Well, it’s been two weeks since the last update and in the last fourteen days about 305 homes in San Mateo County were listed on Redfin. This time 59 homes qualified as home sellers in trouble. This is nearly 20% of all the new listings in San Mateo! Quite a few of these homes are marked as lender owned. Here are some highlights.
Entries Tagged 'Value' ↓
San Mateo Home Sellers in Trouble #6 — 11/05/07 to 11/18/07 — Nearly 20% of New Listings In Trouble
November 19th, 2007 — Foreclosures, Global Economy, Housing, Investing, Money, Mortgage, Personal Finance, Real Estate, San Mateo, Silicon Valley, United States, Value, Wealth
Veterans Deserve Our Respect — Reflections on Veterans’ Day
November 12th, 2007 — Life, United States, Value, Volunteer
This weekend my hubby and I went to the Palo Alto VA hospital with our church to serve the veterans a barbecue lunch. We always organize a barbecue on Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day for the veterans there. My hubby always mans the grill and I help dispense food on the chow line. Each time we have the event we serve hundreds of people in the hospital. It’s always a fun and humbling event and I am glad that I get to participate. It’s also nice to see that the Palo Alto VA hospital is a great facility for the veterans.
Regardless of my opinions on the war and military spending I have a tremendous amount of respect for the veterans of America. A lot of the extremely injured soldiers I saw at the hospital are probably younger than me. One particular soldier that left an impression on me was a very young man who had a bruised face and staples in his skull. I saw him a few months ago during memorial day, and today on the radio I heard an interview with a soldier at the same VA hospital. He said that he lost half of his skull and his brain is severely injured. I wonder if that’s the same man? Another veteran that I remember very clearly is a tiny old woman who was shorter than me and slightly hunched over. She was still quite energetic and she said that she used to be a marine who handled artillery. It is humbling to meet these veterans because on the surface they are such ordinary people, but they were presented with extraordinary circumstances, and I think that makes them extraordinary, too.
I believe all of these veterans young and old deserve our respect. I don’t pity the young Iraq War veterans’ wounds because I don’t think they want anyone’s sympathy. What the wars have done to the veterans is irreversible and now what would help them is support in going back to some kind of normal life. I think it’s ridiculous that some VA hospitals are horribly mismanaged and a lot of young soldiers with families are paid very little for their work. I think a lot of veterans do want some recognition that they are still there after the wars and the military and they don’t want to be used and then discarded. I find it unsettling that a large proportion of the homeless are veterans, and I wonder if there are programs that can help veterans reintegrate into civilian life.
Finally, I feel like that volunteering a couple weekends out of a year is so insignificant, and I really want to do more volunteering.
A Tale of Two Houses — Purchasing Homes Before and During the Housing Bubble in the Bay Area
November 2nd, 2007 — Housing, Money, Mortgage, Personal Finance, Real Estate, Retirement, Salary, United States, Value, Wealth
The original text of this post is preserved elsewhere. I didn’t expect this but my parents went PSYCHO over the post and spammed this blog with crazy comments and flooded my cellphone with messages. They went as far as phoning my husband at work about it. I didn’t write anything bad about them, but I think the post really hit a nerve because I wrote about the reality of the real estate bubble and how they were affected by it. I really don’t understand why they are always bragging about what they have and at the same time they are afraid to face the truth. What annoys me the most is that they’re still preaching that real estate is a great investment to me using the numbers of years past and that isn’t realistic at all. I wrote the post because I thought it was a pretty interesting story that I lived through personally and I didn’t mean to offend anyone. I also wanted to put the story out there to show that once upon a time houses in the Bay Area were affordable and it made sense to buy. My parents’ objection isn’t that I wrote about the truth, but that I wrote their story. Maybe it’s the Chinese custom of “saving face” that I violated, but I believe that I shared the information quite anonymously. I hope that they realize noone really knows who they are except for themselves. I guess I am still quite in shock that they reacted this way because a lot of bloggers write about the good and bad in their lives. Also, I didn’t react as crazily as they did when my dad plagiarized multiple articles from this blog and posted them on his blog without crediting me as the author. I really think the entire point of blogging is that we learn from personal stories like the one I wrote. For those of you who read the original story, would you say that I revealed too much? Do you think that the story was mean-spirited in any way? Comments are definitely appreciated on this matter.
Carnival of Money Stories #32 — True Financial Horror Stories
October 29th, 2007 — Carnival of Money Stories, Debt, Money, Personal Finance, Real Estate, Relationships, Retirement, Roundups, Saving, Silicon Valley, United States, Value, Wealth
Welcome to the 32nd Carnival of Money Stories. On this foggy and ghastly eve of Halloween The Baglady brings you a creepy collection of money horrors. This edition includes 21 stories about mooching relatives, timeshares, and giant wallops of debt. If you want to have a relaxing day please stop reading here, but if you want to be shocked, titillated, and inspired, please read on!
Editor’s Picks of True Financial Horror Shows:
Eric presents When Saying No Helps Your Family posted at A Penny Closer. This is a well written story about a truly horrible situation. You have to read this article to see why I found this story to be the most upsetting and scary. People really just have to say no to family members that mooch continuously and that is why I say parents should make their adult children pay rent.
Ana presents Stupid Tax on Wheels (But not mine!) posted at DebtFREE-Revolution. I fear debt so much that when I read this story I felt like I was being run over with the kid’s truck. He should really be feeling the weight of his monster truck debt but .
Repugnant Real Estate:
Millionaire Mommy Next Door presents Can Renting Play A Part In The American Dream? posted at Millionaire Mommy Next Door. Honestly, the picture insert on this post gave me quite a fright, but I agree with the Millionaire Mommy that renting makes sense for a lot of people.
Silicon Valley Blogger presents Don’t Let Real Estate Clean You Out posted at The Digerati Life. SVB’s dry cleaner turned into a real estate agent! I hope that guy will be okay, but the fact of the matter is that real estate is softening quite a bit here.
Terrible and Terrific Timeshares
Maria Fernandez presents Have an enemy? Buy him a timeshare! posted at Learn a foreign language. I am so glad that my parents didn’t buy any timeshares and just took the free gifts and ran.
Betsy Teutsch presents A True Tale: Making Lemonade out of a Lemon-Sized Inheritance posted at Money Changes Things. This is a great story about a couple quite scary things: a timeshare and a golddigging stepmom.
Triumphs Over Life and Death
Brip Blap presents follow the white rabbit to financial freedom posted at brip blap. I actually really liked this story and voted for it over at Millionaire Mommy’s Carnival of Personal Finance Contest. It begs the question “have you used your real eyes before?”
Raymond presents Life Comes At You Fast – Be Organized and Financially Prepared posted at Money Blue Book. Raymond shows us that being organized and financially prepared could really help in a situation where a family member’s health turns for the worst.
Scary Shopping Trips
JvW presents Shopping Extravaganza posted at The Good Life on a Budget. Group shopping can be pretty dangerous and you can end up with things you don’t really want. JvW shows us how she planned for a group outing.
freefrombroke presents EMOTIONS GOT THE BEST OF US AT THE PICTURE PEOPLE posted at Free From Broke. Marketing people really sell us a lot of things by playing on our emotions. This story shows us a prime example of this manipulation.
A Ferocious Fire
FIRE Finance presents Wild Fire Disaster! posted at FIRE Finance. I have survived a rather large hurricane and quite a few floods, but I think I am still most afraid of fires. FIRE Finance writes about the on going disaster in Southern California.
Repulsive Jobs and the Wonders of Unemployment
FMF presents Get Rich by Doing Something No One Else Wants to Do posted at Free Money Finance. My hubby’s ex-coworker went mountain biking with a sewer cleaner, and that’s when I first found out that they made so much money. We pay money to take care of tasks we find disgusting to do, and those with the guts to do these dirty jobs really really deserve the money.
Lynnae presents The Benefits of Unemployment posted at beingfrugal.net. Losing your job can be a traumatic experience, but Lynnae seems to see the good parts of being unemployed.
Hideous Health Insurance:
paidtwice presents The Ominous HR Letter posted at I’ve Paid For This Twice Already. I must say paidtwice’s family pays quite a bundle on their health insurance and this post made Brip Blap’s blood boil! Read the article and comments for details.
Ghoulish Greed and Feral Fees:
caw presents How petty greed translates to more fees posted at Money $ Liberty. This is a story of an App-o-rama gone wrong. I guess it could have been a lot worse.
ispf presents Bank “Upgraded” The Account and Started Charging Fees without Authorization! posted at Grad Money Matters. Ispf shows us that we need to check for things that are anomalous on our bank statements. If you’re not careful the sneaky bankers may take your money without your consent!
The Investor’s Journal presents The Temptations of the Stock Market posted at The Investor’s Journal. This blogger reminds us that investing shouldn’t be like gambling, but sometimes it really tempts us to act like gamblers.
Magnificent Miscellaneous Money Stories
cashmoneylife presents What Is Your Magic Number? posted at Cash Money Life. This story made me feel warm and fuzzy. It wasn’t scary, but it was certainly magical.
Pinyo B. presents Why Do You Work So Hard? posted at Moolanomy. A story that has floated around the net. Very sweet though.
Kyle James presents What My Dad Taught Me About Money posted at Rather-Be-Shopping.com Blog. I think I would get along with Kyle’s dad.
Lazy Man presents My experience as a member of CNBC’s Fast Money live audience – Part 1 posted at Lazy Man and Money. I must say, Lazy Man seems to be enjoying his unemployment.
This concludes the 32nd edition of Carnival of Money Stories. Please submit your story next week if it wasn’t included in this edition! Have a safe and delicious Halloween tomorrow everyone!
San Mateo Home Sellers in Trouble #4 — 10/8/2007 to 10/21/2007
October 21st, 2007 — Investing, Life, Mortgage, Real Estate, San Mateo, Saving, Silicon Valley, United States, Value, Wealth
So two weeks ago I started to look at San Mateo real estate in decline on Redfin. Today I did another scan of the San Mateo properties that have been listed on Redfin for less than 14 days. I found another 46 properties that have listing prices lower than their last selling prices. There were about 300 to 400 properties in San Mateo County that were listed on Redfin in the last 14 days, so that means 46 properties is a little more than 10% of all the new properties coming up for sale. After I looked through the properties it seems that at least a couple are old listings with new lower prices. Here are some highlights of these listings.
Total Count of San Mateo Home Sellers in Trouble for 10/8/2007 to 10/21/2007: 46
Average Time from Last Sale Date: 1.55 Years
Average Annualized Loss: 13%
Average Size of Home: 1256 Sqft
Average Price Per Square Foot: $522
Biggest Loser: 1 Mandalay Pl #807, South San Francisco with an annualized loss of 99.7%
These properties are once again a mix of luxury homes, bank owned foreclosed properties, and other unfortunate homes. The averages definitely looks worse than the report two weeks ago. Basically, the losses are bigger and the homes are bigger. However, the first set of data had a larger sample size so it’s unfair to do a direct comparison. I have started a new page on this site to keep track of the data I have collected. Since the tables are quite big and break the flow of this blog I decided to put them in separate web pages. Feel free to link to the summary page!
