The Rage Diaries

Hope in a bubble

Each Sunday, I check the weekly sales listings in the SF Chron to see how things are shaking in the ol' zip code. It's a not-bad way to gauge two things: how long a house stays on the market, and what it sells for relative to its asking price. It's also a fun way to keep up with the market: this house went on the market within days after we made the offer on ours, and it's now back -- all spruced up -- at a much higher price than in August. I'll be curious to see how it does this time.

Whether or not real estate investors are beginning to get burned is a growing story, I think. BW's "Bubble, Bubble, Then Trouble" (Dec 19, 05) provides a telling example:

Jim Williams, executive vice-president of the Northern Virginia Building Industry Assn., knew the "feeding frenzy" had gotten out of hand when a waiter in a restaurant he frequents confided that he had bought four houses on spec. "I'm sitting looking at him and thinking even with tips...he must be dying on the vine." Now, investors' scramble for the exits is creating problems for owners like Omar Singh, 29, owner of a trucking company in Herndon. His townhouse in Sterling has been on the market for $525,000 since October. He's hoping to hold out without cutting his asking price until April. But, he says, "I might not be able to."

Buying FOUR houses on spec? With what? Then again, I thought the same thing after reading "Buy, Borrow, Buy" in the Dec 9, 05 SFChron:

In the three years since Sacco and McCook put their faith in real estate, the couple have embarked on what might conservatively be called an E-ticket ride, pulling equity from appreciating properties to provide down payments for the next investment. They have bought eight vacation properties - four homes in Florida, three in California and 100 raw acres on top of a mountain in Lake County.

[...]

Sacco estimates that along with McCook's mother, who has been a silent partner, they've made $1.3 million since they began their buying spree, but all of this is still in equity on their properties. Their monthly reality is more sobering. They have $2.3 million in mortgage debt and negative cash flow that ranges from $5,000 to $15,000 monthly depending on the season.

So how do they pay the bills?

"We sort of count our equity loans as our income," she says, with the slightest wince. "If we had real jobs, we'd be fine, but we just need to get some money in. Some people call it a pyramid, but I don't like to think about it that way."

These sorts of investors are the people to watch as the market adjusts in 06, I think.

FWW, Behind the Mortgage's bubble coverage is very well done. After the jump, how some markets are heating up or cooling down, according to "The Ups And Downs of Home Prices" (BW, Dec 19, 05) ...

Build a dream, watch it all come down

When we began house-hunting in earnest, one of the things we considered was leaving the state. After all, your real-estate dollar tends to buy a lot more outside of California, and in every househunter's life, there comes a point where you're smarting from the suggestion that you'll never be able to afford anything that doesn't have an outhouse.

In the end, we decided against leaving for a lot of reasons. But today's NYT story, "Saying Goodbye, California Sun, Hello Midwest," documents the stream of people who had the same discussions we did and came to a different conclusion:

Anyone who likes to breathe, start your letter-writing

Today and yesterday, the California Report has been reporting on how Ford Ord, a decommissioned military base in Monterey County, may be the site of a new fuel refinery if the Gasoline for America's Security (GAS) bill passes tomorrow. It'll also do a number of other nasty things, which you can read about here.

Monterey County is the home of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and to several premium resort communities. An oil refinery would significantly hurt the local economy, to say nothing of damaging an already-fragile environment further.

It's not just the local environment that stands to lose. According to "House Energy Bill Aims for Relief, But Would Foul Air, Critics Charge" (WaPo, Oct 6 05):

A House bill ostensibly aimed at easing the nation's energy crisis would dramatically weaken pollution laws by relaxing environmental standards on both oil refineries and aging power plants, several clean-air experts say.

The GOP's Gasoline for America's Security (GAS) Act -- which is expected to pass in the House on Friday -- would ease rules for oil refineries, instruct the president to designate new refinery sites on at least three retired military bases and relax air-pollution controls on thousands of industrial facilities across the country.

Proponents of the bill claim this will give America the gas refineries it needs -- while conveniently forgetting that the majority of recent refinery shutdowns in the U.S. have come from fuel companies hoping to maximize profits by keeping supply relatively low:

The United States has not built a new refinery since 1976, and in a series of memos in the 1990s major energy companies warned they needed to reduce the number of refineries in order to boost profits.

``I don't think you can honestly say there's a shortage of capacity, because there is worldwide capacity,'' said Edward Murphy, group director for refining and marketing at the American Petroleum Institute.

So I'm asking all y'all: write your congresspeople.  Californians, you need to start ASAP.

This bill is expected to pass in the House, but if it can get killed in the Senate, it's better for the country. The solution isn't to poison the air so we can enjoy cheap gas -- it's to ultimately encourage cleaner and more efficient fuel solutions.

Curse you, set breakers!

The building next door to my office is used in some TV productions -- it was the HQ for cops-on-bicycles "drama" Pacific Blue, it was HQ for cops-on-CBS drama The District, and now, it's apparently been rented by people shooting E-Ring. At least, all the signs around the place reading "E-RING CREW PARK HERE" seem to imply so. I haven't seen Dennis Hopper skulking around, so I can't really verify.

Anyway, last Thursday afternoon, the people responsible for building sets had taken the plain building next to us and put up a U.S. seal and giant letters reading "EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA."

Because we were hustling to get on the road to Monterey before the 405 turned into a total parking lot, I didn't stop to snap a photo. I had planned to; I wanted to post it here, with the title "U.S. Out Of California!"

Today, however, the building was naked. And now, those who want to joke about getting the U.S. of California will have to settle for a t-shirt.

That's presumed innocent until proven guilty, O capricious FM radio gods

So as I was making my 15-minutes-long drive to work this morning*, my mayfly-like attention span decided the commercials on Indie 103.1 were taking too long. I began punching random numbers on the dial so that I might be entertained in the final minutes of my commute.

The first station: "... and what is this world coming to with child molesters like --"

Click.

The second station: "... the way you make me feel (the way you make me feel)/ you really turn me on (you really turn me on)/ you knock me off my feet (woooo-hooo!)"

CLICK.

Y'all. The jury selection's still going on. It'll be months before a court of law rules on whether Michael Jackson's a criminal pervert, or merely a freak who inflicted insipid lyrics on a hostage Top-40 listenership in the 1980s.  How many more of these unintentionally hilarious FM juxtapositions will I live through?

There go several nights of my life

So the Museum of Television and Radio is holding the William S. Paley Television Festival from March 2-March 16. If you've ever watched a show and wondered, "What on Earth were they thinking?" -- well, now's your chance to find out.

Some events are likely to be fairly well-attended, like the Desperate Housewives event ( 7 p.m., Tues, March 8, with: Marc Cherry and the Desperate Housewives. Wow, that would be an excellent band name.), the Lost night (7 p.m., Sat, March 12, with: J.J. Abrams and what appears to be everyone on the island except the polar bear) and the Veronica Mars night (Mon, March 14 with: Kristen Bell, Enrico Colantoni, Joel Silver, Rob Thomas. I have no jokes about this.).

Personally, I'm scoping out the Adult Swim event (7 p.m., Fri, March 4) and Michael Palin night (7 p.m., Fri, March 11), because I am just THAT MUCH of a cable-watching dork. Other cable-watching dorks may appreciate the L-Word event (7 p.m., Thurs, March 10) and the Deadwood event (7 p.m., Wed, March 16).

Each event costs $25 for museum members and $29 for non-members; tickets go on sale Feb 5 for members and Feb 11 for us unwashed masses*.

Liquid! Falling from the sky!

So it turns out an overachieving little jet stream is dumping Pacific storm after Pacific storm upon we hapless residents of Southern California. If this keeps up, we'll have to adopt new hobbies like SUV-curling (see how they glide across a parking lot! Or is that careen?) and push harder for the cutting-edge research necessary to bring implantable gills to the mass market. ("Rain, Rain, Here to Stay? A Drenched California Copes," CSM, Jan 7, 05; "Soaked and Cloaked in the Wet White West," NYT, Jan 4, 05)

All things considered, however, this still beats the winters I spent waiting at a bus stop and wondering, "Did the mucuous membranes in my nose just freeze? Is that clicking sound because the vitreous humor in my eyes just solidified?" I just hope the Gorman pass is still clear by next Friday, as I'm planning on driving through it on a trip up The Five. ("I-5 Near Gorman Re-Opens, New Storm Expected," LAT, Jan 4, 05)

Also, I hope I don't suffer a second invasion of ants. I mean, I know their homes have been flooded and all, but my threshhold for ecological diversity inside my apartment only goes so far.

Those of you who routinely endure far worse from December to May are welcome to share your war stories below. I will be appropriately awed, I promise.

Haven't you driven before?

This SF Weekly article on driving the I-5 was not nearly so funny as I had hoped it would be, although I do give it points for the line "I also spend a lot of time thinking about fast and efficient rail service connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles that makes way too much sense to ever really happen." It's funny because it's true. The rest? Not so much.

Blame experiential bias. I spend a lot of time on I-5, or The Five as it's called in some parts, because I spend a lot of time going back and forth to the Bay Area for assorted reasons. So if anyone if going to talk about the suckage on The Five, I am well-qualified. Aside from this guy, that is.

California -- leading the nation?

When I read Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in 91, one of the things that rocked my world was the exchange where Ken Kesey tells Tom Wolfe that California's always a few years ahead of the rest of the country.

In search of apple cider

I'm about to set a dangerous precedent here by letting y'all know that I'm willing to take the advice of all my comments posters. You see, I spent Saturday traveling to Oak Glen, California, in search of apple cider and cider doughnuts, per the recommendations you made in the "Y'all need to love on apple cider" entry.