California here I come… NOT!!
California Home prices
A 1200 square foot home needing another $50,000 in repairs selling over $500,000? 
They are NUTS! I could build or buy a brand new 4500 square foot MAINSION for that here! Geez!
TG
Just a matter of time TG, real estate investors are driving property values thru the roof, what happens when the crash hits (like the stock market). Young families buying a new house will be looking at a 5 year equity go to a loss. It could colapse our entire economy. It’s ridiculous for someone to purchase a property 8am for $180k and sell for $250k at 8pm same day. But this is actually going on and has been some time now. I have witnessed this first hand. A gentleman I did the interior trim for his personal house has made as much as $120k on 1 property in a day. He also bitched about my $1.50 square ft price on trimming his house. And by the way, his personal house valued at $850k in 1999. It was around 4800 sq ft tho.
Yaz the carpenter.
You are right, and this is what is WRONG. When interest rates drop so housing becomes more affordable to the masses, the GREED mongers step in and FUBAR the whole works. The “cost is what the market will bear” theory is CRAP! It is ridiculous to expect someone to spend 70% of their income on housing. Especially when it’s a run down POS house. Greedy people SUCK!
TG
It all Smells BAD,
A lot of this was fueled by phoney money that was generated by the .com boom. The folks that bailed out in time and didn’t loose their shirts when it all went bust had all that funny money burning holes in their pockets.
In this large northeastern urban area, we are seeing prices that are starting to rival the California cities. In the city proper the prices are staggering. In the blue collar semi-burbs 800 - 1500 square feet of single (on a postage stamp lot) typically costs $320-500K. If you go to the ritzy towns it is hard to find anything better than a shack for much less than $800K - 1M.
There are some older mill-towns further from the cities that are cheaper but the have no jobs, are way too far for most commutes, have poor services, housing stock is in rough shape and prices are still going up. You get the picture.
Of course, with the increase in house values and the huge drop in commercial tax revenues our local government has reassessed and bumped rates so property tax bills are going through the roof. A lot of my neighbors have been here for 40+ years and are on fixed incomes. A couple had their pensions stolen in one of the corporate scandels you may have heard about recently.
We won’t talk about energy costs…
I figure I may live out my older years in a trailer if I am lucky to be healthy enough to take care of myself. I am being squeezed out by increasing costs and low wages when I can even find work.
Sigh,
TrackGrrrl
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| I figure I may live out my older years in a trailer if I am lucky to be healthy enough to take care of myself. I am being squeezed out by increasing costs and low wages when I can even find work. |
By trailer I assume you mean something that moves around?
Because at the moment, that is something I am seriously considering.
Buying either a motor-home, or truck plus caravan, then spending my remaining days just travelling.
There’s a lot of Europe I haven’t seen, or I could even fly to the US, and buy one there.
Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, taking my time.
It could be fun. “Ali’s mobile recording studio and Doner Kebab van!”
Ali
Trailers here in the states Ali, are dwellings sizing 14’ wide 80’ long, they are mobile to be transported and set up as a permanant house. People call 'em trailers here, I want mine with no under pinning, loose blocks for a porch/step, several vicious dogs lying under the trailer at the front door to bite the crap out of solicitors, and my truck up on blocks with no wheels, and of course, a big satelite dish.
What you are refering to is called RV’s here. Recreational Vehicles. RV’s are 10 to 15 times more expensive than trailers also. My RV is a Coleman Tent.
Trackgrrrl, the overflow of people selling their houses in the northeastern US has relocated to the south. Selling a split foyer up north for half a million, then moving here and buying mansions is also causing major inflation in housing here. A typical Georgian style 2 story with full basement/3000 sq ft went for 230k to 250k in '96. Now same house sells between 500k and 600k. This cannot continue!
Oh well, looking at tent as permanant residence!
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| RV’s are 10 to 15 times more expensive than trailers also. My RV is a Coleman Tent. |
If a Coleman tent is a normal tent (think fabric, rope & plugs), basic math tells me trailers are dirt cheap
Thanks Yaz, but I was thinking about one of those thing you drag around behind you.
Sort of like a girlfriend, but quieter.
And I have been seriously looking.
There’s a whole lot of the world to see, and not much time left to see it in. 
And it can’t be that expensive to do. When you’ve no money left for petrol, you just park somewhere till the next pension cheque arrives.
And they’re really roomy now with pull-out extensions etc.
Anyway, prices aren’t too bad for used ones. You just need to find a retirement area where people go, buy one, then die.
And if the neighbours complain about my latest mix (so what’s new? ), you just move on.
Ali
Hey not a bad idea Ali. That way you can be your own distributer for all the music cd’s you can burn. The wife has wanted to do this for a very long time now. I’m just torn between the toughts of all the driving I would have to do. Letting the wife drive isn’t an option. Unless I was into drinking 2 fifths of Jack Daniels and 10 cases of beer. Hey then I could toss the cigarette out the window and retrieve it!
Hope you guys don’t get to read about something stupid I have done someday and put me in the evolution hall of shame.
Yeah it is nuts & my wife and I are hoping to cash in on it someday That’s one reason I’m trying to talk her into selling our house & moving to Michigan or Maine where we might be able to buy a home for cash!
With my luck, we’ll wait too long & the market will crash. I’ve always lost money or barely broken even with real estate (I really wonder why they call it that).
PS - I’m selling my '67 Fender Deluxe Reverb if anyone is interested.
It goes back way before the .com boom. My grandpa has been riding the California wave since the mid-60’s. Now the bay area is certainly more effected by the .com boom, but LA and south have been crazy for years. He bought his first piece of real estate, a 10 or 12 unit hotel in Palm Springs for $400k about 35 years ago. The place is now $15 million. He sold it long ago, but prices have been going nuts for a long time out there. If you want California minus the costs and other hassles, move to baja, get a nice ocean front house for $125k, eat some good food, and waste away. I don’t plan to retire in this country by any stretch of the imagination. There are so many cheaper and nicer alternatives to Florida… Spain, Italy, Portugal, Mexico…
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| Spain, Italy, Portugal, Mexico… |
…Cape Town
I’ll probably retire in da’ ground. I don’t care where. Just throw a shovel full in and get on with it.
TG - Ten toes-up? Retired.
Well, retire and not work for the man are two dffernt things. Though I am a busines owner, I sure as heck don’t want to do this forever despite how much I like my work. Retirement for me is opening some little obscure recording studio and taking on choice clients that I believe in and money is an after thought. Perhaps a hotdog stand in Rome is another option…
Hey Bubba, you gonna need a mustard slinger? I could live under the hotdog stand…
TG
Heck, I am sleeping on a bench, so can you. But you can sling all the mustard you want.
"Trailers here in the states Ali, are dwellings sizing 14’ wide 80’ long, they are mobile to be transported and set up as a permanant house."
Jeez Yaz,
14 X 80s are the expensive new-fangled ones they started to use as the roads got bettter and money made its way into the hills. There are still a lot of 10 or 12 X 40-60s out there - those are the ones that fit down the dirt roads and through the switchbacks to go up the mountains.
Actially a doublewide is easier to fit up a road cause they are shorter and each half is only 12-14 feet wide but they cost more and are harder to fit onto a parcel on a steep slope…
I would go on the road with a pull along trailer but it is hard to generate any income, get health care etc. Plus, a girl alone has to protect herself somehow (taking certain weapons across state lines is a big issue…). I suppose a maple neck does make a decent club or could be sharpened into a spear. Maybe a strat could be converted into crossbow using an old piece of leaf spring…
Dare I say Peace,
TrackGrrrl
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| Maybe a strat could be converted into crossbow using an old piece of leaf spring… |
No “maybe” about it Trakgrlll.
William Tell, (the famous Swiss crossbowman, shredder, and overture), adapted his SG into a trebuchet. (Well, can you think of a better use for a Gibson?
).Anyway, during the siege of Zürich, 1449, (that’s almost ten to three in American time), William, or Bob to his friends, (yeah, the Swiss are great at cuckoo clocks, but they’re crap at names), single handedly demolished the city walls of Basel with his SG trebuchet, (OK, geography is another thing they’re crap at).
Where was I?
Oh yeah, guitars as weapons…
It’s a little known fact that Robin Hood’s prime archer, Alan Adair (ancestor of Red Adair, AKA John Wayne) used his lute with devastating effect against the Sheriff of Nottingham’s troops at the OK coral.
And, Little John (Val Kilmer), could kill a man stone dead at 50 paces with a single blast of his curare tipped flugel horn!
So, don’t diss your strat lass, they don’t call it an axe for nothing!
So anyway, you put some wheels on your trailer, I’ll provide the truck, and we’ll travel across the US spreading chaos wherever we go!
Ali
Arrrrgggggggg, another sinful degrading remark towards GIBSONS! Blasphemy.
Actually I think there was an old “B” cowboy movie in which (I could be wrong on my recollection) starred a young Roy Orbison with an acoustic guitar that had a hidden retracting rifle or something to that affect in the body. Anyone remember this one?