patrick.net

I buy a yacht. A nice relatively new 40' one should run less than 200K, which combined with slip fees, maintenance, etc. should be far less than whatever the market climbs to. Speaking of which, anyone here sail?

I have great faith in the ability of the masses to screw up, and in the ability of a few to Do What's Right. Oh, wait, I'm supposed to toss logic/experience/etc. Never mind then...

In theory, nominally it could happen. That means everyone will get paid 1M US peso a year (6.6 Peso Hahas, known as PaHa). Then perhaps we will enter a period of permanent plateau where the average house value of the United States of Latin America will cost around 20 Pahas.

Now, the problem is, how do we deal with the Latin Americanization part that happens as the dollar devalues to peso? If you can survive some random gunshots, robbery, riots, $50/gallon gas, food outage, etc. then I guess we will collectively arrive at the $3M-US peso-home-for-everyone Utopia.

I would go into the used RV and RV park business. Only way for the under 30 set to *own* anything in California.

May I also ask a naive question about the Enron Duos?

How much money do you think they have already stashed away for their family and kids that won't be able to be touched by the court? You know there are numerous ways and places to hide money if one is really diligent at it.

I guess that means the Boomers win. In which case I’m donating the nest egg I’ve saved up to al-Queda.

Allahu Akhbar!

Joe and Whine,

NSA is listening, coming after your ass shortly :-)

I was asked exactly that by a coworker.
I recently sold and am renting, he is looking to buy "before things get out of reach".

My response was "then God bless 'em". I say that whenever I really mean, "then they can fuck themselves". Try it, it works great!

Realistically, I would probably take my savings and move back to NC or at least, somewhar's else.

MovedToAugusta,

If you don't mind my asking, I'm thinking of getting lessons + US Sailing cert from Club Nautique (seems like a good way to build experience). I also saw a "fractional sailing" program (SailTime), but my thinking is that I'm better off getting quality instruction (and seeing how much I end up sailing) before doing something like that. Have you heard anything good/bad about either?

The Revolution will not be televised.

Please be patriotic.

If you think boomers will win, so be it. Design business models to profit from them.

requiem,

I am currently taking courses at Club Nautique and can definitely recommend them. I also looked at OCSC, but they seem more racing oriented. If you want to do coastal cruising or go offshore, Club Nautique seems to be best around.

So you invest in eldercare, and make a killing. Once they find out, they’ll just double your rent. Nice try.

So what?

Do you hate boomers far the sake of hating them? Frankly I see opportunities. If it turns out that the RE bulls were right, we should quickly reverse course and increase RE exposure (I do not see that on the horizon, don't worry).

Moreover, the purchase of a primary residence should be more about affordability and utility instead of market timing.

BTW, I am allergic to whine.

Oops, I meant wine.

Red Whine,

Ultimately, I don't think California will turn into another London or Dubai. There's just too much buildable land and too many moneyed parties that will increase the housing stock long term, if given the opportunity. I don't think NIMBYism alone will permanently bottleneck California's development.

The other half of this equation is the demand. The demand here is much more elastic than in many other countries because America is much more fluid than most other nations, where the big cities are the only places for action.

Here, we can have a pretty good life in NC or TX, if CA is utterly unaffordable. I can tell you that none of my Chinese family would dream of moving out of Shanghai and into a second tier city.

The other thing is, Boomers are largely seen here as self-indulgent and selfish. Great, they'll burn through their cash faster and get things back to equilibrium faster. They might bring the country down with them, but I don't see a multi-generational cleavage btwn haves and have-nots building, yet.

Peter P,

With all due respect, I think this country has been ODing on patriotic platitudes for about 6 years. Having said that, I wouldn't support Red Whine if he truly intends to follow through with his statement. Muslim Extremists' idea of the good life is not something that 99.99% of the reader here would be comfortable with.

Red Whine,

BTW, I do really like your assessment overall. I think California will find it's equilibrium one way or another, and if that equilibrium ends up meaning I have move elsewhere, so be it. No point crying over spilled milk.

I still do not see what will keep the bubble mania alive except wage increases. It's the price to income ratio that is most important.

The easy money has limits. Even if someone offers me a 1% interest on a 10 million $ home, I still cannot afford it. I just don't get paid enough to pay the interest back. Low interest rates cannot keep the price appreciating forever.

Same with rent increases. My rent needs to double to make even with the PITI payments for the same apartment. Why would the rent double ? Yes, it has gone up. I see myself paying 10% more rent next year. That will not force me to take a suicide loan.

No. I do not buy the soft landing (stagnation) theory. Show me wage increases - apart from some specialized techie jobs. And if my salary doubles, I wouldn't mind buying that 1M home.

Okay, let’s just disregard all the knowledge of economics, history, logic, etc.

Huh?

Randy,

I was trying to see things from the specuvestor's perspective. Also, I thought it might be fun to have everyone explore what they'd do if the specuvestors were right, without getting into why they can't possibly be right.

If that all turns out to be true I'll resort to becoming a popular underground Bigfoot Hunter and Ghost Tracker, but with a distinctively Postmodernist bent.

Since it's Thursday and I'm full of Ikura, I'll predict that the above won't happen.

burbed,

Where do you live?

Peter P:

Seriously, I didn't think you'd be able to top "Be patriotic!" but somehow, you've pulled it off.

"Do you hate boomers far the sake of hating them?" I'm not even sure where to begin. Yeah. That must be it. I needed a group to loathe and picked them randomly from wikipedia.

"If it turns out that the RE bulls were right, we should quickly reverse course and increase RE exposure."

Right! No one is actually PRICED OUT -- we're just fence-sitters waiting for the greenlight to buy a $650,000 condo. Have you ever heard of an affordability index? When they say only 6% can afford to buy the median priced home, that means 94% CAN'T. It doesn't mean "94% just don't feel like it." I get the same blank stare from both my Boomer acquaintances and my math-challenged friends when I throw out numbers, but here goes anyways:

Median condo in Area X: $650,000
Required Down Pymt: $130,000
PITI at 6.5%: $3,287 /mo
Prop. Tax: $677/mo
Subtotal Before Insurance, Maintenance, Etc.: $3,964/mo
(Gross) Median Income in Area X: $70,000/12 = $5,833/mo

What could go wrong here?

Typical Math-Challenged Boomer Responses:

"Just brown bag your lunch for another year!"

"We had to stretch to buy our first home too!"

"Maybe you'll have to postpone a new car for a few years, but you can make it work (even if the monthly is more than your gross income)!"

Notice none of the typical boilerplate responses address any financial
realities, just more nice platitudes that look good on a bumpersticker.

I can guarantee you anybody under the age of 45, OR making double or less than double the median income, doesn't "see opportunities" unless they're on Uhaul.com.

I enjoyed the exercise of taking Astrid's "What if they're right?" hypothetical and trying to extrapolate, but that being said, I can't wait for the Las Vegasization of America to fucking end and this market to tank.

Did you guys see this?
Now, she’s not desperate…is she?

@LLILLL, my response to here,

(erased for explicit sexual content)

The Boomers are just too fucking self-indulged to even fucking care what is going on around them. Their malaise will be their downfall, there is enough critical mass of pissed off people ( think Michael Douglas in Falling Down) for them to ever possibly win. The Boomer's are fucking lemmings at best, right now they all say in unison "we love our jobs, we'll work for another 10+years" this way they can justify the cash of refi's, why not, they are still rockin/n/rollin, gettin high and having blue pill fueled sex. What happens is this, one of them says fuck it and retires, the rest see how much "fun" Steve is having spending his days, not just his nights, having drug and blue pill fueled orgies, they my friends the mother fucking game is on, watch what happens when the boomer's all try to cash out at once. Watch the arrogance crumble "but it's worth 850K, really our appraiser said it is". Then watch them turn on each other.

Another giant boomer pitfall is the assumption that just because all they care about is money, all that anyone cares about is money. This logic fails when groups don't buy the "but it only goes up, you can make money" What The Boomer hoard fails to realize is that there happens to be a large group of people who aren't looking for a house as a vehical to make money, but rather a place to call home.

I recently obtained 3 bureau credit reports:

EQUIFAX : 799
EXPERIAN : 787
TRANSUNION : 780

Hey I have a fucking excellent idea, (erased for explicit content) so we can all have a good laugh.

You are truly scraping the bottom of the fucking barrel with this one. Why not just post a letter from your Mommy saying what a prodigy you were?

Well, America is loaded with victim groups and people who hate victim groups. The majority of the population seems to fall into both groups.

HaHa and X,

Play nice, please.

HaHa,

I think your main problem is that Surfer-X got here first. GC's problem was that LILLL got here first. America's main problem is that Boomers got here first.

:)

LILLL and Surfer-X,

Okay, sorry you two, but I find this all this blatant sexual content rather crude and offensive. I can't control other threads, but I'd rather not have this on my thread.

what is the basis of 12 years, not 15 or 10?

I can predict — you credit scores are all below 700 ….

Actually fuckwad they are all above 800, and unlike you I carry Zero, that's with a Z, debt.

Asshole. hey what do you make again? Just curious AS I HAVEN'T FUCKING READ IT A 1000 TIMES.

You fucking belong in the Bay Area, I see no other place for one such as you. Do you have a fucking t-shirt with your salary on it. How many fucking times a day to you tell people what you make? or are we just amazingly fortunate? Asshole go fuck yourself.

Since I was not here in 1970s, does anyone recall how much a burger, a can of coke, gas/gallon cost back then? How much has price inflated in general? The CPI calculation gives me an index of around 3.5x (1970 being 1, 2005 being 3.5), but I'd like to hear from anecdote experience since I don't trust the core CPI number anyway.

Ha Ha, i went ahead and made your very own topic. feel free to post your dribble ad infinitium. . I shall delete all other comments. You are amazing, i feel very fortunate to read the prose of someone that makes such a BA normal salary as yourself.

Peter P Says:
If you think boomers will win, so be it. Design business models to profit from them.

Cocaine-coated adult diapers?
Led Zeppelin-branded walking canes?

LILLL,

Check your mailbox for a longer explanation. There's two separate issues. One has to do with a possibly poorly phrased observation by me. The other is with my thread policing policy.

So X…if I post on the Haha thread, you will delete it?

As long at it is pro-Ha Ha, regaling his magnificence, it stays, any anti ha ha blather will be deleted. Ha Ha makes a lot of money, he deserves this.

SQT,

I guess I'm trying to gauge how we'd feel if the *worst case scenario* happens and if we'd still be able to live with the possibility.

I have my lottery winning scenario all plotted out too. However, my rudimentary math skills prevent me from actually buying a ticket. This is also why I make for a horrible Las Vegas tourist. Damn!

LILLL, I sent it to your info@... box.

John,

I know they'd notice and I make no attempt to hide it. However, there are just areas I'd rather my threads not go into.