Everywhere I go it seems there’s some kind of housing crisis. In some places home values are dropping precipitously, people are unable to sell and move on, and formerly middle class homes are being abandoned or converted to poorly maintained rental properties. In other places home values and rents are obscenely high and ordinary people … Continue reading The Really Big Housing Picture
I’m not the kind of person who gets all weepy about the plight of the poor and oppressed. On the other hand, poverty is something I understand from direct personal experience. When I was a kid my family was homeless for a period of time. We lived in a car, took sponge baths in gas … Continue reading Valerie’s House
History is cyclical, not linear. Most people don’t truly understand that. It’s especially true in real estate. If you base the purchase of a home or investment property on what’s been desirable for the past thirty or forty years you may be unpleasantly surprised at the results moving forward. On the other hand, if you … Continue reading The Real Estate Pendulum of History
Yesterday I went to the Alameda flea market with some friends. It’s held on an old airfield at a decommissioned military base directly across the bay from San Francisco on Alameda Island. It’s warm and sunny, surrounded by water, has breathtaking views of the city, and has direct ferry service to the financial district. The … Continue reading Squeezing the Balloon
If you’re driving from Omaha to Sioux City a high speed multi-lane highway through the countryside makes all the sense in the world. It’s the right kind of infrastructure for that particular task and location. However, decades of highway construction, obsessive road widening, and the addition of surface and structured parking has occurred in the … Continue reading The Failed Promise of Urban Freeways
Granola Shotgun 