American Dream 2: Default, Then Rent

Congrats to California for demonstrating our savvy financial abilities. Now we’re not only the leaders in producing innovative products, but we’re also one of the best in using strategy to manage our finances.

More importantly, we beat NY. You’d figure all those finance/banking losers would be better at this, but clearly they can’t think out of the box like we can. Go California!

It’s search engine Thursday!

Recently, someone found this site by searching for: why many houses for rent in bay area 

This one is easy: because everyone dreams of being a landlord!

To repeat from a few days ago:

Let’s face it – there’s no more noble calling that being a landlord in California. If it weren’t, then laws like Prop 13 wouldn’t reward landlords by providing them with amazingly low property taxes! Clearly, the citizens of the state have decided that more landlords is better from a social perspective.

And let’s face it, there’s nothing better about being a landlord than being able to evict a tenant. After all, it goes to show how powerful you are. You are the lord of the land, and you can do to the serfs whatever your will compels you to do. You should always be sure to conduct evictions while wearing your golden, jewel encrusted, crown that says “LANDLORD”.

And there you go. Easiest question so far.

Pittsburgh Sets Vote on Adding Tax on Tuition

The mayor of Pittsburgh calls it the “Fair Share Tax.” But to officials at the city’s 10 colleges and universities and many of their 100,000 students, it is anything but.

…

On Wednesday, the City Council is expected to give preliminary approval to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s proposal for a 1 percent tuition tax on students attending college in Pittsburgh, which he says will raise $16.2 million in annual revenue that is needed to pay pensions for retired city employees. Final Council action will be on Monday.

The tax would be the first of its kind in the nation, and other cities are watching closely as they try to find ways to close their own budget gaps.

How embarrassing. This is something that California should have thought of first!

Let’s face it, children and students are a drain on society. California should continue on the rich legacy of Prop 13, and institute new taxes and fees to help the shining starts of the state’s future: retiring baby boomers.

It’s not enough that California de-fund schools, California should take the next step and start adding extra fees. It’s a well known fact that families distract people from working and producing innovations that benefit humanity. It’s a win win – make it less attractive to have families and you’ll get more innovations, and more revenue to support the aging population.

Come on California – we can beat Pittsburgh!

It’s search engine Thursday!

Recently someone found this site by searching for: problems with Chinese in Cupertino

Now, on face value, you might think that this was probably some racist guy, complaining about how the Chinese people keep moving into his Cupertino street – driving up house prices and paying his share of the property tax. And as a result, he will only pay $1,400 a year in property tax while his new Chinese neighbors pay $12,000 a year, and when he sells his house, he’ll make a $1 million dollar profit. Damn those newcomers for ruining the neighborhood by making it nice! White flight, blah blah blah.

But as we all know, there is absolutely no racism in the enlightened world of the Bay Area. After all, the Bay Area is full of only smart people who love each other (except when it comes to building more houses).

So… what could this search really be about?

Obviously it is that this person is having problems finding a good place to learn Mandarin Chinese in Cupertino.

What’s your guess?

California population grows less than 1 percent

SACRAMENTO — California demographers say the state’s population grew less than 1 percent in 2009, one of the lowest rates on record.

The state Department of Finance reported new population figures today. They show the state added 353,000 residents from July 2008 to July 2009, bringing California’s total population to nearly 38.5 million people.

The only time the state has seen a slower growth rate was in the years from 1994 to 1996.

Most of the latest growth was due to births within the state. California gained over 179,000 new immigrants and lost about 142,000 people to other states.

More than half the population growth was in the counties of Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside and Santa Clara.

Thanks to Burbed reader Herve for this find. Woohoo! California’s population continues to grow!

Now… let’s be frank, the growth isn’t all that great… but still it’s growing! And that was in 2009 when California had all these fires and budget issues.

Now, in 2010, things are going to be awesome. Green/clean tech is really going to take off and people will be falling over themselves to enter the state. 1% in 2009. 10% in 2010.

You heard it here first.

Now, the real challenge for the Bay Area is to get more of this growth in our counties. Sure Santa Clara was represented, but… come on… LA? SD? OC? What about SM (San Mateo), AC (Alameda County)? Why aren’t people flocking there? And more importantly, what can we do about it?

It’s search engine Thursday!

Recently someone found this site by searching for: good salary bay area 

That’s a great question. But in some ways, it’s the wrong question.

You see, salary doesn’t really matter. Look at Steve Jobs! He gets paid $1 per year as a salary. But he’s pretty well off from Apple stock, and the Gulfstream 5 plane that Apple bought him, and pays him to fly in.

So, really, it’s a combination of salary, stock, and perks. However, stocks and perks are complicated, so I’ll just stick with salary.

As a benchmark, according to the City of Mountain View, if you make between $84,000-$105,500 (for a 4 person family), you qualify for their Below Market Rate housing assistance program. Translation: you’re poor.

So $105,500 is the baseline. Good? Probably double. $211k sounds reasonable. Living comfortably? Probably at least $250,000 – which is what the Mayor of San Jose would call “upper working class”.

Would readers care to chime in with some analysis about how stock and perks play into this? How do you factor the gourmet free food that Google and Facebook provide into the equation?

What’s your ideal San Francisco neighborhood?

SAN FRANCISCO — San Franciscans love their neighborhoods. Blithely ask a Sunset district resident and a Richmond district resident which has the best inexpensive Asian food and watch the arguments begin. Confuse Cole Valley with Noe Valley in front of someone who calls one of those areas home and you’ll never do it again.

The Examiner compiled a range of facts and figures about neighborhoods across The City — including how much it costs to live there and the percentage of people with access to a supermarket — to show that aside from the commonly held assumptions about the areas, there are vast differences among the places San Franciscans call home.

San Francisco

Population: 808,796
Average household size: 2
Percentage of families with children under 18: 40
Percent married: 34
Violent crimes, Sept.-Dec.*: 1,103
Nonviolent crimes, Sept.-Dec.*: 5,623
Median sales price, Sept.-Nov.*: $640,000
Average rent for two-bedroom apartment*: $2,737
Median household income: $71,451
Percentage of households within half-mile of supermarket: 84

Woot… even more good news for San Francisco. Wow… check out that rent/income spread! The average rent is 46% of the median household income!

Of course, that’s the average rent for a 2 bedroom. As we all know, the Bay Area is one of the greenest places in the world, and we’re all extremely concerned about our carbon footprint. Thus, most people live 4 to a bedroom to keep their footprint small – which means that 2 bedrooms are extravagant. Seriously, who needs 2 bedrooms? The average household size is 2 anyway.

Regardless, these are great stats that should give us optimism for 2010. As rent continues to rise, more people will have no choice but to buy, which will drive up prices, and restore us to our god given 15% YoY appreciation. Woot!

Ok readers, it’s that time of the year – what are your predictions for some of the star cities of the Real Bay Area?

For reference, here are the current stats for some selected ones:

Palo Alto 2009 Market Trends

Mountain View Market Trends

Sunnyvale Market Trends

Cupertino Market Trends

Atherton Market Trends

Ok, now these are just a few of Burbed’s favorite cities, but you can feel free to pick your own cities to make predictions foru.

Burbed is going to predict that… this time in 2010, both the list and sold price will be 10% higher than they are in these pictures.

2010 is going to be big. As we all know, real estate is on a 5 year cycle. The downturn started 5 years ago and so of course now is the time for it to soar. (BTW, this is actually a real quote I sort of heard. Really? The downturn started in 2004/2005? Hm.)

Also, it’s clear that the economy is roaring back to life. Look at the stock market. Cha-ching! Everyone has money to buy tons of houses. And where do you buy tons of houses? In the Bay Area – of course. It’s the best investment known to man… in history… ever!

Hurray 2010!

Thanks to Burbed reader Herve for sending this in.

You’ve gotta admit, this is pretty… uh… different.

If you were a real estate agent, how would you differentiate and advertise yourself?

Happiest U.S. States Pinned Down | LiveScience
A new study found that a person’s self-reported happiness matches up with objective measures of state-level happiness.

The results are based on an examination of two data sets, one that included personal reports of happiness for 1.3 million Americans and the other that included objective measures, such as how crowded that state is, air quality, home prices and other factors known to impact quality of life.

Click here to learn more about the survey and what it means.

Here are the 50 U.S. states (and the District of Columbia) in order of their well-being:

1. Louisiana
2. Hawaii
3. Florida
4. Tennessee
5. Arizona
6. Mississippi
7. Montana
8. South Carolina
9. Alabama
10. Maine
11. Alaska
12. North Carolina
13. Wyoming
14. Idaho
15. South Dakota
16. Texas
17. Arkansas
18. Vermont
19. Georgia
20. Oklahoma
21. Colorado
22. Delaware
23. Utah
24. New Mexico
25. North Dakota
26. Minnesota
27. New Hampshire
28. Virginia
29. Wisconsin
30. Oregon
31. Iowa
32. Kansas
33. Nebraska
34. West Virginia
35. Kentucky
36. Washington
37. District of Columbia
38. Missouri
39. Nevada
40. Maryland
41. Pennsylvania
42. Rhode Island
43. Massachusetts
44. Ohio
45. Illinois
46. California
47. Indiana
48. Michigan
49. New Jersey
50. Connecticut
51. New York

Thanks to the Burbed readers who pointed this out.

There was lots of great discussion in this thread on Friday about it.

Some of the interesting comments I saw:

#   BuyersAreIdiots Says:
December 18th, 2009 at 2:57 pm

Taxes seem to also be a mitigating factor in the ‘unhappy’ states. Most of the ones on the bottom tier are those with the highest personal income and sales tax rates.

I think the unhappy states in the list also have (currently) high unemployment statistics.

and

bob Says:
December 18th, 2009 at 2:20 pm

Hmmm… Nomadic’s post brings up another possible part of the equation: unhappiness related to debt or loss of money/value. A lot of people In Cali are either in default or own a house that’s worth a lot less then what they paid. Naturally that would make them less pleased. Then again, Nevada and Arizona are “happy” states and they had record foreclosures.

and

#   Top Dog Says:
December 18th, 2009 at 3:40 pm

Happiness has something to do with ignorance. If you don’t know any better, don’t aspire to much, and don’t get bothered by low achievement, then it’s quite easy to be happy.

and

#   Pralay Says:
December 18th, 2009 at 5:39 pm e

Regarding the happiness topic.

From my experience those who constantly say “I am happy” are the most unhappy people. They normally say that they are happy but if you dig deeper, you will find out that they normally say it to console themselves. You don’t have go that far. Just look at RealEstater who is too happy with his prestigious zipcode (and don’t forget “I am right all along” phrase too).

There were other good comments (check them out) – but enough copying and pasting!

What are my thoughts? I’m glad you asked!

1. I think that more importantly than anything else, we beat New York and its failing Wall St, we beat Connecticut with its failing hedge funds, and we beat New Jersey with its odd mix of Jersey Shore and nation’s top schools. WOOT! Bay Area trumps Tri-State Area yet again! And this after last week’s smashing victory. It’s like a cherry on top of a sundae.

2. Sure there are a few states ahead of us, but at the same time we don’t really understand the methodology of the survey. Did they ask the right questions? It’s hard to tell. What would be an example of a right question? “On a scale of 1-5, how happy are you despite the fact that you are not in California right now?” Or… “On a scale of 1-5, how happy are you with your non-California home?” See what I mean?

3. We’ve got Happy Cows. Period.

I know stats like this may be dispiriting, but let’s face it, we can’t be #1 in everything like we are in green tech, prius ownership, and intelligent people. But as long as we keep beating the enemy, we’re ok.

So… a question to you: are you happy?