Blanco Libre

...when you put your headphones on in the morning and there's an isolated coldness felt at the very top of your head.

Words can't describe the feeling, but here's an attempt--it is a mix of discomfort, slight nausea, and bitterness (goddamn it, I just remembered, I'm bald!)

Locally, rents have been going up.  I frequent bubblehead blogs and one thing that's stuck in my mind is that a lot of people who bought investment properties to rent out are faced with rising payments.

Now, I'm pretty crappy at due diligence.  When I've made my mind up about something, I want it now.  Lease agreement?  Skim, sign.  Back at Epinions in the early days, there was a great project that put consumers into different behavioral buckets.  I was the "Impulse Buyer," which was ironic because I wasn't in the target market of my former employer.

I would like to be in the position to buy before I leave my current rental but if I need to find another, I'm going to ask a lot of questions about the purchase circumstances.  This is relevant to those who, like me, prefer to avoid renting in big complexes.  The big ones like to bring people in then jack up rents after the lease term.  There's potential with the individual landlords too, but I've known those relationships to be more easygoing and familiar, and the more they know me, the harder it is for them to raise rents on such a nice guy. :)

My newfound interest is rooted in the fact that there are more speculators out there than I imagined, and there is a chance that I would rent from one.  There's resources like Zillow that let you easily see when a person has bought the home, and if they bought recently, I might think twice about renting from them.  If they are subject to rising mortgage payments because of adjusting ARMs, I don't want to subsidize their overstretched financial situation.

Visa just partnered with Parker Bros. to create a Monopoly version that uses plastic to pay for properties.

This coincides with reports of people choosing to cover their rising adjustable-rate mortgage payments with credit cards.  How deliciously apropos.

Yesterday I met someone for the first time.  She had eye shadow over one eye, but obviously got distracted and forgot to put it above the other eye before she came to work.

I didn't point it out to her, figuring she'd see herself in the mirror at some point.

My favorite drink is a Ketel One martini, very dry, straight up, with two blue-cheese-stuffed olives.

(I don't know what the middle stuff means).

My other favorite is a cold pint of Guinness.

Can a Market be neither a Buyer's Market nor a Seller's Market?

I think this is the case with the current real estate market. Michael Shedlock calls this a procrastinator's market, and I tend to agree.

I beat back any impulse to consider home ownership for a long, long time, because my parents' dream wasn't my own.  They spent absurd amounts of time maintaining the family home.  At least it seemed absurd to a grumpy adolescent who wanted to do other stuff but had to get that lawn edge perfectly trimmed, lest have to re-do it.  In retrospect, my parents did work hard and realized their dream and I am very proud of them.

The consequences of being co-opted into a dream that wasn't mine is that I am only now, well into my 30s, becoming enthusiastic about owning my own home.  (I can hear you saying it--"stop blaming your parents."  I'm not playing the blame game!  I do kinda blame myself for not finding my own definition and focusing on home ownership earlier, but life is good, no regrets).

The 1,000 cuts of peer conversations about equity, friends having children and wanting to raise them in a place they own, have contributed to this, I admit.  But having moved an average of once every 1.5 years in the last 10 years is taking its toll.

I managed to eliminate credit card debt, round up a decent down payment, and probably look great to a lender.  No problem, right?  Just jump in, because everyone around you says you should never wait to buy what you can afford.

It's been three months since I started looking into home ownership, and I discovered that I'm still a housing bear, but for a different reason.  I learned that I'm a dinosaur, with my 30-year-fixed mentality.  A combination of low interest rates and creative loan packages have allowed people to stretch themselves further than ever, and as a result, prices have risen considerably.  I'm competing with people willing to put themselves deep into debt who likely earn less than I do.  Criminy, and I just got myself out of  this kind of debt I piled on to get myself through the dotcom downturn.

One of my biggest problems is that I insist to own in Mountain View, in the shadow of Google's headquarters.   This is where my friends are.  There is less supply here for sure--there's no room to build new housing, and the land is already very expensive.  But for every Googler with money to hop into the market, there's probably another who's ready to upgrade to a better house, so they're contributing to the supply as well as the demand.

Supply is increasing from what I can tell:

  http://www.movoto.com/real-estate/homes-for-sale/mountain-view.html

I'm noting the increase in situations with properties in complexes like 181 Centre St., where one seller just slipped in with a bigger place, another 1/2 bathroom, and 100 more sq. ft. for $50,000 less.  Good sign.

I wonder to myself--are we in this strange stand-off where sellers are still asking too much, and buyers are waiting on the sidelines because they are seeing more selection at lowering prices?

(to be continued)

I liked the Star Wars 3d vector-based game a lot. The maneuvering was restrictive, but it felt free and exhilarating. "Use the force, Luke."

I know it's not an arcade game per se. but Battlefield 2 is so great I burnt out on it.

People's History of the United States. My favorite bathroom reader.

I've engaged the services of a physical trainer recently, wanting to pay off the debt I've accumulated around the waistline by paying down the principal.

I commented on the various exercises he was having me do that aimed to improve certain back muscles and elsewhere.  He said that when I'm standing up and my arms are hanging at my sides, my thumbs point at each other and my shoulders are more forward than they should be.  He said that this is typical of his clients who work in the Internet, like me, on computers.  A good posture has the shoulders more back and the thumbs pointing forward.  He called my suboptimal condition "Upper Crossed Syndrome."

With the music and the ambient noise, the first time he said that, I heard "Upper Crust Syndrome" and LOL'd.

Having traveled to Ireland and England this spring, I find myself getting very wrapped up in this year's World Cup.  I found this and forwarded to an Irish friend, and he said the whole country had football mania in 1990, as seen in this vid.  He talked about his excessive drinking as an Irish lad, and I noted that he was about 14 at the time...