I’m in the middle of making a large batch of spaghetti sauce last week, and a commercial comes on for something called “Equity Repositioning.” The basic idea is to borrow against your house and invest the money in something else. Of course, that “something else” has to provide enough regular income to make the payment […]
Avid readers of this blog will remember earlier this year the warning calls that went out about the impending new phase of our national and global finance. The part that surprised me was that it has taken this long to get this far. The stones are all lined up for the avalanche, but some of […]
For close to a year now, Bruce Henderson (my co-blogger here) has been using his Boomerang data mining technology to gather and present housing- and economic-related data from across the nation (for an example, see the Hardtack site). For just about that same period of time, he’s been making posts at this blog that expressed […]
Brad DeLong, economics professor at UC Berkeley, has posted a great article reminding us just what life was like for most US citizens back in the early 20th century: A quarter of American households in 1900 had boarders or lodgers (compared to two percent today). Half of American households in 1900 had fewer rooms than […]
I fully anticipated the 2000 Tech Crash, due to the insane spending of dot.com startups with no products and no clear business plan. Having been part of a venture-funded startup in the early 1990s — one that took five years to run through a grand total of $7M of venture capital — I heard big […]
I’m not a native Californian, but my mom is, all four of my sisters are, two of my own children are, and frankly most of my extended family (on the Webster side) is. San Diego is pretty much the Webster home town, and I’ve lived in California a grand total of roughly 25 years, or […]
The National Association of Realtors published figures for existing home sales for April today. Existing home sales fell in April The median price of a home fell to $220,900, an 0.8 percent fall from the midpoint selling price a year ago. It marked the ninth straight decline in the median price. Comparing the national sales […]
…is that he was interviewed by BusinessWeek.com, which has now written up the OSG Hardtack website: Finally, I promised earlier that I’d explain why OSG built this site — since my first question upon finding this site was, “Who are these guys and why did they create this?” One of OSG’s specialties is designing systems […]
National single family home inventory just went over 1.9 Million over on the Hardtack experiment For a while a few weeks ago it looked like the inventory rocket was leveling out, but in reality it was taking a short breather before climbing ever higher. I have no idea when this will slow down, but it […]
Tweeter Cuts Back – Video Fans Mourn
Tweeter Cuts Back – Video Fans Mourn Tweeter is a good store, they have an excellent selection of equipment, the sales staff tend to have a clue (at least at the local ones) and the prices are competitive. I purchased my current, highly prized Samsung DLP at Tweeter, and I was very happy with the […]
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