patrick.net

If more people had my mindset there would never be houses availible for resale- there needs to be a happy middle!

Not necessarily true - people would still move for all the "usual" reasons - getting married/divorced, having children, retiring, job relocation. Just no flipping and no continual tradeups.

The best part of that scenario would be a huge cutback in RE commissions. :)

Good pictures. I'm going to frame some and tell people that I took them in Norway.

How come techies take fantastic pictures? I can never take good pictures of the nature. The only good ones I have a talent for are semi-nudes in an artistic setup.

Another problem with the California ideal of constantly trading up is the instability of neighborhood networks. Where I grew up, if a strange car was parked on the block for more than 15 minutes people started talking. Here in California there could be a panel van parked all day in front of one of my neighbors as they removed the bodies and I would just figure it was someone new moving in.

Now that is very true. Hey, it sure makes it easy for the FBI to do a stakeout though.

There are also some crazy living arrangements. You will see extension cords going out to RVs from homes. I think people literally buy power from people who live in a house.

Better than Port-au-Prince. There everyone just hires a make-shift electrician to tap into the overhead power lines and run bare copper wire through your window and into your house. (Watch where you walk!) Odd, you never seem to meet an old Hatian make-shift electrician...

I had an electrician come to my place once to replace a simple light fixture. He was covered on both arms with electrical burns of various ages. I was a little worried about his work so I had an electrician from a different company come in right after to look at the fixture and make sure it had been installed properly.

HiThere,i was on the losing end of that family situation- once. It used to bother me. Not anymore. Women should take up the opportunity and "trade up" if they can. Beauty does have its privileges. Why should a woman wait for things to get better when they can find a "better situation"? And now that her current "love interest" is a near failed mortgage guy, I relish in the Schadenfreude. I calmly relay to her that the blood bath in Miami will only last 5-10 years. And that the upscale condo she is in virtual bankruptcy and that it may be converted to low-income housing. Beautiful women were used and abused by the housing industry on the way up. Doesnt every stripper have a realtors license? Interesting to see the fallout at Scores and Solid Gold on the way down.

http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/366681.html

"Many real estate agents estimate that about 40 percent of the 10,000 single-family houses for sale in Sacramento County are empty. "

Yeah, rents are going up... and they aren't making any more land either.

Yet another loser who can't get laid.

Isn't that "looser"?

JG, I didn't mean you. BTW, it's "loser" not "looser." I've seen too many typos from otherwise university-schooled people.

"Looser" is an injoke from iamfacingforeclosure.com back when Casey used to post there. He spelled loser that way depsite repeated corrections.

"Just no flipping and no continual tradeups"

If we could get back to that I'd be a happy camper. Oh and no more "I may play a mild mannered employee at my day job but after work I'm ALL RE speculation baby" co-workers! Just STFU and carry your damn share of the work load you putz!

(Actually it'll probably take several years work through the "I was rounding 3rd. base and headed for home when the STUPID mortgage companies stopped loaning money!" specuflipper crowd) I think we'll all be surprised at just how much recruiting there'll be for the "REIC Anon." commiserating club.

From Ben's Blog:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sun_lasvegas0909sep09,0,1389227,full.story

"Almost half of the 30,000 homes listed for sale in the Las Vegas metropolitan area stand vacant, said Nason [Frank Nason, president of Las Vegas real estate firm Residential Resources], making it that much tougher to sell the rest."

Beyond throwing fuel on the "Rents are going up! Buy now!" crash and burn, aren't these REaltors worried about visits from the NAR Hit Squad for telling the truth?

@GallopingCheetah:
If you missed Casey Serin at the height of his glory, you truly missed out on one of the bubble's greatest events.

@sfbubblebuyer
Thanks Bro! I was trying to remember who started that, I could not remember if it was Casey or HaHa! Or maybe some other "looser"...

JG,

Tell me more about it. I did miss a lot. I was doing other fun things. What happened to Casey? What about his wife? I had a few seconds of tempting thoughts about her.

I briefly flirted with Ayn Rand's crazy shit and finally came to the conclusion that her stuff sucks. What's your take on that?

I once tried to get Casey to sell his extra organs to raise money. I guess he just was not desperate enough...

He could've pimped his wife ......

J Galt,

Thanks for the SacBee link! I feel for people like Susan McDonald. Here's a nice gal that just wanted a nice house in a nice neighborhood and look where the "boom" got HER!? Increase in home values? Forget it. It's damage control time.

I'm sure she and the rest of her neighbors are real grateful to the all BA specuvestors for perma-f'ing her town! Thanks guys! Thanks for bidding up prices and taxes then bolting like little kids breaking a window with a baseball! Thanks.

GC,

I've always found the Fountainhead derivative of Arrowsmith (Sinclair Lewis, not the band).

-the all

+all the

?

:(

There is a great deal that Ayn espoused that I do not agree with, however the Book Atlas Shrugged had a central tenet that we should not be penalized or looked down upon just because we choose to work harder than the average person. The argument is every bit as relevant today as it was in Ayn's day.

SWF, you got me. I have not read Arrowsmith.

Thanks for the "jingle mail"!

Thanks for the mosquitoes in your now abandoned pools!

I mean, what can this person do? Really?

JG,

To each's own. As I said, I used to flirt with her ideas for like a year or so, coincidentally, when my PM stocks were down (hard).

GC,
After Ayn stopped writing fiction, she really went off the deep end. Everything has to be taken in moderation and in it's appropriate context. I mean we all go too far sometimes, it is just that most of us realize it after a while and come back to earth. She got to enjoy her sycophants a little too much and never came home. Even I occasionally get depressed with society and go from Libertarian to Anarchist and start calling for a return of the barter system. "I'll trade you 3 horses for your McMansion..." Call it temporary insanity, the point is: I sober up in the morning.

BTW, 3 horses was a lowball offer. The seller thought that his sh!tbox was clearly worth 10 horses...

JG,

You have a good point. It's OK. BTW, I believe A.R. was probably a bad fxxk.

She did get around tho...

DinOR likes Susan McDonald. She's kinda cute.

Anybody planning lowball offers any time soon?

My wife and I are planning on a lowball offer, wait a month or two, send in a SECOND lowball offer, slightly lower than the first.

We're thinking 50% of 2005 list for the first salvo.

Because she had a hole and some men went for it.

GC,
I see you're back and same as usual. I'd suggest lightening up on the sexual innuendo lest you cross the line with the moderator(s).

sfbb,

I don't think there's enough fear in the Bay Area housing market yet. Maybe in the outlying regions (the Delta, as the SFChron article showed, crappy parts of SJ, parts of Sonoma, etc.) there is fear, but in the inner Bay Area, not quite yet. But it seems inevitable at this point.

Thanks. Some men never change. But thanks for the warning. Feel free to delete my stuff so that I don't get kicked out again.

You know, while I was away, I did some pretty interesting things. So, I won't frequent this board as I used to. Today, I was just bored. A girl I met at a club two weeks just told me this morning that she was seeing someone and didn't want to rendezvous. But why didn't she bring that up first, why did she give me her number that night, and why did she kiss me when she left? I believe her "someone" was chilling outside the club when we swapped numbers. Women are fickle. Anyway, move on .....

Personally, I think you guys have beaten this RE horse to death, many times over. What's new?

I suppose that it takes a specific set of life experiences to really appreciate Atlas Shrugged and general Objectivism. Take all this talk about money, and how it's "not all that". Try growing up without "all that", and then through your own calculated risks, hard work, and occasional luck coming by "some of that". After experiencing how those with "that" live their lives, the good and the bad...then tell me about the value of money. I am not ashamed of money I have, money I've made, nor how I choose to spend it. A small fringe benefit from being a dirty Objectivist who feels sanguine about reward for merit.

What is the value of money? I have an answer. It's cooler than what you have, I can tell you now. So tell me yours first.

See, everyone was worried about what all the out-of-work mortgage brokers were going to do for money... As it turns out, when the going gets tough the tough go entrepreneurial.

http://wcbstv.com/watercooler/local_story_252232548.html

"New Rochelle Police raided a 3-bedroom home on North Avenue Friday night after undercover officers responded to a Craig's List posting offering dominatrix services with a grand opening special. Police arrested four alleged prostitutes and the homeowners.

The house, they say, had been turned into a brothel complete with heavy shades over all the windows and a red ribbon placed out by the sidewalk to indicate they were open for business.

Richard Werner and Heather Mezzenga are charged with promoting prostitution. The two are both mortgage brokers who moved out of the house roughly two years ago so they could begin renovating a home on Mountain Road in Pleasantville. "

Who'd a thunk it, the REIC turning to prostitution...

skibum,

It's not in the 'prime' bay area, it's on the wrong side of the penninsula. It's been on the market for 2 years, and has already been marked down once by 20%, went into escrow for four months, then fell out as the financing collapsed at the end of August. The owner bought it in 86, so they have plenty of wiggle room, and our offer would be well over the 'assessed' property tax value, even after the remodel.

If it were a recent purchase, I'd be waiting for it to go into foreclosure. :D