Disqus - Latest Comments for anon10

Re: MB Market Update for 7/31/09, Trees

anon10 — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:41:05 -0000

I think you are probably taking RBD's comments too literally.

But to be fair, I would think a literal interpretation would mean AFTER-TAX income. Add all taxes together in CA, and I think most people take home a little less than 50%.

Use 50% and you get 120-K/year.

Re: MB Market Update for 7/31/09, Trees

anon10 — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:37:57 -0000

OK, I thought a-non was pretty funny. Although I do think we shouldn't comment directly about anyone by name....realtor or otherwise.

If anyone is throwing "mud", it is Lars. And good reason, it turns out that realtors get less respect than ANY OTHER PROFESSION.

So, fellow posters, when you see the negative comments from the realtors here, keep in mind they are just venting 'cause they are on the same level as used car salesmen.

http://lansner.freedomblogg...

Re: Sunday Opens (8/9)

anon10 — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:41:55 -0000

Kind of surreal. I dont' read that kind of author, but isn't he an old sci-fi writer???? Weird.

Re: Sunday Opens (8/9)

anon10 — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:20:23 -0000

Two different olive gardens's within walking distance. Though only one of them seems to serve food unless you have reservations, apparently.

Sorry, couldn't resist! The wos guys might not get the joke, however.

Re: Open Forum (8/3– )

anon10 — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:59:50 -0000

MB-Fringe-Dweller:

That sounds less like "risk-takers" than "risk-managers". That is a skill that most successful people do have to develop.

However, I am not sure that i would care to associate a geographic area with a general skill like that.you can probably point to extreme examples anywhere. THere is a huge spread of personalities and professions here, so I don't really think you can say that MB attracts "risk-takers".

Probably better off pointing to geographic isolation, and good schools and argue that we get price appreciation because we have good schools, and that forces wealthier people to this specific area.

Re: Open Forum (8/3– )

anon10 — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 20:53:56 -0000

MB-Fringe_Dweller......kind of a ridiculous perspective on "risk-takers". Don't get me wrong, the rest of your comments are pretty comment sense.

Amazingly enough, I once had a friend when I was young that was a big "risk-taker" who now, honestly, lives on an island on a river. Not a very nice island. No house, just a tarp.

Now, I admit that some recent very public risk taking (ie, wall street pirates) seems to have not had any sort of wrist slap associated with it. But I venture to say, for every "risk taker", there are 2-5 carefully planned business people that figured things out.

Saying risk-taking is the key to success is pretty one-dimensional.....rolling the dice pays off how many times? One in ten?

Re: Open Forum (8/3– )

anon10 — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 17:50:21 -0000

I'd say the "accidental landlord" inventory will have to disappear as well. Kind of bizarre. House won't sell for a year because seller asks for too much. Paying mortgage in the mean time.

After a year, seller pulls house off market, puts up at rent. Takes a few months to rent.

After a year, house is up for sale again. But the market is down 20%.

Not the best move.

Re: Open Forum (8/3– )

anon10 — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 23:44:47 -0000

OK, I'll put my two sense in about the general economy right now.

People seem prety bullish......stock market is going up quite a bit. Probably too fast.

Most of the numbers are pretty bad. Maybe we are not "free-falling", but the direction is still down.

Lost ~250 K jobs according to BLS. Need to add 100-K jobs to keep even. So 250 K jobs is pretty lousy. Unemployment dropped slightly, but that's based on household survey.....the number was influenced by several 100's of thousands that stopped working.

Personal consumption is still dropping. Government spending is taking up most of the slack.....which counts towards GDP growth. I just heard prediction that personal savings rate will probably increase to 10% by 2014, and stay there as the boomers start saving (late). Since 70% of GDP is consumption, and consumption was effectively 0% a year ago, that's going to be a long term drag. That'll save about 1% GDP growth per year for the next few years.

The financial guys seem to be back to there games.

Doesn't seem like too much has changed. I don't see any areas for real economic growth. Loans are still going bad at a high rate, lot's of bankruptcies. I don't see a new real estate bubble.....too much overhang for that. You'll see increasing tightening and re-regulation for years on mortgages and lending as banks (and Freddie and Fannie) pass their losses onto the public sector and public outrage grows. That's a headwind that will last for years.

Are we at the bottom? At the end of the day, all seems be a confidence game.

Re: Open Forum (8/3– )

anon10 — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:43:33 -0000

I think if you look a little harder, the income distribution is bi-modal.

I don't remember the exact numbers, but a lot of folks make ~100 K. I assume these are the oldtimers.

There are a lot of folks making around 200-300 K. This is the majority of the newcomers, particuliarly the ones that bought in bulk before the run-up (ie, mid 90's to beginning of the centurey). But maybe even more recently. There is a relatively high turn-over in MB, so I would expect medians to fairly quickly adjust to changes in demographic. Particularialy among the more mobile segments.

There are a smaller percentage making > 300 K.

The median income is in between the two clumps of income.

If you are competing to buy a house, you are probably up against the 200-300 k demographic. That probably supports between a 0.6-1.2 M median, depending on how conservative lending gets (3-4X income has been re-iterated by fed).

There are certainly a huge number of other variables. I kind of doubt we would see a median at 600-K, but 1.2-M seems pretty likely. Particulairly since the newer mcmansion market seems to be stalled, and will push down the rest of the market as it adjusts. Maybe even a bit lower.

Again, this is for all of MB and all SFHs.

Re: Sunday Opens (8/2)

anon10 — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:41:25 -0000

I'd also say "maxed out lot" would be an interesting poll.

Ie, would you prefer a 2-3 K sq ft on a 4-5 K sq ft lot, or the max (ie 4.5 k) that you can squeeze in.

Re: MB vs. CA & U.S. Trends

anon10 — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:32:12 -0000

Wow, did Mrs. C, Huggy's alter-ego, refer to himself as BCH?

Re: Surf Festival Weekend

anon10 — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 20:29:48 -0000

Ended up there, but mostly by accident (went to our section of the beach, but walked over to see the excitement after a while).

Actually very impressive. The pier to pier swim made me want to take up swimming as a hobby! Kudos to everyone that did the event.

Re: MB vs. CA & U.S. Trends

anon10 — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 11:49:47 -0000

Huggy, you are talking nonsense. Here is case-shiller during the last downturn for three cities, including LA. You can see that there were FOUR spring selling upticks in price.

http://img150.imageshack.us...

Since you are the one insisting that case-shiller leads the way, and things will be comparable to the last downturn, is that LA only has three more years to hit the bottom?

Re: Deal Done Down Low, High on the Hill

anon10 — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:01:56 -0000

This one's for Huggy:

http://finance.yahoo.com/te...

Re: East MB Bucket (9)

anon10 — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:26:16 -0000

I don't think we need a new drugstore.....already an astonishing number of them.

You mentioned 1856 Marine. That has got to be the worst location of any house in Manhattan Beach.

If anyone has driven by, that house is now having a pretty significant renovation, which kind of boggles my mind. In my opinion, the location is SOOO bad, no matter how much you polish it, the turd won't shine.

Re: MB vs. CA & U.S. Trends

anon10 — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:24:23 -0000

Cost is always what you pay. It is not a subjective term.

Value typically indicates the utility of the purchase, and may or may not equate to the cost. They two are sometimes (not always) interchangeable.

Sorry to be pedantic, but saying "MB was ranked second in the entire state in terms of value" could be read either high cost, or good value for your dollar.

I guess I should direct this towards the CAR, since it is their wording.

Re: MB vs. CA & U.S. Trends

anon10 — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:37:17 -0000

"value" is subjective.

The word should be "cost".

Re: Deal Done Down Low, High on the Hill

anon10 — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:39:11 -0000

Gatodelplaya:

See my comment earlier. Huggy is citing non-seasonally adjusted case-shiller. Seasonally adjusted case-shiller shows continued drop in prices.

So your point would be?

Re: Deal Done Down Low, High on the Hill

anon10 — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:37:45 -0000

You can try http://www.realquestinvesto...

They seem to update weekly. Have to pay for the details, but you can watch the quantities for free.

One caveat. Someone commented on "prices" listed on the houses being low. I think those are loan amounts, and not estimated value of the houses.

Re: Deal Done Down Low, High on the Hill

anon10 — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:25:36 -0000

Huggy:

I provided a link to shiller's data, where it is written in black and white.

Perhaps you'd care to share a link to the interview?

Re: Deal Done Down Low, High on the Hill

anon10 — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 10:09:43 -0000

Huggy, you neglected to mention that that the data you quoted was not seasonally adjusted. The seasonally adjusted S&P housing index shows further month-over-month national decline, and decline for Los Angeles as well.

A little disengenous, no? You're really cherrypicking data when you leave out the important caveats.

Data is here:

http://www2.standardandpoor...

Re: Deal Done Down Low, High on the Hill

anon10 — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:35:40 -0000

OK. I'm going to post a response, try to keep an open mind about it.

At the end of the day, the direction of house prices don't matter too much. They should roughly be correllated to incomes in the long run.

There are some real reason's that it is bad if housing becomes too expensive. Housing is a non-productive asset. Which means investment in housing does not have future payoffs. If we over invest in housing, we are diverting investements from productive areas (ie, new technologies, infrastructure) that WOULD be productive in the long run.

There was massive overinvestment in construction for the better part of a decade....that money is essentially gone, and it is money that will not be used for productive purposes.

More importantly, using regulation in an attempt to prop up housing process extends the overinvestment by forcing later generations to put away too much of their income towards housing rather than towards productive investments.

Think about this in the long run. If we use all of the profits from our economy to only fund housing, what future does our economy have in the long run? Considereing that the US is deficit spending to prop up the damages of the housing bubble, the situation may be work.

Long answer short: High housing costs relative to income are bad for the US. Using government policy to try to keep housing prices hig are bad for the US in the long run. Although, since 68% of the US population are home owners, it is politically popular do so.

Re: Elm is Back, Too

anon10 — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:01:51 -0000

I think the realtor crowd doesn't really care. If they can call "bottom" on the way down, and reel in some commissions, they are happy.

Re: Elm is Back, Too

anon10 — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:24:57 -0000

Funny thread.

Mrs C, you are a little anxious at the bit. The national data looks like we are no longer in free-fall, there is now some seasonality to the data. Possible that bottoming is occuring nationwide. But inventories are still high. And foreclosures are still ~1/3rd of the sales bottom. Can't even call that a bottom.

Re: Elm is Back, Too

anon10 — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:25:35 -0000

Ol' Huggy should give these folks a call and tell them that prices are going up, not down!