patrick.net

The Bay Area is attractive if:

1) you are geographically tied to your job, or
2) you can afford only one residence

Neither applies to rich people, except a few over-controlling types.

i note incarceration rates in the US are already an order of magnitude higher than in any comparable Western country, and second only to Russia... possibly boosted by drug offences, but so what? things like confiscating and auctioning or crushing people's cars for drug dealing or illegal mods don't happen anywhere else either... (not to say that this wouldn't be a deterrent effect, I would actually like to see aspects of that implemented here, more control over racers and provisional drivers, etc)

but in other countries, you can draw down unemployment benefits for as long as you are unemployed, so you will be less tempted to turn to crimes of desperation -- there's a fine line between discouraging 'welfare dependency' and outright cruelty...

If there ever were a time in history when we desperately need high paying functional jobs it would be now. But lets import a few more million Chindians!

Immigration ought to be market-driven. We need to open the labor market to international competition. Protectionism does not work.

How about an auction-based immigration quota, if we need a quota at all?

Logans Run is an awsome awsome flick.

If we are treating people based on Sci Fi movies then "judge dred"(slyvester stalone) crimnal treatment is more humane. You freeze a criminal permanently so if hes proven innocent you just unfreeze him. But if Dred catches you in the act he shoots on site!

However "zardoz"(sean connery) is also another option for those who wish to exterminate the wrong doers (and everyone for any infraction).

You freeze a criminal permanently so if hes proven innocent you just unfreeze him.

I thought that was Demolition Man.

Some change in the Palo Alto scene: a week ago, I posted about a home on Amarillo, that came on the market, got the sold sign within a few days, even a "Open house canceled, house sold" taunt sitting there for a couple of days. Well, the "SOLD" sign has been quietly removed on that house as of this week, but it still has the For Sale sign. Looks like someone had trouble getting a mortgage ...

Another house on the same block has come on the market in the last week too.

Auction based immigration quota? ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE?

I know, there should not be any quota at all. Protectionism will only backfires.

Look at what Jones Act has done to the US shipbuilding industry?

Re: the RandyH-Allah spat, it is a shame. Both of you have contributed useful and interesting insight, and it looks like your difference of opinion wasn’t _that_ different. We all sometimes end up arguing past the point of tedium, so why not stop flogging the poor dead horse?

SP,

Randy has many issues. If you read through all the comments, you will notice a few things:

It was Randy that interrupted my post which was a response to another poster. Instantly attacking me out of the blue as if we both froze over during our fight a year and a half ago (in which he chose to put me in his rss filter :lol: because he THOUGHT that I insulted him) and suddenly thawed to the same old argument as if nothing has changed since then. That filter seemed to work well for both of us for at least a year and a half :) .

He threatens me with his "moderator privileges" just because he disagrees with my views. I don't agree with everyones views, but if I can't resolve my differences with them, I use my God-given common sense (something Randy seems to lack), to agree to disagree and move on. Instead, he expects me to say I am wrong instead. There are hundreds of posts here every day and I highly doubt anyone reads every single one of them; if you don't agree with someone, just skip over their thread :roll: , don't try to overpower their opinion. Everyone has a right to their opinion whether it turns out they are right or wrong. Randy has a superiority complex and doesn't like anything that interferes with his view; when he feels his ego is threatened, he attacks. What can I say?

It was Randy who has been doing all the name calling while I haven't done any name calling at all (go take a look, it's all in black and white); yet he accuses me of being the hater? Obviously, it is HE who is the hater; guys got serious problems. I love everyone!

Randy just needs to lighten up and respect others opinions; even if he doesn't like them. Arrogance and self-righteousness have no place on a discussion forum. For christs sakes, be a man, not a cry-baby!

As a borrower, I wish that happens to me. My credit union goes under and I don’t need to repay ……that’s perfect.

When a company goes under, its liabilities and assets are never distroyed, they just change hands (you will pay someone else); but if you are in the process of closing on a house and the institution that issued the loan goes under in the process, you can be stuck without a loan and lose the house; which in the case of the market we are in can actually be a good thing....you will be saved from buying an overpriced house. I bet alot of people who got shutout of a loan during AHM's demise will find in a year or so, that they were spared.

Allah Says:
SP, Randy has many issues.

Dude, I wasn't offering you a soapbox. Let it go.

SP

renter_paloalto, you should check Property Shark to see if that house actually sold. Same thing happened in my neighborhood, house went up for sale, open house one weekend, sold sign appeared the following week, then after a few weeks it disappeared but the for sale sign stayed up. Yet despite this, no new flyers in the box, and no further open houses, this was all in late July just before jumbos got hit. I started to wonder if they'd lost their financing, but apparently not, someone moved in a few weeks ago just before school started, and property shark lists it as having actually sold. Now there is another house very nearby that just went up for sale, this is a terrible time obviously, as the season is over and school has started (my neighborhood is close to an elementary school and popular with young families). According to property shark it was purchased in June 05, height of the bubble, and has an ARM. Although it also shows the loan amount and based on the purchase price the owner put a hefty 35% down. They are asking $30k more than they paid in 05.

buffoon, what are you talking about military and natural resources. What does this have to do with anything?

Dude, I wasn’t offering you a soapbox. Let it go.

SP

I have let it go, but everyone keeps bouncing back with their curiosity and I felt I needed to follow up on his closing post which accused me of being one of his "haterz"; which I believe I did.

new york punk, your nonsensical ramblings are useless. This is a real estate bubble blog, jackass.

Boy, it sure sounds like the Original Bankster's got himself in a froth. Does anyone else think the board has degenerated a bit today into a flame-a-thon?

Can't we all just get along???

Can’t we all just get along???

If we can't, we always have sushi. :)

there's a virus going 'round...

OK, it is not your second life, it is just a forum/blog/.... to acquire and disperse information and data, so tuck your ego in your bed, lock the door, and come here with an open mind. If you are proven wrong, so what? It is not like you are betting with real money, I would rather be proven wrong here than at the stock market.

Let's be grown ups and behave accordingly.

Bap33,

Try this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conforming_loan

Yes, conforming loan limits are national, based on national *mean* home price. Note "high price areas" like HI, Guam and AK have a higher limit, but California doesn't...

A loan above the $417k limit (jumbo) is a loan that Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac by mandate cannot purchase in the secondary loan market. IE, if the bank or lender that originates a jumbo loan finds no one in the secondary loan market, they're stuck with the liability on their books. A conforming loan, on the other hand, will by mandate be purchased by Fanny/Freddie if no one else is interested. Hence, they "got the backs" on banks originating conforming loans.

The lack of guarantee with jumbos means banks will charge a higher interest rate for jumbos. In the past, that higher rate, or spread was small because higher mortgage usually means higher income and less likelihood of default. With the credit crunch, banks are scared to issue loans that aren't guaranteed by the GSEs, including jumbos, even though historically their default rates were/are very low.

It wasn't that long ago when jumbo loans were only for people who had enough wealth and income that they really didn't need to borrow the money in the first place.

Kinda like, the no doc. Used to be not so much liars loans as instead, for different reasons than fabrication. I can understand that. When I refi'd in 2003 I wanted to get one of those no doc because I thought all that personal data was none of their goddamn business. They offered it to me but the full doc was a better deal, so I made the deal with the devil.

Jumbos only for people who don't need to borrow, no doc not for liars anymore, we are just getting back to normalcy. That's all.

Jumbo loans are available if you have good credit. By coincidence I called my bank yesterday to see what they wanted for a $900,000 loan. They said they would lend $900,000 to me at 6.375% fixed for 5 years (5/1 ARM) with zero points and about $1,000 for appraisal and other fees. Alternatively, I could increase my HELOC to $900k. However, my current rate on that is 7.24% so a jumbo mortgage would be cheaper.

With the 10 year Treasury rates now down to 4.4% I think the mortgage rates will decline as well.

With the 10 year Treasury rates now down to 4.4% I think the mortgage rates will decline as well.

But if the Fed cuts rate, Treasury rates may go up.

there’s a virus going ’round…

Only one?

Surfer-X will be in the Shitty tomorrow evening at the St. Francis

Here is another one in honor of this thread:

http://www.stockmania.com/2007_09_14_archive.html

This is my first time post. I have read this blog since before Randy came here. It is just my opinion and I hope Allah doesn't start picking on me also. But I sincerely think he owes Randy and the rest of us an apology. Maybe nobody else sees it like I do but I think Randy was very patient with Allah. He ignored him for a long time and Allah still beat up on him. Even here Allah keeps beating up on him. And all because Allah is too immature to admit he had something wrong. Just seems silly to me. I doubt Randy will come back. Just my intuition that people like him are not the kind to suffer fools. Like I said just my opinion. I will go back to lurking. Just wanted to get it off my chest.

Oh that other GC guy drove out Linda and other people because he kept posting about paedophilia and violence against women. No small wonder he beats up on Randy because he called him out. I don't want to read here when that guy is around either.

Huge price reduction in Prime Pacific Heights:

http://tinyurl.com/28bzcb

It's actually a very nice apartment, I went to a Christmas party there (previous owner was an acquaintance from the dog park). Very pretty apartment and building, the downside is the parking is leased across the street. I noticed this was for sale a couple of months ago, apparently it didn't sell.

skibum/Bap33,

Where I think they're going to be fighting an uphill battle is that the definition of Jumbo has been moved in generous fashion (and IIRC) quite recently? My earliest recollections are simply 250K (in the early/mid 90's) then $369,500 quite recently and by the time I'd heard Jumbos were at 417K was when they weren't offering them any more.

What SHOULD have been done in 1997 was to start the cap gains exemption at 50k for singles and 100k for married filing joint with an inflation allowance tied to CPI. Just look what happened when we tried to "fix it once and for all"? I'm sure they felt it's passage would've provided generous allowances for generations to come. (It only took 8 years).

Game Over. Insert Tokens.

Just as an example; the limits for cap. losses has been frozen in time (@ 3K) since the 70's with ZIP adjustment for inflation. I've lobbied HARD to get that changed. CPA's don't like it, but they're not about to raise a stink. It's fallen on deaf ears (or I simply don't have the horsepower I'd imagined) YET we're supposed to raise Jumbo limits before the C.O.B Friday!? Better yet, yesterday.

I realize we're talking about the IRS and GSE's (apples and oranges) but you get the idea.

>> For myself, life is too short to waste precious cycles.

Congratulations Randy for coming to this core realizations....

A lot of people are blogging on real estate crash and nothing is happening.
Prices are stick with government assistance.

Hey DinOR, I've been pissed off about that anachronistic $3k loss limit for years, let me know if there's anything I should be doing to lobby for change. With a lot of people about to lose big bucks just like they did after the dot-bomb implosion, it's high time this was fixed so that there is at least some tax justice for the losers. I know people that lost big-time on the dot-bombs and it will take them the rest of their lives to get the losses deducted, but of course the government was their silent partner raking in the tax receipts on the way up. There were some suicides as a result of people who exercised options and had to pay AMT on them (like pre-paying tax on the capital gains) in one year, only to find that after the stock fell they were looking at a capital loss that they could not recover from. This is gonna happen to some real estate owners now.

DJM,

Well! It's good to know this isn't a one man "crusade"! Oh believe me I know. In concert w/ your comments I was screaming at the top of my lungs that a lot of investors won't LIVE long enough to write down these losses! What are they supposed to do? "Will" them to future generations!?

The evil part of me says; "They didn't do it for us stock investors, why the sense of urgency for REP's!" (Real Estate Partiers) However, if it takes for REP's to get their boo-boo in a wringer to get that sense of urgency... well then great. I'm too old to be fussy about "winning ugly"!

Just watch how quickly this thing goes through! Gosh, it's not like homedebtors don't get enough preferential treatment ALREADY! I can only hope there's a retro-active clause!?

There were some suicides as a result of people who exercised options and had to pay AMT on them (like pre-paying tax on the capital gains) in one year, only to find that after the stock fell they were looking at a capital loss that they could not recover from. This is gonna happen to some real estate owners now.

I know a few of these people, it's nothing but greed, the grants are options, but people tried to save on taxes so they exercise and held. When you do that you are taking a risk, maybe it's not explained to them.

cb,

You're right. In many cases major wirehouses had "in-house" relationships with say... DELL or WCOM (usually built by a jr. associate) then nudged aside as the Sr. guys showed them "how it's done". To a wirehouse, stock option money=DEAD money! They don't get paid on it.

So (in many cases) they coerced employees to convert without ANY understanding of the tax implications! There have been more lawsuits over this than you can shake a stick at. As is usual, sales "managers" drove the idiocy and then left individual brokers out to dry.

www.rrmag.com under "Broker Forums" for more on the ongoing saga.

We've all heard the sad stories about stock options exercised before the dot-con bust. Sad, yes, but it not only points out greed as a motivation (as cb says), but maybe, just maybe it was never a good idea to hand over paper value $millions to engineers, secretaries and what not who barely understood what a stock option was, much less the tax consequences of exercising vs. holding.

Skibum,

In a regular (not dot.com) technology startup, it is the ability, knowledge, hard work and creativity of the engineers that make the stock options worth something. I think they constitute very deserving recipients of same.

skibum,

That's why I offer the link to "Registered Rep." magazine for those that choose to "wallow" in it. The problem comes in that RR's have a fiduciary responsibility to understand the tax implications of their actions. While at the same time distancing themselves from "handing out tax advice".

This is how the rinky-dinky "Financial Planners Association" was able to defeat "Goliath" over the "Merrill Rule" and get them out of the "advisory" business. In fairness, it's just called the Merrill Rule when in fact ALL wirehouses had a hand in it. Now to align yourself with the blessings of the NASD, YOU have to be an RIA (Registered Investment Advisor).

It's much the same as having "hired guns" pitching mortgages under a "Senior Broker's" license. It had to end, as witnessed by the ESOP debacle.

justme,

You can compensate them in cash or restricted stock--much less complicated from a tax standpoint.

In a regular (not dot.com) technology startup, it is the ability, knowledge, hard work and creativity of the engineers that make the stock options worth something. I think they constitute very deserving recipients of same.

justme,

That's not my point. They deserve compensation. I just think it's foolish to give folks who don't fully understand the implications of their decisions the option to decide. This is exactly analogous to subprime and other FB borrowers taking on mortgage products they didn't understand.

If they want to do it, fine. Just don't come crying for a lawsuit when you get burned for your decisions.