First house for a young man - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: blueskull
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 03:28:22 am
content: Hi all. This thread is to ask opinions about buying my first house.As I'm progressing in my degree program, I'm about to graduate, and I'm expected to stay as a postdoc for at least 2 years. Depending on future situation, I may stay as a faculty, or I may leave and find a real job.I plan to buy a house, for both investigation and to reduce cost of living. As someone might have heard, economy bubble is collapsing in China, and my parents' want me to buy a house in US as a safe deposit in case Chinese currency collapses. In the meantime, here (RDU metropolitan), real estate's value gains about 10% each year, while tax is only 1.03% (Raleigh city+Wake county), besides evaluated taxable value of houses is overall lower than their real market value.So, long story short, I have $260k on hand (my parents sold one of their apartments used for renting, and I sold my 2 small houses for renting, both in China), and my parents can get me another $10k~$20k if REALLY needed. I plan to buy a small townhouse in Raleigh/Cary, NC with this money.My questions:1. Should I spend all the money (read: ALL) on a house that leaves me no money at all (maybe a few k$ in checking account, but that's it), or should I buy a cheaper house and spare some money in case of emergency? Right now I have 2 choices: a $270k house, including all costs, and a $220k house, including all costs, both townhouses, both are of similar 1700 sqft construction area, both have 1 garage+2 front door parking, the more expensive one has 3 bedrooms (so the rest 2 rooms can generate renting revenue) and is built in 2012, while the older one is a 2006 house with 2 giant bedrooms (despite giant, a single bedroom is worth the same from a tenant's eye).2. I can generate ~$500 per month revenue per bedroom, and that means each year, I can make $12k from the $270k house, and $6k from the $220k house. Factoring in that, which one is my best choice?3. Should I buy a house from the first place? I do NOT have a green card or H1B. I'm on F1 visa, but I'm sure if working in university, I have 100% chance to get H1B if my OPT runs out. In the meantime, I have confidence to get 100 paper citations (which qualifies me EB1 NIW green card program).Inputs are very appreciated, as I'm about to pull the trigger very soon.

author: Scrts
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 03:39:36 am
content: I've purchased my 1st house like 8 months ago and I don't regret going for cheaper option. It was a 3 bedroom house, which I've modified myself to be 4 bedroom now. Did some other stuff to raise the value and when I think about it: do I need lots of space and a big house? Nope. The more space you have - the more garbage you put around yourself. And you have to clean it. In addition to that, you have to heat additional space that you don't even spend 5% of your time per day. Go for bigger when you will have kids.On the other hand: what if US crisis will repeat? Your losses with that more expensive house will be worse.

author: HackedFridgeMagnet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 04:05:43 am
content: My 20cBuying a house is such a big financial decision, don't rush into it.Look for a house that is going to suit you for at least the next 5 years, because if you sell before then you have probably wasted money.Spend some time looking and you may get a bargain.Apparently low ball offers do occasionally work too.In the meantime you could try to align your savings with the housing market using some sort of Share based property portfolio. This way if the property market rises fast, then your savings should rise fast too.Doing this could take the pressure off trying to buy the house without proper diligence.Buying a house in a rush is a sure way to pay more than you need too.One other thing, don't assume you know which way a market is going, if it's any sort of decent competitive market then most of the pricing signals have already been factored in.good luck.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 04:16:31 am
content: Keep in mind that the costs of owning a house do not stop after you have bought it. Unless you are buying a brand new house there will be routine and not-so-routine maintenance costs that crop up. Such costs can occur anywhere from yard work, painting, fences, plumbing, roof, garage doors, appliances, termites, all sorts of things. Everything you expect the landlord to take care of when you are renting, you now become responsible for. Not to mention annual costs like insurance and property taxes.Before buying, get some estimates of typical annual operating costs from homeowners you know or work with, and make sure you will have sufficient income to cover them. Owning a house when you do not have a full time job can be a recipe for poverty.

author: Towger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 05:26:26 am
content: Here:More bedrooms = higher rent = higher value = easer to resell. 2 bed houses are also not as suitable for a family... Unless the large rooms can be properly divided, meeting all building codes etc.Houses are going up on average €2k a month here, after a recession. About 11% a year. People who did not buy during the recession are now being screwed, as rents are rising faster and have just surpassed boom highs.There are very few new houses being built, the remaining builders are all building office blocks, less messing and more profit. Current count on way to work is 16 large cranes. All these offices have been pre bought off the plans by companies leaving London due to Brexit. So they can't lose!Edit: Just heard to the radio is that houses in Dublin are going up 4k a month.

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 06:13:36 am
content: Be prepared to only rent for 9 months of the year. There are always a lot of summer vacancies in college town rentals.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 06:52:58 am
content: Keep in mind that costs of living go up every year, so whatever your monthly costs will be, ensure you have plenty of leg room. Taxes are going to be the biggest expense other than the mortgage. Mortgage is about the only thing that won't go up every year, but it's a good idea to pay more on it than you have to as more than half of your payment is interest.Long term it does make more sense to own than to buy, not only financially but simply because you have an actual place to really call home that is yours.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 08:39:00 am
content: Quote from: HackedFridgeMagnet on July 03, 2017, 04:05:43 amI'd 2nd that.If the market is so hot that it's next to impossible to find a bargain, then walk away.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 08:45:14 am
content: Isn't the Chinese government limiting export of Yuan to $50k per person or some such?I heard they are trying to stem the rush of currency out of the country.http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/markets/chinese-credit-controls-put-clamp-on-property/news-story/9d40204d395a41759e6d29a5262cafcehttps://www.businessinsider.com.au/there-are-more-reports-chinese-buyers-are-having-problems-settling-on-their-australian-properties-2017-5https://www.businessinsider.com.au/cba-tighter-fx-controls-in-china-should-slow-but-not-stop-capital-outflows-from-the-country-2017-1

author: Towger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 09:22:05 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on July 03, 2017, 09:01:13 amI wonder how much of a kibosh that will put on the Australian housing market?

author: Gary350z
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 11:00:55 am
content: My dad is quite the expert on this. He has many houses. Here is one thing he has said.Your facts: house cost = $260k, real estate value gains about 10% each year.You say you want to pay cash for the house.Option 1: pay cash in full for house.Return on investment = (10% x $260k)/$260k = 10% per year.Option 2: get a loan, and put down a 20% ($52k) down payment.Return on investment = (10% x $260k)/$52k = 50% per year.This is called leverage. My dad says buy the house with the smallest down payment you can. These are rough numbers, not including many things, but you can see the difference. It all depends on what you want. I am definitely not an expert on this, I am just passing along a little information. Good luck.P.S. I have read many of your post.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 11:03:26 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 03, 2017, 08:45:14 amThey try. They don't really succeed. There are so many ways around such a restriction.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 11:48:19 am
content: Quote from: Gary350z on July 03, 2017, 11:00:55 amUnless it doesn't.The last two Sydney housing booms had a 5+ year flat period afterwards.We've just had the biggest boom in history, and many indications are that the boom is over.Also, can and do lose money on homes. If you overpay and then are forced to sell you can loose big time.Some suburbs in Sydney drop 30-50% after a boom, usually the exclusive ones with designer home were people overpayed for huge expensive houses on small blocks of land.We have an entire generation of new housing investors who have not seen realestate prices stagnate or go down, or interest rates go up, they will be in for a big shock.

author: kasone
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 12:25:28 pm
content: I have lived in a paid for house for about 30 years and would not want to have a monthly payment. I was even laid off from my job for 30 days in a re-organization and not having to worry about house payments relieved a lot of stress.If you spend all of your available on a house, you will not have any money to repair the inevitable problems that will come up.If you want financial advice, check out daveramsey.com. He has some great advice on money and has a proven concept that has helped a lot of people.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 12:36:17 pm
content: Quote from: kasone on July 03, 2017, 12:25:28 pmA relaxed and stable life has a lot more to do with low outgoings, than a high income. Low outgoings are much easier to replace.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 12:58:38 pm
content: The housing market varies from continent to continent, country to country, town to town and time and luck. It requires local knowledge to tell you whether a deal is good or not.Right now, I pay about 0.2% of the value of my flat as my monthly rent. Meanwhile the interest rate is some 2-3% yearly. It makes no financial sense to purchase it.I know the market in another country few years ago. There the monthly rent is higher percentage, but the interest rate was insanely high. Everyone bought a house. The renting market was less than 3% of the total. Everyone got the rent nominated in Swiss franks, because the rent was cheaper. Some 10 years ago. Before 2008. Now they feel stupid. It required government intervention to avoid complete collapse of the market.One thing for sure, I would never buy a house 100% cash. Money can be used better way than a piece of dirt and some bricks.And there is the thing: It is very stupid thing to buy a house before your life makes a mayor change. And before means 5 years. And change I mean kids in or out, marrige, retirement, work, going expat (AKA immigrate).

author: WastelandTek
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 01:36:37 pm
content: not even joking

author: tronde
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 04:39:08 pm
content: Quote from: WastelandTek on July 03, 2017, 01:36:37 pmI think we must consider one most important thing "bluescull" said:I plan to buy a house, for both investigation and to reduce cost of living. As someone might have heard, economy bubble is collapsing in China,and my parents' want me to buy a house in US as a safe deposit in case Chinese currency collapses.This is not only about to find a place to sleep.

author: WastelandTek
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 04:56:48 pm
content: A "young man" should not be totally tied down to his parents wishes. Have them buy a managed rental, or invest in a REIT, gold or Bitcoin. Get out there and climb some hills, meet some girls, swim in the ocean.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 05:07:03 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on July 03, 2017, 04:16:31 amI agree! Also get the house checked from top to bottom to look for problems with rot and other potential money pits. To be honest: I wouldn't buy a typical US wooden frame house at all (except in earthquake areas)! Also check for things like quality of the sinks, taps, door handles, etc. That way you can see the current owners take care of their home or patch things up.BTW another option is to have a house build so everything is new.

author: vodka
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 05:57:21 pm
content: Quote from: tronde on July 03, 2017, 04:39:08 pmBut a house of the 158 meters per square for only man, that is a bestiality in cost and maintenance. Now, i don't know that kind the lab would want him , but i think that for living an one person(eat,sleep) with 40 or 50 meter per square is sufficient and more cheapest.Now about the rooms rent , i see a risk too elevate. You never don't know that sort of tenant find you, he or she might be a sons of bitches or adorable peoples .http://www.lavanguardia.com/local/maresme/20170607/423229153751/calella-aurora-rodriguez-inquilinos-amenazas.html.On the other hand, if you have tenants have more probailities that by accident of the tenant his home burns . The tenant will lose 500 bucks but you will lose all and if the insurance pays you will have many luck.

author: vodka
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 06:20:19 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 03, 2017, 05:07:03 pmAnd how do you see the defects on the house, if it is hidden? For seeing you will have to break the wall or the floor. Furthermore, there is an other question. Whom does the inspection hole if there aren't defect? The buyer or the seller?

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 06:43:15 pm
content: Quote from: vodka on July 03, 2017, 06:20:19 pmAn expert can see the tell-tale signs of previous leakages and you should be able to get into the crawl spaces for an inspection. A good thermal imaging camera is a very useful tool.Look what Google came up with:https://www.homegauge.com/buyerseller/samples.html

author: PartialDischarge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 06:50:05 pm
content: If I were you I'd wait. Maintaining purchasing power of money is not easy anywhere today. You are betting on a house which is ok, but the future is very uncertain nowadays . For example you mentioned that you can 100% get a H1B visa. I'd seriously question that figure, not because of your skills, but because under the current administration that may not be the case in the near future.

author: vodka
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 08:15:54 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 03, 2017, 06:43:15 pmI see many TV programs of the reforms of houses, particulary of the USA & Canada. I can confirm that i see amazing things: Beams floatings ,without support stand a full floor without collaping,illegal stairs without accomplishing with the laws of the local council, plugs with anti-reglamentary height,etc. All this that i told, to the fooly owners have had that put more money for resolving it and they contracted to inspectors for inspectioning their homes but they didn't find nothing.If i contract an inspector is by he informs me from the things that i can't see. Because a broken binge or a slice on a door ,it is small change, instead a rot beam , i may represent the live or the death, that i spend a fortune that might bring to bankrupt.

author: gildasd
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 08:45:09 pm
content: Don't get house poor.Never spend everything without leaving a buffer, because shit will happen (just had the bathroom hotwater go kaboom)If you have to get a mortgage, you should put 20% down, otherwise you will have to pay PMI on top of your monthly mortgage payment.As for how much, go to a credit union that still has a real human (not a droid who who only cares about your credit rating) and ask (with your 20% down) how much you can borrow with 10 and 15 years with a payment of no more than 1/3 of your take home pay.This should give you a good bracket of what you should be looking for in a first home.Try no to fall in love or get home fever, rent the cheapest thing you can get in the area you are looking, to give yourself time and space to buy the right thing.I'm telling you this because I made the mistake of rushing my 1st home buy, just to sell it after 3 years with all the expenses that implies.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 09:26:41 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 03, 2017, 11:48:19 amYou could not be more correct!You only need to look at most of these new suburbs in West and South-Western Sydney... Spring Farm, Oran Park, Gregory Hills, Jordan Springs... all come to mind.

author: SKHILLBILLYSlures
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 09:29:55 pm
content: Quote from: WastelandTek on July 03, 2017, 01:36:37 pmI l've thought about buying a house for myself but have considered how cool it would to take my stuff with me where I went though work whilst traveling is the most confusing part. unless I went back to welding. how is it in one of those does anyone know? like how worth it is it?

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 09:44:15 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on July 03, 2017, 04:33:08 amWhat does that mean? Are the houses freehold (you own the land & house) or leasehold (you just own the house)? Normally those sorts of annual fees are for leasehold but things may be different in your jurisdiction.My advice is only buy freehold, avoid leasing like the plague, then you have no landlord to pay and you own the land for eternity. Leases don't last forever but for a limited term, which can cause the value of the property to fall, especially towards the end.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 10:03:25 pm
content: The US can be a great place- and it welcome immigrants- so, IF youreallythink the US is where you want to LIVE, and maybe start a family, not just work then BY ALL MEANS, do everything you can to stay here.Especially I would be very careful about getting into debt until you know for certain you can stay.Bubbles bursting are not such a hypothetical situation. I also would not buy a townhouse (avoid "houses" with common walls shared with other homes. That is an condo apartment, not a house) or in a neighborhood ruled over by a "homeowners association". Ive heard a great many horror stories about them. Also, the quality and integrity (or lack of it) of local government varies a lot from town to town.When the time comes to buy, try to buy in a neighborhood where people you already know and like live. US neighborhoods vary a lot. Also, I think small homes are far better investments now than large ones.The price of energy (natural gas) in the US might be about to go up a lot. Figure that cost into your home maintenance costs.Also, I would think long and hard before buying a house if you are not certain you'll have permission to stay in the US.If a bubble bursts, after you buy, you could end up with an underwater asset, on the hook for a lot of money.Frankly, to me it would seem irresponsible to buy a house if you're not sure if you can stay.Houses should be looked at as something other than simply an investment. The issue of ghost houses which have been bought by distant investors as a place to flee to in the case of collapse or insurrections where they live, is a sore spot in communities where many longtime residents have been displaced by the insane rising cost of housing.I would expect houses bought and left empty in such a manner to be heavily taxed in the future.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 10:16:48 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on July 03, 2017, 10:03:25 pmI strongly agree. Home owners associations must be avoided like the plague! They are usually run by incompetent people or people who let their business friends do the work. Even worse: many of the homes falling under the HOA could be owned by a large company which has a 51% vote over what is going to be done and which company (their subsidiary company!) is going to do the work. Oh and let's not forget about increases in service fees.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 10:19:47 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on July 03, 2017, 10:17:15 pmThen put the money in an investment fund with a good spread of risks and rent a home. With HOA you will be worse off then renting. HOA is what we would call 'a trap for young players'.

author: edavid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 10:43:52 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on July 03, 2017, 03:28:22 amI sure would not feel comfortable with that. I think in your situation you should have at least 6 months living expenses on hand, plus an emergency house repair fund.Quote from: nctnico on July 03, 2017, 10:19:47 pmMaybe that's true in NL, but in the US, an HOA full of picky people can be a very good thing for protecting the value of your property.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 11:35:57 pm
content: Oh, and especially, avoid mobile homes like the plague. Avoid any kind of home where you dont own any key part of it. There is an important psychological difference between townhouses and neighborhoods. Townhouses, the owners are usually away, you never see people outside, living in their homes. neighborhoods, people are outside a lot, people know each other, kids can feel safe in other peoples yards and houses. You can leave stuff you're using outside and know its unlikely to be stolen, ever. (for example, right now I have my e-field antenna stuck to a camera tripod so I can figure out the best spot, moving it around. I could never do that in a townhouse neighborhood. Also, although some people here hire gardeners, it would bug me to be forced to pay for one. Thats alotconsidering that several months of the year you likely don't needanygardening at all.I would consider a well built and maintained slightly older wood home that was built in the era when homes did not consist of so much plastic.Some kinds of homes are just really nice to live in. Others, no.My friend has atwo story townhouse that was in the Bay Area and cheap. I would make an exception for that. A $200k "townhouse" in the Bay Area (around what she paid around 15 yrs ago=reallygood deal.) I suspect even now, in NC, not really that much. Again unless you already know people you like there.Try to get out and check out open houses to get a feel for what exists and what it costs. And again, dont think of it as an investment, think of it as your potential home for a long time. Then you'll make the best decisions. Also, look for area that have a diverse community - they often are the best in terms of value and investment too. Communities near colleges tend to be better places to live too. Also look at public transportation. If you drive a lot, sometimes you may want to take the bus when its convenient instead of driving. The further you get from the/an urban center the nicer it is to have a regular bus going in.Some (big) cities you absolutely donotwant to drive into. I can be in midtown of one of those cities in a bit more than half an hour from where I live without driving and its great.Again this varies a lot from town to town. Light rail or train connections are better than bus connections (easier to read or get work done, more predictable, as no traffic) and having a choice between both is the best.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 11:45:49 pm
content: Will 2008 "US crisis" repeat?IMHO, you can almost bet on itif this passes.

author: jpanhalt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 11:46:29 pm
content: Quote from: edavid on July 03, 2017, 10:43:52 pmPicky people "protecting property value" is the opposite of what I have seen. In particular, a few years ago, I was looking for a new home. I was shown a nice home in an HOA, so I asked for a copy of the covenants. The realtor was a little reluctant, but knew she had to provide them. In brief, the developer effectively retained control, but neither lived in the the HOA nor actually owned a developed property in the HOA. Home value decreased substantially in my opinion upon reading the contract. Goodbye! Realtor countered with the "fact" that the developer was thinking of dissolving the HOA. Right. End result, I bought a property "fee simple" and have not regretted it for a second. More than a year later, HOA home still had not sold.1) If you are considering purchasing in an HOA, read over the covenants very carefully and then get a more experienced person to read them too.2) HOA's primarily serve the interests of the developer.3) I can't imagine a situation in which I would buy anewhome in a restrictive HOA administered by the developer. Not all HOA's are so restrictive, except for conditions such as square footage and outbuildings. Even residential building codes will include such restrictions.4) Rather than own in an HOA, I would seriously consider leasing a home.The above comments also apply to a condominium but even more so. Of course, there are markets (e.g., NYC) where the only choice might be a condo, but I do not think Raleigh/Durham is truly such a market yet.John

author: edavid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 03, 2017, 11:54:22 pm
content: Quote from: jpanhalt on July 03, 2017, 11:46:29 pmNot in the common case where the developer is completely out of the picture.What if OP's hypothetical large, angry neighbor does something obnoxious like parking a junk car on the front lawn? Wouldn't OP prefer to dump the problem on the HOA?

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 12:09:17 am
content: >>Quote from: vodka onTodayat 12:20:19>Quote from: nctnico onTodayat 11:07:03>Quote from: IanB onYesterdayat 22:16:31>Keep in mind that the costs of owning a house do not stop after you have bought it. Unless you are buying a brand new house there will be routine and not-so-routine maintenance costs that crop up. Such costs can occur anywhere from yard work, painting, fences, plumbing, roof, garage doors, appliances, termites, all sorts of things. Everything you expect the landlord to take care of when you are renting, you now become responsible for. Not to mention annual costs like insurance and property taxes.Before buying, get some estimates of typical annual operating costs from homeowners you know or work with, and make sure you will have sufficient income to cover them. Owning a house when you do not have a full time job can be a recipe for poverty.>>I agree! Also get the house checked from top to bottom to look for problems with rot and other potential money pits. To be honest: I wouldn't buy a typical US wooden frame house at all (except in earthquake areas)! Also check for things like quality of the sinks, taps, door handles, etc. That way you can see the current owners take care of their home or patch things up.>>BTW another option is to have a house build so everything is new.>>And how do you see the defects on the house, if it is hidden? For seeing you will have to break the wall or the floor. Furthermore, there is an other question. Whom does the inspection hole if there aren't defect? The buyer or the seller?Check out inspectapedia.com lots of info on possible risks in homes. Also, if you have a lot of money, sometimes people buy a house for the lot and remplace it completely. Just if you do that, build a house that fits in, DONT build a ugly, box shaped house thats oversized for the lot or you'll alienate your new neighbors. Also, dont build a house and take more than a few months, dont spend a year building a me too, box like ugly house. (pet peeve of my own and many others)Quote from: blueskull onTodayat 16:17:15>Quote from: cdev onTodayat 16:03:25>I would not buy a townhouse or in a neighborhood ruled over by a "homeowenrs association". Ive heard a great many horror stories about them. Also, the quality and integrity (or lack of it) of local government varies a lot from town to town.A real house here would be 300k+, still with HOA. Unless you build a house in a remote place,or buy a house built decades ago, you simply don't have non HOA managed houses, let along townhouses.Buy a home built decades ago, by all means! especially a nice, well built one thats underpriced because people dont recognize quality.Quote from: blueskull onTodayat 16:17:15>My primary goal is to get a house that doesn't need much of my attention, rather than a house I need to work on it every quarter, if not month.Then get a townhouse but dont expect it to give you what a house would give you, as it isnt quite the same. In particular, you dont get to participate in the all important ZONING BATTLES in your community because your entire HOA development is seen, legally by the local zoning board as one person for purposes of record, as one lot. and the HOA is the only entity that receives notice. This means that some company could build some nightmare toxic facility right next to you and unless you scanned the local newspapers of record every week (good thing for any homeowners to do) you would never know until it was too late. Poof, there goes your investment and peace of mind.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 12:31:48 am
content: How many postdocs end up with full time jobs in their chosen field? (science) ? Is there still a big problem with perpetual postdocs?See, if we want a society thats going to have jobs for all these scientists and especially, people with humanities degrees, we're going to have to change course totally. Because the future they are building us is one which doesnt value learning much and ideally, in their eyes, doesn't "need" practically anybody.narcissists (what we have in charge now) hate needing others to the extent that they will go way out of their way to sabotage the lives of anybody they perceive themselves as needing.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 12:45:15 am
content: This is a radio segment from the era of the US housing bubble that everybody should listen to.The Giant Pool of MoneyThis American LifeThis gets one of my top recommendations for online content.Listening to this, people will see that the crash of 2008 was like an inside bank job. they knew in advance that it would crash.This should serve as a warning to everybody.

author: seatrix
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 12:59:42 am
content: Do not invest in fixed assets, the global fixed asset prices will fall in the future

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 01:12:30 am
content: You're assuming here that everybody who exists in your world view can apply to and be accepted to the best public university in the state. But in reality, only a very few are that talented. And its not just because of bad life choices, its because they never had access to the kind of ideas that would have gotten them interested.Society now writes many poor Americans off before they were even born. Its much worse now than when I was growing up. And outside of tech, in so many areas, the entry level jobs are all "internships". Meaning unpaid work. Worse than perpetual postdocs.So public higher education that you count on existing, here, is under attack.What about in a few years when its gone private?Or perhaps I should be asking, what happens in a few years, when the bulk of work is automated, jobs are increasingly scarce for all but the very very brightest, and the Kool-aid of capitalism so many have drunk so deeply of, starts wearing off?Quote from: blueskull onTodayat 18:43:20>An in state student needs only to pay half the tuition and they are allowed to work to make living cost, and I know guys who can support all their living costs on their own labor. That means their family only has to pay $40k for the entire BS degree.But dont people need at least an MS or PhD now to get a good, permanent, stable job in the sciences? (except maybe in engineering)Quote from: blueskull onTodayat 18:43:20Considering average household income in NC is $53k per year, I don't think there is any difficulties for a US student to attend STEM education.Whats happening is the middle is vanishing and the extremes of income are fattening. An M shaped distribution. The trade agreement I'm talking about may also undermine the kinds of jobs you're talking about which grad students depend on. We may even see those jobs getting outsourced, seriously.The problem I can see is the demand of higher quality of living. If you want high living quality (say, driving a Porsche, go to bars every a few days and join frat houses) without having a rich family, then that's your own issue.The middle class families that I'm talking about arent like that at all, NONE of them drive Porsches. More like ten or fifteen year old Toyotas. Most young people I know could never afford to buy a new car.If you are willing to live a poor and minimalistic life for 4 years, then an average US household should be able to fund a kid to go to college every a few years. Considering age difference of siblings is ~3 years, that should not really be an issue.Should be but again, you're making assumptions which just arent realistic. The key to all this would be teachers, but the US is bending over backwards to discourage people from entering the teaching profession.Quote from: cdev onTodayat 18:09:17>Those who think they can go into non-STEM careers and have a stable working life are about to get a big surprise in the form of the aforementioned international services agreement which will offshore a lot, perhaps more than half of those kinds of jobs, especially ones in sectors formerly thought to be safe like quasi-public service/government. Remember all the incredulous posts in the recent Grenfell Towers post about how employees of this dysfunctional local council were still sending emails several days after the twoer burnt causing heavy loss of life wondering why they werent answering phone calls for some kind of language tutoring appointments. Thats a sign that they were outsourcing all those jobs literally to the other side of the planet. Thats coming to the US soon too, and its going to decimate certain kinds of jobs. At that point, home prices will fall, a lot because some communities will be hit so hard people will just stop buying, and tax receipts (how towns fund themselves) will dry up. They will have to raise taxes and that will cause even more problems. What I'm trying to say is the best thing the current Administration and the Democrats too could do would be resign en masses and tear up all trade agreements, NOW.>>That's an American problem, not mine. The rule of the world, boil down to the root, is to make as much money as you can. Bosses tend to screw up their employees if they are not competitive.Blueskull, we want to welcome you, but if you want that from us you have to see our problems here as your own too, because they are. Because if you put down roots here, you will be one of us. Also, the whole world's problems are interrelated.>>Think of Japanese white collars, they work form 9am to way after 5pm, sometimes after 9pm or later. That's why Japan is so innovative, technically developed and yet can still compete China on price in a lot of product categories.Yes, and big parts of Japan are virtually abandoned because the stressed out Japanese have almost stopped having children. The schools, carefully shuttered up for the day the children return, are particularly touching. Something is broken in a society that treats people like this. We're now making it possible for people to do what they want. Soon its going to be possible to have only those who really want to do something and like what they do, work. I put forward that as things get more competitive, it becomes impossible for people who just want to do things for money to ever get to be the best at whatever it is, and if thats what it takes to be hired, its going to leave most people out. But thats okay because not that many will be needed unless we work at making an inclusive society.>>The development of a country is bound to be the deprivation of the workers.Eventually advantages of the western world will be no longer exist, and that's bound to happen as the competitors are rising. Japan, Korea, Singapore, China, and now Vietnam, and I believe Africa is not far away.The alleged advantages of the "western" world came from fairly egalitarian nations many of us here grew up in in the postwar labor scarcity years, brought about by exactly what they're trying to eliminate, public services, delivered to end users below their costs. Public universities, public water systems, public transportation, and highways, and especially public health systems.China is trying to emulate that level of public investment it seems in some area (the richest areas in China?) But China is still way behind. India is far worse off. India it seems now, post Modi, doesnt even try.And in the US, it seems, becoming more like India every day. Massive greed and privatizing everything and rigid caste systems will eliminate the alleged Western Advantage faster than anything else.However, I can see that not to happen to US at least in the next few years, and I am pretty sure I will sell this house in less than 10 years.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 01:14:27 am
content: What would happen in this world if suddenly, we all started caring about one another's countries, and trying to improve the quality of life for each other, as well as ourselves?

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 02:13:12 am
content: Its not a racial thing, poor is the new black. Basically, TPTB's vision of the future isnt an inclusive one because that prevents the race to the bottom they have been fantasizing about and cultivating for decades. they feel entitled to cash in on that race to the bottom, they want to bring it on, they all feel entitled to get in on it.We're all in the way, speed bumps on their road to success.If you want to understand wealthy Americans - a good analysis, old but still holds trueis this one.Quote from: blueskull onTodayat 19:43:15>Quote from: cdev onTodayat 19:12:30Society wrote them off before they were even born.From my personal experience as a teaching assistant, I see a lot of young American students being not very talented while still manage to do great things. I refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.Quote from: cdev onTodayat 19:12:30What's wrong of being an engineer? Not every one must be the leading edge researcher, but on the other hand, it doesn't mean everyone else must be in a shit hole.I meant that engineers are more talented than some theoretical sciences. Or skiled in a way which they still need. But increasingly, they'll be able to get subcontractors for a fraction of what they cost them now.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 02:15:50 am
content: Invent TNT and then endow a dynamite Peace Prize!Quote from: blueskull onTodayat 19:35:27

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 02:31:02 am
content: What I'm trying to explain is that we're in a really unhealthy cycle.----I would be very careful investing now.Try to stay debt free, if you can.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 02:43:49 am
content: When Americans like me talk about America, I think most of us, our loyalty is to a bunch of ideas, and people, more than a place.Listen to that This American Life episode. The world has a real problem right now with speculation. Its like a Ponzi scheme which eventually has to crash.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 03:26:46 am
content: Quote from: edavid on July 03, 2017, 10:43:52 pmYes, that's the story realtor's tell, but the reality is different. Most people are only suckered into an HOA once. When they move they will try very hard never to be in an HOA again. HOA's take away your freedoms and limit what you can do (e.g. prevent you from parking in your driveway, or hanging washing out to dry, or erecting a TV antenna). Restrictive covenants like that can only devalue a property, never increase the value of it.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 03:53:08 am
content: Also stay away fromadjustable rate mortgages.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 04:00:24 am
content: Quote from: cdev on July 04, 2017, 03:53:08 amYeah, they really suck. Every time my friends refinanced to get a lower rate, my rate just went down automatically at no cost. That has been really terrible

author: edavid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 04:12:05 am
content: Quote from: IanB on July 04, 2017, 03:26:46 amWhy would OP want to do any of those things, or want the neighbors to be able to do any of those things? They all make the neighborhood look trashy.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 04:45:59 am
content: Quote from: edavid on July 04, 2017, 04:12:05 amBecause your driveway is your property. Parking a car on it is normal. Everyone does it.Because tumble driers are wasteful of energy and damage clothes. (Every time you remove lint from the lint filter, your clothes got a bit thinner, a bit more threadbare.)Because you might want to watch TV without being forced to pay for cable?When people care more about their neighbors and less about getting on with their own lives, you know you are living in America.

author: WastelandTek
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 05:27:56 am
content: Quote from: edavid on July 04, 2017, 04:12:05 amfound the guy I don't want to be in an HOA with

author: gildasd
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 06:10:08 am
content: Quote from: edavid on July 04, 2017, 04:12:05 amStuff people do even in richest neighbourhoods here.Only elected government does rules, not private liberty sucking HOA.Weird things that are considered trashy...For me, a place where all the houses and yards are uniform reeks of lower income working class just able to comply with the minimas.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 12:25:56 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on July 04, 2017, 03:30:55 amIn the NL it isn't a problem. Technically my home is part of a building with 12 or so (didn't count exactly) other homes but (as usual) there is no HOA. Practically I only have to deal with 2 neighbours. If you stay reasonable everything can be worked out. I also assume each town has zoning rules and rules which say what is acceptable or not (like repairing cars on the street).

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 12:59:48 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on July 03, 2017, 10:26:42 pmSo you want to invest 300K of your own money to save what? Few K a year? What is the ROI of that, 60-80 years?If you rent out a room. IDK about you, but I dont want to live with someone in a subrent, not for a long time anyway.If you want to rent out places, make a limited liability company (so you dont play with your own reserve) and buy a bunch of places and grab as much loan as you can. And buy a house with mortgage. Ask anyone who ever invested in real estate about your plan.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 02:31:00 pm
content: The price question comes down to whether or not we are in another 'bubble'. Sure, prices are going up but they're coming off some pretty ridiculous lows. In many areas, the prices are still 30% or more below the 'frothy' highs.In the days of the real bubble, everybody bought a house with the intent to sell it later for more. But not much later because they had ARM loans with increasing interest rates. As much as the buyers were greedy, the banks were worse!The "greater fool theory" didn't hold up and there were no buyers and the loans were getting more expensive and people just couldn't afford the house. Had they been realistic, they couldn't afford it in the first place. Then the government doubled down and cancelled the taxes on the 'gains' of the short sales. This allowed everybody to just walk away without owing tax on the mortgage amount minus the short sale price. Since there was no penalty, a lot of people walked away.The idea of Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae making risky loans started under Reagan and later spread through the entire banking industry and we all know how that worked out.We are still seeing ARM loans and these simply shouldn't be allowed. Even Greenspan made comments about the risk of these loans.In the end, there's only so much dirt and we're not making any more (except China and Singapore). Owning a piece of it is generally a good thing. For one thing, you build wealth (equity) at a far better rate than you can get on most low risk investments. In '86, I bought a small house for about $80k. In 2003 I sold it for $290k so I made a decent return. In 2006 it was offered back to me for $130k so timing is everything. The point is, I had a place to live for 17 years, no HOA, virtually no maintenance and I made a few bucks out of the deal.So, look at buying the more expensive house but try to make sure prices haven't topped out. I live in California and prices never top out - well, hardly ever.I didn't play with the numbers but would the house be self-supporting if you had to leave the area and selling wasn't an option? It's one thing to take a paper loss, that is, losing theoretical equity but it's quite another to lose real money!

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 03:21:53 pm
content: Incidentally, I just checked on Zillow (real estate prices) and that house I bought for $80k in '86, sold for $290k in 2003, got offered back for $130k in 2006 (or so) is now estimated at $360k.It's a tiny house at just 952 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 1-1/2 baths. It's 50 miles from Silicon Valley and the commute is UGLY. It wasn't bad back in '86 but I sure wouldn't want to drive it today.No HOA, no amenities except a small park a block away. But the prices in Silicon Valley are even more insane so that pushes up prices in neighboring areas. If 50 miles can be considered a 'neighboring area'.What do I know? When I moved to Silicon Valley in '76, I thought $50k for a house in Milpitas was insane! Now even the tract houses are more than $900k.https://www.zillow.com/milpitas-ca/houses/Palo Alto is a little closer to the action:https://www.zillow.com/homes/palo-alto-ca_rb/Some of these are ordinary tract homes - nothing special. Some aren't much larger than the crackerbox I had.Check out this duplex:https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Palo-Alto-CA/pmf,pf_pt/house_type/2099372804_zpid/26374_rid/globalrelevanceex_sort/37.538043,-121.857262,37.225407,-122.413445_rect/10_zm/Like every market, there are 'corrections' but if the owner can just hold on, everything will work out ok. It may take several years but real estate will recover in most areas. Particularly areas with education, technology or industry.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 03:38:07 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on July 04, 2017, 01:14:27 amIt's a zero-sum game! One person's gain is another person's loss. Assets in one hand, liabilities in the other.Only the best and brightest win!

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 03:43:46 pm
content: Quote from: rstofer on July 04, 2017, 03:38:07 pmNo its not.See, if wealthy individuals would stop the over-consumption, we would all be happier.I'll go, get my pitchfork.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 04:15:08 pm
content: This is an old debate but I have a fairly large amount of research that I cite which shows that altruism is a successful strategy for societies and individuals living within them.Also, is it smart to raise people the way it seems many wealthy people have been, to ignore others rights?https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222699672Quote from: rstofer onTodayat 09:38:07

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 04:19:51 pm
content: Then we all gravitate toward mediocrity.I didn't spend 6 years in college just to make parity with someone flipping hamburgers. They got to mess around while I was working my butt off but now it's my turn! And I get to mess around at a much higher level.This whole idea of 'equality' attempts to create equal outcomes without equal effort. It's not going to work! It's been tried, it failed! People want to be rewarded for their efforts and they want to feel that reward in their lifestyle.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 04:52:43 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on July 04, 2017, 03:26:46 amIn the US, FCC prohibits HOAs (or anyone else) from preventing the installation of a TV antenna.https://www.fcc.gov/media/over-air-reception-devices-ruleThe bigger issue is that there rarely seems to be anything worth watching on traditional TV. But it's a big deal for amateur radio operators since a TV antenna can be used for VHF/UHF amateur service. (HF is a different story but there exist workarounds for that, too.)I have found a drying rack to be a better alternative to a clothesline. Namely in that being indoors, it is not affected much by weather.

author: vodka
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 05:58:09 pm
content: Quote from: rstofer on July 04, 2017, 03:21:53 pmit might be worse;Barcelona Neighbornhood Bornhttps://www.idealista.com/inmueble/36349379/58 meter per square = 624 feet per square Price :649.000€Tarragona Arrabasada Valleyhttps://www.idealista.com/inmueble/36797301/44 meter per square = 473.7 feet per square Price :149.000€

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 06:25:47 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on July 04, 2017, 03:26:46 amHOAs tend to be run like a dictatorship! There are a handful of busybodies that want to control every aspect of the association and everybody else is a peon. I would definitely tend to avoid any HOA.Our last HOA was the opposite. If it didn't concern the roog, paint or grounds, they pretty much stayed out of things. It wasn't too bad. But still, if you replaced the roof and the material wasn't approved by the board, they placed a lien against the property for a replacement roof when the house was sold. They wanted 50 year Presidential roofs and nothing else! And we couldn't park boats in the driveway - bummer!There is talk about starting some kind of association where we live now but since that association isn't part of the CC&Rs (Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions) tied to the title at the time of sale, they wouldn't have any authority. I don't sense a lot of people want to sign up. Everybody has their own property and there are some beautiful homes here. It works well even without an HOA. But, out here, everybody has their own well, they use septic tanks, there is no city water, sewers or storm drains. We're pretty much on our own. Nice...And we have a dedicated Deputy Sheriff. Somebody around the corner must have some juice! It's certainly not us...

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 08:14:26 pm
content: This is why we had the 2008 crash. A stupid decision made by the Clinton Administration (but it must be emphasized that this deregulatory agenda is the common point for both US "parties" and its totally ill-considered.)In 1998 it was Clinton who was pushing his deregulatory services agenda, to "reform" the Glass-Steagall Act - which kept investment firms and banks separate.They claimed that the Glass-Steagall Act which had prevented speculators from being able to tap the US Treasury to cover their gambling debts, violated their new general agreement on trade in services..This WTO services agreement.. which almost nobody knows about, has been responsible for so many problems.But they obviously did so well from the 2008 crash.. at the taxpayers expense.that now the GOP is making the same mistake again. (see attached)This is why I suspect we'll see another bubble, soon. The wolves are running the henhouse.Watch out you don't get trapped like so many others.Of course, people still need places to live, and the place you yourself live is far more likely to be a good investment.but its not unlikely we'll see wild fluctuations in values again, I think. Soon.One could almost guarantee it with Trump and in fact his candidacy seems to have been a not so subtle message to some that the green light to speculators to steal the country again.So that the common people's pensions and medicare can be stolen to pay back the banks that caused the problem.Trump is well known in the US for having finagled his wealth by highly leveraged investments.. i.e. speculation.The world needs totax financial transactionsso that there is a cost to speculation high enough to discourage it.Also entities that engage in speculationshould be required to carry insuranceto indemnify others and society. That will remove the incentive for schemers to use their power to take over the country and use it as part of their huge Ponzi scheme.The tax on financial speculation should go to pay for assets, like education for our best students, and PUBLIC infrastructure that no GATS or TISA or other evil trade agreement can force the privatization of - In other words, unstealable assets.Who cares about sucking up to the capitalists.If that discourages international investors from moving their money around like quicksilver, so be it!That will be more than made up for by sensible, intelligent people who will then find a refuge from the madness in America.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 08:27:14 pm
content: It actually started with Reagan having Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac write substandard loans in impoverished neighborhoods. The idea was that homeowners would be more invested in their neighborhoods and tensions would decline.Everything else just piled on. For many years, only Savings and Loans could write mortgages. Once banks got permission, everything fell apart.I did hear that Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac were back in the business of writing 'liar loans' but I don't think the banks are back in that game. Nobody on the planet would buy that kind of bond again.Once they started write "no doc" or "liar" loans, people could get over extended in a heartbeat!

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 08:43:39 pm
content: NINA loans. "No income, no assets"NINA loans should not be written.Growth is not a given, we're seeing deindustrialization now.We wont see growth if their war on the middle class continues.Sure, credit is tight when money is tight, because people are protected from crooks.. thats the way it should be.What happens in austerity?Since the wealthy have inevitably flown the coop with all the money its the people, especially the weakest who never had much of anything who lose their hopes for a better day in the future, who lose everything.If anybody here has gone through official "austerity" in your country, (not Americans and Brits who are having it forced on them via stealth) I'd love to hear what it was like.Blueskull, you'll do fine, just don't rush into things. No deal is too good to spend some time evaluating.

author: Towger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 08:52:59 pm
content: Blueskull, you must be sorry you started this thread. It appears half the posters did not read your original posts re not being able to borrow. My vote is for the three bedroom still stands. Just do your research, better may turn up soon. When I was young I made the mistake of not buying early, despite having more than enough money in the bank. Your buying power gets erroded with time. Property is recovering again, better to get in the game early, than the top of the boom bust cycle.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 08:58:17 pm
content: Towger, what about deflation?

author: Towger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 09:13:21 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on July 04, 2017, 08:58:17 pmHits the money in your account more than property.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 09:32:57 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on July 04, 2017, 08:58:17 pmAs I pointed out in my story about my old house, don't worry about it. Sooner or later, prices recover. Maybe not to the stupid levels but, at least in California, they have done just that.It's all too easy to sit back and say assets are overpriced while watching them continue to rise. Then, when they inevitably fall say something like "Told you so!". But the thing is, there is a lot of money to be made riding the trend.What can you say about and $80k house rising to $360k in 31 years (plus providing shelter and a mortgage deduction). I'm not going to do the math but that seems like a pretty good return. Yes, it will go down again. But it will never go back to $100k and, even if it did, just hang on! As bad as the ride was in the 2006-2010 timeframe, things have recovered nicely.Many locales are banning most of the new construction in favor of in-fill projects in the inner cities. By law (stupid as it is), new construction around here is essentially stopped while we wait for inner city projects that will never be built because they just don't pencil out. But what happens when supply is limited? Right, prices rise! Cool...Builders are in the business of building but they aren't stupid enough to get involved in some of the "feel good" projects.It's a shame the OP can't get a mortgage. I'm not sure I would want all my assets in one place. I would go asking around. He has income, he has enough for a huge down payment, he has enough left over to make the payments for a very long time. I would at least test the waters. And stay away from ARM loans!

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 09:44:55 pm
content: I'm wondering what exactly you mean with ARM loans? Are those so they change the interest rate every year? If yes they may not be so bad. Over here you can get mortgages where the rate changes every year. Sure there will be good years and bad years but overall the interest rate is lower than longer term fixed rates. What I did in the past few years is wait for the interest rates to drop before committing to a longer term interest rate (which is pretty sweet if I may say so). I expect the interest rates won't stay as low as they currently are for very long; I expect to see a rise somewhere in 2017/2018.

author: jpanhalt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2017, 10:11:57 pm
content: Let's hope the entire US doesn't follow Europe's lead down the economic toilet.

author: tronde
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2017, 01:05:16 am
content: Quote from: jpanhalt on July 04, 2017, 10:11:57 pmI would be more than happy if you kept the toilet your side of the fence...

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2017, 01:16:50 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 04, 2017, 09:44:55 pmRight, Adjustable Rate Mortgages. It all depends on how it is structured. We just got a flyer for an ARM that started at 2.5% and, over time could get to 8% while a 30 year fixed might be 3%. The rate is intended to rise, it is not simply a matter related to the Prime rate. Bsically, the bank is lending money quite cheap in the first couple of years and making up their profit in later years.ARMs are a little more reasonable (they used to top out at 15% or more, much more than a 30 year fixed loan of, say 3%,The idea is to allow people to buy more house than they can initially afford with the hope that there income rises as fast as the rate.When money is cheap, house prices rise.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2017, 01:31:51 am
content: Quote from: rstofer on July 05, 2017, 01:16:50 amAdjustable rate (or variable rate) mortgage loans were for a long time the standard repayment mortgage in the UK, and fixed rates were almost unheard of (and maybe still the case, I haven't look at the UK market in 20 years). There were some mortgages where the rate was fixed for, say, the first ten years, and after that it varied.So coming to the USA from the UK and seeing interest rates fixed for the life of the loan was something of a surprise.That said, I have an ARM, I chose it deliberately. The rate is tied to a standard bank rate, so the interest rate is not going to go up arbitrarily. After I got the loan I watched people refinancing each year to get lower rates, while for me the rate just went down automatically. Maybe in the future the rate will go up again, but I won't be too concerned. I knew exactly what product I was buying and am completely happy with it. Another benefit is that I have tremendous payment flexibility. I can pay as much or as little as I like each month as long as it is more than the minimum amount (effectively interest only). If I want to, I can pay the loan off early without penalty.So, I really don't agree that ARMs are bad. They are different, is all. There are pros and cons and you need to know what you are getting into.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2017, 02:54:12 am
content: There are crooks who are pushing to pull something similar to 2008 again, but this time the people will be hit much harder.The world will want to punish everyday Americans for electing such irresponsible people. But, they didn't know. People here have been really badly deceived by both parties, who must be laughing together behind our backs.Both parties here now are rich crooks who couldn't care less about the country or its people.. They just want to milk their positions of power for as much money as they can, and stash it away in some numbered swiss bank account.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2017, 01:57:11 pm
content: Quote from: IanB on July 05, 2017, 01:31:51 amWhat the banks did around here is have the beginning interest rate less than the Prime Rate. They were loaning money for less than it cost them to borrow. To recover this, the rate of increase and the maximum amount for the interest were set fairly high - much higher than a fixed rate mortgage. As the payments ratcheted up, people could no longer afford the payments. Throw in some asset depreciation, wage stagnation or job loss...The idea behind the ARM is twofold: Allow people to buy houses they can't afford in order to keep prices up and, second, hope that the asset value increases such that the buyers can sell out with a profit to use as a down payment for a different house.As the prices fell, a LOT of people realized they were under water and just walked away from their obligations. The .gov helped with this by cancelling the capital gains tax they should have had to pay. This tax alone would have bankrupted most people. Imagine suddenly owing tax on $100k (or more) worth of capital gains! All of a sudden there was a flood of houses on the market, prices collapsed and the banks and bond holders were in trouble.Had the buyers been able to hold on, they would have recovered and then some. Not every area has recovered equally but I suspect that everybody would have been fine. But they couldn't hold on because the interest rate was increasing and, really, who wants to make payments on a house that is wildly underwater?I don't object to ARMs if they are sensible but, basically, they are allowing folks to buy stuff they can't pay for.The banks knew these "liar" loans were questionable so they came up with a way to securitize the mortgages and sell the debt off as Mortgage Backed Securities. What could be safer than a MBS? In a normal market, these bonds would have been a good investment. In a crash, they were worthless.At the time I remember reading about a town in Finland that was especially hard hit because they had invested in these bonds. I was staggered that a housing problem in the US could devastate a town in Finland!Here is a discussion about Finland's national problem during the meltdown but I didn't find the article about one specific town:http://njb.fi.s189994.gridserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2013_1_Paper_Laitamaki_Jarvinen.pdfAround here, ARMs are really bad news but the fixed rates are fairly low at around 3%.I would like to see the US go back to the arrangement we had in the '50s and '60s. Banks didn't write mortgages. Savings and Loans took all of the mortgage business (and risk) leaving the banks doing 'banking'. Interest rates were fixed for 15 or 30 years and some kind of down payment was required (usually 20%). GI Loans didn't require a down payment but, naturally, the payments were higher.Instead, I get several offers to refinance my house each week. They all have attractive 'teaser' rates but, in the end, they're all ARMs. It seems everybody wants to write GI Loans because so much of the loan amount is guaranteed by the .gov.

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2017, 05:42:46 pm
content: A couple of comments from a University Staffer who takes care of a big house on 7/10s of an Acre in Ohio.One as I read this, I see the tone of a single, male, engineer, so a few things you need to think about:HOAs and Electrical Engineers don't mix. You'll need antennas for satellite internet if there is no FIOS or a 2.4 Ghz directional panel for WISP,No Engineer I know is happy with the internet speeds at his house these days, and many of them have two internetfeeds. If you have the renters, they will need high speed feeds of their own, a place to park their cars, and their own bathrooms.You will eventually probably want to try ham radio or having a trebuchet or boat in the back yard. Every engineer I know that has a HOA has ran into them headlong one time or another. Often over the color of paint, or tree choices, or even the desire to keep a trailerable airplane in the driveway.The HOA may have something nasty to say about your planned subleasing or choice of sub-lease candidates or even your tools.. I have a neighbor who is moved from a HOA covered house to our neighborhood. Her nosey attitude has caused problems for me, including with a pre-employment background investigation. She even nagged local cops about the extensive electronics gear and tool kit in the back of my then SUV. Pick a place where you, will be, quietly left alone. Never discount the problem of neighbors who seemingly have nothing better to do then to study you and complain. If you can, meet the neighbors before you buy!State funding and in some cases Federal funding for universities is rapidly decreasing. I know you are a "Rising Star" from the quality of your posts, but even with a EB1, I would not assume they will make you a Post-Doc or offer you a associate faculty slot, even if you have big time IP with them. I'm seeing the direct results of this more and more here in the Midwest, with large staff cuts. By all means please stay in the US, but get the Green Card ASAP.Along the way, as you work at the "happy hunting ground" of a University, where there are far more potential quality mates per square meter then anywhere else for the rest of your life, hopefully you will find a potential Mrs. Blueskull. From minute one SWMBO (She who must be Obeyed) will start making choices about your home, and the first thing to go will be your renters. Her income will be spent on shoes, and not the mortgage payments, for the immediate time being. In other words, do you really want to buy something you'll need to "Flip" when you get the good job?She certainly will not want to share a bathroom...If your going to stay in academia, SWMBO is not really a option you can ignore, as one of the silent, un-expressed, criteria for joining a faculty (in many cases) is a stable home life. Why? A single PROF can outperform married with children co-workers 20 to 1, not having all the responsibilities of a married staff member with hatchlings. That can anger your colleagues, as they can see it as a unfair advantage. Your colleagues will want to see stability, and a major indication of that is a communicative, educated, spouse. Married staff members value married colleagues. Look at the house you buy in a woman's eyes or potential mate's eyes.Girlfriend 1.0 is always seeking an upgrade to wife 2.0, and will spawn daughter processes*. (Part of old joke) Educated women choose where to raise their offspring carefully in terms of local schools. So look carefully at the school district where you buy the home, as in talk to local parents and look at the funding, demographics, and teacher student ratio..Your predicted/planned utility, upkeep, and emergency upkeep costs are too low. No where did I read about the costs of a lawn-mower and consumables.If you rent/sublease, make sure you can dismiss/remove the renter on a short, reasonable notice. In some locales, getting rid of a persistent renter can require the reformation of the universe as we know it. Check with local landlords about jurisdiction related issues, and have a lawyer review the rental agreement.Also check into the local, state, and federal taxes... Paying 4,000 to 6,000$ a year in taxes might be typical.Just an FYI..*, Link to old programmer's joke:http://www.indranet.com/potpourri/humor/girlfriend_upgrade.htmlSteve

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2017, 06:43:18 pm
content: Quote from: rstofer on July 05, 2017, 01:16:50 amAha. That is completely different than a mortgage with a rate which follows the actual interest rates (like Euribor, Libor) + margin.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2017, 06:57:08 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 05, 2017, 06:43:18 pmWhen you think of the US, you need to think in terms of unregulated greed! Now, greed is good, that's true, but you need to read the fine print. If you think you are getting a deal (low initial interest rate), read the fine print. You're getting hosed a little farther down the line. There are no deals! The consumer always loses and they lose more if they're stupid. Think of it as a tax on stupidity.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2017, 07:05:17 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 05, 2017, 06:43:18 pmBut there was some kind of jiggering the Libor rate:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandalWhat I didn't realize is that the Libor Rate was used in the US.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2017, 07:45:36 pm
content: They have figured out a new way to steal huge amounts of money from taxpayers, called a control fraud. The key to these huge bailouts and giveaways are a new scheme to do an end run around democracy..(trade and investment) "agreements" where governments agree to insulatecorporationsfrom risks they always figured into their costs before.By doing this they can make mistakes of all kinds, irreversible.We're seeing our governments become thinly veiled schemes to channel more and more of all money to the insiders, looting the "peasants" everywhere of all we own in the process.See if you see a pattern here.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237428807_THE_BCCI_COVER-UPhttps://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/20/a_plan_only_banksters_will_lovehttps://www.citizen.org/documents/Memo%20-%20Unanswered%20questions%20memo%20for%20Geneva.pdfPrudential_Measures_Report FINALMemo on Feb 2010 WTO Secretariat Paper on FS5 "That'sAllTheyGot.pdf"MEMO Gats conflict with bank size limits may-10-2011Financial crisis Policy Primer Nov 2009 FINALWTO-GATS-Medicare and Social SecurityPatricia Arnold - GATS and financial deregFinancial crisis Policy Primer 121508public-citizen-comments-on-international-services-agreement.pdfQuote from: rstofer onTodayat 07:57:11:

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2017, 09:51:38 pm
content: ARMs were, and still are, about greed! The lender wants a high rate of return later on and the buyer wants to buy more house than they can afford so they can sell it and reap a windfall. The bond holders (buyers of Mortgage Backed Securities) wanted a safe investment that paid a lot of interest/dividends.I don't have any sympathy for any of them. Particularly the buyers! They should have understood what they were signing and not base their hopes on an ever increasing asset price.Some people might not understand how the capital gains tax comes about as a result of foreclosure. The bank held a note on your asset for, say, $300k. You defaulted and they only recovered, say, $100k on their $300k investment. That's a $200k loss to the bank. Well, their loss is your gain (it has to balance!) so, since $200k is going to push the buyer into a pretty high tax bracket, they might owe the Feds about $70k and the State about $20k. So, not only would they not have a house, their credit rating would be destroyed by the foreclosure and they owe about $90k in taxes. If they couldn't afford the house payments, the really can't afford the tax hit! The .gov felt sorry for them and let them off the hook for the capital gains taxes. They shouldn't have done that!Borrowers simply have to read the fine print!

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 12:31:48 pm
content: All the complaints about banking regulation always frame it as if the money being borrowed is primarily for investment here in the US, but right now its not, and it seems to me if given the opportunity to borrow more and insanely inflexble investment protection rules which bite both ways (ISDS) its likely business will shed jobs here and invest in new construction and new factories, etc, overseas, which they frame it as "where the growth is" but just as much or more, its really "where the cheapest labor is". The "global value chains" system we're pushing frames all tasks as best done where they can be done the best for the cheapest, but often the emphasis is far more on cheapest than best.So easy credit won't enable business to create jobs here any more than it will enable businesses to move more jobs overseas, or automate them. Also of course, jobs are going away in large numbers just because we are figuring out better ways to do them without people. That's pretty much unavoidable and it will mean massive job losses over the next decade, in all kinds of jobs.Also, administrative jobs are being shifted overseas in large numbers.This means to me that we may see another crash in home values soon due to large numbers of people losing jobs- which are going away for good, and not being able to find others, and losing their homes, depressing the market.Banks like bubbles when the government bails them out of the consequences of them. Last I looked, we pay interest for loans to cover lenders for potential loses, not just as profits. Part of that profit should be spent on re-insurance and explicitly understood as meaning the lender did NOT get their risk covered by the government.

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 12:38:34 pm
content: Quote from: rstofer on July 05, 2017, 06:57:08 pm

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 01:52:33 pm
content: If you are ever considering buying in Australia and not living here (ie: hiding your cash or investing in our housing stock) you are not wanted. Go buy a place in your own country of residence.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 03:01:47 pm
content: I might be a stockholder in every one of the companies expanding overseas. I didn't buy their stock just because I'm a nice guy, I want an increasing stock price. Otherwise, I'm going to take my money and go elsewhere. Do whatever it takes to make my stock value increase! I'm not in the charity business.Greed is good!As to the bank bail-outs, let's not forget that the .gov TOLD Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac to write non-conforming loans and managed to change the banking regulations such that banks could make similar loans with lots of encouragement. This whole thing was a .gov experiment that backfired. Of course the .gov has some responsibility.Nobody complained when home construction was at an all time high. Everybody was making money! The stock market was at record highs, home sales were at record highs as were prices. Money way easy to get thanks to .gov and non-conforming loans. What could possibly go wrong?It's like musical chairs: When the music stops, somebody won't have a place to sit.Had their not been bailouts, the banking failure would make 1929 look like a family picnic. Everything would have crashed, including my retirement. As it is, I had a few lean years in the stock market. These things are worrisome when you're retired because you simply don't have much time to recover. Allowing the banks to fail was simply not an option. We would have taken the rest of the world with us. As it is, many countries haven't fully recovered yet.When you lose 20% on an investment, you need to make 25% to recover. If you lose 50%, you need 100% to recover. Just something to keep in mind.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 03:49:57 pm
content: Quote from: LaserSteve on July 05, 2017, 05:42:46 pmThe FCC law also covers antennas used for satellite or fixed wireless internet service.https://www.fcc.gov/media/over-air-reception-devices-ruleWhat is not explicitly covered are antennas for amateur radio, but for VHF/UHF, the antenna can double as a TV antenna and be covered. What is problematic is HF.Satellite internet service is expensive and high latency, making it mostly for those who have no other option or want a backup that is resilient to disaster.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 04:42:08 pm
content: Quote from: rstofer onTodayat 09:01:47>I might be a stockholder in every one of the companies expanding overseas. I didn't buy their stock just because I'm a nice guy, I want an increasing stock price.There is much more to this than that, what's happening is a system has been created that lets rich people rip off the rest of the planet Especially in the US.>Otherwise, I'm going to take my money and go elsewhere. Do whatever it takes to make my stock value increase! I'm not in the charity business. Greed is good!Neither are the people of this country, why should we subsidize wealthy speculators?As to the bank bail-outs, let's not forget that the .gov TOLD Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac to write non-conforming loans and managed to change the banking regulations such that banks could make similar loans with lots of encouragement. This whole thing was a .gov experiment that backfired. Of course the .gov has some responsibility.The people who made a killing should be made to repay the country from their own swiss bank accounts.Nobody wanted what they did and they did it to line their own pockets. that means they are the ones who should pay, not us.Thats why the people of Greece and Iceland were literally up in arms, because a few people wanted to steal their retirement to cover the asses of big banks and big bankers.The Clinton Administration (which was notoriously corrupt) created a global trade agreement on services which basically gave the big banks carte blanche to steal in unauditable ways by limiting any checks on them. In a single line on the last page of a appendix to a long and boring document filed in Geneva, not in the US , they claimed that this GATS agreement required that the Glass-Steagall Act be eliminated. So in 1999 they did. Now the GOP want to do essentially the same thing to Dodd Frank, for the same reason.Partners in dishonesty.Nobody complained when home construction was at an all time high. Everybody was making money!Thats not true. Millions lost their entire life savings. The shaft stripped entire communities of their homes.Globally, billions of people ended up paying for this tiny group of people to make a killing and walk away scot-free.The stock market was at record highs, home sales were at record highs as were prices. Money way easy to get thanks to .gov and non-conforming loans. What could possibly go wrong?Famous last words.It's like musical chairs: When the music stops, somebody won't have a place to sit.It wont always be the other guy who pays the price. Statistics show that.Had their not been bailouts, the banking failure would make 1929 look like a family picnic. Everything would have crashed, including my retirement.Learn about austerity. THAT will eat up your retirement savings. It will strip everybody of everything thats not nailed down, EXCEPT for those responsible. thats how it works. And then you wont be happy. When the veil falls away and you see them for what they are. But by then it will be too late.The way things look now, the same people will be sitting on a beach somewhere and laughing at all of us then.As it is, I had a few lean years in the stock market. These things are worrisome when you're retired because you simply don't have much time to recover. Allowing the banks to fail was simply not an option. We would have taken the rest of the world with us. As it is, many countries haven't fully recovered yet.In the neighborhood I used to live in on my way to work or going out for walks early in the morning I would see, often impeccably dressed senior citizens, fishing food out of restaurant garbage cans.When you lose 20% on an investment, you need to make 25% to recover. If you lose 50%, you need 100% to recover. Just something to keep in mind.While we discuss this, jobs are vanishing at an exponentially increasing rate, so the ability more and more people have to work to recover (the only way most people earn money) is becoming more and more elusive for many. Without investing in more education for our country, we're going to run into a real impasse.At that point, most investments will crash, home values will crash. You cant have a whole country of people hoping to sell at the same time without values crashing. Pretty much everybody here can see that we're all headed towards a single global society because we're living it and we can see thats just the way it is. But that also means wages will become more similar everywhere which means wages here will fall, a lot. Equal pay for equal work. That could work out if its gradual only if corporations and those who enable them stop what theyre doing to the rest of the planet. And trade deals that are forcing countries to crapify their healthcare and education and water systems so that corporations can milk them will have to end.The problem is NOT the poor or anybody else, its THE CORPORATE PILLAGERS. And they are not people, they deserve no personhood, their money is not free speech. Its poison for democracy.Corporations are an artificial construct, a legal fiction and a world ruled by them will be horrible for everybody, especially those who run them, especially for even those doing well within it because of the brutal competition. Their numbers will constantly be shrinking as more and more of them as well as things that matter, are sacrificed to keep them unaccountable and their Ponzi scheme growing for those on top.That will be a very very unhealthy and stressful world for all of us.To give one example, their "harmonisation" of regulations, downward. Safety regulations should improve or all society pays a very high, increasingly costly price when people are poisoned by bio- persistant endocrine disrupters..Thats not a business opportunity- its a crime and its avoidable, you should know, however, thattheywho conrtol governments have decidedthey want a decline, instead of rising standards of living not only do theyexpect a race to the bottom on wages and working conditions and extreme poverty and shorter lifespans for most people, they are getting it set up so they make a killing on that too, byprivatizing everything, including clean water and likely soon, air.Thats what they want, even though logic dictates that technology's gifts should be shared, resulting in improved standards of living and growing lifespans and people having more and more time.They don't want that becausethey claim it cheats themof the insanely high profits they feel entitled to, as wages drop towards zero and poor people of the countries of the world fight one another for the vanishing jobs - while they cash in. And their bretheren in the developing countries, already fat from having impoverished their own people, want in on the action, so they plan to give them, our jobs, perhaps even Blueskull's future hypothetical postdoc - to temp out.Every good deal is under attack by Wall Street. "Too generous".The people of the world are too generous, but dont know it. Because we don't know we're being stolen from.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 05:15:32 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on July 06, 2017, 04:42:08 pmAbsolutely there is a skills gap! We have a large segment of the population that doesn't have an education, nobody in their family has ever had an education and they aren't going to change course. They are no longer employable.But then you have GM CEO complaining that they can't hire enough coders. Why aren't there enough coders? Well, it's a lot of work to learn the trade! Welfare is easier.We spend about $620 Billion per year on primary and secondary education without tangible results (2012-2013). How much more should we spend? Do we double the spending? Triple it? We're talking about $12k per student per year. The public education system is a failure and it always will be. Schools are plugged up with students who don't want to learn and teachers who don't teach but are well protected by their unions. The unions, in turn, have massive influence on their state and local elected officials.I must say, public education rose to the challenge when Russia launched Sputnik. The next day, math became the most important topic in 6th grade! We are still the only country to land on the moon and return. Six flights with 12 astronauts having walked the surface.Maybe Sputnik is the reason the boomers are the best educated and most productive generation the world has ever seen.QuoteGeorge McGovernhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-mcgovern/hey-baby-boomers-welcome-_1_b_16947.htmlWe may be old but we vote! Every election for the last 50 years!

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 05:46:30 pm
content: A lot of young people here would jump at the chance of being able to learn computer science or engineering.They would jump at the remedial math they would need. they would do it. But, the powers that be dont want it. They want everybody except them to be at a disadvantage of some kind. That means they want foreign workforces whose presence depends on a job thats lacking the normal level of freedom to change jobs. In the normal world, when people learn all sorts of new skills, they get paid more. Not with l-1 visa temp jobs. They are six year contracts and the wage is negotiated at the start and doesnt go up.Its not based on prevailing wages like H1B jobs are. In other words, H1B jobs are seen in some circles as too good a deal, not as too bad a deal. The lure of abnormally cheap labor is a lot like slavery, its a corrupting influence.The people who tell us that there are no Americans (or smart young Chinese not laboring under an artificial handicap) who want those jobs have already traded those jobs away in all but deed - they used them as virtual IOUs to get what they wanted from other countries for two decades, making themselves rich, (the people who cashed in did it personally, not nationally) and the cover story now is the afterthought, simply the last lie in a long long chain of lies, and of course, confident that nobody will call them oyt on anything, they are trying to craft a story to fit what they have already done behind the scenes.Mode Four is a means of having a workforce that cant bargain for better wages or conditions. Pushing down wages in a race to the bottom.In education, they want a shift to corporate ownership. Think "ITT Technical institute" on a massive scale, and more expensive, but with a foreign workforce here being paid wages that are somewhere between wages here (possibly even below US minimum wage) and wages in the corporations home country, the foreign corporation with workers here temporarily becomes a means of bypassing all sorts of laws by the expediency of trade rules..Mode Four is based on the Middle Easternkafalasystem.."modern day slavery" is what those jobs have been called, with justification.You have to have some personal experience with pathological liars before you realize how dishonest they are. Their entire business model depends on milking information gradients in the worst possible ways, the entire planet being successfully shafted by them, so, think, what things have to happen for that to work. #1 thing, their target audience, which is essentially the 90% of all of us who dont have broken consciences, well the subset of that group who are well to do and influential, rich people with consciences all around the world, they are trying to justify their scheme to them, not us as a whole.And they do that by hiding all of it and only revealing little things at a time, and spinning them dishonestly in a false narrative worthy of North Korea. Its that complicated and that wrong. (not just evil, factually wrong)Those people are being trained to see the victims, (us, the middele class and upwardly mobile poor of the world, who otherwise would have risen higher) as deserving of every misfortune we got.So, a relentless spin machine has likely been churning on this for decades. Its trying to spin the changes they want as benefiting the poor of the developing world (the trunk of the elephant) while ignoring the fact that the tip of the elephants trunk is rising ever higher at an dizzying rate, we're supposed to think that the loss of those in the trunk area the top qunitile minus its richest 1%, will go to those in the bottom 4/5 when it will actually go to the top 1%.Look at what they've done with health care. Whats their real plan? Its already there in the GATS and in the WTO Government Procurement Agreement- they want people who get subsidies to get their care, at least any hospitalization, overseas. they want to resell those services. Then they can use those patients as bargaining chips.According to R. (a WTO official) countries that have committed health insurance in their existing commitments implicitly agree that their health insurance must become portable. That means us.These deals trade various concessions, just like a poker game.here are thefour modes of supplywhich are traded.http://www.slideshare.net/GitanjaliMaria/four-modes-of-wtoour drug companies might gain a right to buy up shares in ownership of firms that make generic drugs overseas, lowering the prices of drugs generally. US firms would essentially get a right to eliminate their compatition, under the guise of increasing competition. Thats how these things work.Countries that become dependent on us for jobs are less likely to develop their own businesses at home that compete with us.here is India's argument for more Mode Four to the WTO. (several years ago because thats when this debate was happening)http://web.archive.org/web/20090410103914/http://commerce.nic.in/wto_sub/Invest/sub_invest-W39.htmMy main objection to all this is that it cheats a great many groups of people of their futures, keeping a few already insanely wealthy groups of people's children on top, while jobs are going away. Lying to the planet about how its being done, and stealing democracy.A good example here in the US is health care. The real reason our healthcare situation has nothing to do with the things they say. instead, adeal was made in the WTO. And US patients are now essentially pawns in this global game. Bargaining chips.So, both parties are shamelessly lying.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 06:18:55 pm
content: Quote from: rstofer on July 05, 2017, 09:51:38 pmI strongly disagree. If you buy a product it should not be designed to bite you in the ass (like a gun which fires backward). You shouldn't need a PhD in economics to borrow money for a house. Unfortunately in the 1990's and early 2000's a lot of financial products have been designed in a way they where only proffitable to the banks/insurance companies and over here banks and insurance companies are paying deerly for that because the terms where not clear enough. All in all it is very important to strongly regulate the financial sector so they only offer products which benefit both the bank/insurance company and the customer. Only then you will have a financial system which functions properly and isn't prone to collapsing.

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 06:19:57 pm
content: A bit too much TLDR here. If you could make your points with fewer words, I might read them.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 06:45:39 pm
content: Rstofer,At the very cutting edge, sometimes a condition exists where no schools teach "it" (whatever it is) because no teachers know it well enough to teach it.if they know it they are doing it, because its that new.not teaching.A good argument can ahnd should be made that the way we teach a great deal of knowledge could and should change to adapt to the exponentially rising curve.Your Trumpeting this alleged "skills gap" - is parroting the phony PR campaign for the offshorers and outsourcers. Who are primarily driven by money, not anything else. As they put it, its the people of the United States, damn us, who often are self taught, lacking formal credentials, but sometimes also brilliant, who stand in the way of US corporations grandiose expansion schemes. (because we see the value of knowledge and want to share in the wealth it brings) We're not wowed by the mere fact of employment, we want to be challenged, we want to solve problems, but we also want to be treated well. We don't buy into the bean counters and economists race to the bottom windfall bullshit.Well, those of us who are a bit older have seen it all before, during the 90s and it was 99% BS. Its a cargo cult mentality that ignores the facts of productivity and real wealth generation, which happens when it happens and more often than not despite government policy (except for education and things that have nothing to do with deregulation or banking, or cheap labor schemes.. those things are energy drainers and soul suckers that will kill creativity, which frankly is what they want. )They dont want creativity, if they did they would behave differently in every possible way. They wouldn't know creativity if it bit them in the ass, seriously. They dont want the win win positive vibe of a creative community. They hate that when they see it and try to kill it. They are trying to kill public universities. They are trying to drain American families of their every penny. They are trying to set up a future which only they control, and it will backfire on them.In their world, we're both in a declining job market (ie. race to the bottom) when it suits them and in a boom which demands endless new flesh when it suits them.It doesnt add up.What it really ius is a sort of familial abuse scenario where the people of this great land are being taken advantage of by the false promise of jobs.. Jobs are vanishing for the many but5 for a subset of people the future is bright, but they need to be paid a living wage, not eight dollars an hour.Those are the businesses that moved to the South to shave a few bucks off their wages and now are moving jobs offshore or automating, giving them what they want wont fix the systemic problems, it will only cheat workers of their due and stimulate bad conditions in workplaces which should be improving and becoming more professional, not less.No growth continues forever, and we should throw out the crooks whose overenthusiasm needs to be tempered by the reality that economic predictions made for trade deals have turned out to almost always have been wrong. So its a huge mistake to give them what they want, they are like addicts who will never be satisfied.Like the banks, they are crooks, who are trying to lock in their ill gotten gains.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 07:06:52 pm
content: Rstofer, its the US's strong position that any "innovative financial products" of any kinds whatsoever, no matter how predatory, should be allowed. At several points you've described regulations we used to have in the past (funny how many Americans dont realize that the laws have been changed and especially, WHY) that violate the US's core trade goal, in financial services, DEREGULATION = "progressive liberalisation" which means ever less regulation, irreversibly, for corporations. SO for you to say that some financial products should not be allowed because people wont know they are falling into a trap. why you're sounding too much like me!What we have now is a lot like feudalism, with serfs being bound to the land.Look at it this way, an 'opening' is a concession, suddenly everything gets locked down by the trick of "having been paid for"."Other countries' (corporations) traded concessions to get their rights toexploit"serve" us, they paid for us fair and square. Thats what trade deals do.If you then regulate - (you cant, its forbidden by an international agreement, thats why DoddFrank and the ACA are being eliminated, itsreally beingrolled back(!)..)Because, since we committed to open health insurance in 1998, that also meant we could not fix it after that date, because doing so would spoil its profitability for this hypotetical foreign investor, so a million Americans have had to die (really!) to avoid doing anything that deprives banks (insurance companies, etc.) from all around the world of theirlegitimate expectations of profits.(Now thats likely acrime against humanitybecause we had the money all along to fix it- but didnt, in fact as insurance companies are experts atcollecting money for decades and then dumping peoplewhen they get sickand then the government ends up paying,it actually would have been cheaper and still would be - if we didnt count the compensation which soon we will in theory SOON have to pay, under the GATS article XXI procedure, to simply give everybody involved healthcare forfree!) And as we committed to this path back in the 90s, they will claim to deserve and will likely ask the WTO to force us to pay them, compensation. And they will likely win because it will be undebatable that indeed, wedid add new regulations after February 26, 1998. Thats what will be at issue. Not whether any of our objections to the deal (postulating some future uncorrupt Administration, Congress, Senate, etc) make sense. Or not. Thats irrelevant. This is the system we have today, one which is totally rigged, so rigged they refuse to tell us about it knowing that they all would be laughed out of existence and office, and their deals would all be torn up.Why do overseas banks want US customers? Lack of financial sophistication. Also, probably the least regulated market on Earth in a developed country.Shouldnt we be happy that India wants our poor patients? Do insurance companies want the patients?Not necessarily, their proposal is just for the WTO to force us to make health insurance portable, along with a bunch of other things, (one of them is making it easier to outsource engineers) The rich countries are dragging their feet on the promises they made back in the 1990s, and India wants the WTO to force us to open up our services to former WTO DG (and ex NZ PM) Michael Moore called the "cleansing disinfectant of competition". Neoliberalism is a sort of cult, that sees corporations as the future. They want a "world without walls" for corporations.Nobody is asking anybody to lose any money. They couldn't, anyway, insurance is a business whose intent is making money. and the hope is to make the rest of the world less generaous and more business friendly, for example, they would like governments to stop helping the poor. Instead, they want a partnership among thieves, where governments eliminate the risk for them in exchange for the FS firms taking away their responsibilities to their people. irreversibly.Conditions in the US in 1998 (the year signatories to the agreement linked below froze regulation, newer regulations were frozen) were a nightmare for people with any kind of chronic condition, but very nice for insurers.Whether its housing, banking or health insurance, don't make any mistake that anybody is doing anything out of the goodness of their hearts, no its all about maximizing profit and eliminating moral hazard.Using this system they will create a new normal which is the lowest common denominator of regulation. Just in time for millions to lose their jobs. Imagine that.If foreign financial services firms have been hyped up to see our market as more valuable than it turns out to be, just like happens with housing, it might turn out to be mutual, because their markets may turn out to not be generating the growth that we expect becausewe underestimate their level of exploitation and the lack of upward mobility there, too!After all, there is a reason countries like India have so many poor people, and it has nothing to do with America.. (despite how they would like to blame it on us) Its a problem thats been thousands of years in the making. Both India and China had very bad inequality, (even under Communism which starved maybe as many as 30 million people in rural areas to death in the early 60s in a completely avoidable, ideologically driven "famine" without the rest of the world even realizing it had happened.)I think our corporations are overestimating their profit potential in developing markets, because they are underestimating the willingness of their rich to exploit their poor. So, using an allaged need to mistreat our poor more giving up the bird in the hand, giving up good jobs here, or sending our poor patients there, in order to get more business there, is nuts.Nomatter what we do there likely are only a few decades at most, before almost everything that can be automated will be, even in poor countries, will be. That will mean poverty for billions of their unemployed and ours as well, and many now employed wont be - So they wont buy our products in large numbers, no matter what we do.. in other words they wont be "growth" or any kind of replacement for the middle class we're so eager to lose, in fact have already written off as gone, instead it will be a total disaster.Instead both will stagnate but both sets of crooks will have extracted all sorts of promises and changes they NEVER could have gotten at the ballot box based on this back room con . But the system will then crash and god knows what will come put of it.Quite possibly then we all lose.For health insurers (think India and Brazil, in particular) and bankers and other financial service offerers, they've been trained to look at the US as a gold mine of financially unsophisticated people whose savings are higher than they would be elsewhere.Ripe for the takings.In exchange they are expected to let US banks do the sameforto their people.Don't foreign banks and health insurance firms deserve a little bit of that captive action?After all, its practically free money, waiting to bestolenearned?No, its a symptom of a total decline which will lead the world into a pit of destruction. Give them an inch they will take a mile. Of course, thats why they are using trade deals to wipe out every hint of compassion, like the compassion you describe, rstofer - telling gullible people what kinds of cons they should avoid.Once you start doing that, it will never stop. before you know it, the whole scheme goes down in flames andnobody gets filthy rich, except the poor who work hard for it. Nobody (important) should ever have to dothat. Damn you!/sarcasm.

author: tronde
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 08:02:26 pm
content: Quote from: Nusa on July 06, 2017, 06:19:57 pmThe essence of all the words is that those who don't want to waste time on educating themselves will be badly bitten.

author: tronde
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 08:20:56 pm
content: Question to bluescull:I can see why you and your family fear for financial trouble in China. My understanding of the Chinese economy is that it does not follow the "western rules of economy" if you look at the government level because the government as an entity does not see money as a goal in itself. I know that one of the most important goals for the government is to remain in office, and money can be a tool to achieve just that so it is importat that way. But just to save up a huge pile of money is not importat in the same way as it is in the West.So - how big losses for a Chinese citizen or family will they allow? I guess a large group of pepole can be rather difficult to handle if they loose a lot of money because of something as abstract as large scale economy?Will your money actually be more safe in the american housing market than within China? If the Chinese economy really goes bust it will for sure affect most western countries too.

author: tronde
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 08:27:49 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on July 06, 2017, 07:06:52 pmSome reading from Nick Hanauer, one of the "super rich":http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014

author: tronde
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 08:41:28 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on July 06, 2017, 08:29:55 pmThen I understand.Yes, I agree that a house with no loan is safer than the bank. As long as you own both the house and the land (as I understand is your goal) the house will most likely survive a lot of financial trouble. Just make sure you have a proper insurance on it, and don't cheap too much on maintenance.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 09:04:10 pm
content: You should know that planners, who often are in the know about such things, expect a lot of less expensive neighborhoods to be redeveloped via eminent domain in the coming years as cash pressed towns attempt to increase their tax bases (its likely to be futile, though because whatever systemic problems are happening, to kill malls, etc, are unlikely to reverse themselves for a community that builds more malls where affordable housing used to be. )A legal decision in 2005made it legal for towns to take peoples property and give it to developerssimply because the developer has some kind of idea that they find attractive. That is I think a huge mistake because its just inviting corruption. If your neighborhood or home is taken by eminent domain its typical for people to get less than their true replacement value for them, also its the pre-improvement value.What you see in China where holdouts manage to stay for years with a big mall being built around them would not happen. In that respect, homeowners" in China (despite them only owning the land for 99 years or whatever) actually have more rights than Americans now.

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 09:37:08 pm
content: Quote from: tronde on July 06, 2017, 08:20:56 pmMoney in cash form almost always loses value, no matter what currency you have it in. You need to invest to keep or gain value. Having assets in more than one market is usually safer than having it in a single market. Even if the house loses value, he still has a place to live and it remains a long-term asset. And property taxes may fall, making it cheaper to live. His family background gives him experience in property investment and management, even if not in this country, so he's not going into it cold like most first-time home buyers. I think he'll do ok overall.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 09:53:05 pm
content: Tronde,Here in the US it emerged that several banks - big banks, were actively committing fraud so that more people would be foreclosed on so they could take the entire asset. They totally got away with it.It was their word against the banks and the banks got away with it. Even when one very large US bank was forced to pay a settlement, it worked out to around $300 per family foreclosed on. They had paid off their mortgages or made the payments on time they were supposed to - but still lost their homes.How much was their compensation?This was in a case where the bank was officially declared "Guilty" and there was no debate that they had deliberately pretended families who had managed to get their payments in on time, often having gone to great trouble to get that money, had failed to.the bank abused their power and the trust people had put in them to declare them in default and foreclose on the houses which often then went to ruin, not being occupied they became flooded or targets of metal thieves, etc,. often serving as a magnet for homeless people and destroying the value of other homes in their communities..How much did the banks have to pay for this behavior? So little as to be almost less than nothing.The bank was forced to pay a settlement that worked out to a very small sum, of which the lawyer who brought the class action lawsuit got around a third. The payment was a few hundred dollars per family.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 09:56:53 pm
content: Blueskull,It seems as if everybody in China are essentially renters then, maybe?How much is the mortgage, rent, etc, that people have to pay in Chinese cities and towns?How large of a percentage of income is it on the average?

author: tronde
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 10:12:19 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on July 06, 2017, 09:53:05 pmI have read "Who Stole the American Dream?".https://www.amazon.com/Stole-American-Dream-Hedrick-Smith/dp/0812982053Seems to be quite OK with the the facts, at least as we see it from Europe.Since bluescull can't get any kind of loan, the house should be rather safe from the banks as long as he also owns the land.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 10:13:33 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on July 06, 2017, 09:56:53 pmLarge numbers of people buy their own home in China. Prices vary a great deal with location. Shanghai and Shenzhen can be very expensive. An apartment in the up market parts of the Shekou district of Shenzhen can be 150k RMB per square metre.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 10:39:18 pm
content: That's22048.12 US Dollars per square meter

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 11:03:29 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on July 06, 2017, 10:39:18 pmOr about $2000/square foot, and he did specify "up market parts". The Central Park South area of New York City is more expensive than that with a median of $2500/sq ft. If you want to buy in the Ritz-Carlton building, it could go up to $10,000/sq ft.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 11:22:35 pm
content: Autonomous cars may change driving substantially because people will be able to sleep or do other things. This may qualitatively change the relative merits of in city versus suburban or rural living, and/or living in different parts of the country or even planet in ways we likely have no idea of now. We wont know until it happens.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2017, 11:39:18 pm
content: Quote from: tronde on July 06, 2017, 10:12:19 pmOwning the land is traditional. Oddly, owning the mineral rights below the surface isn't. That's just one of those things to look for. I doubt that it matters but who knows?The problem with owning the house outright is that Bluescull takes all the risk. Yes, there will be some kind of insurance but that doesn't cover downturns in the economy or downturns in local housing costs. Having 100% equity doesn't seem like a good thing until you are older and less able to make mortgage payments. Also, he loses the mortgage interest deduction.The interest deduction isn't a reason for buying a house but it certainly enters into the math. If your marginal tax rate is, say, 35%, then in the early years when the mortgage payment is nearly all interest, the .gov is making 35% of your house payment. Basically, the deduction reduces your income subject to taxation and, as a result, you pay less taxes. Of course, you are still paying the interest.In the bad old days of the '80s, when mortgage rates were up around 18%, the math got very interesting!https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/just-explain-it/why-mortgage-rates-matter-152241574.html

author: tronde
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2017, 12:05:59 am
content: We had 100% interest deducting in Norway too. It ended with a lot of smoke in 1987/88. Lots of people lost their homes. Now we can deduct 24% of the interest.What is the best of having a loan or to pay cash is never known before the loan is fully paid back. If people invest in something just because they can save on taxes it will quite often end up with a bigger loan because it gives the impression of the thing being cheaper. It is a lot of psychology involved in this.For bluescull this does not matter. If he want a house he will have to cash out. As I understand him, this house is meant to preserve as much as possible of his savings and to give him a roof above his bed. He also think he can get some money from chinese students to help with the expenses. That makes sense for me. He knows best how he will share his home with other people, and I think chinese people look different on how to share a place to live than what western people does. If he finds home-sharing to be OK, it can give him money to pay for the fixed costs of owning a house.The biggest uncertainty for him will be how long he can stay in the US.

author: WastelandTek
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2017, 01:33:47 am
content: Quote from: cdev on July 06, 2017, 09:53:05 pmThis is a bit off topic, but bears repeating. I personally know people who MADE THEIR PAYMENTS and got swept up in the mass forclosure rubberstamp shiteshow anyway. Bloody thieves, hanging is too good for them.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2017, 02:47:35 am
content: Because of my shortwave listening hobby when China sent in the tanks to crush (literally) the protesters in June 1989, my friend and I were among the first Americans to protest here in the US. On that day (maybe 500 people by the end of the day) and the next (30000) I met a lot of Chinese students who were protesting for democracy.I still have a bunch of flyers I was given that day, Most were in both Chinese and English. I could scan them in.

author: mrpackethead
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2017, 05:22:52 pm
content: Invest in Oscilloscopes. Its the future.

author: vodka
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2017, 06:46:56 pm
content: Quote.15K$ for a flat or by unifamiliar house?Here , we are arriving a exorbitantly price rent, the average 1500€/month for an old house of 50 meter per square(begining S.XX) .The problem is many people of middle classes have to live like soviet commune. I think that we haven't arrived as the chineses of 12 people by room , as much 4 or 5 people by room.QuoteUntil that the goverment declare his owner land as "Good of National Interest",so they expropiate his land and they will recompense with small change. Here , we have a theme park "Port Aventura" when it was built , the autonomic goverment expropiated the lands to 450 owners. The swines declared all the lands as "Good of National Interest". Today, the owners follow reclaiming a fair recompense.http://www.lavanguardia.com/local/tarragona/20170320/421042372763/expropiados-portaventura-preparan-peticion-conjunta-revalorar-terrenos.html

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2017, 08:07:43 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on July 07, 2017, 07:44:28 pmGive it a little time. You'll change that opinion.

author: basinstreetdesign
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2017, 08:10:32 pm
content: My 2 cents:We bought a house here in Ontario 5 years ago and here's what saved our asses:Get your chosen prospective property inspected by a REPUTABLE house inspection service. One that will produce a report binder with photos of all things that they inspected (electrical, water, ground water, sewage, structure, fire safety, roofing, cladding, etc).This service may cost you $400 or so but can steer you away from a money pit. It did for us. And it will be VERY educational about all things property-related.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2017, 10:25:12 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on July 05, 2017, 09:36:00 pmWhat? A country of tax dodgers and cheats, eh? Sounds like pre-1949 is repeating itself. The Chinese should learn a lesson from the Greeks to see what happens if you don't pay your taxes. Governments should crack down on tax cheats and given them harsh penalties like confiscation of their assets and jail time.Our biggest tax cheats in Australia are companies like Chevron who cheat Australians big time. Our government caught up with the crooks...http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-21/chevron-faces-massive-tax-bill-after-ato-court-victory/8460874

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2017, 12:44:44 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on July 06, 2017, 04:42:08 pmI know you say that as a flippant remark, but FYI, Swiss banks have been useless for rich Americans for years now. Not only have secret accounts been unavailable for a long, long time, but the more recent FATCA law makes it damned near impossible for American citizens (and their spouses, green card holders, etc) to open bank accounts outside of USA (or indeed even to keep existing ones). The financial services situation makes some things hellishly difficult for Americans abroad like me. (FATCA stupidly makes no distinction between a multibillionaire living in USA who wants a foreign account to hide assets in, vs someone who wants a "foreign" accountbecause you freaking live abroadand need a local checking account for your salary to go in...)P.S. cdev, I love your comments, but can youpleasestop using your homegrown, cobbled-together quote formatting, and instead just use the forum's actual quote tags? The latter ensure a consistent appearance of quoted text, including for users with alternative viewers like tapatalk.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2017, 12:52:18 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on July 03, 2017, 03:28:22 amI agree about stabilizing the visa situation first. The US government is currently showing ZERO hesitation to renege on promises, so until you have the green card in hand, don't even THINK of relying on merely the promise that you qualify.I'd also advise you to buy a detached home if at all possible; in NC this is eminently doable. (My dad lives in Durham, right at the border to Chapel Hill so I know the area a bit.) Townhouses suck, especially in USA where walls are thin. And they're likely to be under an HOA. Detached houses can still be readily found without HOA.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2017, 01:03:28 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on July 03, 2017, 10:17:15 pmWhoa now, hold on a minute.It's not that Americans and Europeans aren't interested in STEM. It's that the populations of India and China are HUGE compared to ours. Given a similarpercentageof people interested in STEM, you will easily outnumber us.Add to this the fact that many Americans cannot afford to go to university, regardless of interest in the subject, and it's no wonder that Americans aren't the majority. China's wealthy people alone (to which you belong, given the circumstances you describe) are enough to outnumber American STEM students.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2017, 02:35:07 pm
content: Quote from: vodka on July 07, 2017, 06:46:56 pmIn the US, it's called Eminent Domain and it's part of the 5th Amendment.QuoteThe problem is the definition of 'public use'. The law was often used to obtain land for roads and highways - clearly to be used by the public.Public use was degraded public purpose by the Supreme Court such that government agencies can use eminent domain to seize property and then give it to private developers:http://www.sgrlaw.com/ttl-articles/837/There probably isn't even public access much less public use!

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2017, 06:41:03 pm
content: As real, wealth creating businesses dry up or move their operations overseas, its replaced by churning activities which milk positions of influence for tax money.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2020, 12:04:02 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on July 03, 2017, 03:28:22 amWhat if the US currency collapses

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 05, 2020, 12:38:38 pm
content: Quote from: Psi on August 05, 2020, 12:04:02 pmThe thread was necroed from over 3 years ago. The OP isn't even in the US anymore.