Comments on: “Why Your Home Isn’t the Investment You Think It Is – WSJ.com”

By: dustbury.com » Thought, word and deeds

dustbury.com » Thought, word and deeds — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:06:13 +0000

[...] Wall Street Journal has now weighed in with a similar argument, plenty of which was quoted by Burbed.com, as follows: For the grasshoppers, there’s nothing quite as stupid as paying off your 2002 [...]

By: burbed

burbed — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 02:22:10 +0000

I’ll address this question in a post tomorrow.

By: henry

henry — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 01:58:46 +0000

Please stop spinning and answer the question: Why did you ignore the parts of the WSJ article that directly contradict your hypothesis about Bay Area housing prices? Were you so desperate for information to confirm your theory that you didn’t read the whole article? Didn’t you think any one else read it?

By: burbed

burbed — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 01:47:36 +0000

Or Las Vegas.

http://www.burbed.com/wp-content/uploads/graph-lv.png

By: burbed

burbed — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 01:46:54 +0000

>>And the graph that accompanies the article in the print edition calls out the San Francicso metro area as vastly outperfoming the national average since 1998. Why did you leave that out?

Because they used the wrong graph. They should have compared it to LA instead.

http://www.burbed.com/wp-content/uploads/graph-la.png

By: henry

henry — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 01:40:53 +0000

But why did you leave it out? It relates directly to the region you are covering after all.

And the graph that accompanies the article in the print edition calls out the San Francicso metro area as vastly outperfoming the national average since 1998. Why did you leave that out?

Perhaps RE clerks aren’t the only ones to play up information that supports their preferred conclusions while ignoring information that doesn’t fit.

By: burbed

burbed — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 01:22:27 +0000

Notice the original author picked a house that was purchased in 1977.

Any house that was purchased pre-Prop 13 would show a giant gain since it pushes the tax burden onto new residents.

Maybe the lesson to be learned is to:
1) Buy a place
2) Petition your politicians and government to enact a Prop 13 like law as well to destroy your community, but increase your property value.

By: henry

henry — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 01:19:31 +0000

So burbed, why did you leave this part out?

Q: Those numbers don’t seem realistic for where I live. You can’t buy a house here for that king of money.

A: To be sure, not everyone did so badly as the national average. OF-HEO’s Home Price Index calculator puts the average 30-year appreciation for a house in the ever-pricey San Francisco metropolitan area at 1,125%, compared with the national average of just 481%. So if you bought that $50,000 house in San Francisco in 1977, it would be worth $613,000 today and assuming much the same costs of ownership, you’d make a true profit of $219,000.

…

By: DinOR

DinOR — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:43:54 +0000

burbed,

The WSJ reporter interviewed on CNBC earlier today while playing down the neg. impacts definitely stood her ground insisting that for shorter holding periods it usually doesn’t make sense!

Besides, as a long time financial planner I can assure you that people that truly have money aren’t running around boasting about gains in the primary residence! For me, anyone that gushes about their equity gains in their home, their ONLY home is basically telling you, “I’m incapable of saving, have NO confidence in my ability to invest and will likely not be able to keep this place when I retire!”

Other than that, yes, I’m impressed.