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As I have mentioned before, the first piece of America I moved to was Honolulu, Hawaii. This is a place where I learned English and it’s also where I learned to sing Christmas carols. Well, it so happens that a lot of Christmas carols are pretty different in Hawaii! When I sang the Twelve Days of Christmas in the car the other day my hubby thought that I was making up lyrics to songs again. (I am guilty of making up lyrics to songs I don’t know to annoy my hubby sometimes) Then I told him that I learned these songs in Hawaii and he said that I learned them wrong! How rude! So today I shall sing these songs on my blog without reserve the ways Hawaiians do!

The Twelve Days of Christmas (Singing Day Twelve Only)

Numbah twelve day of Christmas
My tutu gave to me!
Twelve TELEVISION!
Eleven missionary!
Ten can of beer!
Nine pound of poi!
Eight ukulele!
Seven shrimp a-swimmin’!
Seex hula lesson!
FIVE BIG FAT peeeeeeeeeeeeeeegs!
Foah flowah lei!
Tree dry squid!
Two coconut,
An’ one mynah bird in da papaya tree!

Footnotes: tutu is a grandmother, and a mynah bird is a pretty common bird in Hawaii and I think they can be trained to talk. Once I had a baby mynah bird that fell out of a nest and I fed it watermelon and bread, but it died of diarrhea. Now onto the next song!

Po La`i E,Po Kamaha`o (Silent Night, Holy Night)

Po la`i e, po kamaha`o,
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaluhia, malamalama
Ka makuahine aloha e
Me ke keiki hemolele e
Moe me ka maluhia lani
Moe me ka maluhia lani

Po la`i e, po kamaha`o,
Oni na kahu hipa e
I ko ka lani nani no
Mele na `anela haleluia.
Hanau `ia Kristo ka haku.
Hanau `ia Kristo ka haku.

Po la`i e, po kamaha`o,
Keiki hiwahiwa aloha e,
Ka lama la`i mai luna mai
Me ka lokomaika`i makamae.
Iesu i kou hanau `ana.
Iesu i kou hanau `ana.

And finally, Mele Kalikimaka!!

Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say,
On a bright Hawaiian Christmas Day,
That’s the island greeting that we send to you
From the land where palm trees sway,
Here we know that Christmas will be green and bright,
The sun to shine by day and all the stars at night,
Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaii’s way
To say “Merry Christmas to you.”

Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say,
On a bright Hawaiian Christmas Day,
That’s the island greeting that we send to you
From the land where palm trees sway,
Here we know that Christmas will be green and bright,
The sun to shine by day and all the stars at night,
Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaii’s way
To say, “Merry Christmas,
A very Merry Christmas to you.

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone!

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Today I received an excellent email from a reader of mine and I have permission from him to post his email here. I thought the information is excellent for first time buyers who are interested in condos. It’s funny but my parents were just telling me this weekend that they met a taxi driver who bought a condo in San Mateo and was assessed one of these secret fees for $20,000 or $40,000. San Mateo’s condo fees seem to be extremely expensive and basically I really wouldn’t want to buy a condo here. The reader also attached a picture of the Colina Condos at 1 Appian Way. That address has been on the home sellers in trouble list in the past and it seems that more will flood the market.

Hi Baglady,

I just want to stress the importance of looking carefully into the signing documents when purchasing real estate, especially condos. Often, sellers may try to slide in information about “special assessment fees” hoping the buyer won’t notice. “Special Assessment Fees” are levied by the HOA for repairs that affect the whole complex that the standard monthly HOA fee can’t cover, usually as a result of shoddy construction, bad planning, or mismanagement. The HOA or property management company usually informs owners about these assessment fees a year or so in advance and sometimes set up an installment payment plan, as some of these fees are outrageously large. These assessment fees are a bad sign, as they often indicate possible future problems and therefore, more future fees. And unfortunately, you can’t deduct it off your taxes like a mortgage. It is an out-of-pocket expense. And unfortunately for some condo-owners, they are already financially stretched to the point where they can’t afford this surprise fee, thus forcing them to sell early before the fee hits them, hoping some other poor sucker buyer was
equally as negligent as they were and gloss over the signing documents in haste.

Here’s an example I saw earlier this year. The condos at Pointe Pacific at the top of San Bruno Mountain in Daly City had an assessment fee levied because the location of the condos was a poor decision. Pointe Pacific is on the side of the mountain, battered by rain and wind moreso than another condo complex no more than a block away. This
results in the buildings at Pointe Pacific requiring more repairs. The special assessment fee: approximately $15,000 per household. Even worse, this was not the first time its happened. Just about 5-7 years ago, the HOA levied a similar fee. So you can probably bet there will be another fee in another few years, after the current fee.

Its even worse when the HOA neglects the repairs as they snowball into a huge financial disaster in the long run. Probably the worst example of “Special Assessment Fees” gone awry is the one CURRENTLY HAPPENING at Colina Condos on 1 Appian Way (cross street Gellert) in South San Francisco. I know several people who have bought condos there. Apparently, the condos were poorly built as the original builder went bankrupt halfway through the construction process. The whole complex requires approximately $13.5 million to repair the run-down buildings. The HOA meetings are shouting matches and whole HOA board has quit in horrified disgust. The property management company has abandoned the complex. The only hope left is for the city of SSF to take over and help solve the process, something many of the homeowners are hotly debating. The ship is sailing in the dark with nobody at the helm, so to speak.

The average estimated cost per household for Colina Condos: $70,000. Yes, you heard right. $70,000 out-of-pocket repair costs for condos going for about $400k on the market.

Even worse, you may need to temporarily move when they finally do get the repairs going (and possibly spend even more money on renting a temporary place), as the condos have some deep structural integrity problems. (Some people have water-logged walls, others have collapsed bathrooms.) So, as you can imagine, many new condo owners with no equity can’t afford it and may need to sell. This will probably result in a bunch of impatient, panicked sellers putting those condos on the market all at once, driving value down further. They are hoping for a miracle of miracles: that someone else will be dumb enough to buy their lemon condo and lift the load off their shoulders.

Lessons to be learned: 1. Read all the signing documents carefully. 2. Don’t buy crappy condos. It is of such importance, I hope you publish this email on your main webpage.

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This week there were some great carnivals as usual. First there is the All Women Blogging Carnival at Red Sultana where my article about selling eggs was included. Being the nerd I am I really liked this article about bird migration.

Next there is The Carnival of Personal Finance #126. In this carnival I wrote about speed interviewing. A couple articles I would like to highlight is Scrabble and Personal Finance: 8 Lessons from Tiles at Blueprint for Financial Propsperity and Soup Parrish’s Ground Rules for his retirement at age 24. I really love Scrabble and I love how Jim put together his experiences in a game into lessons for personal finance. Soup Parrish is a friend of mine and he is trying an interesting experiment in retiring on $75,000 in San Francisco. I would like to see how he does.  I have told him that realistically he can’t retire on $75,000 here in the Bay Area, but he has a set of rules that lets him generate other income too.  Check out his blog at The Retirement Hobo.

Finally, there is the Carnival of Money Stories at Being Frugal. I like Lynnae’s blog a lot and this week my article about Asian parents  has been included.  I also really liked this story about gifts for children by Betsy Teutsch.  It’s pretty true that kids don’t like presents like stocks and bonds because they can’t really play with it.

That’s all for this week!

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This is something that has puzzled me for years. Why do Americans allow babies to poop and pee so freely and spend a fortune on diapers? It’s understandable when babies can’t move around and go to the toilet, but when babies start to walk around they can be trained to go to potty by themselves. Normal toilets are way too big for babies but when I was young I had a tiny potty that fit me perfectly. My mom said that soon after I started walking I was able to do my business in my personal porcelain throne and I only got excrement on myself when I was sick and couldn’t control myself. Of course, my parents had to empty the potty out and clean it daily, but it’s not really much worse than cleaning up after a puppy or cleaning a regular toilet that is heavily soiled. A baby potty isn’t very expensive, but I’m not sure if they’re widely used here in America.

This weekend I spent some time with my friend’s baby. He’s exactly 17 months today and he is walking around quite capably. He is still wearing a diaper and is quite used to pooping standing up. His dad told us a funny story of where he was playing ball with the baby. Suddenly the baby needed to poop and concentrated on pooping while he stood there. Instead of catching the ball he let it hit himself in the face. It is pretty comical to me because the boy is quite smart and is learning words by the mouthful. He can certainly learn to poop in a potty and his parents can probably save hundreds of dollars on diapers.

Today I discussed this issue with my coworkers during lunch and one of them is an immigrant from Vietnam. He recounted that he had a baby potty, too. His parents set the potty outside of the house and let him do his business there. He also doesn’t understand why toddlers here routinely soil themselves. It also amazes me that there are products like Pull-ups that probably prolong the potty training process. It is almost like a diaper industry conspiracy to take your money and keep your child ignorant. I don’t have a kid yet but I think I can probably save a lot of diaper money just by training my child to use the potty as soon as possible. Babies are really smarter than people expect them to be.

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So, I am a pretty big fan of the blog Sacramento Area Flippers in Trouble where the blogger lists houses that are bought in the past two years and currently listed for lower than the last sale price. So I wondered if I could find some listings in San Mateo County that qualify as “in trouble”. A lot of people are saying that San Mateo County’s real estate is resistant to the current housing market and won’t ever fall, but after browsing Redfin’s San Mateo listings I found over 100 homes that are current asking prices less than their last selling price. I found a lot of interesting data through this exercise and I will share it here all week long. Today I will present the overall averages and the five homes with the greatest annualized percentage loss plus the five homes with the highest current price per square foot.

Overall Average Statistics:

I found a total of 102 homes in the San Mateo County that were last sold within the last 3 years and are currently selling for lower or equal to their last sale prices. The average amount of time from last sale date is 1.78 years. The average current asking price is $631,059 and the average last sale price is $703591. The average size of these homes is around 1200 square feet and the average annualized loss per year is about 6.76% if all of these homes sell for their current asking prices. Overall, they are still quite expensive and have an average per square foot price tag of $540.

Top 5 Homes with the Largest Annualized Percentage Loss:

I calculated the annualized loss using 10/7/07 as the current date and assumed yearly interest compound. Four out of these five homes were bought less than a year ago, and that is probably why their annualized loss is so high. I know that the home at 2318 Flores St. is a short sale and it has been advertised for months.

Address: 2241 Addison Ave, East Palo Alto
Last Sale Date: 05/23/2007
Last Sale Price: 543099
Current Asking Price: 429000
Annualized Loss: -46.7%

Address: 2318 Flores St, San Mateo
Last Sale Date: 12/29/2006
Last Sale Price: 1250000
Current Asking Price: 888000
Annualized Loss: -35.8%

Address: 1139 Cleveland, Redwood City
Last Sale Date: 07/24/2007
Last Sale Price: 688937
Current Asking Price: 649900
Annualized Loss: -24.7%

Address: 2632 Meath Dr, South San Francisco
Last Sale Date: 06/21/2007
Last Sale Price: 476469
Current Asking Price: 439000
Annualized Loss: -24.2%

Address: 645 Bermuda, San Mateo
Last Sale Date: 05/20/2004
Last Sale Price: 1984091
Current Asking Price: 862000
Annualized Loss: -21.8%

5 Homes with the Highest Cost Per Square Foot

I think most of these homes belong in an episode of Dr. Housing Bubble’s Real Homes of Genius. Four of these homes are smaller than the condo I rent and the cost per square foot is more than some parts of Manhattan. The largest home in this list is a condo so there is no land premium. It is a condo in a good location, but it still seems to be quite overpriced. So here they are:

Address: 3570 Oak Knoll Dr, Redwood City
Current Asking Price: 889900
Annualized Loss: -0.7%
Size: 910 Square Feet
Price Per Square Foot: $978

Address: 222 6th Ave #102, San Mateo
Current Asking Price: 1599999
Annualized Loss: -16.5%
Size: 1911 Square Feet
Price Per Square Foot: $837

Address: 1906 Alameda De Pulgas Ln, Redwood City
Current Asking Price: 850000
Annualized Loss: -8.9%
Size: 1030 Square Feet
Price Per Square Foot: $825

Address: 1953 Ivy St, San Mateo
Current Asking Price: 649000
Annualized Loss: -0%
Size: 820 Square Feet
Price Per Square Foot: $791

Address: 2737 Marlborough Ave, Redwood City
Current Asking Price: 529000
Annualized Loss: -4.1%
Size: 680 Square Feet
Price Per Square Foot: $778

Tomorrow I will post the following: Cities with the Most Homes in Trouble, and The Least Expensive Homes by Price per Square Foot.

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