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bubblesitter
2012 Feb 16, 3:39am
so all these $500k price cuts and delinquencies: are they the middle class or the 1%?
Haha. May they are still in the middle class and on their way to exit or the top 1% are not living up to their obligations.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-foreclosure-crisis-beverly-hills-050531722.html
". Many are walking away not because they can't pay, but because they judge it would be foolish to keep doing so."
Rich are not so naive after all. :)
It is extra amusing to pull up Los Altos and Los Altos Hills on www.foreclosureradar.com and see all the delinquent borrowers with well over $1M in outstanding debt. Where on earth does someone borrow that much money from?! I guess it strikes me as odd that someone seriously looking at $2M+ houses would finance any part of it.
Yes, that is a very good question to ask/ponder on.. there is more to all of this. Certainly not the norm in prior decades.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-foreclosure-crisis-beverly-hills-050531722.html
". Many are walking away not because they can't pay, but because they judge it would be foolish to keep doing so."
Rich are not so naive after all. :)
"It's a business decision, not an emotional one which it is for normal people," said Deborah Bremner, owner of the Bremner Group at Coldwell Banker, which specializes in high-end properties in the Los Angeles area. "I go to cocktail parties and all people are talking about is whether it is time to walk away, although they will never be quoted in the real world."
Now that is remarkable.. instead of cocktail parties on open homes, is now if to defualt of the mortgage.
so all these $500k price cuts and delinquencies: are they the middle class or the 1%?
When you cut the number of public companies in Silicon Valley by half, you certainly dont need as many CEOs, VPs and middle managers anymore. Yes, the top earners get wacked...
Vanishing Public Companies Lead To The Incredible Shrinking Silicon Valley
One of the most significant trends I’ve been watching over the past decade is the dramatic drop in public companies in Silicon Valley. Naturally, that number was artificially inflated during the dot-com bubble when it reached 417 in 2000. For our purposes, Silicon Valley includes San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and the southern half of Alameda County.
But the number of public companies has dropped for nine straight years now. Even when IPOs briefly reappeared in 2006 and 2007, they weren’t enough to overcome the net loss of public companies through acquisitions or bankruptcy.
In 2008, the number had fallen to 261. We just updated our records and the latest figure is 241.
That’s not just less than the dot-com era, that’s well below the 315 public companies the valley had in 1994 when the Mercury News started keeping track.
Serpentor
2012 Feb 16, 4:20am
when I drive though Cupertino (good asian food and decent movie theater) and l look at the houses there, I don't think "wow these people are loaded!" I see middle class homes and fixed up McMansions in small lots. Nice, if you are an average Joe Chang, but not mind blowing by any means...
However, sometimes I'll take a drive up to the hills in Los Altos, Atherton, Palo Alto, San Mateo...etc and those mansions are absolutely incredible.
So if the prices of Mansions are dropping and people are defaulting (intentionally or not) on the the super high end. I don't see see why people think regular ol Cupertino is somehow immune.
B.A.C.A.H.
2012 Feb 16, 10:42am
But by comparison to what is average or median or typical or whatever in the US and even in California, they are loaded.
They are either loaded with equity, or they are loaded with a high income to pay the rent or pay the loan + property tax. As long as they keep those high incomes that SFAce cited coming in, they are loaded.
Loaded with debt? It doesn't matter, because in order to qualify to borrow to be loaded with big debt, they were already loaded with income.
Rich? As you said, probably not. That'd be places like Woodside. But wealthy? You bet.
They are either loaded with equity, or they are loaded with a high income to pay the rent or pay the loan + property tax.
Wealth comes here from...
(1) inflated stock we unload on the markets.
No one talked about Cisco or Yahoo when they went IPO back in the early 90s. Not many around here were wealthy from the many prior decade IPOs, except until the late 90s. Cisco like many issued their stock at 20/share and only appreciated based on real earnings and hard work.
(2) salary from sales of products
Lets face it.. Sales/Revenue comes from other regions who are willing to buy our capital goods.. As such we compete with the Japanes, Koreans, and Europeans.. Maybe even the Chinese in the future. Anyone of the major global industries decides to skip over our products IT WILL have a impact on jobs and salaries.
If we are loaded today, better to save it for rainy days vs blowing it on bubble priced homes. But many came here post 2000 and they want their piece of the action.. regardless if its here or not. Watch your wallets...
Goran_K
2012 Feb 16, 12:24pm
But by comparison to what is average or median or typical or whatever in the US and even in California, they are loaded.
They are either loaded with equity, or they are loaded with a high income to pay the rent or pay the loan + property tax. As long as they keep those high incomes that SFAce cited coming in, they are loaded.
Loaded with debt? It doesn't matter, because in order to qualify to borrow to be loaded with big debt, they were already loaded with income.
Rich? As you said, probably not. That'd be places like Woodside. But wealthy? You bet.
I think this post paints it best. People have bought homes in Cupertino since 2006, and definitely after the big crash. If homes are still at 2006 prices in Cupertino, and people are continually buying them today, we have to assume they aren't all FHA loans, a lot of them were bought by wealthy, loaded, people. Banks are NOT handing out "credit" like they were back in those days, you need real skin in the game qualify for a mortgage on a $1,000,000 home.
Serpentor
2012 Feb 16, 1:02pm
But by comparison to what is average or median or typical or whatever in the US and even in California, they are loaded.
They are either loaded with equity, or they are loaded with a high income to pay the rent or pay the loan + property tax. As long as they keep those high incomes that SFAce cited coming in, they are loaded.
Loaded with debt? It doesn't matter, because in order to qualify to borrow to be loaded with big debt, they were already loaded with income.
Rich? As you said, probably not. That'd be places like Woodside. But wealthy? You bet.
are they so "loaded" that the are immune to economic forces? If even wealthier areas are seeing price reductions and foreclosures (intentional or not) what makes you think Cupertino is immune? You can explain away everything by saying ooh they are rich, but the majority of Cupertino residents are hard working immigrants with regular jobs with regular problems. If they were richer, the'd be in Palo Alto or Atherton. Are they wealthier then most, yes, but that doesn't make them immune to market forces. and please for the love of Jeremy Lin don't mention commie money from china again unless you have proof
Here is my perspective on why the Cupertino prices will never crash.
wouldn't a lot of these reasons also support the Cupertino area never bubbling? So, I would expect that Cupertino did not rise in value in a statistically significantly different way from 2000-2007.
I hate to say this, though I don't believe the prices were driven up soley by Asians, I do think Chinese from mainland are much more readily to pay premium for educations and houses b'cos few of my Chinese friends here, who do not own a house, and most of them own a house in the premium neighborhood ....
If you don't think the Chinese can crash the housing market, take a look at what happened in Hong Kong back in the late 90's. Chinese surely like to
gamble with their real-estate, so, prices in places like Cupertino will crash just as hard as they escalated.
They are many kinds of "Chinese". People from Hong Kong are culturally different from mainland Chinese. But, coming back to the real estates bubble, bubbles in HK or Shanghai are rather speculative. But, a lot of those at Cupertino mostly paying into the school district. I do hear hear people from china buying up property here simply bcos china is expensive. But, what is the %? Or lobby us to curb nonresident from owning property then.
Property History for 300 SANTA ROSA Dr
Date Event Price Appreciation Source
Feb 25, 2009 Sold (Public Records) $3,100,000 -23.7%/yr Public Records
Mar 15, 2006 Sold (Public Records) $6,900,000 30.7%/yr Public Records
Oct 22, 2004 Sold (Public Records) $4,750,000 -- Public Records
Something weird was going on with this house. After it was bought in Mar 2006, it was right back on the market in Sept of 2006 and was on and off the market many times until it sold in 2009. If you look at any extended price chart for these really expensive areas, the declines are no where near 50% from peak to now; more like 10%.
Goran_K
2012 Feb 17, 1:17am
In the case of Cupertino, I have found many homes that have sold above their 2004-2006 price.
It doesn't make any economic sense to me, but people are buying these homes today in a horrible credit market. These buyers are loaded.
B.A.C.A.H.
2012 Feb 17, 4:10am
It doesn't make any economic sense to me, but people are buying these homes today in a horrible credit market. These buyers are loaded.
But, a lot of those at Cupertino mostly paying into the school district.
That is right. And what is it about the school district? It is the API. And what is the API?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Performance_Index_(California_public_schools):
"Due to the API's heavy reliance on standardized testing (although some factors such as attendance and graduation rates are considered), many criticisms of standardized testing can also be leveled at the reliability and accuracy of API scores as an indicator of a school's level of "academic achievement." "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Higher_Education_Entrance_Examination
..."Gao Kao, is an academic examination held annually in the mainland of the People's Republic of China. This examination is a prerequisite for entrance into almost all higher education institutions..."
..."The examination is essentially the only criterion for tertiary education admissions. A poor performance on the test almost always means giving up on that goal. Students hoping to attend university will spend most of their waking moments studying prior to the exam. If they fail in their first attempt, some of them repeat the last year of high school life and make another attempt the following year. Fear of failing the exam is such an issue that students who can afford to will sometimes go abroad to attend university despite the greater expense - up to 15 - 30 times the cost of an education in China..."
This, friends, is what it is all about.
Folks too busy working hard making money to get wealthy enough to "get-in" to high API score public K-12 so that they don't have time to "invest" with feet on the ground to learn what goes on in the classroom, what is offered or available at the schools for students to have the opportunity to succeed after grade-12.... Outsouring a parenting responsibility to the API and the standardized tests behind it.
Sad, really. Because, the kids don't excel because the schools have high API's: instead, the schools have high API's because those hard driving kids with Tiger Parents go to their schools. Those kids would excel just about anywhere that is safe and that offers the requisite courses. Jerry Yang, Stanford alum and founder of Yahoo, graduated from Piedmont Hills High School in East San Jose.
Realtors® have cynically exploited the frenzy about API to their advantage. And, Education Professionals, especially those outside of the classroom like administration, are quick to take credit for the API results. But the API result is not because of those Education Professionals who rest on the laurels of their students' standardized test results; the API result is from the nose to the grindstone memorization skills and test taking skills of the students. Hardly surprising since their parents came from that Culture.
Sad, really. Because, the kids don't excel because the school have high API's: instead, the schools have high API's because those hard driving kids with Tiger Parents go to their schools. Those kids would excel just about anywhere that is safe and that offers the requisite courses. Jerry Yang, Stanford alum and founder of Yahoo, graduated from Piedmont Hills High School in East San Jose.
I'm not a strong believer of *premium* school district but I have no idea on how bad could other school districts be since I don't have kids.
But, I would say one thing, I went to the lowest ranking middle school/high school in a third world country, that didn't stop me later on went on to Stanford grad school with paid scholarship/assistantship after a second-tier college in US. I really don't see the need to pave the *road* for the kids if they are not meant to be there. And, it's not necesarily a bad thing. My brother who didn't have college degree, is saving as much money as I am today in bay area back home. (Maybe, that points to something is wrong with the taxation system here .. at the end of the day, it's what is left that counts ...)
And, if you want your kids to have a good chance for the so-called *good* school without paying for the premiums, bug your friends who have contacts with Stanford/Berkeley professors, send them there for voluntary summer research (like in medical school) or a big company where someone who is willing to take intern. And, that would make the kids resume shine much more than just having a Palo Alto or Cupertino high school name.
Sad, really. Because, the kids don't excel because the school have high API's: instead, the schools have high API's because those hard driving kids with Tiger Parents go to their schools. Those kids would excel just about anywhere that is safe and that offers the requisite courses. Jerry Yang, Stanford alum and founder of Yahoo, graduated from Piedmont Hills High School in East San Jose.
I think it is probably a lot about achievement but I have seen people equally concerned about the friends that will be made if they were in other schools in say san jose. Many of these kids are very sheltered, parental controls on everything. Many fear that kids in non-Coop schools from inattentive or struggling families as friends will lead their kids to be slackers, get into drugs, parties and relationships very early on. Fear is sometimes a bigger motivator than achievement.
Those kids would excel just about anywhere that is safe and that offers the requisite courses. Jerry Yang, Stanford alum and founder of Yahoo, graduated from Piedmont Hills High School in East San Jose.
Many people dont get this. They dont realize many who grew up in Santa Clara County and worked in Silicon Valley did very well. Many didnt go the best schools or best univesities ... but at the end did more to make shape and form much of the tech revolution.
My brother who didn't have college degree, is saving as much money as I am today in bay area back home. (Maybe, that points to something is wrong with the taxation system here .. at the end of the day, it's what is left that counts ...)
in short is your brother saying success should be taxed more (punished) ?
It doesn't make any economic sense to me, but people are buying these homes today in a horrible credit market. These buyers are loaded.
No. they are formally loaded.. No longer loaded. When you pay, you no longer have that cash.. you exchanged for a home at a highly inflated exchanged price.
B.A.C.A.H.
2012 Feb 17, 12:57pm
thomas,
I think they are still loaded. Either with, equity, or else with high incomes required to service the debt, pay the property tax, or else to pay the high rents in those neighborhoods. SFAce has shared his figures here about the high incomes in Cupertino.
thomas,
I think they are still loaded. Either with, equity, or else with high incomes required to service the debt, pay the property tax, or else to pay the high rents in those neighborhoods. SFAce has shared his figures here about the high incomes in Cupertino.
Well If i was still an auditor, I would ask.. Show me!
Show me bank and brokerage statements for the past 5 years. Show me Payroll records and other Income earnered from Cupertino residents.
As we all recall, people with very little or no "wealth" were buying up mega mansions ..everyone assumed they were rich buying homes they could not otherwise afford up to the day the music stopped.
What did we learn, based on all the demographics data, studies and papers, and plenty coming from paid media, seems everyone got it wrong. Even Greenspan got it wrong regarding RE prices and household debt load. But then again he received te data from the NAR.
So why do parents covet schools so much? Simple, Cupertino is dominated by tech workers, software, and business. It is really the most educated place on earth as far as degree achievement.
Cupertino like many other cities in Santa Clara has been around decades "dominated by tech workers, software and business" and plenty of hardware manufacturing.
Yet we didnt skyrocket in prices back in 1980-95 to the same degree as we have over the past 10 years... so whats different.
Its the same High Schools, Community College and other 4 years Univsersities. Yet we had real economic and income growth back in 1970-95 vs decline since 2000.
Hype.. thats all that is left to explain ...
If all you said is true, surely prices would not be correction (declining).
All bubbles eventually end.. it many not coincide with your retirement plans.
Goran_K
2012 Feb 18, 5:08am
As we all recall, people with very little or no "wealth" were buying up mega mansions ..everyone assumed they were rich buying homes they could not otherwise afford up to the day the music stopped.
That was 2004-2006. This is a different credit environment. No one is going to walk into a bank and mortgage a $1,000,000 home with fake income statements and lies anymore. To get approved to even mortgage above the jumbo limit, do you know how much paper work and verification you have to go through? You need 5 years of verified income, 20% down, 25% for the best rates. For a $1,000,000 home that's $250,000 cash and proven income of around $200,000 to $250,000.
People buying in Cupertino today are loaded, and obviously so.
People buying in Cupertino today are loaded, and obviously so
your talking to a former auditor.. just because YOU say so .. dont fly with me.. I want to see collaborative evidence.
For all we know they may well be all foreign spys sent by the Chinese Intel Services on espionage to steal Industrial secrets from SV companies. Would not be the first time that happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_intelligence_operations_in_the_United_States
To get approved to even mortgage above the jumbo limit, do you know how much paper work and verification you have to go through? You need 5 years of verified income, 20% down, 25% for the best rates. For a $1,000,000 home that's $250,000 cash and proven income of around $200,000 to $250,000.
Normal operating procedures... as i and many others went through.
dunnross
2012 Feb 19, 8:02am
Not sure why u think Cupertino is way over price here. Home prices went from $550k in March 1998 to $1.1M now, which is about 4% appreciation per year. Back then the conforming loan limit was $240k compared to now $729k. Yes, $729k not $625k. In addition, interest rate was at 8% then compared to 4% now.
All those things are completely irrelevant, in the long term. The only thing which counts in house price appreciation is household income, which has declined since 1998. So, fundamentally, there is no explanation for an increase in price of 100% in 14 years. Basically, all those places you've mentioned are still in a HUGE bubble, which have yet to implode.
Basically, people are wondering why other places, like Vegas, continue to depreciate. The answer is simple. It's because, this crash isn't over, until the fortress falls, and there are 80-90% losses across the board. When this thing is over, you will know it, because nobody will be spared.
Exactly. How are $1,000,000 in cupertino being bought by non-loaded people in this credit environment?
It doesn't make sense to explain it that way.
RentingForHalfTheCost
2012 Feb 19, 8:59am
Exactly. How are $1,000,000 in cupertino being bought by non-loaded people in this credit environment?
It doesn't make sense to explain it that way.
You got 100K saved from stocks/options/RSUs and double income then you will qualify for a 1million home. They go off you gross income, not your net like they should. Say 200k income for two people in the bay area (not a stretch at all), then a 900k jumbo loan at todays crazy free money rates would only be $4500 (4.5% and PMI included). That is only 54K so about 25% of gross. A bank would find that more than reasonable.
They would pay about 1.6million in the end of 30 years when all said and done. Now, the real question is should they. I think not a chance, but obviously many see these numbers and all they think about is "we can do 4500/mth for 30 years". For me, 30 years is not in my vocabulary. If it takes me 30 years to buy old lumber and concrete, and a small patch for a backyard, then they can keep it. That is just me though and I am allowed to have my opinion just like everyone else.
I think many many more people can buy in the BA, but like me they run the numbers and think things will get more in their favor in time. Good for them, I think they are making the correct choice. Most people that seem to have a different view are either in the industry or own homes already. Everyone I know that are renters, and I know many, think just like me. You can say whatever on this forum, but I would just think you are lying anyway and in one of the first camps, because trust needs to be earned, it doesn't come for free. ;)
B.A.C.A.H.
2012 Feb 19, 10:06am
100K saved from stocks/options/RSUs and double income then you will qualify for a 1million home. ... Say 200k income for two people in the bay area
Yes.
By any normal standards of what is a typical average household in the USA, in California and even in the Bay Area, such households are quite wealthy.
And in Cupertino, almost all of them are wealthy immigrants. And as long as they keep coming, and keep bidding against each other for their kids to have access to the coveted Cupertino School District, the prices for living there will stay high or probably even keep going up.
I don't know why Serpentor gets bent out of shape of what is going on. Like Eman said, "It is what it is".
I had an immigrant coworker who had spent some years in a different ('red') state before coming here. He thought the Cupertino or Bust mentality in our office was kind of insane, and he would say so, sometimes quite vocally; he said others tried to make him feel or look stupid for saying so. One time a different immigrant who had recently bought a home in The Fortress discretely took me aside and she explained to me that he was saying those things because he was jealous.
Serpentor
2012 Feb 19, 10:29am
I don't know why Serpentor gets bent out of shape of what is going on. Like Eman said, "It is what it is".
you obviously didn't go to a Cupertino school, because your reading comprehension is horrendous. I get "bent out of shape" because people like you keep repeating the same BS about my people without any proof.
Your entire knowledge of immigrants is based on stories and interactions with your immigrant coworkers and you do not even have detailed knowledge of the financial situation of that tiny subset of a huge and diverse group of people. You make broad assumptions and present them as fact of an entire multinational group of people without any proof.
Immigrants don't have unlimited source of money to prop up housing forever. "Rich" is a relative term, it doesn't mean unlimited funds and it does not mean that rules of economics doesn't apply. How many times do we have to do this?
There is no fucking commie dragon gold.
B.A.C.A.H.
2012 Feb 19, 10:57am
people like you keep repeating the same BS about my people
Are your people the same as the subset of Buyers in The Fortress? Or are your people from a different (larger) subset?
Yup. It is a different culture, and a different mentality. Status is huge,
There's a whole lotta regular folks from those places for whom status is not The Religion. But they're not the ones immigrating to Cupertino. So 'Tino has become a "self-selected" population of a certain sub-Culture.
Immigrants don't have unlimited source of money to prop up housing forever.
You are right. But like SFAce, Rentingforhalfthecost, EMan, Gorak and others have pointed out, they don't need unlimited source of money to do that in Cupertino. They only need to be wealthy enough. Maybe not propping up forever, but just as long as more of them keep comin', and keep bringing their API-centric attitude with them.
Your entire knowledge of immigrants is based on stories and interactions with your immigrant coworkers
My entire knowledge of immigrants is not based solely on coworkers. My inlaws are (Asian) immigrants, including the ones that have stayed with us from time to time. Being a local kid like you are, many of my friends and classmates were immigrants or children of immigrants, from K-12, community college, college and grad school. Roommates in college, from Japan, Hong Kong, Philippines, kids of Mexican immigrants, and a couple of New Yorkers too. Nowadays most of my neighbors are immigrants. Some from Latin America, some from Asia, some (multiple households) from the Azores. Like the other immigrants, the Latino immigrants are my equals, my peers. They are not just the people who wait my table, clean the toilets at night in the office where I work, change the oil in my car; because those are not the only interactions I have with them. Because I live among, work out at a nonprofit gym with, go to church with, go to afterschool K-12 activities, volunteered at our schools with them. Because like you, I don't live in a place in The Fortress like Cupertino.
Like you said, Fortress People are a relatively small subset. But that's what the thread is about, prices in Cupertino (read title). Like E-man said, "it is what it is". They are the buyers and the buyers set the prices. Wealthy. Immigrants. API rank (a standardized test, like the gao kao). This thread is not about the rest of us.
B.A.C.A.H.
2012 Feb 19, 1:18pm
Serpentor says
Do you think Cupertino is the center of the fucking universe? ....
I never said Cupertino is full of only millionaires. Why are you so angry?
Maybe....
I had an immigrant coworker who had spent some years in a different ('red') state before coming here. He thought the Cupertino or Bust mentality in our office was kind of insane, and he would say so, sometimes quite vocally; he said others tried to make him feel or look stupid for saying so. One time a different immigrant who had recently bought a home in The Fortress discretely took me aside and she explained to me that he was saying those things because he was jealous.
dunnross
2012 Feb 19, 1:35pm
Maybe not propping up forever, but just as long as more of them keep comin', and keep bringing their API-centric attitude with them.
Did anyone ever question how can it be, that these API scores are so high if these schools are only attended by immigrants form China? As far as I know, very few immigrants can learn English that fast, and beat out API scores of native-born English speakers. My guess is, that these are not immigrants at all, but 2nd/3rd generation of Chinese Americans, who are attending these schools.
B.A.C.A.H.
2012 Feb 19, 1:54pm
that these API scores are so high if these schools are only attended by immigrants form China?
Because it's their kids who are the students. Kids like Harvard alum Jeremy Lin. Dunross, it sounds like you don't spend much time in local public K-12.
I'm thinking some writers here are not aware of which countries make up the continent of Asia.
B.A.C.A.H.
2012 Feb 19, 2:00pm
well if you want to be semantic about it, much of Hong Kong is not part of continental Asia. Nor is much of Mumbai. Nor is Taiwan, nor Singapore. For that matter, my NY relatives don't live in the continental United States.
As far as I know, very few immigrants can learn English that fast, and beat out API scores of native-born English speakers.
Take the Vietnamese in San Jose. The early ones that came over in the 70s-early 80s.. dirt fucking poor but educated in the French style schools and took to US schools pretty well. Heavy on Science/Math/language. See them back in the day with Calculas and Computer Science text books were a common sight with these kids. Math and Comp programming are a language on their own. They did well with their work ethic, hard work, savings, etc. Language skills at first were poor but they managed ok.
The same applied when HK was about to be handed over to Mainland China in 1997.. so many 10 years prior "fled" to the US, settled in places like Cupertino, Santa Clara, San Jose, which impacted test scores, but didnt impact home prices which declined from 1989 to mid 90s. Certianly many knew English, since it as a British Colony. I certainly didnt see any getting hired into SV back than, their Children after college did... I saw them as mainly merchants who set up small stores locally and did well. Many stores like the ones you see in ranch 99 were abandoned strip malls which became Chinese stores. However even today Valco mall, hasnt even come close to recovering back from the 89-mid 90s recession. Back in the 80s Valco was much more busier than today.
Chinese immigrants to Cupertino today... beats me. Its a mania.
Neither the Vietnamese or HK Chinese had money or willing to overpay for homes so we didnt have a RE mania due to foreigners. I could throw in Japanese, Korean, some British and some French I met as well.
As far as getting a highly paid job in Silicon Valley.. Good luck on that.. They have always been pretty hard on hiring US University Grads only... and mainly from local universitiies..and US Companies which can be verified.
SJ State/Hayward/Chico/Fresno, Santa Clara Univ. and from UCD/UCB... forget about foreign universities or employers, cant get verification on degree or job history!
So prior waves of immagration has no impact on prices.
dunnross says
As far as I know, very few immigrants can learn English that fast, and beat out API scores of native-born English speakers.
I can certainly recall how this young vietnamese kid.. couldnt speak a word of proper english passed the CPA exam back in the day ... perfect score in College and the CPA exam. Didnt make it to the Big 8.. went to work for the IRS.
memorization techniques.. infact ..AICPA freaked out by the mid 90s so many were passing the exam, but learned nothing, so they started to change content, and added written essay and simulations. In fact you have to sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding the exam questions. Passing rates last I saw was around 30-40%. For the BAR exam its 80%.
Maybe not propping up forever, but just as long as more of them keep comin', and keep bringing their API-centric attitude with them
Self fulfilling-feeding Ponzi scheeme. LOL! Someone is gonna go belly up.
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According to Redfin, Cupertino's median sold price has actually gone up since 2010, unlike other cities.
I'm guessing low inventory, lots of foreign (asian) buyers, and prime location have skewed the pricing here.
I work with people who have lived in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Shanghai, and they say that the prices here are actually cheap for what you get compared to asia.
I don't see places like this ever correcting to before the bubble pricing nominally.