[spdrun]

How many walls? How many holes? How big holes?

Honestly, if they’re normal-sized nail holes, I’d just fill them with pre-mixed plaster filler and touch up with an artist’s brush. It’s a rental. Tenants don’t need perfect, just livable and decent.

And remember to put a “no holes” clause in the next lease.

[spdrun]

What % of those shootings involved a student randomly “going postal” vs gang/personal violence in schools, which has been going on for eons (sadly)?

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/11/us/school-shootings-cnn-number/
(apparently 15 out of 74, so 20%)

I’ll bet that a kid has a greater chance of being hit by a truck crossing the street walking home from school than of getting mixed up in a random school shooting.

Solution is for the mainstream media to STOP PUBLICIZING THIS CRAP. I’m not advocating for censorship. I’m arguing for a gentleman’s agreement to give this kind of lunacy a passing mention vs putting it on a 24-hour news cycle and using it to gain attention and push agendas.

It’s well-known that media attention promotes copycats.

[spdrun]

^^^

Except that the 2nd Ave Subway is still over budget, over time, and scaled back from the original plan. Not as if they’re running trains on that line. What’s the excuse there?

It’s not only unions, BTW. It’s bureaucracy and politics. Projects get scaled back, changed, redesigned to be less functional, etc, for political reasons, then killed, then the design process gets to start all over. Look at the saga of the Penn Station railroad tunnel expansion for a particularly egregious example of this.

Tunnel capacity from Penn Station to NJ is sorely lacking. One tube each direction, built for early-1900s-era trains. If a train breaks down, traffic is snarled for hours. New tunnels were originally supposed to connect to Penn Station, then the plan was changed to connect to a dead-end underground station under Macy’s. This project was killed for fiscal and utilitarian reasons by Gov. Christie of NJ. Thankfully.

Now, 4-5 years later, there’s a new design phase of a tunnel that will connect to Penn Station and to the Penn Station annex being built in part of the general post office building on 8th Avenue. Fortunately, they’re including provisions to make this happen in the Hudson Yards project (building a few office and apartment buildings on a bridge above an open-air rail yard). Meanwhile, years of time and lots of contractor money have been flushed down the bog. If this were Switzerland, Germany, or Malaysia, the tunnel would have been built 10 years ago and would have been up and running, to Penn Station.

As far as people spending an hour on the subway, fine. Just what we need — everyone yap-yap-yapping and texting instead of holding on to the handrails on a crowded car. What’s wrong /w just reading a book?

[spdrun]

It certainly didn’t appear to make the world better, though I have to say that Hussein got what he deserved in 2006.

[spdrun]

Thank G-d for no distance pricing in NYC. Having to pull a fare card out twice would make exit lines move much slower. It also would punish less well-off people from the outer areas of the boroughs vs the wealthier who commute within Manhattan or from closer areas in the boroughs. The $2.50 (less the MetroCard discount) fare anywhere in the city or the $112 flat-rate monthly card are quite OK with me.

The problems are mainly the unions and generally asinine bureaucracy, which make any modernization projects end up massively over time and over budget. As far as cell phones not working in the subway — really, who cares? If you can’t stay off the intarwebz for 15 minutes, you need therapy, not a hotspot.

[spdrun]

Actually, housing markets in Europe are often quite strictly controlled. Sometimes to control appreciation — i.e. flips in Germany are basically forbidden.

[spdrun]

Came back from NY, the capital of public transport in America. Even at La Guardia (the third world airport Joe Biden was talking about), the terminal is not connected to the train. The bus is some disorganized stop outside the terminal. No signage or clear instructions. You have to take the bus for like 20 minutes (not including waiting time) then connect to the train.

#1: John Bidet and other Americans who refer to LaGuardia as a third-world airport are totally off-base. It’s. Not. Really. An. International. Airport.

It’s a domestic/local airport in a big city. London City Airport, LA/Burbank, and the former Berlin Tempelhof didn’t have hotels, golf courses, dancing girls, nor horse racing on the airport grounds either.

#2: I like it dirty and slightly chaotic. It keeps the Midwestern tourons looking for a “good experience” going to Newark or JFK. Which in turn keeps security lines at LGA relatively short, fares relatively low (under $300 r/t to the West Coast is possible), and the rabble out.

#3: Public transport: I suspect there will eventually be a subway extension. The bigger issue is the crappy public transport to JFK and Newark. You have to change to a monorail vs getting a one-seat ride from Midtown. Why?

In the case of JFK, pissing contest between MTA, which runs the subways and Port Authority, which runs JFK and the monorial. In the case of Newark, who knows? PATH runs from 33rd St. to Newark Penn Station. Extension to the airport via an elevated viaduct over the Northeast Corridor line was perfectly plausible. Perhaps not-in-my-backyard types, afraid that their view of beautiful downtown Newark would be ruined forever.

THAT’s the problem with public transport in the US. A unified policy is sorely lacking.

Update: apparently, they’re planning to extend the PATH system to Newark Airport. AFTER!!!! building the monorail. Yay for spending bucks on the same project twice — got to love government accounting.

[spdrun]

Nothing new here — joec meet Tammany Hall. Tammany Hall, meet joec.

Oh yeah, and the Army Beef Scandal … more soldiers died from contaminated food than bullets in the Spanish-American War. Americans have always been willing to throw taxpayers and their fellow citizens under a bus (or a stagecoach) for profit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_beef_scandal

Institutionalized corruption is as American as baseball and likely even older. Transparency won’t cut it unless it’s total, since it’s easy to hide kickbacks in payments to corporations, especially if the kickbacks are a comparatively small % of the total.

There should be a Buy American mandate for construction of critical infrastructure, which would make the firms involved subject to the reach of US law. And either criminal prosecution or personal lawsuits against the people who received favors should also be options.

Lastly, TSOR on Mr. Anziano doesn’t show a professional engineering license. The man is apparently an attorney who was California state counsel before he was appointed manager of this project. This type of department should really be headed by a seasoned engineer, not by a political hack appointee.

[spdrun]

I’d charge them for the cost of cleaning the carpet (written estimate). Whether you actually clean it or put the money towards a new floor is up to you.

[spdrun]

$685 – 200 (mortgage) – 100 (maintenance/vacancy) = $385/mo = $4620/yr.

Cash invested = $100,000.

You’re still getting 4.6% return on the $100k, 2x that of your CD. As far as paying $100 for property management: it’s a good deal if you’re either mentally deficient or insane. Condos aren’t hard to manage yourself. Why would you want to pay some fecking parasite for the dubious service?

[spdrun]

$1100 – $15 – $140 – $260 = $685/mo
$685/mo * 12 months = $8220/yr

$8220/$140000 = 5.87% cap rate.

If someone put down $100k cash and got a mortgage for the remainder ($200-250/mo), they’d be cash-flowing decently without much risk of being underwater. If they couldn’t get a small mortgage, a $100k loan would still allow for cash flow.

Try getting 5% or more return from a bank right now.

[spdrun]

The problem is that the average American is an uneducated militarist, and it will take at least one pointless war with a draft to disabuse him of the RAH-RAH-RAH-*WAR* mindset. If the draft comes back and such a war happens, I’m renouncing my citizenship and leaving the country. I have no interest in dying for the whim of my government and the blithering idiots who elected it. I mean, you’re talking about the same people who elected Dubya Bush. Twice.

This being said, in the long run, it’s a good idea, but implementation will be painful.

[spdrun]

I’m in the process of looking at properties in NJ, definitely buying this summer.

As far as locally to you, here’s one that went into contract recently:

http://www.sdlookup.com/MLS-140018287-202_Woodland_Pkwy_113_San_Marcos_CA_92069

Say they got full price of $140k.
Rent: $1100/mo
Insurance: $15/mo
Taxes: $140/mo
HOA: $260/mo

= 5.87% cap assuming you can keep it rented. Very close to 6%.

[spdrun]

You keep saying it, so prove it.. 🙂

1. Name one property.

2. Why aren’t you doing it?

1. Look on the MLS yourself in the $100k-$250k range and run the numbers. You’ll find some.
2. I’m getting 8% plus on a property that I bought in SD last year. Right now, my lovely neighboring state of NJ is riddled with “fork-lost” (i.e. oh, FORK, I *lost* my home, waaaaaah-waaaaaah) properties, so I’m concentrating my search on future properties there. I’d rather get over 8% than 6-7%.

[spdrun]

No, on Mars. It’s doable even in San Diego, probably with closer to 6% return. 8%-8.5% was possible last year.

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