Randy_H's Discussions

>> If the lenders weren't spooked this could go on forever, but people with money to loan for mortgages aren't stupid.<<I used to argue the rationality position as well. But something came seriously uncoupled between the originators of risky debt products and the purchasers of that debt. So I think the people loaning the money are indeed stupid. Rather, not stupid, but ignorant. Because the risks have been distorted and hidden by the complex MBS/CDO/GSE derivative mechanism.It could _not_ go on forever. All this mania was producing very real inflation. Inflation can not be transfered, hidden, or ignored forever. Eventually the purchasers of all that mega-inflated asset-backed debt would have balked. In fact, that's kind of exactly what's happening now.

If I had $2mm in cash I'd strongly consider it. Consequently, I'm not a doomsday gloomster. I think prime areas like Marin will correct between 25-30%, which is right on mark for that Belvedere place.

@AlmayThe same. Actually, I feel less calm than usual in my discourse here recently. Normally I'm much dryer and quite boring. I like graphs, for example.

396I have everything in my profile. I don't blog anonymously. Actually, I'm _from_ Capitalism 2.0, which is the blog I helped launch. I've just been authoring threads on Patrick for the past 2 years or so, on and off. By the way, I'm the outsider/contrarian's contrarian on that blog. For one, I don't think the Fed is an evil cabal out to enslave us all.

I have to disagree in the strongest terms possible on the notion of "electing" Fed leadership.If you put the Fed under direct control of the political election engineering machine then all you'll see is never ending cycles of inflation & recession. Politicians will *never* be able to resist lower rates to buy votes. Never. Witness what Sarko is trying to do to the ECB in Europe right now.Independence is essential to the Fed mechanism. If we're going to have central banks at all, then we have to protect them from professional panderers. Close your eyes and imagine the politician you hate the worst, whomever he or she is. Now imagine them with a big lever in their hand that reads "UP = Less Votes; DOWN = More Votes".

Do I know you 396? I followed Casey for about 2 weeks, and argued with him 2 or three times on his blog. I decided it was all some viral marketing ploy and forgot about it until the new report about him a couple months ago. I was wrong, it wasn't a viral marketing ploy. It was something much sadder.

396LOL, the day I'm able to say "I've got a groupie" with a straight face will be the day we know the end is neigh. I'm in search of anonymous fortune; someone else can keep the unruly fame part.If we agree 99.9% of the time then it's the 0.1% that makes life worth living.

I see the Fed is where I end up disagreeing with just about everyone on all sides, lol. I heard once something quite insightful about armchair Fed governors:"The only people who truly believe they can do a better job than the Fed are fools and managers of global macro hedge funds."

>>As for investors, the time for buying rentals has come.<<Rent yields are less than 1% in the nicer areas of the Bay Area, still around 2% elsewhere. Go ahead and buy those rentals if you wish. I hope you have a 99 year payback period in mind.

The most economical way you can get most, but not all title data is by signing up for PropertyShark. It's not perfect, but they're adding more coverage on a regular basis. It has most title records for sales in the past 5-7 years in the Bay Area. The free and more complete way to do it is harder because you have to find a friend who's probably a broker with access to one of the title data systems. I don't like to overload my friend with requests, so I use PS and just ask him to pull records for homes I'm really interested in.--I'm not affiliate with PS or anything else in the real estate industry.