0.6% decline, run for the hills!

Actually, as I've said here before, it's really hard to find any metro area where there has been a 5% decline in overall rents. Hasn't happened in Detroit, despite its economic problems. It didn't happen in LA in the early 1990s, even with a recession, riots, and the prior housing bust in full swing.

Real rents decline sometimes, nominal rents almost never decline more than 5%.

I was going to sign a lease at a brand-new building a couple blocks away, but the building I'm currently in offered me two months rent for free if I stayed. It penciled out to be around $500 less than the new building over the course of the lease and about $7000 less than the asking rent last year (over the course of the lease).

Combining several threads today, can we get custom printed sheets at Bed Bath and Beyond? I would like to use some of the charts from CR.

some investor guy (member) wrote on Tue, 04/07/2009 - 5:56pm.
Real rents decline sometimes, nominal rents almost never decline more than 5%.

So if you were to wake up one morning in bed beside "almost" -- how would you feel about that?

I signed a 60 month extension at the same 2006 terms, giving 3 free months, so that's a 5% decrease, but not recorded as one.

Had to reprint this letter I got in an e-mail. (Names changed to protect the guilty)

"Letter from the Boss,

As the CEO of this business that employs 140 people, I have accepted the fact that Barack Obama is our new President and that our taxes and government fees will now increase in a BIG way.

To compensate for this additional overhead I figure that the clients will have to see an increase in our fees of about 8% but since we cannot raise those prices right now due to the dismal state of our economy, we will have to lay off several of our employees instead. This unfortunate economic reality has really been eating at me for a while as I believe
we are family here and I didn't know how to choose who will have to go.

After giving it considerable thought, this is what I did: I strolled thru our parking lot and found 11 Obama bumper stickers on our employees' cars and have decided these folks will be the first to be laid off. I can't think of a more fair way to approach this problem. They wanted change, I gave it to them.

If you have a better idea, let me know.

Sincerely,

The Boss"

"Bob,
Normally the signs blossom in April onwards as landlords scramble to ensure they have tenants for the next school year."

Thanks, anon; that you, DJ? If so, any news on UC cuts?

I'm sure you're right about the seasonality of "for rent" signs, but I really am seeing a lot more than I ever did, at any season, and I've lived here 20 years.

"I would like to use some of the charts from CR. "

Who's got the (c) on the pig?

"@Michael: You're the first person I've added to my ignore list with this new comment system. Congratulations."

We can do that? And since when does an anon get that? Make 'em sign up or have to put up.

Thanks for the clarification on that. I hadn't herd about that before now. Maybe that letter is why I see so few BO bumper stickers these days.

"@Bob Dobbs - are the rental signs from previous rentals struggling to find tenants, or from properties not previously rented that suddenly find a need to increase cash flow and are looking to bring in boarders to make ends meet?"

I honestly can't tell. They're mainly older houses in established neighborhoods, but then we didn't have a huge SFR building boom here (not enough land). Some could well be people who've left town but are unable to sell the house for what they need; but I don't know.

I do know that boarding is a fine old tradition around here; older women who are house-rich but cash poor often rent a room to students or young professionals.

Not Blackhalo Sorry, To Anon
If your virgin ears can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen, You sound like a Jehovah's Witness.

Did you go for 60-month lease, rather than something shorter-term, because you expect economic stability and a heck of a lot of inflation?

I'm an accidental retail landlord, so I don't know all the peculiarities of commercial leasing. Stability is somewhat troublesome, since the tenant has real estate, retail, and finance exposure, but they've (actually, the acquiree) been in the building for about 10 years. Good thing is that tenant is responsible for increases in NNN and CPI. Also, the building will be paid off next year, so i'm not too picky about rates.

#1 cause of BK, or was. Still, it would be nice for my mailbox, if they would pull out of the CC market too.

https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ is good for this.

Then for near total mailbox de-junking, http://www.dmachoice.org/

"I am trying to give Michael an important mission. So important that he won't have time to waste posting here where he is not appreciated"

Believe it or not my sarcasm/trolling detector does, on occasion, work. Hence the nicely done. A sweet jab.

Ice replenishment occurs in cycles. Just as house prices are sticky on the way down, Ice replenishment is sticky on the way up. We are in a Solar minimum now with low solar activity resulting in no sunspots for the past 18 months. According to NASA, global temperatures are back to where they were 100 years ago.

MSM = CR commentariat plus 18 months.

"Keep an eye out for Blockbuster. That's a lot of retail space demand not coming back "

They need to find a way to deliver, a-la Domino's or Via Domino's Pizza Hut Pizza + movie? Throw in a postage paid return to the store, and they can give netflix a run. Hulu and the Torrents will still eat their lunch.

No Blackhalo, It wasn't to you, it was to anonymous, I made the edit correction Please accept my apologies.

Missouri MIAC Documents Scandal Leads to Advisory on SPLC & ADL
http://www.alipac.us/article-4073-thread-1-0.html

Actually, Michael had a point on this one. The MIAC document was an affront to many intelligent, legitimately concerned Americans.

See http://www.firearmscoalition.org/images/news/miac-militia-2009.pdf for the original. Basically, if you're not a liberal, they've smeared you here. It's sloppy, deceptive and inflammatory all at once.

Admit it, it would be boring around here if I weren't here to shake things up.

Blackhalo (member):

Me too. I hate all politicians equally. Not as much as bankers though.Well except for GWB, he has a special place in my heart.

Yep. I voted for McCain, and believe that Obama is borrowing us into oblivion, but believe Bush was especially hideous

"We are legion."

Dude, you need to take your show on the road. You are WAY too quick witted, to be vying for first post on albeit, a pretty good blog. You should do some stand-up or a sit-com. Or at least write for one. Poingiant, on-topic and you kill.

Pretty nice breakdown of the "Plan" too BTW.

Thanks bobn,
If You scroll to the bottom of the PDF You'll see the symbols to be afraid of. Don't Treed on Me Flag and various movies to look out for. Ohh, scary stuff.

"I can definitely understand that. But we're paying the $12T thru taxes, so it's socialized no matter how you look at it. "

Yeah, but THIS way everyone takes a hit, instead of just the renter/savers. Bankers though, still need to find a way to soak them.

"Ice replenishment occurs in cycles. Just as house prices are sticky on the way down, Ice replenishment is sticky on the way up. We are in a Solar minimum now with low solar activity resulting in no sunspots for the past 18 months. According to NASA, global temperatures are back to where they were 100 years ago."

Arctic ice is thinner than anyone can remember. The thicker, older ice isn't forming. Too much infra-red is getting through.

"I still don't see how we could have been any worse off if we had written off every US residential mortgage from the start."

As a renter, looking to buy, cash, I have a different view. If you bought a house at <3x earnings, you are part of the problem.

I suspect you meant > 3x earnings.

I can sometimes see the point of the guy your quoting: we are already spending trillions to bail out scumbags and scamsters, while standing by and watching foreclosure slam people (many of whom admittedly bought foolishly or dishonestly). If we're going to spend the money anyhow, maybe it makes sense to write off the difference beween bubble prices and reality - say prices around 2000.

Yes it bails out a whole lot of people who shouldn't be, but it has the chance of normalizing the housing market and a lot of other things, by both forcing and allowing capitulation.

Never happen, though. That bought-and-paid-for pussy Santelli would pitch a fit.

(FD: I bought at the top of the bubble and so might benefit. But I paid less than < 3x income with 30yr fixed rate financing, so as long as I stay employed, I'm OK. No plans to walk away as long as I have a job.)

Blackhalo --

Thank you for the kind words. Not everyone agrees with you, though. Besides, I like it here. Feels like home, sort of... Complete with dysfunctional family.

"Much of the past year has been deeply humbling for my industry," Blankfein said.

Speaking of bankers, he is making out rather well by having Paulson and Geigthner pull his cucumber out of the pickler. Paulson, also has a "special" place in my heart.

"If we're going to spend the money anyhow, maybe it makes sense to write off the difference beween bubble prices and reality - say prices around 2000."

Tell you what. Just have the Fed cut everyone a check out of thin air for 40K instead, and I am on board. If you can get to 2000 prices with that then we'll call it even. If not, sucks to be you.

This would be nice as it would hit banker bonus dollars and China's pegged currency nicely, while J6P can make out OK.

In rent controlled markets, there is a lot of motivation offer anything *other* than a rental rate reduction if you have vacancies that you cannot fill. once you reduce the rate, you may not be able to raise it again when rents go up. Much better to give away a free month or two and take a one-time hit rather then bleed slowly indefinitely.

Of course, my experience is that you end up with low vacancy rates in rent controlled markets anyway - since the longer the tenant stays, the farther below market their rents gets, thus it becomes more and more expensive to move to a new place.

"The nearest Mervyns is soon to be a Kohls, which is a nice sign that capitalism still works, even if they did buy the place for $2/sqft or so."

Same near where I am, one town over.

But we'll see how well capitalism works once the Gottschalk's in the same mall finishes liquidation. Nobody's taken the Circuit City spot, either.

Tell you what. Just have the Fed cut everyone a check out of thin air for 40K instead, and I am on board. If you can get to 2000 prices with that then we'll call it even. If not, sucks to be you.

I'm the first to admit that I chose poorly. If in 11/2005, I'd seen one graph of median house price vs. median income, I'd have run away screaming. But I was totally not "with it". Everyone around me was like "are you *ever* going to buy something?"

Oh, well. Shit happens.

"Given that McCain's chief economic advisor was Phil Gramm"

Treasury sec Grahm. Now there is a title that would help be sleep better at night. Of course the 2000 McCain may or may not have been what we would have ended up with, post-campaign. But my magic 8 ball says the stress of the crises would have sent him to an early dirt nap already, and it would be Palin/Grahm right now.

Watch how fast O' goes gray. As much as a bumble-fuck he has been so far, I am not enamored with the alternative. Wait till the appoval numbers drop to near 50% and Geithner/Summers will go the way of Rumsfield. We'd need a Gates like bank buster replacement though.

"Oh, well. Shit happens. "

You mean the realtor did not show you a 20 your Case-Schiller? Fancy that. Just the 5 Year? Well, I might argue that you have cause, if you felt like it, to at least get your 3% back.

Please tell me, fixed rate?

Blackhalo (member) wrote on Tue, 04/07/2009 - 4:33pm.

You mean the realtor did not show you a 20 your Case-Schiller? Fancy that. Just the 5 Year? Well, I might argue that you have cause, if you felt like it, to at least get your 3% back.

Please tell me, fixed rate?

Nope. Not her job.

Buying housing was at least a safe method of enforced saving, with some extra upside, for my whole adult life - I never encountered the word "bubble" in a way that made it stick until early to mid 2006. I literally gave it no thought. I just got a place close to my brother and nephews and within walking distance of the commuter train.

Obviously, Iwas not reading CR, Mish, Financial Armageddon or any of the others at that point.

Yes, 30 yr fully amortizing fixed rate financing that I can afford.

"I hope that you find a service that can meet your needs. If JS-Kit cannot keep up with the competition, they will also deserve their fate at some point. The free market always wins in the long term."

Priceless in unintended comedy.

Yes, but when was the last time JS-Kit asked you for money?

damn, seems like the social unraveling is accelerating. five more people killed in Alabama.

Comrade rally monkey,

What's your outlook for the rest of the week? More booyahahaha? Or should we be on the lookout for those nasty baboons that will rip your face off?

"So if I were really a dumb-shit, you'd feel bad, but since I got it half right, it's still OK to poke me with a stick? Gee, thanks ever so much."

Well, I am fine with kicking stray dogs, but kicking dead ones is a little over that top, even for me.

If JS-Kit cannot keep up with the competition, they will also deserve their fate at some point. The free market always wins in the long term.

Why not sell Haloscan as part of the PPIP?

If the long term correction comes after you've been poisoned by free market disaster, it doesn't comfort you much. Mad cow, global warming, Bernie Madoff, the free market can handle all these issues.

In NYC, rent control limited the scope of the bubble, still struggling to correct itself.

Random barking from the local black and tan dog. Some directed replies, too!

Blackhalo: 40K would pay off half or so of most of the homes in this Rottie's hood. My doghouse would be 55% cut, give or take (bought in 97, model home, modest sq/ft and location that has deteriorated as of, hmm, about when the spigots got turned on for NINJAs, etc. For sale/foreclosed signs sprinkled and rising.
Nemo: Don't sell your wicked self short. Dark humor/wit is always the best (IMHO).
Basel Too: Alabama: Bad, going to get worse (gov/muni bankruptcies and social unraveling in the cities)
Rob Dawg: Exurban Nation it will be shortly enough. I have a suspicion a LOT of wealthy urban-enclave-old-money folks are going to run screaming for the hills when summer hits (crime goes up, remember). Suburbs won't be perfect but a lot better than what's going to happen when all the thugs are out of school (instead of some being inside school ganging the scene to keep biz/cred up), and the first set of folks will have plenty of rental options from over-HELOCed wannabes while the second will have empty house sporadically and strategically placed outside of their normal central locations to, umm, work in.

I can't comment on too much "local" news outside of the Southeast, but for all of the news sites I hit every day, there are more than a few cities that are just sitting on the edge of serious issues. Here, try this: http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/apr/07/st-pete-cops-say-man-charged-kil...

Any other major- to mid-size city is about to blow up down here (good thing you're on that island, LawyerLiz!).

There isn't any way around it; those who can leave when it gets bad enough will, and those left behind...

Woof woof woof.

Must have something to do wit Freud.

Please God, just let the whole system collapse soon.

If that TARP story is true, looks like my $9 April HIG calls as a hedge are going to pay me some serious coin tomorrow? Wouldn't that be a riot.

"Remember the D.C. Shooters?"

They killed someone two blocks from where I live. The same day but before, we were at the bank and one of the bank officers came out of her office and told the people on line to stay inside for a while - and explained why.

However, we're talking about a deranged man and a kid under his control. McVeigh represented something far more dangerous.

BTW, just sharing, nothing is as funny as making American Taliban who have just been cheated of their intolerance fly into a foam-flecked frenzy of hatred over what the queers are doing to the soil.

I think it's a setup for a gun grab. I think this story is bogus but it could be astroturfing for the real thing.
http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/government/new_world_order/news....

One might say the leap in weaponry from the Civil War to World War 1, is equivalent to the leap in financial technology from 1929 to 2009

Yeah, it's that scary~

Why? Repeating rifle in Civil war was a pretty big leap. Trench warfare? Mustard gas? OK, decent artillery and machine gun, I'll give you. But half-assed armor and air. and we are talking weapons of financial mass destruction here. WW1 - WW2 vs. GD1 - GD2.

But we may be reaching the time at which what human beings assemble controls human beings, asserts its own destiny.

SkyNet

"So, as people lose their minds & money (not necessarily in that order) why are they offing their families?"

It's nothing new. I'm not even sure it's happening more often.

SkyNet? Try launch on warning in the 80s.

"I wonder how long it took to reload a rifle after shooting, in 1787?"

Rifles took longer than muskets. Well-drilled European troops with muskets? Prussians? Five times a minute?

"The only one that comes to mind is Goebbels, and he had the blood of tens of millions on his hands, so in some perverted way killing off his kids made sense, imagine their lives after the war, the shame."

Boermann's kids survived. His son had a bizarre tale to tell about how Boermann's mistress invited them for lunch, and then as a special treat showed them her parlor, which had furniture made from human body parts. The children went home in a state of shock. She outdid the Brothers Grimm, no? The boy became a Jesuit priest for some time after the war.

I think statistics show that most violence is intra-familial, probably always has been.

Crazy

Seems appropriate given what's going on out there

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe500eIK1oA

"Who's gonna be our Bionnie & Clydes, Pretty Boy Floyds, Ma Barkers and John Dillingers this go round? "

I dunno. Not much more money kept in a bank than a 7-11 these days. It is all bits on a server somewhere.

Now, bankers have some ill gotten gains. Some FBI related crime, and a Western Union to your buddy in Nigeria? That I could see.

Less Bonnie and Clyde, more Lindbergh Baby, for the folks who are smart enough to go where the money is.

Damn, CR you have to save those nyc posts for late night. We never sleeps...

Can't believe I missed a chance to laud skyscraper living to dawg, fly and all the other hicks.

damn, seems like the social unraveling is accelerating. five more people killed in Alabama.

"Sweet Home, Alabama"

1 currency now -yogi (member) wrote on Tue, 04/07/2009 - 6:22pm.
Damn, CR you have to save those nyc posts for late night. We never sleeps...
Can't believe I missed a chance to laud skyscraper living to dawg, fly and all the other hicks.

I've got some nice avocados. What do you have to trade?

I say we just outlaw murder. That will surely stop both knife and gun killings.

"The UK has gun control and a while back NBC news reported an up swing in knife murders."

Yeah, but guns are loud and scary. I just think what kind of damage one of these nuts could do with a knife. Very quiet. You could work your way through and entire office complex that way with no-one running for the exit, until the first body was found.

After spending some time as a butcher, you would be astounded how effective that would be.

Gun control is a rallying cry in the, "for the children world." I would prefer to take a pass on any more nanny-state.

One thing we can learn for sure in these comment boxes: There are a lot of very anxious people these days. Personally, I used up all my nerves 20 years ago. Now I only get nervous about the inconsequential, like whether or not the food co-op is going to run out of bagels.

how do you add people to the ignore list? It's a feature specifically made for my boy-toy Michael.

Sorry but knife-wielding maniacs kill far fewer people than gun-wielding maniacs.

True. But someone will evil intentions will find a way no matter what. The Happy Land fire killed far more people than a person with a firearm likely would have been able to.

"Keep in mind, in the Civil War, America was a bumpkin backwater, amateurs at war equipping its troops with the equivalent of say, the Russians using the Mosin-Nagant in 1944."

Didn't J.P.Morgan make his first fortune by selling defective muskets to the Union Army?

Russian weapons were simple, strong, easily reparable in the field. The P. P. Sh. (Peh Peh Shah) 'tommy gun' was admired. I once went to a gun shop in Baltimore with two Russian journalists. They yearned after the fancy hand-guns but couldn't figure out how they would get them back home.

"I'm not so sure you're right. "

Oooh, I completely forgot about the Sudan and the machete.

I remember a million Huto's, or was that Tootsies, slaughtered with machetes a while back in Africa.

Really, I can conceal carry in VA but they have a hissy when I wander around with my catapult

But I took pictures. I am going to post them to after the crash plus I think I will take a couple of fotos of where the real world tree people are living.

Well, even a proponent of "gun control means hitting what you're aiming at", has to agree the number of drive-by knife attacks hitting innocents is lower than the ones we get.

I wouldn't mind more gun control but I'm not too unhappy with keeping the 2nd amendment alive.

1 currency now -yogi (member) wrote on Tue, 04/07/2009 - 9:25pm.
Sorry but knife-wielding maniacs kill far fewer people than gun-wielding maniacs.

Too bad knives are useless for toppling the state, which is the purpose of guns in America.

You can either have final compulsive power rest in the hands of the citizenry, or you can have it rest sort-of-kinda around the person of the autocrat. It can only reside one place and it must be one of those two places.

Before you consign your state to the politics of state-sponsored mass murder and autocratic civil wars, maybe you might want to consider that your government already has already cut the contracts for the concentration camps. They will have you snatched up and bundled away on the one-way train ride before you can say "perhaps I should have considered firearms."

I think if you just lived through the Bush administration and you don't have a firearm, ESPECIALLY if you are a liberal, you are out of your damn mind. Why did the left turn from militant workers and people's heroes into internally castrated Alan Alda pacifists? Can people possibly forget you were one botched hurricane response away from death in a prison camp in the New Mexico desert? WTF?

Sorry people get shot, but the tools to tear down the state effectively must reside in the hands of the populace and recent events have really only redoubled my feelings in this regard. If you think that Byz guy knows the politics of weak and autocratic states, then if I can convey no other thing that is seen as my urgent wisdom in this regard, it's to keep the economic pyramid flat and wide and the population armed to the teeth. It's easier to bury any number of bar fight and domestic dispute and crazy guys with a gun victims than to dig your society out from under a few generations of military despotism.

We Cornellians are more resourceful than our more elite Ivy counterparts. We have outstanding architecture and engineering programs. But perhaps this was a home economics major, or a law student.

Actually I'm getting ready to go out and have a Two Hearted Ale.

Prestidigitationista wrote on Tue, 04/07/2009 - 9:41pm.
So, if we keep to the letter of the 1787 law, wouldn't it be prudent to not allow another shot until 12 seconds had passed since the previous, on all guns?

No, because the goal is to keep the populace an effective irregular infantry. You can't tear down the state with toy guns. Tearing down the state or defending it against invasion are the reason the guns are there. The rest is a footnote.

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world." - AL

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."

Abe was a pretty cool cat.

And don't get me started on my Patrick Henry or Ben Franklin.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/abraham_lincoln_6.html