Entries Tagged 'Wealth' ↓

Well, it’s been two weeks since my last update on the homes selling for less than their last sales price in San Mateo County. So today is the time for another update.

I found another 50 properties that have listing prices lower than their last selling prices. There were a little more than 400 properties in San Mateo County that were listed on Redfin in the last 14 days, so that means 50 properties is once again about 10% of new properties coming up for sale. Here are some highlights of these listings.

Total Count of San Mateo Home Sellers in Trouble for 10/22/2007 to 11/04/2007: 50

Average Time from Last Sale Date: 1.76 Years

Average Annualized Loss: 14%

Average Size of Home: 1382 Sqft

Average Price Per Square Foot: $483

Biggest Loser: 375 Keith, Pacifica with an annualized loss of 98.4%

Most of the homes in trouble were in Daly City and East Palo Alto, but some were also found in Menlo Park and Redwood City. In fact, the most expensive home on the list is 101 Laurel St, and the least expensive is 1154 Carlton St, and both of these are in Menlo Park.

I am glad to see that it seems like the homes getting discounted are of larger sizes than previous reports. Also, I did a scan of the homes in my last data collection and it seems like none of them have sold. A couple listings were withdrawn but for the most part all of the listings are still active on Redfin. A couples of the listings also went through more price reductions in the last two weeks. The most drastic of these reductions was on 1363 Windermere in Menlo Park. On 10/21/07 the list price was 649,000, but now it lists as 499,000. I haven’t seen any properties that really caught my eye yet, but some of these properties could be a good deal for people who are good at fixing up homes. So once again, the raw data is available on the statistics page for this series. Enjoy, and keep in mind that I don’t have every single distressed San Mateo property listed here. I only grab what I see from Redfin, and that is by no means an exhaustive source. I am sure if you dug deeper you can find cheaper homes in San Mateo.

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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.

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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!

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Today I was reading an article about America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs and once again it made me think about starting my own business.

When I think about it, I already have a lot of things that could help me in a business venture. Here’s a list:

• I am young and I could afford to take a bit of risk.
• I have quite a bit of experience working at startups.
• I have a degree in engineering and I am fairly capable with web technologies.
• I am fluent in Chinese and English and could possibly source products and services from China.
• My parents are financial professionals and could help me with the accounting
• I have a good network of contacts in the Silicon Valley through jobs and school.
• I have a hubby that is usually pretty supportive

Then there are the hurdles I need to overcome to actually go ahead and start something:

• I need an idea for a business that could be profitable
• I need to get over the fact that I would probably not make money right away.
• Eventually I need to give up my job and work on my business full time.
• I need to get over my fear of failure since most small businesses fail and I absolutely abhor losing or failing at anything .
• I need to get off my butt and execute my idea once I have one.

I think the biggest hurdles for me are that I may fail and I may lose a stable income while I focus my energy on my own business. Coming up with a business idea isn’t very hard because I firmly understand that I just have to sell a product or service that people want and it really doesn’t have to be a complex “web 2.0″ idea. The business could be as simple as buying useless cheap crap from China and selling it to people here at a markup. In fact, a lot of people and companies make billions of dollars doing this. My business doesn’t have to be huge and glamorous so coming up with an idea is easy. I have dabbled in quite a few “businesses” where I sold very mundane things and I did make small buckets of money. However, I always quit because they became too time consuming and my full time job paid much better. Running a business takes a lot of work and most of the time it is easier just collecting a stable salary. I think my mom also said that she always wants her own business, but after calculating everything she found that collecting a salary is just less of a hassle.

It is hard to convert from a wage-slave to a capitalist, and I think for me that is the hardest part about starting a business. If I did get really serious about having my own business I think I could do very well. The problem is that I may never get started.

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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!

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