Sunday, April 23, 2017

Affordability

We keep checking our Zilguesses for fun and theoretical paper profit but the flip side has to do with affordability.

Here is an animated gif showing the shift in US major city centile distribution.





Not pretty.  Kind of a long way around to the US getting more like Europe. 

To help you do a little research try this nifty tool:


As Liz used to say, what cannot continue... won't. 

84 comments:

Lawyerliz said...

Still do, my dear, still do.

Also there still is no normal.

And B of A must be destroyed

Lawyerliz said...

Eternal verities.

Lawyerliz said...

Hard to see on phone.

Lawyerliz said...

Kramer whom I don't trust is beginning to mumble about debt.

Rob Dawg said...

Everyone should be mumbling about debt. We are on autopilot for a debt explosion. Obama got away with it because we went out a falling yield curve. Trump gets neither and some crushing obligations.

Lawyerliz said...

I thing the yield curse is gonna go up. It almost has to.

Lawyerliz said...

I think

Rob Dawg said...

"Yield curse." I like it.

Oh, and didn't feel the quakes. I'll ask my BiL tomorrow who lives right there.

Lawyerliz said...

Hahahahaha, I didn't notice. Glad I didn't.

LBD said...

We will need more low interest rates to keep people buying. We have been substituting debt for income for a very long time. Who needs income or wealth. Give Me Liberty or Give Me Debt!

Lawyerliz said...

Nah, I prefer 💰 money.

Cinco-X said...

Yield curse... Good one

Lawyerliz said...

No debt, liberty.

Lawyerliz said...

Nitey nite.

Unknown said...

Zestimates are worse than useless in most cases.
Two examples: I'll be listing a place with 900 Sq Ft of unpermitted space and Zillow treats it as though it were permitted (It can't be, ceiling height).
I'll discount the Zestimate by a bit more than $55K and we'll get multiple offers because it's cute and it's likely to go for more than asking in this market. I was talking to another old fart about the Spencer rifle he inherited from his grandfather ( Spencer founded IBM, quite the inventor)and he mentioned how frustrated he was in trying to sell a home he owns in Downieville CA. Three agents told him to price it just below $300K and it would sell quickly...it didn't.
The Zestimate?
$186K.
Zillow no longer automatically shows a value range...for damn good reason. People buying a place in Sierra County are usually from the SF Bay Area or Sacto and they assume "Zestimates" have some validity without bothering to look at the underlying assumptions.

Lawyerliz said...

Zestimates are just fun. People rely on them I guess. son's house as!King price was the zestamate. He bid a bit less and got it.

The appraisal was more than the Z.

They like the house, will stay they a while, unless They shuts the govt down. . .

Lawyerliz said...

Too much chopping very achy this morning. Didn't rain as it was suppose to. Very bad brush fire north of us on the Canaveral national seashore. We can smell the smoke. Hope it rains today.

Lawyerliz said...

Hub had an anxious 2 weeks of not working when it shut down last time, but he got paid eventually The VA is usually considered critical, but Who knows this time?

LBD said...

Good Morning!

The new Party of No will do what the party wants not what the people need.

dodahman said...

about the same as the theoretical party of 'Yes', I reckon...

LBD said...

Yes, When everybody is agreeing, nobody is thinking.

Lawyerliz said...

Va is funded a year ahead of time. No prob for son.
You think we need a wall?

You think Dems should slit their wrists?

The Repubs don't like the wall either. The states next to where the wall would be built don't like it either, including Texas.

If he keeps on like this he may not just lose the Senate but the house too, which I didn't expect. Dems are energized and signing up to run in droves.

Thanks, Trump!

Cinco-X said...

G'morning

Lawyerliz said...

You know Paul Ryan has kinda dropped out of sight recently. He has some common sense and brokered the last. . . Or the one before??. . .Settlement, putting off the day of reckoning.

LBD said...

People voted T for a wall. The Dems didn't listen and neither did the Repubs. Next election things shift then the voters are fickle. IMO

Lawyerliz said...

Maybe he'd actually like North K to do something drastic. He will say, who knew war would be so hard.
???

Lawyerliz said...

Trump sorta needs the Repubs. Even wasn't voted in as king.

Lawyerliz said...

I think Trump just wants to win something. . . Anything. A shutdown on his 100th day. What a symbol!!!

Lawyerliz said...

Everybody gone away again? Don't feel well today but chopped sawgrass some more, around the Snow on the Mountain, a spurge, whatever that is. Communed with turtle. Planted marigold flats. It sounds like a lot but looks like a little. Also there are fire ants around Snow, so I have to be careful.

LBD said...

Play day with the project jet ski. Lunch then the lake. :)

Rob Dawg said...

Markets up 1%+. VIX down 23% and falling.

Have you tried the H+T affordability tool I linked in the post?

Lawyerliz said...

You are excused.

LBD said...

Yes, You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

Lawyerliz said...

The first one, with the cities. People not only need to work more hours, they need to get big raises.

The hard money/soft money thing predates the Revolution.

Lawyerliz said...

My neighborhood when it was built, had lots of kids. It wasn't cheap, but it wasn't out of sight either. No kids hardly now. One set across the street. Some grew up adparents stayed. Some only older folk withmonet can afford. Sad really.

LBD said...

People need to work more hours (YES!) and learn they don't deserve more then they earn. Reward before the effort is accomplished with excessive credit. Giving them more money only lets them be even more irresponsible. Kind of like raising the rate of poverty with more money.

Lawyerliz said...

Only the rich are allowed to be irresponsible, I see. Perhaps we could allow people to sell themselves into slavery.

LBD said...

If you can afford to be irresponsible then you can afford it. Debt slavery is voluntary.

Lawyerliz said...

Not if you and your kids are starving.

LBD said...

If your kids are starving you are a dysfunctional person. All the education one needs was provided free along with lots of additional help. At what point do we call them a failure?

Rob Dawg said...

> No kids hardly now.

Not only are your hubby and I good friends who never met but apparently we live in the same neighborhood a mere 2291 miles apart.

No more kids here. 1995 the bus stop was a playground. 2011 my youngest was the only and last. No more bus stop. Affordability froze out families.

Rob Dawg said...

> If your kids are starving you are a dysfunctional person.

Obviously we all understand you aren't talking about tragedy, medical, etc.

Anyway, yes. Identifying and intervening for families at risk would be the rare social program I could support.
• How to clip coupons.
• Basic laptop preloaded with job tools from sample resumes to where you can get a business suit for free for interviews.
• Balancing housing and transportation expenses.
• Even stuff like how to possibly expunge any criminal or driving record.
• Continuing Ed resources.
• Time management tips.

Rob Dawg said...

Those of us lucky bumblers who still cling to the lower rungs of middle classdom sometimes forget or take for granted the social infrastructure we inherit. I gave a couple dozen ties to my son in law. As a financial investment advisor straight out of college with no exposure to "the right circles" he has virtual straw in his hair and his feet in the furrows. These ties were from my Boston days. High quality silk ties with "code histories" do not wear out. Even his mentor at the agency noticed.

Another case of the rungs on the ladder being cut between classes?

Lawyerliz said...

Good for you.

Lawyerliz said...

Yep.

Cinco-X said...

Did you try sprinkling their hills with corn meal? It presumably swells up in their stomachs and kills them

Cinco-X said...

Except there is no hard money anywhere...

Cinco-X said...

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2128512-ancient-carvings-show-comet-hit-earth-and-triggered-mini-ice-age/

Ancient symbols carved into stone at an archaeological site in Turkey tell the story of a devastating comet impact that triggered a mini ice age more than 13,000 years ago.

Evidence from the carvings, made on a pillar known as the Vulture Stone, suggests that a swarm of comet fragments hit the Earth in around 11000 BC.

One image of a headless man is thought to symbolise human disaster and extensive loss of life.

The site is at Gobekli Tepe in southern Turkey, which experts now believe may have been an ancient observatory.

Computer software was used to match carvings of animals – interpreted as astronomical symbols – to patterns of stars and pinpoint the event to 10950 BC.

Other evidence for the impact from a Greenland ice core suggests roughly the same time frame.

The cataclysm ushered in a cold climate lasting 1,000 years and is likely to have resulted from the break-up of a giant comet in the inner solar system.

‘Worst day in history’
“It appears Gobekli Tepe was, among other things, an observatory for monitoring the night sky,” says lead researcher Martin Sweatman, from the University of Edinburgh’s School of Engineering.

“One of its pillars seems to have served as a memorial to this devastating event – probably the worst day in history since the end of the Ice Age.”

The carvings appear to have remained important to the people of Gobekli Tepe for millennia, indicating an event that had a very serious and long-lasting impact, say the scientists.

A number of the pillar symbols suggest that long-term changes in the Earth’s rotational axis were recorded by the early astronomers using an early form of writing.

The discovery also supports the theory that Earth experiences times when comet strikes are more likely, due to the planet’s orbit intersecting with rings of cometary fragments.

Cinco-X said...

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse

Safa Motesharrei, a systems scientist at the University of Maryland, uses computer models to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that can lead to local or global sustainability or collapse. According to findings that Motesharrei and his colleagues published in 2014, there are two factors that matter: ecological strain and economic stratification. The ecological category is the more widely understood and recognised path to potential doom, especially in terms of depletion of natural resources such as groundwater, soil, fisheries and forests – all of which could be worsened by climate change.

That economic stratification may lead to collapse on its own, on the other hand, came as more of a surprise to Motesharrei and his colleagues. Under this scenario, elites push society toward instability and eventual collapse by hoarding huge quantities of wealth and resources, and leaving little or none for commoners who vastly outnumber them yet support them with labour. Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the elites due to the absence of labour.

Lawyerliz said...

Gack. Hide under the bed, quick!

Lawyerliz said...

Up another 150$. Wheeeee.

Rob Dawg said...

> – all of which could be worsened by climate change.

Bzzzt. This has to be the biggest tell in the subject. OF COURSE it -could- get worse but it cold also get better. "Could get worse" is the very worst content free scare phrase ever invented.

Lawyerliz said...

Did the working population crash, say, before the French Revolution? I never heard that.

Cinco-X said...

They were certainly starving

Cinco-X said...

True enough...I suspect it will get better some places and worse others. Refugees will most likely be a problem... They already are...

Rob Dawg said...

> Did the working population crash, say, before the French Revolution? I never heard that.

Actually you did but sometimes history gets meme kidnapped. "Let then eat cake" was actually a helpful albeit weak suggestion to the starvation.

Rob Dawg said...

Refugees? Make sure your Dawgifornian pre-entry papers are up to date. Just sayin'.

Lawyerliz said...

I've had opponents, pro se, say, it could have happened. Judges don't like that.

LBD said...

RD Yes and no. There are programs that will feed kids in any situation. The only way IMO is the parents stealing from the kids.

Lawyerliz said...

Nitey nite.

Cinco-X said...

G'night

Cinco-X said...

... And g'morning

LBD said...

Good Morning.

Mish is very positive on the self driving truck again today. One is a Nat gas/electric. Good step IMO.

Lawyerliz said...

Good Morning.

Hell will self driving cars. I want a self cleaning house, a super rhomba. Further robotic ingredients work forbidden until that isue is vastly improved.

Lawyerliz said...

Spell check!!!!
Improvements not ingredients!

LBD said...

Maids are cheaper and probably no benefits cost. I don't think we will see robotic maids for a long time. For now I work on short cuts and easy ways to clean.

Cinco-X said...

Fewer jobs for HS graduates

Cinco-X said...

Fewer jobs for unskilled immigrants

Lawyerliz said...

Giving away gardenias left aND right. Hundreds on bush.

LBD said...

More jobs for unskilled leisure class Americans.

Unknown said...

RE is exploding around here in the South Loop of Chicago. A year ago a friend told me that a developer had offered to buy the entire low rise building of condos where she lived. She bought her place in 2006 and had doubts that she could sell it for what she paid for it - until the buyout.
Then another buyout was attempted fifty yards further down the street which later failed.
Yesterday a developer bid for the entire low (two story) development next door to me. Another dog walking friend who lives there told me six months ago that she thought prices were rising in her area and she could get 600k for her 2 bed room condo. Today her neighbor told me that he heard a rumor that the buy out prices would be $800k.Wow.

Lawyerliz said...


How insulting. But you don't worry about truck drivers jobs. I suppose housewives don't do anything complicated.

LBD said...

Nothing I have haven't done and still do today.

Lawyerliz said...

Wow. I hope you own your place.
I liked Chicago, except it's too cold.

Lawyerliz said...

But I don't like doing it. I do like gardening. Just planted more Marigolds around the Buddha stature. And cooking dometimes.

Lawyerliz said...

But where could she move as cool as the loop?

Rob Dawg said...

Chicago is a case of double down brinksmanship. Between local taxes and the pension implosion there's no way they lift their own bootstraps.

Rob Dawg said...

New post. Neat links. Liz, show your hubby.

Encinitas Undercover said...

I think this graph is not about affordability, but about neighborhoods segregating more.

This is % of census tracts at each income level, and you can see that in 1970 there were a lot of middle-income neighborhoods in all cities. Now there are fewer middle-income neighborhoods and more rich and poor neighborhoods.

Rob Dawg said...

Reasonable point but remember census tracts are not adjusted for population.

Unknown said...

Yeah Liz, we own the condo free and clear. But the monthly assessment is $530/ month.

Lawyerliz said...

Why? Taxes? Plans to coat rhe building with Diamond dust?

Lawyerliz said...

In Fla the taxes are separate from maintenance.

Unknown said...

Liz, property taxes are separate. Ours were about $3k last year for an 1100 sq. ft. 2/2 condo.