Recent content by FairEconomist_IHB

El Mo is rated <a href="http://www.city-data.com/school/el-modena-high-ca.html">86 among California schools </a>on a scale of 0 to 100. That's pretty good. We're in the Orange High district and my neighbor made a special effort to get her kid into El Mo because it's considered a considerably...

I have a different suggestion - Once you are committed to a course of action, it's detrimental to look at alternatives (which you can no longer take). It uses time and thought, which none of us have enough of. Further, because people value losses much more than gains, it's almost certain to...

What has happened to Detroit is what makes me extremely negative about the prospects of the exurban house farms. Detroit has been/is being killed by a combination of no jobs and low population density (Detroit is now less dense than your typical suburb). No jobs means lots of idle young men who...

Here's a thread on Bangkok talking about highrises that have been <a href="http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?p=2990280">vacant for a decade</a> after the Asian financial crisis of 1998. This is after a recovery from the crisis, and in a dense city. Unlike the uncompleted...

My neighbor's daughter is friends with a girl from Hillcrest. When my neighbor first met the girl's mother, the mother proudly announced to her that she "lives in <i>Hill</i>crest". My neighbor - who's pretty status-conscious, likes nice houses, etc. still didn't know where or what it was and...

<blockquote>No, Riverside deserves a significant premium over Moreno Valley-always has had such, always will. Likewise, Corona gets, and deserves, a significant premium over Riverside, due to it being even closer to Orange County</blockquote> A premium, sure. But right now Riverside...

<blockquote>TIC is very clever to make sure its center will always have a fresh look and avoid the dated aesthetic. </blockquote> Not if it leaves them with empty commercial space. Better would have been a sinking fund which the tenants could only use for improvements. If the tenant left...

Riverside county has areas that are probably at or near bottom, but Riverside proper has an unsustainable premium compared to those areas. See this <a href="http://housing-kaboom.blogspot.com/2009/09/sales-by-zip-code.html">Housing Kaboom</a> thread on Riverside vs. Moreno Valley.

12 month leases are the norm near UCR. I know a number of professors who make very good money by renting places to students; but they mostly rent to graduate students of professors they know which gives them a huge advantage in tenant selection.

A single guy buying a 3 bedroom house to live in alone? That's insane. It would be insane even if it wasn't a major hardship by being far from family, friends, and work.

Spontaneous fraternal twins are more common in Caucasians that Asians. It varies a lot between different Caucasian ethnic groups and I expect between Asian ethnic groups too. It's an adaptive trait, and the frequency of twinning varies with historical chances of having more surviving offspring...

<blockquote>The Fed can not price anything above free market rates.</blockquote> Not in the long-term but markets can be heavily manipulated and profoundly irrational for years (housing, iron, many stock markets) - and the Fed has the institutional, reputational and financial wherewithal to...