Happy 2013 everyone!

We don’t have too many New Year’s Resolutions, although we invite you to let us know what they should be.  Here are some we’d probably get from the people who are thinking this but wouldn’t dare comment.

· How about being nice in that True Bay Area Spirit you never stick to, you hypocrite?

· You’re too nice to the whiners.  I liked the site better when you were 10 kinds of rude.

· How come you never do a house in my neighborhood?  There’s all kinds of crap here!

· How come you always do my neighborhood?  My neighborhood is more elegant than Cupertino!  Quit dumping on us!

· When will you get rid of Commenter XYZ?  I cannot stand XYZ!  I won’t comment here until you ban XYZ.

· Stop censoring XYZ’s posts!  XYZ is the best commenter on your stupid site.

· Please no more Guest Posts!

· Hey, you haven’t run a Guest Post in months!

· How come burbed went away?  You suck. Bring back burbed!  burbed was funny.

· Where did you go? Are you on vacation or something? This burbed poster is no good.  Why didn’t you ask Commenter XYZ to fill in for you instead?

· Enouhg wit the gramer Natsy stuf. Noboddy cars how abut my speling.

· Can you write a post in less than 200 words?  I don’t think you can.

 

Nope, and when we answered the last question this article went to 427.  Okay, now here are some of our predictions for the New Year.

• Real estate prices will go up where it’s Special and stay flat or even drop where it isn’t.  Are you selling a house? Did you have to lower the price?  Then it isn’t Special.  Q.E.D.
• Rents will go up some more in late Spring and Summer.  If you got yourself a rental last summer, we suggest you look into how much breaking the lease will cost you, because you could get something cheaper right now.
• Spring Bounce officially starts today and continues until the end of December.  Look for higher asking prices… where it’s Special.
• As long as They Aren’t Making Any More Land, Burbed will continue to have plenty of material!

Stop in on comments to wish everyone a Happy New Year, and feel free to make your predictions for 2013, or give us your advice on how to improve this site (which we promise we will ignore completely).

Today is the last day of the year.  What was your favorite property of all the ones we pointed and laughed at this year?  Here are some for your discussion.

Top High End Properties

Belvedere Design House doesn’t sell, going up for auction

Unbelvble Gorgeous French Style Masterpiece Estate in Saratoga

Lafayette Mansion of Murders

Los Gatos house parks 7

Unbelievable New Millbrae House

Burlingame Mystery House

Los Altos Hills for only $20M

Sunnyvale Freedom is Slavery Inverse House

$4.2M Belvedere teardown

Woodside auction (never sold)

Live across the street from Steve Jobs, except you can’t cuz he’s dead

Brutalist Sebastopol spread

$9M house with meh kitchen

Saratoga red arrow spectacular

Insanely expensive PA house with Kawlums in the bathroom really

Too-big-for-the-hood Sunnyvale Spectacular, with Bunus Buyer in comments

Los Gatos luxury home plus HDR lesson

New and ugly house in Mountain View!

Top Not So High End Properties

8.5 foot wide lot in Alameda

Bayview Bargain

Santa Cruz Mountain High

Saught after PA street

Every Burbed cliche in Sunnyvale

Realtard goes there: Alameda bathroom flaunts all

San Mateo Photo Spectacular

I say, I say, I say in Mountain View

Instagram for Redfin

Mountain View house with free pets

Million dollar meth lab

Dead animal decor

Redwood City or Abbottabad?

Pair of houses across from psych ward

Adorable pink house in PA under a mil

This Castro Valley house is going places

Saratoga home for living!

Truly manificent, with angry commenter defending this neighborhood’s honor

Palo Alto! But deplorable condition

This one’s worse

Kids not included with house

House with themed rooms in Fremont

Perfect home in Walnut Creek

Good housekeeping in Menlo Park

Close to Santana Row!

Top Filler Pieces Not About Actual Houses for Sale

Lucky numbers in asking prices

Snout Housing of the South Bay

Worst. Ad. Ever.

Los Gatos family scamming school district?

(November) 2012 Proposition Voters Guide

New Luxury Trend: Tons ‘o Toilets

Make more money not selling houses than selling houses

Charter school lawsuit lunacy in Los Altos school district

Business student asks us to do his homework

Palo Alto is so awesome people live in their cars and park there

Spot the Meth Lab

NAR creates utterly useless stats, Movoto derives useless infographic, we uselessly point ‘n laff

Free Tesla with non-RBA house (cheaper w/o Tesla)

The other Official Burbed Ballot Guide to Everything (June 2012 election)

Facebook effect on SF (yes, SF) real estate prices

Deconstructing the WSJ’s doubleplusgood view of the housing implosion

Squatters sue Realtard

Painter of Light Kinkade switched off

Now is the Time to Buy or Sell a House. With Us.

Spot the Grow House

San Jose House found under Hoarder’s hoard

A dozen tenants in a SAn Jose McMansion

Silicon Valley high-flying homeowners who lost everything

Under $2K fine for house thievery

Secrets of Contracting Cheap

See if our 2012 predictions came to pass

Did we leave out your favorite Burbed house or article?  Which piece was your least favorite and why?  What would you like to see us cover more of in 2013?

Happy New Year 2012!  We’re SO DONE with 2011, and don’t have to hear any more Negative Nancy Nay-Saying about the housing market!

Besides, if you’ve been paying attention, you already know that all that housing bear news you’ve been hearing from the usual suspects doesn’t even APPLY in the Real Bay Area!  Things in the RBA could not be better, and 2012 is the year that market conditions start TRICKLING DOWN for everyone to enjoy.

Let’s examine some of the excellent conditions in place for you to BUY OR SELL A HOUSE THIS YEAR.

First, there will be PLENTY OF FORECLOSURES.  This is a GOOD THING because it will ensure PLENTY OF INVENTORY to choose from.  That means PLENTY OF OPPORTUNITY for you!

INTEREST RATES on mortgages will remain low.  Or maybe they will quickly rise.  LOW rates are good because you can buy MORE HOUSE.  Rates going up are GOOD because you can lock in today’s low rates and laugh at the LOSERS who waited.  But you’d better lock them in TODAY.

Why are you still reading this?  Go LOCK THEM IN!  Get going and BUY A HOUSE!

JOB CREATORS won’t get their TAXES RAISED no matter what Obama says.  As long as Wall Street continues OCCUPYING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, there’s no chance of any millionaire tax.  And even though banksters don’t create that many jobs (heck, they just use all that cash as insulation in those drafty castles), fewer jobs means YOUR MONEY WILL GO FURTHER because you won’t have much competition.  And if you don’t have any money then why the heck are you reading a real estate site?  Go look under the couch cushions, you can probably find something.

Meanwhile, the EMPLOYMENT OUTLOOK shouldn’t have anything to do with home prices.  If you have a job, buy a house!  If you don’t have a job, it won’t be long before another bubble, and you’ll be able to buy a house with a no-doc loan!  You can fog a mirror, can’t you? 

HOME PRICES FORECAST: RBA Real Estate only goes UP UP UP!  Non-RBA Real Estate is not worth considering, so save up for the RBA.  Real Estate in areas that aren’t even in the Bay Area?  Choose wisely, knowing you’re probably going to lose it all.

This is an Open Thread.  What are your predictions for 2012, other than the world will end?

2011 was a year of transitions. Some things ended too soon (Steve Jobs), some things finally concluded (the Iraq War). For me personally, 2011 was also a year of transitions – second order impacts of the challenges of 2010.

I would like to thank the entire Burbed community for continuing to make this such an interesting, funny, educational place to be. I would like to thank all the commenters – quality, trolls – all alike (except spammers – thanks but no thanks.) I would like to thank the sponsors of Burbed for helping keep the site running. I would like to thank all those who sent in their “finds” – there were some awesome finds this year.

I would especially like to thank Madhaus for keeping this site going. To be frank, without Madhaus there wouldn’t have been a Burbed in 2011. Madhaus’ perseverance in delivering great posts on the site has amazed me, as is her persistence in getting me motivated to do some of the behind the scenes chores that I so suck at. (Like site uptime…)

It goes without saying that 2012 will be another interesting year for all. My involvement on Burbed will likely continue at its current level due to ongoing personal challenges. I look forward to continuing to see the great “finds” that you folks keep sending in.

I wish you all a Happy New Year.

Thank you for your support.
-Burbed

Have you made a list of New Year’s resolutions?  That’s a difficult, painful, and ultimately pointless task, because few people keep them for long.  It’s far more effective to make resolutions for what other people should do. So here are some 2011 resolutions for Burbed readers.

• Visit at least ten open houses this year – This is a good idea for several reasons.  One, if you want to become a homeowner, you need to start thinking like one.  Two, the more homes you visit, the better you will become at telling a bargain from a disaster.  And three, if the place you visit is an absolute piece of crap, you can send it in to Burbed so we have more material.
• Take a real estate class – Real estate is a fascinating field, with its own language, customs, paperwork and buzzwords.  Not only will you learn something about the homebuying process, you will be able to pepper your Burbed comments with useful phrases such as “leverage” and “negative equity.”
• Choose a trade-up area – Even if you already own a home, there’s probably someplace more Special than where you live.  Find one of those places and learn about it.  Follow new listings that appear from your designated “new” neighborhood.  Figure out how much it will take to trade to this new neighborhood and then justify your staying put in comments.
• Create your home budget – Calculate how much discretionary income you have.  Take your gross paycheck, subtract all required payments out such as taxes, utilities, coffee and sushi.  You can list discretionary expenses such as clothing and movie money, but don’t include them in your budget.  Is your number positive?  Take the rent out too. Once you buy a home you won’t be paying rent to a landlord anymore when you can rent your money from a bank!
• Determine how much home you can afford – Did you create your budget in the previous resolution?  Of course you didn’t.  Why don’t you go back and do that one for real?
• Make an offer – Learn about the homebuying process by working with an agent, visiting homes, and submitting an offer to buy property.  The key to not having to actually buy a house is to only submit lowball offers.  In a healthy market, a lowball offer is usually more than 12% under asking price.  In today’s market, the wishing prices are usually much more than 12% over actual market prices, so you are going to only offer 25% or more under asking.  Otherwise, you’re in danger of having your offer accepted. In the event it is, remind the seller’s agent that she won’t be earning her full commission.  If your (buyer’s) agent objects to your approach, assure her that Suzanne researched this.

Well?  What are you waiting for?  It’s 2011! The time to buy is NOW!