patrick.net

Carl Says: I would also like a three-way with Jessicas Biel and Alba.

I would take just Biel. No need to be greedy when the quality is that high.

Where do you live? Can you send me a e-mail? My wife does not allow me to discuss our favorite Japanese restaurant on the blog anymore.

Why's that?

I hope to be able to make it. It will be fun to meet all of you in person.

PeterP we're going to be up your way tomorrow. If you and you wife are free for dinner you can send an email to Malcolm.Shaw@Cox.net.

no period after the .net

WealthyWoman:

If I may ask, why is it that you are in such a hurry to buy?

serpentor,

Reasons why "WealthyWoman" is a troll and not just ignorant.

1. The statement "the market is in a frenzy" is just a straight lie, when you consider every statistical report from the likes of Dataquick etc. is saying the exact opposite. Heck, even CAR is reporting a slow market.
2. "You guys should seriously wake up from denial." Right, let's denigrate the regulars on our very first post. Without. as BAN points out above, providing a single piece of hard evidence for why they are wrong.

(OK, I will admit it's just possible she's an incredibly crass MOTU who is talking about a vanishingly small top-end submarket with her condescending "areas ... that people want to live". Still not someone I'm interested in conversing with.)

It is funny to have someone say people here are in denial, especailly when the majority of us aren't even in the Bay area. I too am suspicious but I try to give the person the benefit of the doubt until I know for sure. It sure has been a long time since I've seen anyone dispute the bubble bursting.

i have spent several months in mainland china, and met hundreds of people... never heard Tang or poon back to a "nin gui shing?" ever...

i have spent several months in mainland china, and met hundreds of people… never heard Tang or poon back to a “nin gui shing?” ever…

Did you miss the part where it was pointed out that the last name Poon is mostly found in Hong Kong?

never heard Tang or Poon back to a “nin gui shing?” ever…

I have seen both of those last names on the cubicles around campus, but my mind never made a connection between them until this thread.

SP

A nice anecdote from dinner with some friends tonight - one of them is selling his house on the market. His agent from Boldwell-Canker has been pressuring him to 'expect to make concessions' (i.e. prepare to offer non-cash incentives) if he wants to sell at all, and to lower his desired asking price if he wants to sell quickly. This is in the heart of the 'Frickin Fortress'.

It looks like if you are trying to sell the damn house, the realtwhores sing you a different tune.

SP

All this spend spend spend and serfdom is terribly sad.
I have colleagues here in the East Bay who have not been to the beach for 6 years. All they do is work endless hours and shop for bling bling.
They think my siesta lifestyle with no debt and no mortgage is crazy.
This is absolutely crazy. People in Europe "work to live", but I guess it is "live to work" here in California.
I wonder if Californians would work so hard if it weren't for the huge debt load over their heads ??

One thing I have noticed here is that it is difficult to differentiate between the rich from the stretched middleclass. Everyone has bling bling here because of the easy credit. In Europe it is easy to differentiate between the rich and the middleclass.

Sorry uncle Ben, no debt for me.

Housing Bubble vs Great Depression.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLjo7-J1qho

azrob,

My dentist's last name is Poon and both Tang and Poon (Peng in Mandarin) are very common names. Quite a few board members are from China/Taiwan/Hong Kong. A couple month in China as a nonspeaker does not compare.

PS-in my almost 20 years in the United States, I've never met a Seward or Williamson, but I do not assume they are Norwegian nicknames if I should ever encounter them.

astrid Says:

PS-in my almost 20 years in the United States, I’ve never met a Seward or Williamson, but I do not assume they are Norwegian nicknames if I should ever encounter them.
_____

You should come to my work. I'll introduce you to T. Williamson.

WealthyWoman Says:

> Do you guys really think prices are falling in San
> Francisco, and other areas in the Bay Area that
> people want to live?

We don’t “think” they are falling, we “know” they are falling based on the majority of sale prices (sure every now and then a Google guy or VC partner will buy in Atherton or Presidio Heights at a super high price, but “almost all” homes and condos in “the places people want to live” are selling for less than they did last year)…

> I’ve been trying to buy a house for a year now,
> and the market is in a frenzy.

If you are a “wealthy woman” why are you just trying to buy a house now (Most on this blog have posted many times why they don’t own a home)?

> The houses i have tracked and wanted to buy are
> up about 7-10% since this time last year, and about
> 3-4% this year already.

Have the homes been on the market for over a year with the sellers raising the asking price or have you just been talking to Realtors (who say that 10% appreciation is the bare minimum you can expect)?

How about even one example of a home or condo that you feel is up 7-10% and let us know how you determined the increase in value (did someone actually sell a year later, did you ask the owner, did you look on Zillow)?

I never said they never existed in china at all... my god the people on this blog have nothing to do but look for ways to snip at anyone who writes anything...must be something with internal bitterness...

In a nation with 1 billion people, you can probably find every mathematical combination of roman letters used as pinyin version of someones last name...

However, they are remarkably common thai nicknames, and I am willing to be a non asian, ie "they all look the same to me" meeting a poon or a tang is much more likely to have met a Thai person then a chinese...

and fyi "wo hue shuo idian dian pu tong hua" and "Pom pood pasa thai nidnoy" I don't write pinyin well but ce la vie!

Ozman,

There's a lot more of us livin the siesta lifestyle than you might think.
See, since we're not conspicuously consuming, we are kinda like wallpaper.

All the Beautiful People look right past or right through us. We don't exist.

And we like it that way.

WealthyWoman,

The sharks er..Realtors are surrounding you right now. They have a live one. she's ready to buy. raise the price. ghost bidders...they are going to try to drain your $$ dry. I'll throw in some chum for ya.

There’s a lot more of us living the siesta lifestyle than you might think.

That's reassuring. I was beginning to feel like a misfit :)

Hello Everyone,

WW

I've been tired lately. That much is true. I need more sleep.

Tell you what, WW. I'm getting kinda annoyed waiting for the reversion, and I've got the means to buy a house right now. But I also don't like wasting my money, and I think you are the one in denial.

Seems to me we can make a market here. I'll buy a nice home. Hell, even a very nice home, somewhere like Ross or Larkspur. I'll sell you 100% of my cash position; more if you're willing to take it. You get to keep all the upside when prices keep marching upwards. You also eat the loss if they decline. I'll even agree to not sell the place for 5 years.

Any interest? Not bad return (using your numbers) for doing nothing. Especially if you think there's no risk of a downturn. Just exploit my ignorance and steal my gains. I'm more than happy to give them to you.

Ozman,

You are a misfit, if you want to fit in with the Hip and Cool Beautiful People who dominate the media and culture in the Bay Area.

Just ignore them.

They ignore us. We're beneath their contempt.

Some of them will get in over their heads and quietly leave the Bay Area.

Others of them will manage to keep up appearances during their whole working lives here but will have to leave eventually from exhaustion. Financial exhaustion, physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion, psychic exhaustion, whatever.

Those who leave will be replaced by like-minded conspicuous consumers. It is part of the Gold Rush mentality that lives on here after a century and half.

WW, if prices are going up in the bay area, then why has the Case-Shiller home price index been on the decline every month for the last 12 months. Just, like during the 1989 housing crash, once the Case-Shiller starts to decline, it will decline for years, until it hits the bottom, and then start going up again for years. During this latest housing boom, the Case-Shiller index has been going up for 120 months (with the exception of the tech recession, which should have really started the housing recession in the Bay Area, but AG reinflated the bubble with his low interest rates, and crazy mortgages). Before that, the Case-Shiller has been going down for 100 months in a row.

Yes, forgot to include the link:

http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/index/CSHomePrice_History_23950.xls

goldboy,

Don't be silly! Of course Wealthy Woman has a handle on the CME Housing Futures! Like all truly "wealthy women" she has some one that tracks all those mundane things for her. Kind of like her personal assistant, shopper or dog walker.

goldboy

It's only a conundrum if you don't look past the statistics.

Elites like the rich Asians here and also a handful of techies (sometimes the person is both at the same time) can still buy for cash or borrow on great terms, and have the income to service the loan and property taxes. So the nominal prices reflect what they are able or willing to pay.

But, as you pointed out, there's a lot of homes on the market, so even though they pay the same or slightly more than last year, they get more house for the money. That's why the Shiller index will keep going down but the median won't.

"part of the Gold Rush mentality"

And I'm o.k with that. I don't have anything against people that have more money than I do? If someone can truly afford the finer things in life I say more power to them! (It's the other 99.9% that p1ss me off).

Bloomberg's had a great article about all of the "binge travelers" (their term, not mine) and what a dreadful impact it's having on the environment. The guy that wrote "Lonely Planet" researched it pretty well. No so good but if it makes you feel like you're rolling BFSTOC hey whatever!

One of these days someone like Ameriprise (TM) is going to do a commercial about a retiring boomer couple and they're going to say that their "dream" is to occupy a bar stool for their golden years and I'm going to keel over clutching my chest. Call 911! :(

Dinor,

There's a lot of wealthy people here.

But his comment was about his colleagues who are working themselves to death to maintain their standard of living.

There's a lot of people like that here, too.

The price for the same house sold last year is lower this year. This is what the Case-Shiller index is saying. What the median price going up is saying is that the low-end market is drying up because of the credit crunch. Palo Alto, Los Altos & Mountain View went from 9% of total SCC sales in February to 25% in March, although the actual sales volumes went down during March in those towns. All this sais that the crash has begun and it is imploding from the base of the pyramid, which is the low end. In fact, the crash is already progressing at about 2x the rate of the 1989 crash. This is very consistent with the fact that we are sitting on top of a double-bubble, the bubble in 2001 + the reinflated Greenspan bubble, so price decline this time, will completely erase all the gains since 2001 + half of the gains of the 1996-2001 bubble (50% fibonaci retrace), which should take the prices back to the 1998-1999 levels.

Goldboy,

You're saying with statistics what I'm seeing and saying with anecdotes.

Exactly, and my estimates may be on the conservative side too, because it doesn't take into account the implosion of the tech boom, and the return back to the dirty 30's. Once, the apples and the googles go away, this town is going to look like Detroit in a 3rd world country.

goldboy,

Exactly. It wears me down endlessly wether it's in person or from the MSM to hear that the housing bubble is strictly a "post 9/11 event". Especially when it comes from realt-whores. By confining the debate to 2001/2/3 (depending on how much they have at stake) takes the unthinkable (pre-2000 prices) completely off the table.

(I'm gonna be keeping an eye on you)*

*Sam Kinnison in "Back to School" w/ Rodney Dangerfield

Then factor in all the "freebies" builders are throwing in and now you have a hopelessly skewed picture. We're throwing in a POOL! AND CASH BACK! 50k in "upgrades"!

Was that scene hysterical or what!

Rodney is shoe horned into this desk and Sam asks the class what happened in Viet Nam. One girl gives a perfect textbook answer and is obviously content with her own explanation. Then Sam builds slowly into that patented RAGE howling about being knee deep in a rice paddy and ripping desks apart!

Freaking classic!

azrob,

Your last post once more proves that you don't know much about Chinese culture and wasn't qualified to comment about it as an expert - and you were holding out your several months' visit there as evidence of your expertise. When that happens, don't be surprised when your expertise gets called out when you made an inaccurate statement.

FYI - the Han Chinese have maybe 200 surnames - that's it. Of those, maybe 10 or so are very common and another 40 are fairly common. That's why there are a lot of Wangs and Chens out there.

I just come back from SF. Looks like they have new construction condos every direction eyes can see.

Hi Peter, just got your email. Left a message for you as I can't send email from the hotel server. Oceanside is the looking the same way as well, new condos everywhere.

Peter P-

We'll try Sawa; I'm in Sunnyvale. Not sure how to send an email(?), but feel free to e-mail me if you have moderator privledges and I'll keep a closer look at my spam filter for a few days.

Thanks,
Brent

We’ll try Sawa; I’m in Sunnyvale.

If you love lots of good fish, it is a good restaurant. You need to call ahead to make arrangements or the restaurant may not open.

Honestly, I go there less than once per year.