Time is right for planting fruit trees
“September and October are probably the best months to plant citrus and deciduous fruit trees…”Read more
Greenspan Slams Ratings Agencies
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan sharply criticized ratings agencies for their role in the current credit crisis. ” People believed they knew what they were doing,” he said, ” And they don’t.” One of those companies that didn’t know what they were doing was Moody’s which holds a 40% share of the world’s credit ratings market. Moody’s also owns Economy.com which has been very bearish on home prices for years. I guess Moody’s dismissed it’s own Economy.com forecasts.Read more
Interview With Robert Shiller
Interview With Robert ShillerRead more
Blogging for fun
One of the serendipitous things about blogging is that I’ve become friends with some of my fellow Phoenix area real estate bloggers. Jonathan Dalton of Dalton’s Arizona Homes mentioned in his blog last week that he has season tickets to ASU football. Well, so do I! Liz couldn’t go to the game last night, so it was great fun during half time to go chat with Jonathan and meet his mother. By the way, ASU football games are very family friendly. There is no alcohol, no fights and few drunks so you see tons of kids and families at the games. Compare that to an Arizona Cardinals football game! ASU…Read more
Can you time the real estate market?
In May of 2004, Dean Baker, an economist in Washington who had been warning about excesses in the housing market, sold his two-bedroom condo after concluding that the market had lost its moorings from reality. Had he waited until May 2006 when home prices in the Washington area peaked, his home would likely have appreciated by roughly 38 percent from its 2004 value So Mr. Baker was right about the housing market. Or was he? His condo may have increased 38% in value after he sold it. It’s very unlikely, in my mind, that the price of that condo will ever decline to the 2004 level. Ah, the perils of…Read more
Arizona vacation homes cheaper for Canadians and British
Buying U.S. real estate (your Arizona vacation home) can act like an exchange rate hedge and a portfolio diversification strategy for many Canadians and English. The crazy low U.S. dollar opens up new opportunities for Canadians and British who would like a place in the sun. An Arizona home could be more expensive for our friends from Canada and England next year, if the U.S. dollar rebounds against their currencies. British Airways has daily direct non-stop flights between Heathrow and Sky Harbor and we have excellent connections, of course, with Canada. A sunny, golf get-away, winter home is closer than you may think. No better time to buy in sunbelt…Read more
Past U.S. home price corrections
The chart below is taken from GlobalInsight’s House Prices in America Qtr2 2007. NOTES: Price corrections are defined as declines of at least 10 percent over a period of at least 8 quarters. Seventy-nine price corrections are observed over the past 22-year period and are ranked by starting date. The median, or typical, price correction is 17 percent. The median, or typical, degree of overvaluation prior to a correction is 33 percent. The median, or typical, duration of a correction is 18 quarters. The more severe the overvaluation, the greater the subsequent declines tended to be: correlation = +0.25 The more severe the overvaluation, the shorter the duration tended to…Read more
Economistorama
Elliot Pollack: ” The economy is no longer running on eight cylinders but on three or four cylinders,” he said. ” So the economy will still be driving forward, but . . . it will be a sub-prime year.”Read more
Which of these two leave you with a better impression of the home?
1) Long single page – CLICK HERE 2) Mini-website – CLICK HERE Which gave you a better impression of the home? The long single page The mini-website Thanks for taking the time to help me! John [Bumped] ADDED: Everyone, thanks for voting! I appreciate it. It used to be conventional wisdom that website visitors don’t like to scroll down. The internet is different now. Many people have high speed internet access and mouse wheels that make scrolling easy. In this sample at least, people preferred scrolling down one long web page to jumping around a mini-website. The preference was not very great but the long single page ad wins!…Read more
Phoenix Symphony – Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1
If you like classical music, go to this concert. There is one more performance on Saturday night. Get tickets if you can on the “piano side” so you can see the pianists hands. If you were standing on the stage looking at the audience, the piano side would be the right-hand side. My wife Liz loves classical music and we’ve gone to the Phoenix Symphony for years. Sitting in Symphony Hall I’ve slowly discovered that musically I’m a Russian. I love Rachmaninov, Shostakovich (delightfully depressing) and Tchaikovsky. Seeing a live performance of the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat minor, Opus 23 is spectacular. The rest…Read more