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 | Another Wal*Mob |
After all, we add color to holidays, events, and disasters to help our frail brains remember the details. Most of us remember Black Monday, that fateful day for world stock markets back in 1987, and maybe the Gray Monday that loomed over Wall Street in 1998. Or how about Pink Friday, Castro's annual block party each night before the Gay Pride Parade. Red Friday has at least four meanings in the U.S., and in Canada it's a new tradition to show support for the Canadian Armed Forces. Green Monday is the first day of Lent on the Orthodox calendar, and Olive Sunday was England's version of Palm Sunday.
How about if I contribute to this rainbow of festivities: How about Cream Saturday, the night before Gay Pride Parade, where thousands of men in the city manufacture copious amounts of... well, cream. How about Orange Tuesday, the day when all homeowners spontaneously install solar panels to afford their dizzyingly high mortgages and utility bills.
Enough already. There's news far more fascinating to report than charging mobs of turkey-stuffed shoppers. News like a busted marijuana operation spanning over 20 units in a high rise in Toronto, or dealers distributing marijuana gumballs at a Maryland school. Quite the entrepreneurs, aren't they!
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(By Daniel Culveyhouse | No comments yet | comment here)
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Just like mobs of other San Francisco residents, I have awed at the ludicrous runaway value of real estate in this area. This dizzying trend that outpaces inflation and salary increases seems to defy reality. But this "twilight zone" of housing fits right into our world, a world gone bananas.
I have spent a lot of time researching our housing market myself, trying to ascertain whether to invest into a house, or continue to rent. After three years of coffee house chats, debates on the dance floor, spitfire sessions with homeowners, and raging rants with renters, I have ascertained that:
It is beyond ridiculous to buy a house or condo in San Francisco or most anywhere in California, now and in the foreseeable future.
I'm sure that conclusion is enough to ignite a battle among intellects (and counter-intellects) any day. Some of my own personal arguments, as well as many points in the conventional wisom of investing, all point me away from being a homeowner, and redirect me toward being a wise and diversified investor. Here's what I mean:
All investors with a lick of sense know that diversifying their portfolio is easily the most important step in protecting their financial assets. If we fail to diversify, we risk losing everything we own in one single storm. WILL SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME HOW BUYING A HOUSE IS DIVERSIFYING? It isn't! For first-time homeowners, they essentially dump decades worth of toil into a single chunk of property, banking on the hope that its value will never decline, which is a critical error in judgement.
I have assembled a list of dozens of reasons in strict opposition to buying a house or condo in San Francisco, and I list the most undeniable ones below:
- Real estate prices will drop in the coming years, just as they have in cycles since San Francisco was a port town.
- When city-wide real estate value begins to drop, many will lose all of their hard-earned personal equity in their property, resulting in a wave of foreclosures. Welcome to San Franclosure!
- It's cheaper to rent— a hell of a lot cheaper. Although mortgage brokers lend roughly three times the homeowner's salary, most of these folks are dumping over half of their salary into their mortgage payments, which can approach two-thirds of their net pay. Too much.
- Earthquakes happen. These are a natural disasters that so many real estate investors seem to ignore, assuming that earthquake insurance will simply take care of any damage sustained. Is there no regard for personal trauma, relocation headaches, reconstruction delays, hidden costs, and the chance of insurance companies bankrupting after a major quake?
- Most of Bay Area loans (over 80%) are adjustable rate loans, which will hit homeowners very hard as interest rates hike in the coming years.
- My credit is not good enough to buy a house anyway, so I must pay for a property in cash years down the road, which has turned out to be a blessing. However, for the rich boys and girls that recently bought a house with cash *cough* Google PhDs *cough*, they stand to lose the most of all homeowners, since a housing crash will amplify the losses on their huge initial investments.
These detractors may sound either elementary or controversial, but I have dozens of other more complicated reasons against first-time buyers taking the real estate plunge right now. My whole case is befitting of a 100 page report, but it's not worth spending the time on such minutiae. Why over-analyze a bitter market when I can offer my advice in a single sentence:
Research all investment opportunities, then reduce your risk by diversifying your investments!
If your head now hurts from investor fever, then alleviate the aches with bubbly clarinet music by the British composer Malcolm Arnold. The excerpt below is the first movement from his only clarinet sonata written in 1951. Notice the jazz influence alongside the undeniable British idiom.
Sir Malcolm Arnold: Sonatina For Clarinet And Piano, Op.29: I. Allegro Con Brio
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(By Daniel Culveyhouse | See the 1 comment | comment here)
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A huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. We have been reborn from our lame duck ashes from years ago. Like a new order of charitable Knights, let us now push for tolerance, for peace, and for harmony among all mankind.
There exist both geniune goodness and pure evil in man, and just as this truth became evident in my own encounters, I have also born witness to this in the government of my land. Never again will I let tyranny poison the ground that I call my home, these United States of America.
Thus, there are plenty of reasons to celebrate, feast, and dance this weekend. Brian and I kicked it off with a deeply satisfying dinner at Suppenküche, San Francisco's oldest German Wirtshaus. Thanks for the first meal of a brighter age!
To celebrate with song, take a few minutes to enjoy a spirited dance for violin and orchestra by the British composer Herbert Howells:
Herbert Howells: Three Dances for Violin and Orchestra: I. Giocoso molto
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(By Daniel Culveyhouse | No comments yet | comment here)
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 | TK-213 and Red Angel
Escape Gang Violence |
My armor is plastic, not titanium, and it certainly is not strong or thick enough to stop bullets. One of those nine injured folks could have been me. I have many friends in this area who planned to visit the party, and I feared for their safety all night. It also could have been much worse, particularly since I saw first-hand that SFPD officers stood around like imbeciles and did very little, if anything, to prevent weapons from entering MY NEIGHBORHOOD. A practically useless waste of MY TAXES.
I cannot possibly express how disgusted I am with gang violence, particularly in MY NEIGHBORHOOD. I am almost ashamed to be a citizen of a country that cannot curtail its street and gang violence, especially in a relatively safe metropolis like San Francisco. Just the night before Halloween, I sat in my office and watched two groups of over 20 young African-Americans fighting and clobbering each other in front of the Walgreens across the street, marking the third time that this has happened in one month!
I WAS NOT AWARE THAT MY NEIGHBORHOOD HAS TURNED INTO A STAGING AREA FOR PSYCHO GANG WARS AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN FIST FIGHTS!
From this point forward, I will be finding another venue for Halloween for safety's sake, and in the future I may just help to damn and purge this 200,000-strong human monstrosity from this historic and fragile district. The Castro neighborhood represents peace, diversity, and hope, and if we need to completely eject this tainted block party right out of MY NEIGHBORHOOD, then so be it.
You may have figured out by now that I am pissed. By Sam Hill, you got that right. The ranting may spill into next entry as well.
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(By Daniel Culveyhouse | No comments yet | comment here)
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