[SK in CV]

[quote=bearishgurl]
Okay, SK, fair enough. But, just so we’re on the same page, the tax savings is more than a “few bucks.” It adds up to many, many thousands of dollars over the course of the lifespan of a typical retiree.

If you all don’t mind, I don’t mind … but I (if given this oppt’y), would have done everything in my power to make “mom’s house” mine, whether or not I chose to actually reside there 🙂

Location and/or condition be damned.[/quote]

It would have saved her about $3,500 a year. There are a lot of homes in Allied Gardens where the savings wouldn’t have been that much. Even with the low taxes, it wouldn’t have made a good rental, rents just aren’t high enough.

[SK in CV]

[quote=bearishgurl]
I understand. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your sister ALREADY OWNED her home in the same area as your mom’s home at the time of your mom’s death. Therefore, she possibly couldn’t “re-qualify” for a mortage at the time of your mom’s death to buy the rest of her siblings out (yourself incl) so opted to stay put.

This is perfectly understandable but I’m just wondering why the rest of you siblings weren’t interested in taking over mom’s home. The tax savings alone would have been a “gold mine” on into your retirement years.[/quote]

You are wrong. She made an entirely non-financial decision. She likes the house she lives in.

My siblings and I all had homes where we were quite content, so, like most people in our position, we decided just to sell the house rather than to save a few bucks in property taxes and live in a house that none of us wanted to live in.

[SK in CV]

[quote=bearishgurl]
SK, if you are referring to “her” as your mom, why didn’t your sister “buy” your mom’s house from you and your other sibling(s)? Had she done so, she would have had a much lower tax bill and a bigger house in the same area she lives in now.

In light of the tangible benefits of taking over your mom’s home, I don’t understand why your sister thought it would be a “hassle” to do so.

Perhaps the area where you grew up (Del Cerro?) is now too expensive for most people to purchase with all cash or mostly cash. I was referring to neighborhoods in the $200K to $350K range in recent years as having a lot of all-cash or nearly all-cash purchasers (and they are not ALL “investors”).

Those with well-established parents who have real property holding(s) in CA are the ones who have and will end up being the “haves” going into the future while newcomers who come in and buy in newer areas will end up being the “have nots” due to the combination of taking out high-LTV mortgages plus having high carrying costs in the form of MR … and often HOA dues as well. This is just my opinion based upon what I’ve seen the combo of these monthly charges do to family finances in the long haul.

I would have to pull actual plat maps and then examine the corresponding titles to show the prevalence of recent all-cash or near all-cash sales in different areas. This would be a time-consuming but yet “interesting” endeavor.

Just like the “real” cause of the Vallejo (CA) BK which I had posted late last year that I planned to examine in detail and report my findings here, I just haven’t had an extended block of time to devote to the project.

I’m getting ready to leave on another road trip so won’t be able to devote any time to this right now. I promise that I am putting this task on my “to-do” list for my spare, spare time for the balance of 2013 :=]

Luckily, I already have a nice selection of county plat maps from “well-established” areas in my possession :)[/quote]

It was my sister’s choice to not move into my mother’s house. She didn’t want to. For her, it would have been too big of a hassle and not worth it. It is a perfect opportunity for what you think happens all the time. She’s not wealthy by any means, but she has her home that she can afford and for a few thousand dollars a year in tax savings, she didn’t want to move.

The area I was talking about was not Del Cerro, but Allied Gardens. I know at least a couple dozen people I grew up with that still live there. Only two in their parents homes. And I’m pretty sure none of the others were in a position to pay cash for their homes. And come to think of it, I know someone who lives 2 blocks from where he grew up and his mother died recently and he would have had the same option to move into his mother’s house with much lower taxes, and he chose not to, and sold her house instead.

[SK in CV]

[quote=bearishgurl]
If you never leave your “planned development” except to go to work in your “planned office park” and shop in your “master-planned strip mall,” you’ll never be able to see up front and personal how the (gritty?) “real world” operates :=0[/quote]

Actually, I grew up a stone’s throw away from one of those areas you mentioned and my sister still lives there, (in a house 3 blocks away from where we grew up, that she purchased with 20% down and a mortgage) and I have many friends that still live there. My sister certainly could have acquired through inheritance my mother’s house 8 years ago and kept the low taxes, but she chose not to. (Her taxes, btw, dated back to a pre-prop 13 assessment, and were over $1,000 a year.) It was a bigger and nicer home, but it wasn’t worth the hassle to her.

I’ve seen no evidence that anywhere near half of the homes there are being purchased for cash. Of the scores of people that I know that still live there, only two acquired their homes from their parents. I’m still waiting for any real evidence that there are neighborhoods were most homes are purchased for cash. My anecdotal evidence says otherwise.

[SK in CV]

[quote=bearishgurl]Again, folks … “salaries” (in relation to price of housing) only matters in *some* CA markets. In well-established areas, a much larger percentage of buyers use all cash or mostly cash for purchase money. Buyers utilizing 1031 exchanges typically don’t have to come up with very much cash because they trade “like for like.” Also, it is not uncommon in well-established areas for longtime neighbors to pay cash for a nearby prospective listing for a residence for other family members or gift a large downpayment to the buyer (typically a relative) OR tell distant relatives who will be cash buyers of a nearby prospective listing (before it is put on the MLS with the commensurate price increase). This can only happen if the listing agent/broker goes door to door telling neighbors of the listing before it is actually marketed (again, this is common practice in well-established areas).

[/quote]

Can you name a single market where salary (or income) doesn’t matter because most homes are purchased for cash that is other than the very top end of the market? (it may be true in RSF. I doubt it’s true in LJ.)

[SK in CV]

[quote=SD Realtor]Well AN I remember those days really well. There was an extreme tightening of the money supply which was the way Volker dealt with the inflation issues in the mid to late 70’s. I cannot say what wages were because I was still in school although I worked in the labs at school and we were paid well for not doing crap. I do not believe people were getting the kind of 10-15% raises that you wrote about although some will claim that they did. I don’t buy it or if it happened it was the exception and not the rule.
[/quote]

I agree with this, and was in the work force full time through most of the 70’s. There probably were some getting 10% or raises every year, but absent promotions, that was the exception rather than the rule. (Volker, btw, didn’t take office at the Fed until ’79, and he did jack up interest rates in order to quell the inflation that took hold in the years before him.) And it wasn’t across all industries.

[SK in CV]

[quote=dumbrenter]
I find that your attitude towards ‘these workers’ is reeking of condescension and lacking in empathy. One of the problems that ‘these workers’ have is ‘friends’ like you advocating on their behalf.[/quote]

These might be the most ironic words I’ve ever seen on this board. You suggest that these workers will buy bling and tequila if they got a raise, and are perfectly happy living in conditions that you would never consider, and I’m the one being condescending?

[SK in CV]

[quote=ucodegen]
Cute.. taking an email monitoring of a post that I deleted because it had become OBE at that point and trying to ‘recreate’ the deleted post to reply to it…. just couldn’t fake the timestamp. Once a post is replied to.. it can’t be modified or deleted… so this one looks like it was ‘recreated’ to nit pick.

[/quote]

Nope, didn’t recreate anything. You posted, I clicked on reply, composed and posted, and by the time I clicked on save, you had deleted. No need to fake the timestamp. It shows exactly what happened, we both saved at the same time.

[SK in CV]

That was fun! I’m really excited for those kids. Surfer dudes look like my high school basketball team. We all had that same (non)haircut.

[SK in CV]

[quote=SD Realtor]
Now TAKEN IN CONTEXT is there any implication that I am saying the employees should not get payed his salary?[/quote]

SDR, I just went back and read the entire thread up to your comment for at least the 3rd or 4th time. If you had said “The employees aren’t entitled to anything other than their agreed upon pay”, I wouldn’t have questioned you. I would have wondered however, why you thought that was the least bit pertinent to the discussion. There is NO context up to that point in the discussion where it was pertinent. Nobody had suggested the employees are entitled or even deserved more. That single sentence of yours was the first that I can find.

If you’ve been part of some long running discussion about employees believing that they’re entitled to more than their agreed upon pay in other threads, I wasn’t aware of it. If I had, it may have provided some context. But nothing in this thread in general, or your comment I responded to specifically supplied any meaningful context.

[SK in CV]

[quote=Cube]

Ok, I’ll bite. I care whether it’s hard for Joe the Pizza guy to start his second pizza joint. I want competition and innovation in the pizza joint market. I want a fertile bed of innovation and local alternatives to Papa John’s and Pizza Hut and Domino’s.

There’s a shortage of *good* pizza joints (and other small biz restaurants), and if the marketplace is chock full of mega-corp, franchised pizza joints (ones that can afford an employment law compliance department at that scale), then there will be no reasonable path for newcomers.

I don’t think there should be public policy to support a pizza joint selling any particular number of pizzas per day to stay afloat. I also don’t think there should be public policy actively inhibiting any group of people (employer and employees) from agreeing on how to split the potential profits from trying.

Also, since I’m alreay spending the keystrokes to post, let me say that calling SDR out on his commision is the height of irony. No one sets a minimum wage for SDR’s profession. It’s legally possible for him to agree to take a job for effectively less than minimum wage, and no legal policy is currently standing in the way of clients paying him so little (per hour of labor).

The right to undercut one’s competition in terms of price is not a right that is afforded our workers whose skills are in least demand.[/quote]

Thanks for your reasoned response. I’ll get to it in the morning. But your claim that I “called out” SDR on his commission is not accurate. I asked him if he was entitled to it, which I think he is. Just as I think employees are entitled to the pay they’ve agreed to accept.

[SK in CV]

[quote=ucodegen]I think you are confusing ‘entitled’ vs ‘negotiated’ and ‘promised’. The words do not mean the same. ‘Entitled’ does not imply a contract.. it implies a right free of requirement. [/quote]

what the word “entitled” means:

en·ti·tle
/enˈtītl/
verb

1. give (someone) a legal right or a just claim to receive or do something.

[SK in CV]

[quote=SD Realtor]Like I said, it looks like you have caught up to everyone else as you seem to be the only one who was confused about the main point [/quote]

Blah blah blah. The main point you were making which wasn’t included anywhere in your comment or anywhere else in the thread. You have now clarified your main point that wasn’t included before. With your clarification, your comment now makes sense.

[SK in CV]

[quote=harvey][quote=SK in CV]No SDR, I wasn’t the least bit confused about anything in this thread. You were the one that said employees aren’t entitled to their pay. You were the first to bring up the issue of pay relating to taking care of a family. You are now the one that is arguing that the terms of a contract should not be set by the needs of an employee, when neither I nor anyone else in this thread ever claimed it was an issue.[/quote]

The OP article was interesting and raises some curious questions.

SDR comments that there is no obligation for an employer to pay anything more than the legal, agreed upon rate.

SK attempts to make a snappy comeback:

“Are you entitled to your commission?”

Weak sauce: attempting to equate paying a low, but mutually agreed-upon wage with simply not honoring a contract. Distinctly different things.

SDR calls him on it, SK starts backpedaling. It’s not working for SK.

The honorable thing to do would be to say “I choose a poor analogy, but let me rephrase my argument…” Perhaps SK does have a worthwhile point. Instead he gets pissy, personal, and even dishonest.

There’s no post here that says “employees aren’t entitled to their pay.” SDR never said anything even hinting that employers do not have to honor their contract.

This is why Piggington just is not a worthwhile place to hang out anymore.

SK is a smart and knowledgeable guy, but this is not the first thread where he was an outright dishonest with regard to what others have said. It’s not worthwhile to engage him in debate.

Funny thing, it’s all right there in front of everyone on the screen. Is he really so blind and incompetent? Maybe he should run a slaughterhouse.[/quote]

Harvey, I suggest you back and review the thread and find where anyone mentioned an “obligation for an employer to pay anything more than the legal, agreed upon rate.” It didn’t happen previously to my comment, and it certainly didn’t happen anywhere in the comment I responded to.

What I responded to was:

Employees are not entitled to anything. They don’t like the pay, they can quit and look for another job.

Anything.

If he had suggested that employees aren’t entitled to anything more than their agreed upon pay, I wouldn’t have responded. Maybe you can read minds and knew what he meant. I can’t. Which is why I questioned it.

Nobody suggested that employees are entitled to be paid more. I haven’t backpedaled at all, nor been dishonest. The words are right there. SDR has backpedaled, by clarifying that he does think employees should be paid exactly what they’re entitled to.

[SK in CV]

[quote=Jazzman]Just read this is the Washington Post:

“[I]nventories of homes listed for sale rose 7.8 percent during July in Los Angeles, 12.5 percent in San Diego, signed contract offers were down [I]n San Diego, the monthly decline exceeded 10 percent. [S]igns of “buyer fatigue.” Affordability is beginning to erode down by 4.4 percent from the previous quarter. [P]rice gains in the double digits that were commonplace in coastal California, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Washington and parts of Florida starting 24 months ago have gradually begun to self-correct.”

I love that term “self-correct”. There something very correct about the self taking control.[/quote]

I’m not all that excited about the term “self-correct”, but beyond that, I’m not sure there’s any evidence yet of price changes. If YOY increases continue, we’re still seeing price increases, even if the rate of increase declines. Prices can remain flat for quite a few months still in those markets mentioned, and we’ll still have YOY increases. I don’t think it’s accurate to call it a “correction” unless prices fall significantly. It may happen, but I don’t think it’s happened yet. A leveling off is probably more likely, which would not be a correction.

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