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$782,000 Over Asking For a House in Sunnyvale (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A house in Sunnyvale just sold for close to $800,000 over its listing price. Your eyes do not deceive you: The four-bed, two-bath house -- less than 2,000 square feet -- listed for $1,688,000 and sold for $2,470,000. "I think it's the most anything has ever gone for over asking in Sunnyvale -- a record for Sunnyvale," said Dave Clark, the Keller Williams agent who represented the sellers in the deal. "We anticipated it would go for $2 million, or over $2 million. But we had no idea it would ever go for what it went for." This kind of over-bidding is known to happen farther north in cities including Palo Alto, Los Altos and Mountain View. But as those places have grown far too expensive for most buyers, future homeowners have migrated south to Sunnyvale, a once modest community that now finds itself among the Bay Area's real estate hot spots.
Debt isn't necessarily bad. Debt to fund operating costs is (almost) always bad. Debt to fund capital investment is only bad if the interest on the debt is worse than the return on investment. If one person rents a house and the other takes out a mortgage at 3% interest to buy a house in an area where the house value appreciates at 6% per annum, which do you think is more fiscally responsible?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yeah. I live in a small town of about 15000 people, with a large and stable employer, which has led to a a very strange and hot real estate market for a place 50 miles away from anywhere.
When I was shopping for a home, I made a habit of inspecting the cabinet hinges in every room and bathroom. I don't care about a shiny new granite countertop. Cheap $0.50 hinges means corners were cut, and the place will likely fall apart. Nice Blum hinges on even the smallest cabinet? That's a winner. I am sure there are other things to look at too, but hinges worked for me pretty well as a 'tell'.
Hmm? Been having budget surpluses the last few years.
That is actually part of the problem. California's taxes are highly progressive and mostly based on income tax. Wealthy people tend to have highly variable incomes. So when times are good, California's budget racks up huge surpluses, and politicians being politicians, they tend to squander the surpluses on vote-winning boondoggles. Then a few years later, a recession comes along and the economic pendulum swings the other way. The revenues dry up, and we are locked into spending that we can no longer afford.
This is also why the "boom and bust" cycle is stronger in California than in many other states. Because of the volatile nature of government tax receipts, the government tends to overspend in good times, heating up an already frothy economy, while yanking spending at the very time some stimulus is needed.
The answer, of course, is long term planning and fiscal restraint, but you don't win elections by being a naggy sourpuss.