[temeculaguy]

Hey it brought back Mr. Mortgage, that’s fantastic! He’s even using his old name, his last chance for redemption has arrived. It will take a few months and the Tsuinami may just be wave that is absorbed, but the real news is the cleaning of the books and going back to 90 days and you need to start looking for a place to live. It’s needed in order to truly begin the recovery. Heads are being pulled from the sand and I think that bodes well for the future.

There will be a ripple in supply in some areas, but not all. There will be a drop in price in some areas, but not all. The lending standards changed a few years ago, probably about 3 years back. So the pipeline is emptying and the number of distressed properties that have already been churned through is significant, so this will likely be the last system shock. I personally believe recovery, a slow one albeit, will follow. We will not have $10k beachfront properties and we will not see 50% declines since affordability metrics are already normal. What we might see is a very short overshoot in areas with lots of properties that were not foreclosed on but should have been. I believe the overshoot (if it happens and in the places it happanes) will be short lived and we wont see it again, at least not for a decade or two when the next cycle occurs. Actually I’m not sure we dig this hole again in my lifetime, it will require time and a generation to erase the memory.

The point of the thread, is that something will come, not earth shattering and not likely in the strongholds that are somewhat immune or the areas that have already been churned through. So for the estimated 20% of the piggies that are still sidelined, I think you should keep your eye on the ball if you are serious, this might be the last leg down you see.

My anaology of choice is actually about housing and bad weather, blending housing prices and tsuinamis quite nicely. Think of it as a series of storms or hurricanes hitting an area unusually hard. With one last storm on the horizon, the houses that have not lost a shingle will likely be fine. The ones that were already knocked down and rebuilt with brick with be fine too. But the ones the barely survived the last storm and have not been repaired, they will fall. Where they are will probably be revealed in the coming months.

[temeculaguy]

I booked my flights today, priced jumped a little probably because everyone else saw the football games on 9/11 and decided to go as well. I hate country music but I downloaded Toby Keith’s “courtesy of the red white and blue” video to my iphone, I’ll play it at the memorial, and think of this thread, the contrarian patriot I’ll be.

Allan, I’m taking back all the praise I gave you for resisting the urge to get involved in this thread. You failed! Seriously, you can’t win and SD and I aren’t getting suckered in again.

[temeculaguy]

BG, we actually agree on something, that retirees will not be heading to downtown SD. I took stabs at the places they go because those are places in the past they have gone, but you actually are in that boat so you see where the current trends are. However, downtown SD or downtowns of big cities are not the usual spots, even though sdrealtor cited some exceptions. There will always be exceptions, but I was speaking more to a trend on such a scale as to affect an entire market like the original article alluded to. I’m only 43, yet after 21 years with the same employer, I seem to reguarly attend retirement parties these days since some of them were working for 10 years or more when I first met them. They seem to either stay put, or pack up and head for less dense areas. Places that have lower taxes on their retirement, lower costs and in many cases, cheaper real estate. It is not uncommon for them to unload the family home and pay cash elsewhere with their equity. Lots of them seem to like land, deserts or mountains. Not one moved to a place considered “urban.”

To answer brians statement, my kids will likely do what I did and do what most people do. They grow up in suburbs, go to college away from home, live in a cool city, find someone to marry, make babies and then move back to the suburbs. It’s not 100%, but it’s the most common scenario.

To answer BG’s question about where they are coming from and who are they. Most are people who lived in cities, had a baby, and away they go, to get away from people and live amongst the others like them. Some are retirees that didn’t want to leave the state because of grandkids and such, but wanted to lower their costs and commuting wasn’t an issue. The many golf courses, wineries and casino were draws (older ladies dig the slots, old dudes love the golf, everyone likes wine). But it’s mostly young families. The influx is actually having a great affect, I bought at the end of 2008 and because it was a thrashed repo I ended up going FHA 5% down so I could hold back my cash to fix it up. Also cause I read too much piggington and was affraid we’d be on spam and ammo by now. Yesterday I got my appraisal back for the refi I’m doing. I’m up 30% during the worst housing crisis of the century, not only did I lower my rate, without paying anything, my LTV is about 70% now so I just got a conventional fixed and no PMI, and believe me they are picky and it is a fair appraisal if not on the low side of the comps.

Regarding the jobs moving to urban areas, there are many studies and evidence to the contrary. large employers are trending away from the cities, to the suburbs, where their employees can live better, for less and raise families. Nor LA mentioned Valencia, that is where movie and television studios have been moving as well as a number of other industries, because their employees don’t want to live in the city and it’s cheaper and more expandible to chase the employees that the reverse.

lastly, brian, you are basing a lot of prognostications on your limited journey. Stop for just a minute and listen to those who have more in their rear view mirror to look at. I actually grew up in Los Angeles’ version of temecula, I grew up in valencia. After college in a city, living in a city, once a kid was on the way, I went looking for my valencia. May parents moved there when it was under 30k people. Everyone else followed them and they eventually left after we were raised on gone and made a killing. I moved to temecula when it was the same thing, 30k people and saw the exact same thing start to happen. When Mrs. Brian comes along and brian jr. is on the way, send me an e-mail and I’ll help you out picking the next one.

Oh wait I had one more comment, brian mentioned friends. You will see, as your friends marry off and have babies, they will leave you for suburbs, when you get to your suburb, you’ll actually make better friends. I’, only a few years away from having to live here for my kids and when the day comes when i can I move, I’m not sure i will. The reason is because duing 20 years I’ve made friends that aren’t just people I have a few cocktails with, but they are people that I have shared raising kids with, been through ups and downs with, in all aspects of life. Through relatives dying, illnesses, financial hardship and financial success. I talk to them all the time and see them at least weekly. It’s not one or two, it’s dozens, suburbanites are an alien race to you, but we are a close tribe. I’m not sure I can ever leave them, so I can walk to art galleries, they are almost family.

[temeculaguy]

This concept and original analysis is totally flawed. The basis for the rush to downtown is the convergence of two demographics fighting over the same housing.

I understand the fantasy land some people want to live in. The “wouldn’t it be great if this was Paris and everyone walked” I’m sure that keeps the coffee shop talk exciting.

Downtowns are popular with single people, young people, gay people, hip people and childless couples. What they are not popular with is old people. The old people in the city are the people that have been there forever and don’t feel like leaving. They don’t move there in large numbers and they won’t.

Urban areas also attract poor people, crazy people, hobos, homeless people for a variety of reasons but these people cannot handle the difficult task of vehicle ownership, maintenance, insurance and licensing. So they will always be in urban areas. Old people for the most part are afraid of these people.

The other element of a downtown residence is that it is close to work, retired baby boomers (who will be 70 in 2016-2018) are not going to pay 3x the price per square foot to be close to a job they retired from, that’s just stupid. Plus the stores and restaurants are more expensive. It’s noisy, crowded and busy, the exact opposite of what old people like. 70 year old people don’t hang out in gas lamp bars, dine in stylish cafe’s and shop the hip stores. They play golf, travel in motor homes, hang out with other old people and try to live as nicely as they can afford. $800 hoa’s of downtown condos are not real popular with the fixed income crowd. So places like Phoenix, Oregon, Idaho, Palm Springs or even Rancho Bernardo are more appealing to retirees. It has what they want.

But have fun with the “wouldn’t it be great” fantasy.

[temeculaguy]

[quote=4Sbuyer2002]The new Del Norte High School in 4S looks to be a very impressive campus. There is alot of buzz in 4S about it offering the “International Baccalaureate Program” at the school. This is some sort of whiz bang big deal out of Switzerland designed to prepare students to compete in a global market.

http://www.powayusd.com/pusddnhs/faq.html%5B/quote%5D

My kid’s school has the IB program and I think it is one fo the only ones nearby so they allow IB accepted kids to transfer in, even from Fallbrook in the neighboring county (the school is 1 mile from S.D. county so it’s not a big deal).

The IB program doesn’t prepare for the global market, it prepares them for colleges in other countries. If they plan to attend school in the U.S., AP is probably better suited for them. AP is recognized in the US, IB in the rest of the world. I’m not an educator and others will certainly disagree. My info comes from friends who live in other countries who have kids in private schools, but english speaking american schools despite not being in english speaking countries. If their kids want to go to college in the states, they steer them into AP and if they want to attend school where they are or another country, they steer them toward IB. It may be hard to comprehend that for us, but for some people, the distance between here and San Francisco will cross numerous countries and languages. We think our schools vary, it’s mcuh different other places, IB allows colleges to evaluate foriegn students on a more level playing field with certain universal standards. And of course everyone hates America, so they had to invent their “Euro” version of AP.

[temeculaguy]

[quote=pri_dk][quote=temeculaguy]I can’t explain heroism to those who lack that element in their character.[/quote]

TG,

You may want to find a way to rephrase that. It’s the most arrogant thing I’ve heard in a long time.[/quote]

Unfortunately that was the fourth re-phrase, the original included something about how I’ve never seen such a parade of walking vaginas, but that would be an insult to walking vaginas.

Pri-dk, we get along most of the time, in fact I get along with most people. Everyone has a nerve, this one is mine, I respectfully request a pass on this one thread if I’ve gone overboard. I think I’ve earned it a pass this once.

It just killed me to see everyone have such strong opinions about things in which they knew so little about. Like brian’s comment about how long feels a mother gets to mourn the loss of her son, that one got my goat too, I regret even reading this thread to begin with.

I think the best way I can explain it is to compare it to religion. I do not belong to a church, but I understand that many people do. Some give their money or their time to their church. Some go without certain pleasures and some endure sacrifice, don’t even get me started on the amish and mormons. Yet here we are, 2,011 years later and this entire country takes of work for the birth and the re-birth of a guy who reportedly got nailed to a cross. Do I tell them to get over it, it was a long time ago, that three spikes through your extremities isn’t that big of a deal and far easier than a shark bite or wood chipper accident. They can’t explain it to me, how they connect with the stories, how it is important to them, but I also don’t make them explain it. I let them enjoy their day with the respect of a fellow citizen and maybe when they see me or others react with similar ritual and regard to something they don’t fully connect with, they will do the same for me.

Maybe it’s more like professional soccer, I have a hard time understanding the passion some people have for it, but they can’t understand my passions. Yet neither of us want to ban the others emotions and neither of us can explain what makes us who we are because we have had different experiences.

How you die isn’t always up to you, how you choose to live is. I cannot live with the guilt of knowing I could have done more and someone may not be able to live with taking certain risks. If people don’t like it that they don’t make movies praising the guy who took the lifeboat from the women and children on the titanic, or the guy who hid behind a wall in Tienanmen square, opting to praise the ones who were brave, took risks or made sacrifices. That’s just the way it is. Not everyone will get it.

It’s September 12th, hopefully nobody will be bothered by this stuff for a while and they can go back to believing that nobody is better than they are. Feel free to forget.

[temeculaguy]

I just watched the opening of the Jets/Cowboys game and the New York Fire Department’s band played amazing grace on the bagpipes. I’m doing all I can to not tell walter to take one day off or to insult brian for actually being what he hates, uncultured. Your mancards are dangerously close to being revoked today.

I take pause each year to remember this day, and today it is probably the most important because it’s been long enough but not too long. This isn’t about politics, wars, economics, racism or history. It’s about appreciating the human spirit and the hero gene that is dormant in most people (but not all). I can’t explain heroism to those who lack that element in their character. The people on flight 93 were not soldiers, firemen or cops, they didn’t practice risking their lives and they didn’t start their day knowing that this was the day they would have to make that decision. Earlier today, I went into my den and read the various awards and medals I received as a young man, including the one for saving another person’s life while risking my own. My hero days are behind me, yet every time I get on a plane I run through the flight 93 scenario and ask myself if I still have what it takes to give my life for strangers today. I like to think it’s still in me, but I make no mistake in thinking there aren’t men and women out there far more brave than I, and I choose today as the day to quietly thank them, mourn them and appreciate them.

In a few months I will be making the trek to see the memorial and taking my kids with me, my son’s last trip with me before college. Before he strikes out on his own, he gets last lesson on what it means to be a man and what it means to me to be an American.

I will not be there to admire the artwork.

[temeculaguy]

Someone sent me this, so I take everything back that I said about Norway. I’m also modifying my future travel plans significantly. I had no idea of the extent of Norway’s natural resources.

http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=5285

[temeculaguy]

[quote=FormerSanDiegan]Here is a re-post of something I wrote back in February with some historical info …

If rates changed instantaneously by 1% and no other factors in the economy changed, then the price would be inversely related to rate.

However, rate changes never happen in a vaccum. Rates respond to underlying economics, so changes in home prices rarely respond as you suggest.

Example #1: From 2006 to 2010, 30-yr mortgage rates declined from around 6.5% to less than 5%.
Did prices increase by 10%+ during that period ? Hell No. Prices declined at the steepest rates since the depression.

Example #2: In late 2002 30-yr mortgage interest rates were at 6%. BY mid 2006 they were 6.5%.
Were home prices flat during that period ? No. They were quite bubblicious.

Example #3: From 1990 to 1995 rates dropped from 10% + to about 7.5%. Did prices rise during this period ? Not really.
This period current decline) in home prices in post-war California.

Example #4: In 1972, 30-yr mortgage rates were about 7.4%. By 1989, rates were above 10%. What did home prices do doing this period ?
Hint: they did not decline.

The simple point is that it’s not that simple. Rates do not change in a vacuum. As a thought experiment prices are inversely proportional to rates, but in reality, it is not neccessarily so.[/quote]

This is so well written and easily digested that I am going to save it for the next time a friend asks me this question. There are some other great posts about why this happens, but this one explains in laymans terms that history does not support the logical theory that prices are affected by interest rates.

At cocktail parties, when asked this question, the audience usually loses interest at about the 30 minute mark of my explanation (which happens with most other topics too). If I can just memorize this post, I’ll save oodles of time.

[temeculaguy]

I took that wikipedia link and found something interesting. Near the bottom there was mention about oil shale and another link, I don’t know much about it so I started to read it. Current methods of turning it into fuel are messy, costly and environmentally unfriendly. Apparently other countries do it but we don’t. But it does work. Then I read further, turns out, we are the middle east of oil shale, with over 62% of the world’s supply and that amount is 3 times the world’s oil supply. Oddly enough, it is located primarily on government owned land.

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

It’s not a stretch of the imagination to think that the technology will change before oil runs out. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d be curious about the current situation. The worlds oil reserves are about 1.3 trillion barrels. The world’s shale can currently yield about 3 trillion barrels. 62% of that is in the U.S. and 70% of that is on government land. So the government owns the equivalent of about 1.5 trillion barrels, more than all of the combined known liquid petroleum in the world.

Naw, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. I’m sure they will never figure out a way to cleanly convert it into fuel because 191 years of our entire oil needs sitting in Utah and Colorado, there’s really not much money in that.

[temeculaguy]

Here’s why I hate it when people like to compare boutique countries to the big boys. Norway is cool and has a lot going for it, I’ll give you that. But at under 5 million people, it’s barely twice the size of San Diego. 80% of the population belongs to the same church, 96% speak the same language. I’m sorry, you don’t get any prizes for getting a small group of people who think and act the same to think and act the same.

Maybe if I went to Boston and got everyone to agree the Celtics are good, I’d get your admiration too. Or maybe if I convinced the crowd at a Nascar event that beer and country music was a good thing, I’d win a prize. Of course being in lockstep has it’s downfalls.

And this fouled up, disjointed and uneducated country that we call home has something Norway doesn’t have, diversity. This isn’t a politically correct statement. Our little cauldron of inefficieny is responsible for the need of Norway’s oil. In fact thier daily life would be miserable without ours, not the other way around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_(before_1890)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_(1890%E2%80%931945)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_(1946%E2%80%931991)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_(after_1991)

Their snowboards and their ice hockey rink resurfacers (things they should have come up with) courtesy of the misfits. Not to mention the birth control pill, ky jelly and buffalo wings, otherwise known as the ultimate trifecta!

[temeculaguy]

I think that works, there is more to it than just time off. I knew someone where the wife took off more than ten years to home school their kids, the kids grew up, she went into a new line of work and was only on the job for about 6 months. They had good fundamentals (In fact they were kinda loaded because she doubled their income and the purchase wasn’t a stretch above what their rent was without her income) but they needed to calculate about 25% of her income to qualify and the first lender said no. They had to shop around but they found a lender and at market rates. The reasons they were given was that it was a combination of things. Her lack of work history, the new line of work she was now in and her probationary status at work. It wasn’t a single thing in a vaccum, but a combination of things.

In your case, it’s not a huge threat to your ability to repay the loan, so I think you should find at least one lender out there, especially since it is the same line of work.

[temeculaguy]

svelte, you did all you can do. Some people aren’t wired for marriage and some people are definately not wired to be married to each other. They are over it because they have come to terms with it. Think of it like an incurable illness. It’s best to just give advice and support to them so that they may find the best way to cope with it, the one that causes the least pain and reduces the spread of the disease. Treat and contain, not cure.

More than likely the reasons they gave you were symptoms and not the actual reasons.

Don’t let it bother you, their experience is probably much different than yours so it’s difficult to compare it or judge it.

Do this, cherish your marriage, be thankful, and go tell your wife how lucky you are to have her. Then tomorrow, stop by the flower stand and buy her some flowers. When she asks what they are for, tell her this “Honey, I look at our friends and their divorce and their problems and it made me think to myself, what did I do that was so great that I was lucky enough to marry you. I asked God but God wouldn’t talk to me, he never actually talks to me so as I was driving and I saw a florist stand, florists see people in love probably more than bartenders see people in sorrow so I figured I’d ask him. He didn’t know either, I’m not sure he spoke english because he grabbed these flowers and began wrapping them. Maybe it was a sign, maybe it was just a language barrier, but I thought you’d like them so I bought them.”

You can thank me later.

[temeculaguy]

buy a house from sdrealtor, I like his stimulus plan. Due to some recent recon, I have his next night of debauchery all planned out.

I can’t give advice about what to do with all that money other than to be thankful for your situation, what a wonderful problem to have. This is one of those problems that isn’t really a problem. Like the woman who has a problem finding a bra because her breasts are ginourmous, or the guy who has decide which woman to go home with, or you, who has to decide what to do with all that money. Step one, thank the universe, Step two, I don’t know because I’m still at step one.

[temeculaguy]

The best advice you can give is to avoid lawyers altogether. If he can talk to her before she gets one, and they are on decent speaking terms, they can work this out using the same attorney, a paralegal or by themselves like Dataagent reccomended. It all depends how mad they are and if they want to go to war or not.

I never saw the inside of a courtroom, my legal fees were under a grand and we went to the same attorney at the same time. We had property, investments, pensions, kids, debts and all the other complications, indluding a marriage over ten years long. It could have been a 50k fight in court and in the end, the same result. The courts have formulas, almost like turbo tax, you enter the facts and the result is the usually the same, you just save time and money.

7 years later, all is still well, kids are grown, never had much of fight and we still maintain a special joint checking account to pay for all kid expenses (sports, pictures, field trips, etc.) and their college savings is a joint account. I realize I hit the divorce jackpot and my ex is a reasonable and fiscally responsible woman, but it takes two to tango, and most couples (divorced or married) usually have things in common like this, even when divorced. Advise him to everything he can from making this a drawn out fight or trying to exact revenge.

In retrospect, neither of us felt like we were screwed over, in fact we both feel we did better by avoiding the cost an the stress that court creates. Other than that, I got nothing.

[Author]

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