patrick.net

Space requirements. :-) Do you REALLY want more?

Seriously though, I love how the real estate bubble is blamed on "deregulation" as defined by evil banks doing what the government told them to do. It's doublespeak.

I remember 5 years ago when these same people were chuckling about all their "preferential treatment" loans and how the "trashy, but overprivileged" conservatives were "missing out" on the real estate boom and special loans. Tee hee. Yeah, that really worked out well for them...

PolishKnight says

Seriously though, I love how the real estate bubble is blamed on “deregulation” as defined by evil banks doing what the government told them to do. It’s doublespeak.

That's utter nonsense. The government didn't tell them to do anything. Banks made the loans because they wanted to--pure and simple.

cab says

I’m not sure what MILs are but the rest of your response makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve decided to go old-fashioned and see what happens. I’m going to drive around neighborhoods and keep a notepad handy in my car and just look for For Rent signs with phone numbers to call

Sorry, cab. MIL = mother-in-law. In SF they're usually the bottom floor of a house, tricked out for independent living. Occasionally in SF there's an MIL unit behind a house.

The method you describe works when there are a lot of vacancies in town. I moved to SF at the beginning of the internet crash and there were lots of signs in windows. One thing I learned renting there is that the rent price asked is not necessarily non-negotiable. I rented a one-bedroom flat advertised for $1400 but ended up paying $1100 a month. The landlords were really tired of trying to rent the place and when I made the offer they jumped on it. Nice place, too.

Good luck to you.

sybrib says

But I don’t agree with you about places in close commute to the Bay Area dropping like a rock: modest neighborhoods in close commute to the Bay Area will continue to have high rents because those places are close to where the jobs are

That depends where you define your job at. No longer centered in Mt-View to Sunnyvale. Jobs are far too spread out across the 9 counties for landlords to have any upper hand.

For example Concord which is close to the East Bay, Walnut Creek, and BARTable to Frisco.

PolishKnight says

Not one single loan written in the United States during the real estate boom was forced on the banks. Every penny was voluntary.”
I guess it’s “voluntary” for me to drive in the speed limit too. I could exceed it if I don’t think I’ll get stopped…
Weaseling.

Huh? You use a very poor analogy and then call it weaseling? Face it--you are just flat wrong.

PolishKnight says

Seriously though, I love how the real estate bubble is blamed on “deregulation” as defined by evil banks doing what the government told them to do

Most sub-prime lenders were not even commercial banks subject to regulation. They were specialty mortgage companies that wrote loans, sold them to wall street investment banks, where they were packaged up and sold as secuturies. Nowhere along the way was the government telling them to do this. That is just ridiculous nonsense.

MarkInSF, these "mortgage companies" are not banks. The banks ordered to buy the bad securities were ordered to do so for political reasons based upon race and gender. Perhaps the great irony of leftism is that the groups that suffer the most tend to be their constituencies. After all, if their special interest groups ever were to become wealthy or succesful, then they wouldn't need socialist preferential treatment anymore.

PolishKnight says

MarkInSF, these “mortgage companies” are not banks. The banks ordered to buy the bad securities were ordered to do so for political reasons based upon race and gender.

Wrong. This has been disproven mutliple times. There are several old threads on pat.net where it has been thoroughly debunked.

"the CRA thing has been very thoroughly discredited many times over by many people with impeccable credentials"

I feel like I've stepped into the twilight zone. Patrick.net has tons of links and comments about how Freddie and Fannie helped cause the bubble in the first place due to the CRA and also the subsequent crash and how government is CONTINUING to prop up bad debt. You know, the one where Democrats control both houses and the presidency?

Yeah, sure. Keep on believing that. "The power of leftism (and the Koran) compels you! The power of leftism (and the Koran) compels you!" :-)

I hear that the climate is changing. It's changed in the last month and it's causing the leaves to change color. They may even fall in the next month...

I could be way off, but aren't sales down YoY, MoM, and foreclosures and supply way up? Generally speaking, of course. I know SF and NYC are Different and Special. I've read too many articles and glossed too many charts, so maybe my hold on the facts is shakey here.

CNBC (for whatever they are worth) is right now on my boob tube telling me that the volume of housing sales were most definitely in a decline YoY.

Rents are more directly tied to wages. That's a fundamental. With unemployment at 12%, plus another 10-15% of UNDERemployment, I'm not convinced. However, given that a former homeowner was paying easily 50% more per month in a Big Fancy City than a renter would have paid for a similarly-appraised property, perhaps that 50% margin between renters and former homeowners is pulling rentals up in these Big Fancy Cities. It's the great downward squeeze.

"The CRA has never forced a single institution to make a loan since its inception. Furthermore CRA banks actually wrote fewer toxic loans than non-CRA banks did.
If you were honest, you’d confirm these facts."

Perhaps the source of your frustration is that your claimed facts don't, by themselves, make them facts.

For example, let's define your "facts": How many banks are "CRA"? How many are not? What percentage of bad loans are CRA and not? How many CRA banks exist compared to nonCRA banks? What IS a CRA bank?

Why is it a failure of my "honesty" for you to make unsupported claims? You sure don't seem in a rush to confirm where my "facts" are right.

Amazing.

"You’re not going to believe a word I say on the subject which is why I want YOU to research it for yourself and discover how silly your beliefs are."

Think through what you just said. Let's pick it apart piece by piece:

You start out by saying I'm not going to believe a word you say. So by definition, arguing with me is pointless according to you (and also a great copout.) Smart people usually end it here.

But then you say that you expect me to go out and prove your argument for you. If only people were that helpful. Yet you just claimed that I'm anything but helpful.

Then you have the nerve to say I'm the one with silly beliefs.

Yeah, good luck with that method of argument.

You then turn around and engage in an argument of equivalence and redirection:

"So I guess my question is why you demand all kinds of evidence from me when you’re totally 100% incapable of providing any evidence for anything you’ve said in this entire thread? "

For starters, that's a loaded question. I disagree with you that I'm "100% incapable of providing any evidence for anything I've said in this entire thread." I just provided URL's. In any case, YOU are the one demanding I do YOUR research for you even as you just said I'm "100%" incapable of doing so.

Again, amazing.

PolishKnight says

For starters, that’s a loaded question. I disagree with you that I’m “100% incapable of providing any evidence for anything I’ve said in this entire thread.” I just provided URL’s

You did?

No offense, but doesn't a case of Obama suing because minorities weren't getting loans prove exactly the opposite of what you are arguing? If the banks were writing these loans, there would be no lawsuits, right?

And your wiki quote says things "could" have happened. We're not interested in what "could" have happened. The bubble is over--what we need to find is what DID happen.