patrick.net

Little Al,

When I was stationed in San Diego someone told me they had a trolley line that ran all the way to University Park (?) and then back to Downtown. I guess it ran up to and through WWll? People seemed to love it.

Returning to BA,

Um, I grew up in Chicago and still have many friends and bus. contacts there. I even have a client that now resides in Newport Beach but spends his summers in Chicago! (I know, sounds weird to me to) but if I had his money I'd burn mine. (Owns golf courses but still makes me pay, you get the idea O.K?)

It absolutely kills me to say this but in spite of their brutal winters on balance they have more "nice days" than Portland Oregon ever thought about having. A REAL spring and summers where you can get by with a T-shirt at 10 O'clock at night. Try that on the Oregon coast!

So many of our coastal communities have tried many times over the years to sponser surfing events but they refuse to take hold. We took the kids out to Pacific City one AUGUST and there were TWO people surfing! AUGUST! I could go on and on about the OR coast and depression (and a generally unhealthy environment) but I think you get the idea. I don't think Surfer X would be caught dead up here. What would his surf buddies think!

I put my money where my mouth was and sold my house in October. I feel pretty good about that. I just signed a one-year lease to rent. I'm interested in what everyone's crystal ball is saying about when it would be smart to buy again.

In reality, I'm going to evaluate the market every year and make the decision, but it would help with my financial plans if I could figure out how many years of renting I should do before I buy.

If someone held a gun to your head and you had to buy in July, what year would it be? Depending on my mood, my typical guess is 2008 or 2009.

>>So, I have a different perspective than those on this blog who grew up without humidity. To them, it is a cut and dry negative. To me, humidity is okay so long as it is not hot.

I'm with you. Since I grew up in northeast Ohio, I find humid summers to be a lot nicer--green and lush. I find the West Coast summers to be disappointingly dead.

The whole West coast looks brown to me, in fact, as opposed to the lush green rolling farm hills I grew up with.

Even the Washington and Oregon valleys look brown. I think the difference is in the east coast's green tangly dense vegetation "woods" as opposed to the west's brittle crackly coniferous "forests."

I find the summer dryness on the West Coast to be frustrating. It leaves everything brown.

I was pretty shocked when I first moved here, but it's sure easy to get outdoors between may and november. :) That said, Bay Area weather is overrated; everyone has their own preferences. It took me years to get used to the summer heat. The S. Bay feels like a desert to me; N. of SF is much more humid.

RTBA,

6 years is a common answer because of history, so that makes sense. Seems long to me because the last two years have been so over-the-top that I'm expecting a panic on the downside. But your argument is a reasonable one.

Michael Anderson Says:

If someone held a gun to your head and you had to buy in July, what year would it be? Depending on my mood, my typical guess is 2008 or 2009.

We sold our place in Boston 11/05 (just at the start of Boston's noticeable and significant downturn in RE prices - we were lucky). We moved back to the BA (who moves back here anymore? I think we and RTBA might be the only ones in recent memory), and have been renting ever since. Plan is to track the market and consider buying in as early as 2 years, perhaps as late as 4-5 years, depending on how this all plays out.

Robert Coté asks Different Sean (who like most liberals has obviously never actually built anything):

> Do you understand the meaning of enumerable criteria?

Different Sean Says:

> apparently not. if it’s not where i listed 4 things straight
> off, including the mathematical obviousness of greater
> cost in longer runs of materials used in providing public
> utilities?

While it may "seem" to make sense that it is cheaper to build a 100 unit high rise in the center of San Francisco than 100 single family homes north of Sacramento this is just not the case. Sure the cost of wire and pipe to connect to the power and sewer system is more with the single family homes but this is just a small part of the overall cost of a new development. A good example of infill vs. new suburban development is that it cost Mayor Willie Brown about $250mm to "renovate" about 100 public housing units in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill while at the same time Angelo Tsakopoulos was able to buy the land, build the roads, and build 100 brand new single family homes in the Sacramento area for less than $250mm...

Where did you move from that it took you years to get used to the heat?

N. Washington coast: generally cool and foggy all year; 80 was a rare hot summer day. (Nobody owned A/C) Moving to S.Bay felt like a desert; it was the heat as much as lack of humidity. I'm back in a marine climate now, and I can deal much better. Yeah-I know what you mean: AC sucks; I don't even like using it my car.

I think wherever we grow up defines our taste on the weather. We may like hot summer nights or dry summers. For me, a cool stiff breeze off the ocean can't be beat. :)

I know this point has been raised before but Buyers dont seem to be comparing the prices pre2001 to now when they give offers for houses.
The link provided by daytwah: the buyers went for a $9000 drop from the asking price and they believe they got the best deal. I am not sure of the Detriot market but that does not seem like something you want to cheer about. I am thinking we will see more of it here in the bay area as well where buyers see a drop of $20K as if they got the best deal.
Need to ride this down to the bottom and hope there will be some decent places still available at the bottom which i expect will be another 2 yrs. I think it will be different from the other boom bust cycles as this boom had lot of money injected and it will evaporate at the same pace.

I know this point has been raised before but Buyers dont seem to be comparing the prices pre2001

You're absolutely right. It's very easy to lose perspective in the Bay Area, especially if you moved here after 2001. House prices had also ramped up prior to the tech boom, and few remember what it was like pre-2000, when a 4BR tract home in the Cupertino school district went for $400K. The same house would sell for $1.1M in 2005; we have a long way to the bottom.

I have no doubt that there will be some buyers all the way down. By the end, most people should hate real estate.

I was younger (weren't we all?) for the last two busts. I don't remember such a cult of real estate. I remember certain people were good at buying houses and renting them out, but I don't remember it being such a mania. Am I right? Or was I just not paying attention?

Caps Lock

We aren't growing like Bacteria in a Petri dish. At least in developed countries, we are now reproducing below the rate to stay constant.

Space travel would be a great way to spread, but it can't help our population problem here on earth, can it?

LILLL,

Wow, that's something. Hard to believe a guy bought last month to flip! I thought flipping was over six months ago. Pathetic.

Godel is Real.

(unless declared integer)

I am seeing that the stresses that have been building up for a long time are starting to make folks crack. They are cracking up at the job, and there was a recent article, they are cracking up in Gilroy and Morgan Hill with record high incidents of domestic violence. Now their personal finances are cracking too. Some people are losing their homes because they have a problem. Soon this will cascade into an avalanche. Sadly we are seeing the very beginning of the scenario Dr. Tablot from UCLA Anderson School of Business predicted in his recent book about the coming crash in real estate. It is going to be fundamental to our economy and how people live their lives in the months and years to come.

A good example of infill vs. new suburban development is that it cost Mayor Willie Brown about $250mm to “renovate” about 100 public housing units in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill while at the same time Angelo Tsakopoulos was able to buy the land, build the roads, and build 100 brand new single family homes in the Sacramento area for less than $250mm…

yeah, but that can become a whole other issue -- the cost of renovating existing structures vs building from scratch -- it's held to be about twice as expensive per sq. m. to renovate as it is to build new, which is the classic infill or refurb conundrum.

because it's hard to get to things inside existing structures, rewire, replumb, etc it takes more labour, and therefore the costs go up.

further, we don't know whether mayor willie brown managed to completely bollocks up project management and got gouged somewhere along the line, which again is a whole other argument -- for instance, should such work be put out to tender on a PPP basis to control costs, as is done with public housing projects here?

it would be fairer to compare the costs of constructing a new high rise development with the same number of low rise sprawling developments -- and then you would have to break it down to see which components blew out the cost one way or the other.

finally, there are hidden long-term environmental and resource costs which should also be factored in, and are worn by the inhabitants -- somewhat like total cost of ownership (TCO) -- how much more fuel will the sprawl inhabitants have to use to get around? can they walk to the nearest store, or will they have to drive? how far is the nearest Tube station? schools? what rates will be charged by council to maintain the area, etc. (i guess utilities charges get equalised amongst all subscribers, so perhaps the low maintenance cost users are really subsidising the high cost users, so there is no direct penalty for sprawling.)

sometimes builders save money by effectively passing on costs to the people who purchase -- e.g. constructing cheaper buildings with poor design, shading or orientation which will require occupants to run expensive A/C or heating more often, and so on.

however, dysfunctions of the market approach to housing also mean that price differentials may occur which are just about 'location' etc, also making comparisons harder, or wiping out any of the environmental benefits at first sight.

The San Diego investor thread is pretty tragic, LILLL. See what happens when you turn human shelter into a speculative asset investment class? Brings out the best in people...

Here was one wonderful solution:

"Here in CA, if you sell a house with a purchase-mortgage loan on it, you are not responsible for the loan after the sale. If you ARE NOT personally responsible for the loan, I’d suggest the following approach. Deed the property over to somebody who does not care about their credit report. Perhaps a minor, a derelict, a very elderly person who never buys on credit, somebody else who does not care. Make sure that you “sales agreement” makes you responsible for the ownership expenses so you will be able to deduct them from your taxes. Then rent out the property for as much rent as you can. After a few months, stop paying the mortgage and let the property go to foreclosure. Later you have “credible deniability” for the loan. That is, you can explain to credit granters that you were not responsible for the new owner’s having defaulted on the loan."

"Maybe my memory is frazzled here but the usually excellent Ron Starr just suggested to commit pre-meditated lender fraud, a felony.

Somebody tell me I'm wrong please!"

"szabo is a slick operator and I didn't do enough due dilegence about the rental market. Rents don't come close to covering mortgage payments. Live and learn. I am not giving up investing in real estate, but I certainly won't be doing another pre-con."

so basically these specuvestors didn't even spreadsheet the numbers before purchase, just took a realtor/developer's word for it... one estimate here, for a small country, puts investor losses from real estate scams in the billions...

Sir Rick of Shmend Says:
LILLL, the chemtrails thing is totally real. im serious. you see them all the time in phoenix.

are these the west coast locations which are held to be most at risk from a Chinese or N. Korean missile, etc?

Chemtrails are Real.

(unless declared integer)

"The massive appearance of Sylphs in 2004 and their neutralization/transmutation of chemtrails into harmless elements was a huge leap forward in neutralizing the diabolical chemtrail genocide aerosol spraying operation, but apparently we have progressed to yet another level. People are now reporting the ability to clear the skies of chemtrails by use of the mind alone to obtain assistance from unseen helpers (Sylphs and others) and do the job for you based on your focused intention. It's really amazing to see this development. I first posted an article in 2002 by Rich Work about using the mind and the the power of prayer to disperse chemtrails, and now we see this ability coming into reality with many people. We are winning the battle against chemtrails and defeating the satanic traitors at their own game. Spread the word: DEPLOY ORGONE GENERATORS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD and you too will be free of chemtrail laden skies!"

why do people worry about america?

Shmend,

Contrails can last much longer than 10 minutes. They can grow to an enormous size in the absence of cumulus clouds, and in the right meteorological conditions even start the process of cloud formation.

Commercial jets follow "highways" in the air, literally in a very grid-like pattern. You can find many of their flight paths on the Internet, although not as many as before 911. Actually, they don't fly in a grid because the earth is curved, but it looks like a grid from a ground observer.

How do you know they are "rectangular"? You can only see them from one point of view. Such objects at a distance will always appear planar when viewed without any other point of reference.

You cannot tell how close "intersecting" contrails are from the ground. You may see a grid, but in actuality they are often separated by many thousands of feet of vertical distance.

Then there's the whole parts per million problem. Unless they're spraying plutonium or something else so overwhelmingly powerful per unit (which would be easily detectable as certain weather patterns would cause occasional overconcentration), then anything they're spraying at that altitude has no effect. What is the dispersion from 10,000 feet, let alone the 35,000ft at which these contrails are really located? Something like hundreds of square miles. That's some pretty darned powerful "spray".

In short, this is tin-foil stuff. Seeing isn't always believing. I saw city lights out on the farallon islands one dusk as I drove north over the GG Bridge. I swear to you to this day I saw a city out there. I did, but it wasn't a city; it was a reflection of SF lights in a "mirage". Don't believe your eyes, believe your common sense and critical thinking.

What is the dispersion from 10,000 feet, let alone the 35,000ft at which these contrails are really located?

Right, I was wondering that too. If the gov. really wanted to get to us, why not just add it to our drinking water, "for our health"?

"Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?"

i was just about to say all the stuff randy said -- no, really! particularly criss-crossing flight paths and atmospheric conditions -- supersaturated air in the stratosphere can end up producing very long-lived vapour trails that then slowly extend outwards -- just depends on exact weather conditions at the time.

or else it's a sign of the end times that vapour trails are lasting longer.... 8O

plus they also regularly jettison surplus jet fuel and human poo from planes over the ocean (or suburbia) and no-one is complaining much about that...

makes one wonder- is it really about tooth decay?

i think they were injecting nanobots into your system...

I have no military background nor am I a pilot. My father was in defense and always attached to a SAC center, which is how I ended up growing up most of my childhood in the shadow of Wright Pat.

I am just invoking some physics, chemistry and other science education. One need not be especially accredited to figure out that chem-trails is a really complicated conspiracy theory that is very likely impossible, and which could be accomplished through much easier methods like KurtS mentions.

Occam's Razor is a good thing. Why spray from planes when you can just put it in water or milk or asthma inhalators or dogfood or insulin or sneakers? And if "it" is a bad thing, then surely someone would leak "it". Not everyone in the guberment is evil, and they'd need thousands of people including blue-collar types to pull off the logistics. If "it" is for our own good then an easier way would be a public education campaign.

I saw city lights out on the farallon islands one dusk as I drove north over the GG Bridge. I swear to you to this day I saw a city out there.

Atlantis!

further, the contrails are dispersed from the engines over the tailplanes of ordinary jet liners, and therefore give some people the impression of 'spraying' rather than exhaust. much of the exhaust of a jet is in fact water vapour, with a few other gases and probably solid burned carbon deposits.

apparently a very small amount of it can also be barium-based meteorological wind detection solutions.

looking at the chemtrail websites, and for some reason there are dozens of them, i find the psychological tendency to 'attribution' to be quite strong in the posters, who are probably not in the most critical thinking end of the spectrum. attribution is a spurious cause and effect assumption by associating coincidences or near-coincidences incorrectly. e.g. pollution in places like LA, HK, etc is absolutely abysmal, and will cause respiratory problems etc, but apparently it's all due to the chemicals they're spraying...

it seems to correlate with a 'suspicious' mindset also, and it's probably no surprise that their attributions quickly switch to a global conspiracy -- all govts are doing it! i've found when working in computing support that people who are at the extreme end of suspiciousness in their general observed behaviours also seem to make these false attributions a lot -- probably a deeply ingrained evolutionary cognitive survival technique, which, while it may be wrong many times, works well enough that it keeps you alive by constantly trying to put 2 and 2 together.

of course, the whole thing may be true, and i can't rule that out until i go into the stratosphere with a sampling container and catch some of the stuff to analyse for both inorganic or organic substances, or talk to some military deep throat who admits they were doing something nefarious as a project... worldwide... 24/7...

ajh Says:
DS,
I read Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” recently. Very interesting, but I got a bit mistrustful after reading the chapter on Australia, where a segment talks about the Australian dam-building experience but doesn’t mention the Snowy Mountains Scheme (for all its faults).

Collapse is coming on TV very soon, maybe I can skip the book... I've got a couple of Jared Diamond things on human behaviour and saw Guns and Steel -- he's certainly very wide-ranging, but a little quirky and maybe off the mark at times, especially in Collapse, apparently.

The tapping of the Great Lake at Poatina in Tasmania for hydro power has been very successful with minimal environmental disruption, as it used an elevated lake in an extinct volcano crater. You have to be choosy about locating your hydro schemes if you're serious about not damaging the environment tho. The proposed Gordon below Franklin scheme was blocked by protests, probably wisely, which also served to create the Greens Party.

They were trying to sell the Snowy to private interests very recently, the public backlash was immense, so they're not doing it now. Unfortunately, I missed a talk on all that on Friday night - THE SNOWY MOUNTAINS SELLOFF - NATIONAL INTEREST BETRAYED
http://www.politicsinthepub.org/current.htm
sounded almost like ecuador selling off its drinking water to private companies.

yes, not sure what the collapse chapter concerning australia was about - you'd have to summarise it here in 1 para or less ;)

IMO hydro should not be used for base-load power unless you’re somewhere like Iceland with huge supplies of water. Far better to keep it for peak relief. I like the concept of pumped storage too, and I have a nice thought for large-scale renewable energy on those lines if global warming really does raise sea levels more than a few metres.

they will be looking to pump it all over the place before long, if the estimate that sea levels will rise 21 feet just with the melting of the greenland icecap comes true - read a story in the LA Times online just a minute ago on this thru some coincidence.

i think tasmania obtains all of its electrical power needs from hydro projects, and it's meant to be very cheap -- serving about 400 000 people plus an aluminium smelter which uses 1/3 of it at cheap rates.

are you a hydraulic or electrical engineer, ajh? are you interested in commercialising a PE water tank idea of mine? which countries are you working from? :P

yes, not sure what the collapse chapter concerning australia was about - you’d have to summarise it here in 1 para or less ;)

IMO hydro should not be used for base-load power unless you’re somewhere like Iceland with huge supplies of water. Far better to keep it for peak relief. I like the concept of pumped storage too, and I have a nice thought for large-scale renewable energy on those lines if global warming really does raise sea levels more than a few metres.

they will be looking to pump it all over the place before long, if the estimate that sea levels will rise 21 feet just with the melting of the greenland icecap comes true - read a story in the LA Times online just a minute ago on this thru some coincidence.

i think tasmania obtains all of its electrical power needs from hydro projects, and it’s meant to be very cheap — serving about 400 000 people plus an aluminium smelter which uses 1/3 of it at cheap rates.

are you a hydraulic or electrical engineer, ajh? are you interested in commercial-ising a PE water tank idea of mine? which countries are you working from? :P

you're up early, newsfreak - never too early to start reading the news...

interesting about DDT - everyone's saying it's harmless again - and how millions of lives could've been saved if they'd kept using it. it might be more innocuous than people feared - although a lot of the other pesticides are pretty nasty...

actually, forget that last post... i'm not a fan of the michael crichton supposed 'junk science' camp...

RE: DDT. It is definitely dangerous. But some of those arguments aren't denying that DDT is dangerous, but instead challenging the relative value of safety. That is, could more lives have been saved by continuing DDT use in certain situations? For DDT, this is pretty complicated and probably highly uncertain either way.

A better example (and keeping with the air-travel conspiracy) is the recent decision by the FTSB/FAA to not enforce child-restraint seats for children under 2 on commercial aircraft. There is no question that putting all children in restraint would save lives and injury due to turbulence. But, the incidence is low, and well documented.

After studying the issue they found out that forcing parents to buy tickets for toddlers would result in a pretty high percentage of marginal trips (could drive or fly) where parents decide to drive instead due to cost of the 3rd ticket, even at 75% discounts. (A bit of mental accounting going on here). Even with child restraints, driving is so exponentially more dangerous than flying, the conclusion was that more children were spared death and injury by allowing them to fly unsafely on their mother/father's laps.

yeah, there are counter-arguments to the somewhat emotional '50 million lives could have been saved if DDT wasn't banned' line from michael crichton et al.

for instance, mosquito populations become resistant to DDT after 6-7 years, there are other ways of managing the populations, etc...

further, DDT hasn't been banned in many countries which have a malaria problem, so you wonder where the poor science is emanating from...

more on the politics of govt decision making and the power of lobbies: i like the way american airline companies chose not to ban cigarette lighters and books of matches on planes post 9/11... because the tobacco companies know smokers want to light up just as soon as they get off the no smoking flight...

Even with child restraints, driving is so exponentially more dangerous than flying, the conclusion was that more children were spared death and injury by allowing them to fly unsafely on their mother/father’s laps.

hmm, maybe it's that airlines are so desperate to get any customers to stay solvent post-9/11 they're willing to throw safety concerns out the window... (figuratively speaking...)

randy, can u delete this post and one awaiting moderation with the word 'commercial ising' in it -- i already posted it a second time with a hyphen to get round the spam filter. sorry to increase your workload...

What troubles me most is the number of innocent families that are going lose their homes through foreclosure because of this real estate bust.

You heard of "Survival of the Fittest", let's just call this the "Survival of the less Ignorant". There are too many idiots in this world, some of them just have to go!

go where