74 Responses to “$600,000 in instant equity available for you in Downtown Mountain View house”

1. herve Says:
   June 5th, 2009 at 7:38 am

   Jobless rate hits 9.4 percent in May; layoffs slow.

   If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 16.4 percent in May, the highest on records dating to 1994.

   Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost a net total of 6 million jobs.

   There are some “good” news too:

   Still, in another encouraging note, job losses in both March and April were less than previously thought. Employers cut 652,000 positions in March, versus 699,000 previously reported. They eliminated 504,000 jobs in April, less than the 539,000 initially estimated.

2. Alex Says:
   June 5th, 2009 at 9:18 am

   Oh damn. This is exactly what I’ve been looking to rent. It’s a little big for a bachelor pad but I think I can handle it. What’s the going rent on this thing? $3,000?

3. anon Says:
   June 5th, 2009 at 10:26 am

   if that… it’s only 2k sqft.

4. palo alto resident Says:
   June 5th, 2009 at 10:45 am

   I was looking at homes in the area- is this a steal- or correctly priced for today’s market? Because it hasn’t sold.

5. Alex Says:
   June 5th, 2009 at 10:49 am

   I was looking at homes in the area- is this a steal- or correctly priced for today’s market? Because it hasn’t sold.

   Not correctly priced yet…not until the Alt-A mess is done.

   Why do you think I’m willing to shell out money to rent instead of buying?

6. jbunniii Says:
   June 5th, 2009 at 10:57 am

   Rental houses are surprisingly expensive in Mountain View, especially on the “good” side of Castro. There is very little supply available for rent.

   Crappy 1500 sf 3-bed, 1-bath houses on the ghetto side of Shoreline rent for $2500/month.

   This one would probably be well over $3000/month on the rental market; offhand I would guess about $3500.

   That said, the rental market seems to be rapidly improving over the past month or so (from the standpoint of a renter), so six months from now that house may well have a market rental value below $3000.

7. Alex Says:
   June 5th, 2009 at 11:13 am

   Rental houses are surprisingly expensive in Mountain View, especially on the “good” side of Castro. There is very little supply available for rent.

   Crappy 1500 sf 3-bed, 1-bath houses on the ghetto side of Shoreline rent for $2500/month.

   This one would probably be well over $3000/month on the rental market; offhand I would guess about $3500.

   That said, the rental market seems to be rapidly improving over the past month or so (from the standpoint of a renter), so six months from now that house may well have a market rental value below $3000.

   If the rental market improves for us renters, then housing prices will dip even more. LOL I can’t wait

   So what’s the good side of Castro and the ghetto side of Shoreline? Basically, where’s a good place to live in Mountain View and still be within walking distance to shops/restaurants? Is it even safe to walk?

   [Removed part of this comment. let's cut back on the "excrement" name calling. It's not very Bay Area -Burbed]

8. A. lewis Says:
   June 5th, 2009 at 11:19 am

   Let’s see if I can get some graphs available for viewing using many eyes – let’s try a link:

   Case-Shiller Tiered SF

9. cardinal2007 Says:
   June 5th, 2009 at 11:43 am

   Rents are certainly down, but I don’t think they have gone down that much, and they seem to have stabilized since March, at least in Belmont. Asking rents are down about 10% from last year here. Maybe Mountain View has seen more slack in the rents.

   I know the company that owns my apartment building, and a bunch of others is now offering that they’ll let you out of your lease if you lose your job, I guess they figure that gets people more willing to commit to the rents and 1 yr leases.

10. cardinal2007 Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 11:47 am

    With regard to the C-S numbers it seems that the low tier is already in the over correction territory. I wouldn’t doubt if it is possible to buy a property in one of those places at the low tier, and rent it out for more than the interest + taxes + maintenance, including a 5% vacancy allowance. It is probably going to bottom next year or late this year, as more people with the means buy seeing it as cheaper than rent in that tier. The other tiers have some room to go.

11. A. lewis Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 2:56 pm

    Well that link seemed to work.

    Here, I cleaned it up a little bit, and this is the version where I inflation-adjust the data.

    Note that you can trivially turn on and off any of the data series (it’s quite cluttered if you leave them all turned on).

    OER = Owner’s Equivalent Rent (from the BLS data for the SF MSA).

    And the “10-yr-doubling” curve is a response to Real Estater’s constant refrain. It is a value that double precisely on 10-years in ‘real’ units, which are corrected for inflation to create the curve shown.

    You can trivially see that sometimes the appreciation exceeds the 10-yr doubling rate, and sometimes it falls far below it. It can do either one for years at a time.

    And as I have calculated elsewhere, they do NOT ‘average’ to 10-years, it’s more like 18 years. And the average is getting a lot longer each month we add data points during this severe downturn.

    I have a bunch more calculations and charts I’ll post later.

12. A. lewis Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 2:59 pm

    Oh, and I should have said, every line is normalized so that they have value=100 in Jan. 2000. That is an artificial choice.

    It means that the spread in the curves represents deviations from ‘how the market was’ in Jan. 2000.

13. A. lewis Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

    OK, here are the ‘example’ home price graphs I tried to describe in words a while back. It took a lot of words.

    Example C-S Home Prices vs. CPI Expectations

    I recommend turning on one pair of curves at a time (e.g., Low Tier & Low CPI), and then turning them all on to see how far some curves have fallen back to CPI expectations (Low is nearly back), and how some have a huge way to fall, (High has like another 1/3 to do – Prestige has hardly fallen at all!).

    Enjoy!

14. A. lewis Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

    Oh and as further description:

    I have picked “example” home values to start in Jan. 1987 that would be in the Low, Middle, and High (and Prestige) tiers in Case-Shiller methodology. Then I allow them to appreciate following the C-S index values for those tiers to show the real-world prices of houses over time in the SF area.

    I also create lines starting at the same dollar values in 1987, but these lines increase at the rate of CPI (less shelter) from the BLS for the SF MSA. This represents how much you would expect the house to be worth if it followed inflation from everything else in life (if housing was an asset that inflated like the average of everything else, instead of independently).

    The difference in the C-S curves and CPI curves is how much housing has beaten (or lost) compared to other things that cost money.

15. cardinal2007 Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    Two things I that would be nice to see would be incomes quartiles, and also corresponding mortgage payments for the price given 30yr fixed interest rates (on the same downpayment %). I have a theory that those two tend to track well in the long run.

    But great work so far.

16. A. lewis Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    #15 – I could easily program in the mortgage payment formula you want in Excel, and add that, but what exactly do you mean by income quartiles? What do you want to see?

17. A. lewis Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 3:25 pm

    #15 – Oh, and I want you to give me a source for the 30-yr fixed mortgage interest rate over time you want me to use to calculate the payment each month since 1987. I know a few sites, but have no idea what people would consider a fair or reliable source.

18. cardinal2007 Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 3:35 pm

    Let’s say in 1990 the bottom 25% earned less than 30k in household income, the median was 60k and the top 25% earned 90k as a household, then you could get that for every year that would be good. But I will believe you if you don’t think such data is publicly available.

    What sources are you finding on the mortgage rates?

    Thanks. It’s great that you’re gathering all the data to put together.

    Sometimes it is sort of weird to see houses or condos selling for twice the 1989 prices since in 1989 interest rates were a lot higher, you would think the payments aren’t that much higher. Granted it is tougher to pay down the mortgage fast in the future when the interest rate is low and inflation is low, as opposed to high inflation, high interest rate, if the initial payment is affordable in both. In the latter you will be earning a lot more in 10 years, in the former not so much. Plus a much larger part of your payment is principal when the interest rate is low, and extra payments don’t save you as much.

19. A. lewis Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 3:38 pm

    Here’s another one – price/rent ratio:

    C-S Price to OER

    Case Schiller SF Tiered prices vs. Owner’s Equivalent Rent from the BLS for SF.

    By design, the ratios are all equal to 1.0 in Jan. 2000. So this means that whatever they were in some kind of ‘real’ units in Jan. 2000, here’s how they’ve moved since then.

    The analysis – it’s been a wild ride, but low and middle now BELOW 1.0, high is at 1.0, and prestige hasn’t budged yet below 1.4.

    And remember, 1.0 means “whatever it was in Jan. 2000″, and price/rent in the BA was higher than the rest of the nation then, too.

    A note I should make, the Prestige tier prices come from here. And they haven’t put out a Q1 2009 data point yet (I think they’re scared!), so I just keep repeating my 4Q 08 values for the chart.

    We’re now 3 months out of date for Prestige(C-S goes through March 2009).

20. A. lewis Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 3:42 pm

    To me, the striking thing is the high tier Price/Rent being below 1.0 from Nov. 1990 through Jan. 2000. A 9 year trough.

    That is not very long ago, my friends. Please be skeptical of anybody who’s real estate price & rent ‘memory’ doesn’t go back further than 2000. If they don’t remember the 90s, they have no conception of how low prices can fall relative to rents, and how long they can stay there.

    Now 1996, THAT was a good time to buy.

21. A. lewis Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 3:48 pm

    #18, oh I didn’t say it’s publicly available or not – I’ve never tried looking for it. I was hoping you had a source in mind to save me the research. So you just want to see the curves for the quartiles themselves.

    I get it. And compare that to the curves of monthly payments. And if you divide income into 4 quartiles, you have 4 curves you might try to compare to the 4 tier house curves I have.

    I would pick different income percentile boundaries – the lowest case-shiller housing tier is still a house that someone could afford to buy – meaning there is a bunch of people without enough income to buy anything. (US homeownership rates never exceed 70% at the recent peak, and are now closer to 60%).

    So maybe start at the 40th or 50th percentile of incomes as your low-tier buyer, then maybe 70, 85, and 95 for the upper tiers?

    I mean really, think of a ‘Prestige’ bay area home costing more than $1M. Call it $1.5M. Of 100 random people (of working age) how many would you expect to own one of these homes (or better). I’m thinking 5 out of 100 is optimistic. Maybe we should make it 99th percentile.

    And I want YOU to give me a mortgage rate source.

22. Gavin Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    Best source for historical 30 year mortgage rates is Freddie Mac
    http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/pmms30.htm

23. DreamT Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    so are we christening June 5 “A. Lewis day”?

24. cardinal2007 Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 4:35 pm

    The sites I have used in the past are:

    http://mortgage-x.com/general/historical_rates.asp
    http://www.hsh.com/mtghst.html

    But the Freddie Mac site seems more reliable.

25. Alex Lewis Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 4:39 pm

    Nice work. Looking at charts give me headaches. I’ll just stick to Real Excreter’s principle that real estate doubles every 10 years.

    Here’s my retirement plan:
    1. Buy 4 houses now.
    2. Wait for them to double in 10 years (or quadruple in 20 yrs if I’m patient).
    3. Profit!

26. cardinal2007 Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 4:44 pm

    As for the prestige and other tiers, I would be interested in knowing what percentage of the Bay Area ownership stock they are. I suppose if it is 1.5M and up it is not that much. The percentage that can afford it is a very small percentage as well. I don’t think it would make a huge difference, but I suppose it might, the top 2% might have seen their incomes grow much faster than the top 10% on average. I don’t know if you can get small slice of the population like the top 2%. I can look to see what the ACS Census estimates have. Of course that would be per county, so that would take a bit of work to figure out the numbers, Alameda county has twice as many people as San Mateo Co. for example. We tend to concentrate on the RBA here, but the BA is much larger.

27. cardinal2007 Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    It’s hard to make a go of the census data, here is their estimates for 2006 (SF MSA):

    Less than $10,000 5.60%
    $10,000 to $14,999 4.50%
    $15,000 to $24,999 7.50%
    $25,000 to $34,999 7.60%
    $35,000 to $49,999 10.90%
    $50,000 to $74,999 16.90%
    $75,000 to $99,999 13.20%
    $100,000 to $149,999 16.90%
    $150,000 to $199,999 8.10%
    $200,000 or more 8.90%

    Median income (dollars) $70,463

    Clearly the prestige is in the top 8.9% somewhere, at $200k you could afford $1M with a $200k downpayment it would seem.

28. A. lewis Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    #22 – thanks for that. I’m loading it into Excel now.
    Wow – in October 1981 the AVERAGE rate was 18.45% with 2.3 points. Ouch! And from 1971-1997 it never dropped below 7%. How high does 7% sound in 2009? Incredibly high, right? What a world we live in.

    #23 – No one noticed I changed the first initial back to capitalized, but left the last name uncapitalized.

29. DreamT Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 5:24 pm

    your lowercase l was noticed, but why should we care?

30. Pralay Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    Wow – in October 1981 the AVERAGE rate was 18.45% with 2.3 points. Ouch!
    —–

    You know why housing price took a big dip in early 80s. When interest rate goes up, home price adjusts accordingly.

31. SanMatean Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 5:59 pm

    OMG- I totally *heart* you guys! So much data! So tasty!

    One thing to question is whether inflation as measured by CPI is a good predictor of home prices. I’m not sure that it is, as it is only indirectly tied to income. Rather, income inflation might be a better predictor of home prices.

    From 1989 to present, median incomes have grown at about 1% faster than inflation. In 1989 SF MSA median household income was $40494. The 2008 estimate is $94300. That’s a 132% increase in median income over the last 20 years, or an annualized rate of 4.31%. In contrast, CPI-measured inflation over this period averaged 3.3% per year. That extra 1% per year can make a big difference over 20 years.

    Another question to ask, especially for those of us interested in buying in the RBA, is whether income inflation has happened proportionately across all ranges of income, i.e., has the income of high-wage earners increased at the same rate as the median? Slower? Faster? All evidence points to disproportionate growth in income of high-earners relative to low-earners. Indeed, the income of the lowest 10% of US earners remained static, in real terms, in the period 1979-2005. In contrast, incomes of the the 90th-perentile increased by 28.8% in the same period. The US 90th percentile group is where we should be focusing our attention, as the median income of the SF bay area is more than the 80th percentile of national household income! That’s not just RBA, that’s the entire SF Bay Area! One could reasonably guess that the median income of RBA is more like the 90-95th percentile of US income earners.

    If someone can find a good source for wage growth data for the US 90-95th percentiles, this would likely be a great predictor of RBA home price growth. There’s likely census data somewhere to support this, but most of that detailed data is only released every 10 years. An annual accounting could be most illuminating!

    data sources:
    http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/msa/msa1.html
    http://finder.geocommons.com/overlays/3005
    http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/historicalinflation.aspx
    Congressional Budget Report “Changes in Low-Wage Labor Markets Between 1979 and 2005″

32. Alex lewis Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 8:40 pm

    A lewis, your data must not be entirely accurate. My parents bought their house back in 1992 and their mortage was around 6%. Don’t know how the AVERAGE rate was obtained but lower rates were definitely available.

33. A. Lewis Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 11:45 pm

    #32 – I just grabbed a table off the link from #22. By definition, some rates must have been higher and some lower than the average. Maybe your parents lied on their loan application and paid somebody off . Or maybe they took 2.5 points and got a better rate? I don’t know…

    Think what that means in 1981 – 18.45% was the average – what the hell was the subprime no-doc rate?

    Math trivia – what is the interest rate at which you can no longer properly make a 30-year fixed loan on? (The high rate at which there is no fixed payment that allows the loan to be paid off).

34. A. Lewis Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 11:47 pm

    #31 – good points. I would agree the income growth would be the most important component of inflation to watch (I guess it’s not really a component of inflation, but you know what I mean). And I believe there is some evidence that home prices have exceeded CPI by 0.5-1% on long time scales – though it is indeed hard to pin this all down.

    I also speculate that the prices of the higher end homes drive a lot of the bay area market during boom times. Driven by incomes underneath. But what about during bust times?

35. herve Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 11:52 pm

    > Math trivia – what is the interest rate at which you can no longer properly make a 30-year fixed loan on? (The high rate at which there is no fixed payment that allows the loan to be paid off)

    Considering all the foreclosures these days, I would say it’s around 5%

36. Real Estater Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 7:57 am

    I also speculate that the prices of the higher end homes drive a lot of the bay area market during boom times. Driven by incomes underneath. But what about during bust times?

    Speculate no further. Look here:

    Santa Clara County luxury home sales pick up in April

37. Lionel Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 8:10 am

    Show of hands.

    RE = comic genius or moron?

    I’m undecided personally.

38. Pralay Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 8:24 am

    Speculate no further. Look here:
    ——

    LOL! Our master exerceptor is in exercept-mode again. First of all, the link he gave is wrong (the correct link). Secondly, the whole survey (it’s survey) is from Coldwell Banker – the most independent body to tell the market trend (so, when someone says “don’t believe the media” it means don’t believe media unless the report is from Coldwell Banker). Thirdly, exerceptor carefully exercepted (in most independent and neutral manner) and left followings from report:

    But the April total was only about half of what sales were a year earlier, when 218 high-priced properties changed hands.
    ….
    ….
    The median price of the luxury properties sold in April was $1.3 million, down 4 percent from March and down nearly 9 percent from April 2008.
    ….
    ….
    The homes in the survey sold for an average of 91 percent of their asking price, down from about 99 percent in April 2008.

    No downturn here!!!!

39. Real Estater Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 10:09 am

    [redacted]

    The figures your quoted are useless overall numbers. I’m talking about the leading RBA cities listed, which are definitely trending up.

40. Anon Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 10:49 am

    No they are not.

    Anyone who thinks that they are is an idiot.

41. Alex lewis Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 10:55 am

    Real Estater said: Pralay loser estater,

    LOL poor bastard Real Excrement

42. Pralay Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 11:08 am

    I’m talking about the leading RBA cities listed,
    —-

    No, you didn’t.

43. Real Estater Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 11:16 am

    All,

    If you’re looking save a few bucks, Palo Alto is having a city-wide yard sale event with 370 yard sales taking place throughout the city today. Here’s a map of all the homes participating.

44. SanMatean Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 11:18 am

    A. Lewis (#34)- I give, what’s the number? My PMT() function in Excel won’t return a payment value if I exceed 7100%, but I’m not sure if this is a bug or whether this happens to be the real value. I tried my hand with the ammortization formula, but my algebra is too rusty to break out the natural logs…

45. Real Estater Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 11:19 am

    Here’s a related article.

46. SanMatean Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 11:37 am

    Gah- I get it. As soon as the payment exceeds the value of the loan, the payment doesn’t make sense… 1200% interest!

47. sv_newbie Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 12:26 pm

    ALewisORothers,

    does anyone here know where to get past sales data?
    I am thinking of doing a mashup of past sales data with google map to allow seeing trend of $/sqft in a given neighborhood.

    it should be simple website, bit cannot find any site that gives the sales history.. for free

48. San Matean Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    sv_newbie-

    Check out Redfin.com, under the search options, choose “sale records”. I think they’ve got ‘em going back to 1989 or so. Redfin currently has $/sqft data for zipcodes and neighboroods going back to mid-2007. It’s not a far-ranging data set, but its a start, and its updated in real time.

49. nomadic Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 7:04 pm

    That Coldwell Banker article said 12 homes sold in Los Gatos over $1M… that’s about 10 months of inventory. Certainly nowhere close to a seller’s market.

50. A. Lewis Says:
    June 7th, 2009 at 5:17 pm

    #46 – it’s sort of a trick question.

    It depends on the details of the calculation you use to amortize the interest – so there’s different ‘failure’ points.

    Your answer (1200%) is one failure point – what’s the point of a loan where the first payment is equal to the amount borrowed? You didn’t need that loan, if you could make that payment.

    And that answer depends on your amortization schedule – if you compound monthly vs. annually vs. anything else, it will change the calculation. Most US loans do it monthly.

    Another failure point I get with my formula in Excel is around 128% – it starts to freak out in the last few years of the loan (the only time any principal starts to really get paid back), and ends up losing ground. Turns out this is due to rounding errors – b/c the amount of the principal being paid off at the beginning is less than a billionth of a penny, and it goes beyond the machine’s precision. So this might vary with your software or hardware.

    Which brings up the next failure point – if your bank won’t keep track of things down to less than a penny, then if the first payment doesn’t make at least $0.01 worth of principal payment, you’ll never gain on it.

    For me, this seems to occur around 51% interest. Of course, Excel is keeping track down to several places past 1 penny, so it will still be working in tiny fractions to pay off your principal, but you’ll only pay 50% in the first 27.5 years of a 30 year loan.

    So the moral of the story is, if you want to be a loan shark, get an infinite precision calculator (like Mathematica) to keep track of the payments.

51. A. Lewis Says:
    June 7th, 2009 at 5:19 pm

    Anyone in the banking industry know the precision stuff (like a loan payment) is calculated to? I had some vague notion it was in mils (tenths of a penny), but I really have no idea.

52. anon Says:
    June 7th, 2009 at 7:44 pm

    I would imagine it has to do with the hardware it is run on. Figure 64 bits which is roughly 1/(10×10^16).

53. Real Estater Says:
    June 7th, 2009 at 10:09 pm

    I know of very few kinds of business where one can win through “precision calculations”. Such calculations can be applied by anyone, and gains you no real advantage. A keen business sense and understanding the “pulse of the market” will win out everytime. This is the perspective I try to provide. It’s not that I don’t like to share data. I’ve showed plenty of data before, but data is useless without the accompanying understandings. Some of you seem to focus an extroardinary amount of energy on all kinds of calculations, while the rest of us simply enjoy living in our house, and watch the equities accumulate over time.

54. anon Says:
    June 7th, 2009 at 10:24 pm

    It takes a lot of business sense to say “Now’s a good time to buy.”

55. R Says:
    June 7th, 2009 at 10:41 pm

    Yeah, things like historical price charts, rent ratios, and income-to-price ratios are extremely complex and difficult to understand for amatuers. It’s much more prudent for the amateur general public to say F it and buy that over-priced, rapidly depreciating crap shack so that real estate agents and mortgage brokers can continue collecting absurd commissions for posting an internet listing and checking boxes on a CAR form. Sounds like a terrific idea. Financial common sense be damned. Sign me up. In fact, since math and numbers and their consequences are evil and under no circumstances to be considered, I’ll take an interest-only, option ARM while I’m at it.

    Seriously RE, even by your standards, that last post takes the cake. BTW, I hear most average tech guys like yourself prefer “pulse of the market” analysis rather than bothering with “precisions calculations.” Numbers are for amateurs, not tech guys.

56. nomadic Says:
    June 7th, 2009 at 10:43 pm

    math is hard.

    LOL

57. Pralay Says:
    June 7th, 2009 at 11:14 pm

    LOL! I guess that’s the last stance of RealEstater – “pulse of the market”. It got to be similar to George Bush trusting his guts.

58. Pralay Says:
    June 7th, 2009 at 11:19 pm

    It takes a lot of business sense to say “Now’s a good time to buy.”
    —–

    Yes, no matter what happens, conclusion from “pulse of the market” is ALWAYS “right time to buy”.

59. Real Estater Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 8:40 am

    Pralay says,
    >>LOL! I guess that’s the last stance of RealEstater

    You can keep on laughing at the comments, but consider the following:

    Everyday you are renting, you are delaying your home ownership experience. Quality of life issues aside, unless you never plan to own, you are delaying paying off your house eventually. When others are well on their way to financial freedom, you’re just getting started. Home ownership is like 401K; the earlier you start, the better. You don’t want to be the guy who is 30 year old and still working on his GED, or the guy who’s 40 year old and looking for a soul-mate on match.com. While some of the folks (e.g. nomadic, madhaus) appear to be laughing with you, they’ve got their house in order — they own a home! 10-20 years from now they still reserve the right to laugh at you.

60. Pralay Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 8:55 am

    Anything about “pulse of the market”?

    BTW, #59 is typical used car salesman style pitch.

61. R Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 11:25 am

    LOL

    And what an “experience” it is. My neighbor who bought in 2006 has thoroughly enjoyed watching his home lose 300k in value, making payments on a house that’s worth less than the mortgage, and paying property tax and insurance while watching me bank 1000s a month renting a better home next door. Yep, I’m missing quite an experience. If only my quality of life was on par with my neighbor’s. Maybe he’ll let me assume his monthly payments and equity burn so that I feel special too.

62. Pralay Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 11:47 am

    When some people, mostly Realtards, talk about “home ownership experience” and “quality of life” to make sales pitch for buying homes, it definitely makes me laugh.

63. Real Estater Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 12:24 pm

    Rentard says,
    >>My neighbor who bought in 2006 has thoroughly enjoyed watching his home lose 300k in value

    That says a lot about your judgement regarding where you live.

64. Pralay Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 12:48 pm

    When someone gets offended by “Realtard” label, that says a lot about his profession.

65. Real Estater Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 1:00 pm

    Pralay,

    Why would a tech guy be offended by the “Realtard” label?

66. Pralay Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    Ask yourself.

67. R Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 1:26 pm

    “Rentard says,
    >>My neighbor who bought in 2006 has thoroughly enjoyed watching his home lose 300k in value

    That says a lot about your judgement regarding where you live.”

    I know. Good thing I live in the “RBA” near you rather than elsewhere or it would have been even more at this point, although tech land has at least another year of fun ahead.

68. R Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

    “Why would a tech guy be offended by the “Realtard” label?”

    Why would a tech guy be uncomfortable with numbers and possess the logic and grammar skills of…well, not a tech guy?

69. Blink Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 3:51 pm

    I believe that Verizon can give some insight into the precision issue of payments.

70. sonarrat Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 3:55 pm

    Who pays off their house anyway? Everybody knows that the truly wealthy people never pay off their homes.

71. nomadic Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 4:17 pm

    If we’ve learned nothing else from the past year, we know that paying your debts is for suckers.
    

72. toto Says:
    June 22nd, 2009 at 1:22 pm

    This house is for rent on craigslist at $5K:

    http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/1234027675.html

    It’s 3.75% assuming $1.6M house value.
    4.29% at $1.4M
    5% at $1.2M
    6% at $1M

    IMHO this house value is $1.2M to $1.4M max.
    The rent should be in the $3K – $3.5K range.

73. anon Says:
    June 22nd, 2009 at 1:44 pm

    $5,500 a month to rent 2000sqft?

    L O L

    “But I can’t rent it for any less,” said the FB, “I need to cover my costs!” “I didn’t get involved in real estate to lose money!”

    Chumps.

74. toto Says:
    July 24th, 2009 at 3:04 pm

    Still for rent for $5,500.
    http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/1282137530.html

    There is another house very close by for rent.
    They only want $5000
    http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/1287164488.html

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