticipantIt’s okay…Hey, I was going to ask you about that story, because it did sound “off” when I thought about it later. Gas stations already have $3 signs from last fall, and why would a company go to the trouble of putting its inventory in an “undisclosed location”. I again read your post and our responses, and I had to laugh. Now that we all know it was a joke, it really is funny.
ParticipantWell said, Josh, but I would go further and say that if there is systemic shock, the most valuable commodity is food.
The gold bugs are in love with the allure and glitter of gold, but have they ever considered how they would pay rent with the darn thing?
To me gold is not money (at least today), and to 4plexowner it is, so assume we were negotiating the price of my used vehicle, and he wanted to pay me in gold. I wouldn’t make the deal. I would rather have dollars than gold. Thus, we don’t have a medium of exchange. So by definition, how can it be money?
At what point would someone like me become convinced to take gold instead of dollars? When would Trader Joes take gold instead of dollars? Only if there were a widespread acceptance of gold as a medium of exchange.
And I wouldn’t bet my hard earned money that gold will keep going up. Gold is a very volatile commodity. It could go up to $1600, and it could go down to $115. And no one would be able to explain the movement in either direction, except to say investors were excited, or panicked, or the demand for jewelry went down. The greatest demand for gold is from jewelers! So much for it being money. There seems to be no intrinsic value to it.
ParticipantMy husband used to work at Corporate U-haul in Phoenix, and he told me 2 interesting things: first, they make more money on the insurance you buy for your rental truck than they make on the rental of the truck, and second, that they fare better during economic downturns. During recessions, rentals and storage places make more money. U-haul is privately owned, so you can’t buy stock in it. I just checked the stock price for 3 public storage facilities (PSA, SSS, EXR), and the P/E ratio is 42, 29, and n/a, respectively ($16 for a company that lost 16cents per share). No good buys there…
Some others have written about the higher fees U-haul charges for rentals out of SD, and this shows the trend of people leaving SD.
The internet is sure making it easier for all of us to know the inside story.
The Sign information was fascinating. Why are they storing the signs at an undisclosed location? Who is ordering the Foreclosure signs?
ParticipantWhat different story?
ParticipantI reviewed the data back to 1977, and I probably didn’t analyze it as well as Rich would, but I concluded that San Francisco’s housing prices are stronger than ours, except during the years of the .com bust.
San Francisco has always had greater housing appreciation than San Diego, and smaller declines, except the year 1977, and the years 2001 – 2005, where its appreciation rates lagged our city.
If you go on the premise that income should support housing, you’d expect housing prices to rise the same as income. However, SF housing prices rose in excess of income for all years from 1977, except 1982, 1984, and the period 1991-1997. From 1991 – 1995, house prices were negative, and 1996 – 1997, they rose only slightly whereas wages were growing well.
San Francisco housing prices declined only once: between 1990 and 1994, SF homes lost 12% of their value, while SD homes lost only 10%. However, SF prices rose 15% over the following 3 years, erasing the loss, while SD home prices only rose 5% over that period.
It’s interesting that during our bubble runup, starting in late 2000, we had annual appreciation of 10% to 31%, while SF had only 1/4 – 1/2 of our appreciation rates, probably a result of the .com bust. It wasn’t until the middle of 2005, that SF housing appreciation rates caught up to ours!
So while SF has been stronger than SD in the past, they’ve had periods of weakness too, and I don’t see any reason now to believe they’ll be exempt from a decline in prices.
ParticipantI bet a bottle of champagne that prices will decline by 50% over 5-6 years. I made the bet with a couple who got out of the SD housing market a couple years ago and has been renting since. Now the wife is tired of renting, and I think he’s going to cave and buy her a house when they move to San Francisco this summer.
ParticipantNot even the .com bust affected pricing of SF houses.
SF housing has only gone in one direction: up.
How is this possible?
I checked the OFHEO site, and the data goes back to only 1998. That year was only broken down by state, not MSA. I called and requested the data for the earlier years, if available by MSA. The data for the later years is limited in usefulness, because it applies only to SF homes selling for under $359K (raised to $417K recently), and when was the last time you could buy a house in that price range in SF?
March 21, 2006 at 7:57 AM in reply to: For those under 60 years old, aren’t high values always bad? #23728ParticipantYou’re right. Two friends who purchased homes in the late ’90s and checked into moving up to bigger houses, realized they are priced out. Now they wish they’d bought the $300K house in the late ’90s instead of the $180K house, which they bought and is now worth in the 700’s. At the time, they didn’t know home values would skyrocket. These same friends refinanced into 15 yr mortgages when rates went down, instead of buying up or doing the almost-mandatory kitchen remodel.
On the other hand, since the highest portion of the cost of a house, the land, is fixed, the incremental cost of square footage goes down. A lady I know just moved up from an average neighborhood to a luxury home, by just paying a couple hundred thousand dollars more. Apparently she was surprised by how much more house she could get with just a little more money. In her case, she bought her home a long time ago, and their wages had gone up enough that they could easily afford to move up.
March 20, 2006 at 9:52 PM in reply to: is this too much affordable rental housing for san diego? #23726ParticipantAs a European citizen who came here legally as a child and learned English at age 9, I have the right to say that people should use the legal channels of applying for citizenship when they come here, and they must learn to speak English. However, our President wants the illegal citizens here, so we must stop thinking of them as illegal. Either our President is doing something illegal (they all do), or we need to accept this is the way it will be: illegals do the jobs that Americans don’t want.
But stop complaining about them. They are hard workers, and they contribute more to the economy than they take away. If they were a problem, the President wouldn’t be in favor of them being here. Yet, he doesn’t want to grant them citizen status either. The economy works better when there is a black market for labor.
If the US gov’t really wanted to stop illegals, they would enforce employment laws. When I got my first job out of college in the late 1980’s, I had to provide proof of legal alien status, and the HR dept. made a copy of my green card. I don’t think anyone does that anymore.
I hope this puts a stop to anymore talk about illegals. Just remember: the gov’t wants them here because they contribute more than they take away. And I see no impact on housing. Any illegal contractors who lose their jobs will go back home. End of story.
March 20, 2006 at 5:43 PM in reply to: Two realtors told me today that prices will continue going UP #23718ParticipantThe realtor who told me houses in Poway won’t go down has sold real estate for 35 years, and his kids attended the same schools that my kids attend. So this guy would remember the 90’s, and he’s either in complete denial or lying.
ParticipantThis house is in Poway; the house on the other post was in Montelena, in Rancho Bernardo. But it’s the same trend everywhere: price reductions.
I’m surprised they’re dropping the price so frequently, and in large increments.
ParticipantCheck out the same question in the thread titled “Same Payment After Bubble Bursts”, from a couple days ago.
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