3487 Bucha Bits

Thursday, March 15, 2012

In the history of the arts, “Anonymous” was a woman.

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We've all seen those tattoos gone wrong. The husband of a friend of mine is a tattoo artist. The only examples of his work I had seen were on his wife. Beautiful stuff, but naturally that may or may not be a true representation of his everyday work, since he had time and incentive.

Yesterday I saw some photos on his Facebook page. I am impressed! I knew he was a true artist in several media - he does wonderful work in metal, for example, and in designing and making incredibly detailed medieval and Japanese warrior armor. I now find he is an artist of the highest caliber in ink, even when the canvas is not his wife.

If you are ever in the Kingston/Woodstock NY area, and you'd been thinking about getting a tattoo, I recommend him highly. He's not only talented, he's a gentleman in every sense of the word. Check him out: http://www.facebook.com/eddempseytattoos - click on "photos" on the left, then on "album II". I am most impressed by photo 119, near the bottom, the shoulder armor. It LOOKS like metal!

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The TSA says that people 75 and over will no longer have to take off their shoes or endure pat-downs. They figure old folks are a low risk.

Hmmmm. Not any more.....

Say we've got a 27-year-old passionate radical bent on revenge who wants to carry a bomb. Say he's got a 76-year-old grandfather whose wife died three years ago, and who has just been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Hmmmm. We now have incentive to talk to Grampa about a little mission he could spare his grandson from.

Don't get on any planes with old codgers!

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Check out KhanAcademy.org. Scroll down for a list of topics they have lessons on. They're amazing! Wikipedia has an informative entry on Khan Academy.

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You've heard of iPhone 4's Siri, the lady who answers your questions. She has a sense of humor. There are many video clips on YouTube wherein people (usually males) ask her questions (the most common being "How much wood can a woodchuck..." etc., for which Siri has several amusing answers). In this clip, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_SRhnis6f8&feature=fvwrel, Siri learns that Steve Jobs has died. Yeah, it's a faked Siri, but of all the clips I'd seen, this is the funniest.

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Some guy is suing some theater chain (Google it. I'll wait) because they don't allow you to bring in food or drink, and the prices at the concession stand are like 40 times what you'd pay in a grocery store.

I understand why theaters want to restrict what people bring in. Some folks are ridiculous slobs. They'd bring messy or stinky stuff, three course dinners, get pizza deliveries, throw chicken bones on the floor, spill scalding coffee on the people in front of them, and so on. At least if they control it, the theaters know what to expect.

As to what they charge, it doesn't bother me because I don't buy any of it! I'm not forced to pay their prices. It is not necessary to eat during a movie. Sheesh. The high concession prices keep the ticket price down, and if the folks who think they have to eat want to subsidize the price of my ticket, that's fine with me.

I guess I've been conditioned by my past. All those young folks out there don't remember pay toilets (mostly phased out beginning in the mid-70s). They were everywhere, including stores, restaurants, and bars, and if you had to go you were forced to pay. You had to put coins into the door to get into a stall, and if you were out of change, too bad. Now THAT's a ripoff! (And no, the urinals in the men's room did not require payment. Women bore the brunt of that one.)

Note - I would love to sue theaters for what they sell - not over the prices, though. I'd like to force them to sell only things in packaging that doesn't rattle or crinkle! It's not fair to charge me for a movie I can't hear over fifty guys shaking Junior Mints out of a box.

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Voters at my old house vote down the school budget year after year. Year after year the school board redoes it, and keeps it to a 7% increase. Voters seem to be happy with 7%. Last week I checked my records. The school tax for the old house is now 150% what it was in 2005. Note that my income has increased by maybe 8% since 2005.
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3478 I will stay calm. I will stay calm. I will...

Friday, March 2, 2012

He always makes a good first impression; to detest him, you really have to know him.

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A little background: To transfer stock, bonds, etc., you need more than a notary stamp on your signature. You have to get a medallion stamp, which you get only at a bank or a brokerage, because the medallion is backed by insurance for the value of the asset.

Last year, I asked Ex#2 to complete the transfer to me of some jointly-owned shares of stock that I got in the divorce some 30-odd years ago. I sent him the forms. All he had to do was sign them in front of a bank officer and get the medallion stamp, then mail them back to me.

Not so simple. He couldn't find a bank in south Jersey willing to risk their insurance by verifying his identity for that large a sum (which wasn't very large at all). Um, apparently not even the bank he'd been using for the past several years, which makes one wonder. It became a big deal on his end, involving many phone calls and visits to various banks, but he finally found a large enough bank and scraped together enough id to get the medallion. (They also made him open an account.) He then sent the forms to me, I got the medallion on my signature from the small community credit union I'd been using for less than six months, and the deal was done.

So, now, this morning, I got an email from him. He wants to sell the lake lots in Missouri that he'd got in the divorce. He asked me to call him! or send him my phone number so we could talk about it.

Uh uh. Ain't no way I'm talking to him on the phone! He natters, and attempts stupid jokes, interrupts, doesn't listen, and mishears. He objects to everything, he's infuriating, and on the phone there's no opportunity for me to cool down before being forced to respond, which I guarantee will be counter-productive and possibly damaging to my phone.

I suggested we discuss it by email.

Now, I'm pretty sure I completed a quit-claim on that property 30-odd years ago, and I guess he didn't file it because my name is still on the deed, but I can't get annoyed about that because I'd done pretty much the same thing with the stock transfer. He's got a buyer (at a loss, he says, which is odd because we bought the lots before the lake and roads and all the amenities were in, so they were dirt cheap in 1972, but no skin off my nose whether he's taking a bath or lying, and history says he's lying because hey, it's about MONEY!, but I don't care), so he needs me to sign the sale papers. Notarized, of course.

Summary of the email exchanges, omitting the infuriating parts:
He: Drive down here (three+ hours round trip) so we can go to a notary and both sign at the same time.
Me: We don't need to sign at the same time. You sign and get it notarized, then send the papers to me, I'll take them to the notary at my bank and sign, and send them back.
He: The bank won't notarize unless you have an account there.
Me: What part of "my bank" sounds like I don't have an account there? Besides, we're not talking about a medallion. They get sticky about medallions if they don't know or don't like or don't trust you. It's just a notary stamp and any notary can do it.
He: There's only one space for the notary stamp.
Me: Not a problem. The stamps can go anywhere, just so they touch the signature.
He: How 'bout I come up there and your notary can witness both signatures?
Me: (No! No! Please God, No! No!) Not necessary. Get your signature notarized, send the papers to me, I'll get my signature notarized, and send them back. Very simple. Three days with overnight mail.
He: Ok. I send them to [right house number, wrong street name], right?
Me: No. Send them to [my name, right house number, right street name, right town, right zip code, included all just in case, 'cause he's an freakin' idiot.]

Note that he's not signing at his attorney's office because he didn't retain an attorney. The BUYER drew up the contract - a quit-claim. Probably forms the buyer picked up at a stationery store. Sheesh.

And I'm a little nervous myself about the tax issues. Somebody has to pay a real estate transfer tax. Can we trust the buyer to do that? If Missouri requires proof, or fees for filing the deed, maybe. And even though it's (supposedly) "at a loss", Ex#2 should report it on his income tax. I have no confidence whatsoever that he will do that.

We're talking about the guy who didn't file federal income tax for several years because one year he forgot, and then he figured that since the gov'ment deducted the money up front and he never had to pay more at filing time, and nobody came after him for not filing, he didn't have to. Ever. Duh.

If he doesn't report the sale, I can get in trouble for not reporting it, either.

This is the guy who rented out three bedrooms in his seven room house, then claimed 1/2 of his mortgage, taxes, insurance, and utility payments as a business expense, AND since he rented to a succession of drug addicts and sleazeballs who paid the first and last months' rent and didn't pay another penny for the six months it took to evict them while they stole his mail and everything else nailed down or not --- so that every year he declared significant business losses on his income tax, equal to the mortgage+, so that he pretty much got the house free.

The IRS rules say that you can lose money on a business for something like only three years in a row, then it is no longer a business, it's a hobby, and you can't claim business expenses for it. But he scammed the feds and state for ten years, and bragged about how much money he saved on taxes.

The IRS rules also say that if you report crap like that, you get a reward of a percentage of the back taxes owed.

You have no idea how tempted I was. The reward alone would have been in the tens of thousands. But if I had reported his delinquency, Daughter would be upset, so I didn't.

I wish I had. I'm sorry the statute of limitations is up. But so help me, if I find out he didn't report this land sale on next year's taxes, I'll get him. Somehow.

(Of course, if it's REALLY a loss, then he will report it.)
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3249 I don't understand - foreclosure

Monday, May 16, 2011

“We need our heroes, but soon there will be no more. Our world will not grow men with the credentials necessary to survive scrutiny.”
-- Jerald Bevens, in a letter to Newsweek --

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See this: http://www.trulia.com/foreclosure/3030347024--Troester-St-Detroit-MI-48205. It's a foreclosed house in Detroit, owned now by the bank, and for sale for $150. It's a nice-looking house, it's been cared for. One assumes that the prior owners were unable to pay the mortgage.

In cases like this, why don't the original owners buy it back for $150? Like I said, the house seems to have been cared for. I understand the concept of "Don't have any money", but $150? Somebody somewhere should be able to come up with a $150 loan.

But you never hear of anyone defaulting and then buying back their home for a song. It just doesn't seem to happen. They have to live somewhere, and renting somewhere else is bound to be more expensive than buying back the house for a one-time $150 payment, closing costs, and the ongoing insurance and taxes - but no more mortgage!

I don't understand.

About the only thing I can figure is that the original owner lost a job, and just dropped the house and moved away.
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2937 Crazy House Market

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The end move in politics is to pick up a gun.
--Buckminster Fuller --

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Wow! What does Vancouver, BC, Canada have that makes it so desirable? Or at least makes the land/houses so expensive? Go to http://www.crackshackormansion.com/ to find out what one million dollars will buy. (It's a test to determine whether you can tell the difference between a mansion and a crack house. It's mind-blowing.) They're talking about one million Canadian dollars, but the current exchange rate is almost dollar for dollar, so it's still one million.

I couldn't believe it, so I found a real estate listing site, and checked. At http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search?cmid=1021104&sby=1, sorted by lowest price to highest, the cheapest 1 bedroom "bachelor" condo in West Vancouver, 393 sq ft, is $240,000. You don't see two bedrooms and more than 700 sq ft until the $400,000 mark. And that's apartments, not houses.

At the $598,000 mark I found a large 5/6 bedroom house - the first - followed by more condos. I wondered what was wrong with the house that it should be so cheap, and found this little tickler: "Land lease is 10,200 yearly." Huh? No wonder.

I didn't see another freestanding house until $839,000.

So, ok, maybe West Vancouver is the ritzy area. It's near the ocean. Let's head inland to East Vancouver, at http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search?cmid=1095503. Ok, we can get a bachelor suite for $190,000, but prices go up rapidly. The fifth cheapest condo is $225,000. Not a lot better than West Vancouver.

Here's what $580,000, the cheapest house, will get you:
"Handy man special. Needs TLC. Mainly Land Value." They don't say how much land.

What is going on in Vancouver? Are the salaries commensurate? This is scary.
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2286 Cave House

Wednesday, February 25, 2009


There's a unique house for sale in Festus, Missouri. The eBay listing is here. The listing ends on March 11 or so (sooner if they get a good offer). If you go look, the photos in the middle of the listing may not show up - but there's more near the end.

The house is built into a cave. (Well, they call it a cave. Actually it's an old mine.) 17,000 square feet, spread over three chambers. The living area is in the front chamber. The second chamber is 40'x40', and makes a good party/game area. The third, or back chamber, is huge, and contains a stage where, back in the '70s and '80s or something, some well-known music groups performed. In the photos, the green-tinted tunnel-looking one is that third chamber. They really should have included a person in that photo for scale - the ceiling is over 20' high!

$300,000 can get you a very unique geothermal house.


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2276 - I just don't get it.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

When the current governor of New York took office, he noted that the real estate situation in the Albany area was terrible, not so much foreclosures as that nothing was selling. Nobody was buying houses. Nobody could sell a house. He said somebody should do something about that. So he fired 3,000+ state government workers.

I don't understand. Good luck with that relocation, folks.

Meanwhile, in Saratoga, Marylou Whitney has canceled her annual ball celebrating the opening of the racing season. The ball is huge, themed, enormously extravagant. Costumed invited guests are inside, but outside, the masses, anybody who shows up, are also fed and entertained. It's the biggest thing in Saratoga, I guess. She can afford it.

She and her husband have decided that the ball is "inappropriate" in this economy.

Inappropriate? What about the local businesses that depend on the ball to make their nut every year? How many jobs will this move cost?

In this economy, spending, if you have the money, is the most appropriate thing to do! Keeping money out of circulation is the absolute worst thing.

I don't understand.
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2272 Bits and Pieces

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

On NPR today, a lot of people were asked to define love. There were all kinds of complicated, fanciful, and flowery definitions, most of which seemed to fit a particular situation, and most of which seemed a bit smothering to me.

I like my definition best (of course): "Love is when you want for someone whatever makes them happy, even if it doesn't happen to include you."

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Evidence of the spread of the financial crisis - Dubai. Wealthy city. Very expensive. Disneyland, Las Vegas, and New York city all rolled into one, party center of the world (even though sin is against the law). Dubai has attracted speculators from all over Asia and the middle east. And now it's crashing.

In the US, when you can't pay for the house or the car, you can hand the keys to the bank or dealership and walk away. Not in Dubai. You pay debts, or you go to debtor's prison.

In the past four months, the police have found more than 3,000 cars abandoned at and near the airport, with the keys in them. Surprise. People are quietly sneaking onto planes, getting out.

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I knew that the US real estate market was ridiculous, especially in California. Some people still have a distorted opinion of what their property is worth. Look at what $200,000 (down from $250,000) will get you in San Diego:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Diego
/3225-National-Ave-92113/home/5890483/
sandicor-080074949

"Major fixer upper. Needs lots of work no bathrooms fixtures, toilets, tiles. No light fixtures, no kitchen cabinets, partial carpets, stucco needs finish. No landscape needs fence contractors. Dream major fixer sold as is. Needs some windows & new doors, may need some roofing & garage door, no exhaust fans present in kitchen or bathrooms & steps need repairs. Fixer Fixer Fixer!"

"Dream"? Do check the link. It has no foundation, is supported on a few widely spaced posts and whatever else they could find. It looks like you'd be buying nothing more than a small narrow trashed lot.

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Quote from A-Rod: "I laid my bed, now I've got to sit on it."

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I have the Maury show on in the morning because it leads into a show I really watch. I am amazed at how those people overreact! No matter what's going on with me, I'd never be accepted for the show by the producers. They don't want someone who will hear some shocking revelation and respond, "Oh. Ok. I guess that settles that." and walk away.

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Along those same lines, Ben Sherwood, author of The Survivors Club, was on PBS last night. He had some interesting things to say about people who manage to survive disasters, who breeze through crises. He says there's a misconception that most people freak out in an emergency. Actually, he's discovered that in any group of people, there will be 10% who become leaders and do exactly the right things, 80% who obey and follow those leaders, and 10% who flip out and do all the wrong things, endangering everyone else.

He says that

"An international team of scientists has identified a set of genes that seem to protect people from the greatest stresses and strains in life. Researching my book, I actually underwent genetic testing to see if I’ve got the Resilience Gene."

I find it interesting that so many people these days get old sayings wrong, even mature journalists. He said that many people, in a crisis, "run around with their heads cut off", which brings up an image quite different from a chicken with its head cut off.... I guess nobody kills their own chickens much these days.

I took the test at the above link. I came up "Realist". I am, in fact, good in a crisis, and I don't easily stress out.
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2067 An opinion on real estate prices

Saturday, October 11, 2008

There's a piece of the mortgage crisis that everyone seems to be overlooking or discounting.

Real estate prices (I refuse to say values) shot way up over the past few years. The reason was the ease of obtaining credit. It used to be that you could obtain a mortgage commensurate with your ability to pay. If you had a certain income, the banks would tell you that you could afford, say, a $150,000 house, and that was that. When you went shopping, you looked at $150,000 houses. If you were selling a house, you had to be careful not to overprice it, so you wouldn't price yourself out of the market.

And then suddenly, mortgages got easier to qualify for. On the same salary as above, you could get a $200K, or $500K mortgage. So that's the size house you looked for.

Most people really don't have a realistic idea of what they can afford. They don't plan for a crisis. And real estate prices were going up, so they figured that if it turned out that they couldn't afford it, well, they'd just sell it and walk away with a profit. Nobody ever loses money on a house, right?

Well, with looser money, the folks who sell houses realized they may as well get some of that, too. So the prices on houses rose. The same folks who used to buy a $150K house are now shopping for a $250K house, so the house that used to sell for $150K is now priced at $250K. A market-driven inflation. (Not so suddenly, of course, but the movement was inevitable and inexorable, but not inexplicable. It should have been expected.)

In some areas of the country now, it's not unusual to find a four room "fixer-upper" on 1/6 acre in a bad neighborhood listed at $300K. This is patently ridiculous. It's a "deal" only because everything else around it is priced higher.

Home prices were rising faster than salaries. Defaults were rife. Now there are "bank owned" properties on the market, selling for less than average, so it's bringing averages down. It could be a good deal for buyers, except that if they have to sell one house to buy another, they can't.

I see another problem brewing.

Lenders are going to get tougher. You're going to have to really qualify for that mortgage. The banks, having been burned, are now going to tell you that you qualify for only $150K again. But anyplace you'd want to live is priced higher than that, so the real estate market is going to drop. The original $150K house will eventually drop to $150K, because the trough is empty.

This will be good news for buyers.

This will be very bad news for homeowners and sellers.

If you had bought a home with a mortgage in the past five years, you're going to find your house is worth less on the market than you owe on it. Your equity is negative. You won't be able to refinance it, and you'll take a loss on selling it. And if you've been conscientiously making the payments, the government is unlikely to help you.

You are screwed.
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1840 Help me here. Thud or no thud?

Sunday, June 8, 2008

The eFinance Directory list of the most and least affordable housing markets is here. The lists show the area, the median home price, the median household income, and the percentage of people living in that area who can afford to buy a home.

The paragraph after the "least affordable" list caught my eye. It says: "The Los Angeles area tops the list of the least affordable housing markets for the 14th consecutive time. Only 10 percent of the people who earn the median household income of $59,800 can afford a median priced [$412,000] home."

Duh?

Don't they mean only 10% of all the families in that area can afford to buy any house? At all?

There are higher and lower incomes, and higher and lower house prices. The only way anyone with the median income of $59,800 can afford a $412,000 house is to already own a house of the same or near value, and actually find a buyer for it.

There's something wrong with the conclusion in their paragraph, but I'm not sure what.
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1505 Taxes and Cascade

Thursday, October 11, 2007

I got a $500 rebate check yesterday, under the STAR program (School Tax Relief Program, which includes a school property tax rebate program and a partial property tax exemption). The amount of the rebate depends on one's age and income level, and amount of taxes paid. They (Albany) determine your income from the income tax forms filed the previous April.

Now, I appreciate the rebate. But what bugs me is that it costs the state money to cut all these checks and mail them. I paid my school taxes several months ago, using money from a money market account, $500 of which I will now return to that account. So I'm out those months of earnings on that $500.

In these days of computers, would it really be so difficult to figure the rebate before I pay the school tax, and simply discount the tax bill by that much? Duh?

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This (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/science/09tier.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) is a New York Times article on "mistaken consensus".

I've seen mistaken consensus in action in The Company. It's when some person considered an expert comes up with a conclusion that a few others accept without question. Then, since there are now several "experts" espousing this conclusion, others accept it too. It cascades. Next thing you know, it's common wisdom. "Everyone knows" it's true.

Then, a few skeptics decide to actually test the truth, and are unable to support the conclusion. In fact, they may even prove it false. But since the conclusion is generally accepted (by experts who have never tested it, based solely on the acceptance of others who had never tested it, the cascade), these skeptics are shouted down, and even ostracised, to the point where dissension could become professional suicide - in a "reputational cascade".

The example used in the article is "Dietary fat is bad for you." 'Tain't true. The article traces the origin and mistaken cascade of the myth, and the difficulty combating it.

I witnessed several mistaken cascades within The Company. The source was almost always someone who stood to profit from the myth (not that they knowingly spread misinformation - they likely fully believed it - just that it wasn't true), and, on the basis of the myth, was promoted beyond harm by the time it was disproved. And, unfairness piled upon unfairness, the disprover was usually professionally injured by early dissension, and the final disproving of the myth never fully repaired that damage. ("Harumph! Not a team player! Rocks the boat! Yeah, ok, she was right, but still...")

Sigh. Yeah. The disprover was often me. It's a real credit to my talents that I actually did quite well on appraisals, raises, promotions. When I wasn't in the doghouse, that is. Which would last until I managed to kickstart a competing consensus cascade of my own.

There's a lesson there.
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