Friday, August 30, 2019

I'm going to get a few of these cars out.









Someone put a Ferrari engine in this Mustang.













Thursday, August 29, 2019

In today's episode of super depressing real estate news.

Today I decided to go through the recently sold houses in my city. I don't normally do that because I don't care - mostly. But there are starting to be lots of stories about housing being down roughly 10% in most areas of the Bay Area.

For example, one agent in my town is saying the average sale price in my city has declined 83,267. THE AVERAGE! And recently sold houses look to be mostly just a tale of misery.  I would say that only about 10% of the houses sold above asking. One mobile home I was watching finally sold.

It was originally listed on 9/24/18 for 219.500. It finally sold on 8/9/19 for 125.500! I don't know what it looks like inside, but the outside is nice. That is almost a 50% discount!

If this is happening to mobile homes - the tiny house movement is dust. And if people don't think this bleeds into consumer spending.... well I don't even know what to say. When you take a 50% hair cut on a mobile home - this is getting serious. These are the new comps for that neighborhood.

The other thing that was interesting was a bunch of houses had barely had any price appreciation in 12 years. Less than 100,000 dollars. I like to go way back and look at price history. The reason this is significant is that there are a lot of headlines talking about the crazy real estate prices in the Bay Area are - but these price drops are really putting prices almost back down to pre-recession levels.

Just when you thought Google couldn't get any more creepy.



Last night I was telling Mr S. that when I brought up Google Maps it offered me an augmented reality option that allowed you to explore an area. Which I was kinda excited about.

He says - Oh! Google has now started reading my text messages.

I'm like - what?!

He says - yeah... watch. When I ask what you want for dinner it pops up a message about near by restaurants, and if I say I'm on my way home it pops up a share location message.

So, I guess now you can't even have a text conversation without Google butting in. It's just so fucking creepy.

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

That was unexpected.

Fry's Electronics to shutter Palo Alto store in January.

"Apparently their lease ran out" in quotey fingers.

You can finally stop using your arms like a sucker.



Robot arms have gotten astonishingly good over the years. But now they are not as power hungry. So I think they will be everywhere. This is a sharp reversal from my opinion a few years ago when you had some serious power requirements.

This one was running off a laptop battery. And they've become no code devices once in house. You basically articulate what you want the arm to do, and it repeats it. I'm surprised they don't stick these on humans. Well.... I might be a little ahead of myself. How much do you think your average arm weighs? Because this one was around 13 pounds. If a human arm weighs 13 pounds, for sure - just start slapping these on humans.

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

If it wasn't totaled before.........



I guess they are rolling out these sweet chariots in Denmark for EV fires. Because EV's are totes environmentally awesome. It's a car dunk tank! More pictures at the link.

HT Morten Grove.

Uhaul game.



When Mr S. and I go on road trips we play the Uhaul game. Which is better than your average car counting road trip games. These are the rules.

1 Uhaul - 1 point.

Any Uhaul towing a Uhaul trailer - 3 points. These are usually game changers because if you manage to get two of those in a row, you are getting your butt kicked. That's 6 points. You can make it up the hard way - one point at a time...but you have to work at it.

If you call any other competing truck like Penske - it's minus 5 points. This is to stop you from calling trucks before you know what they really are.

Then there are unicorn calls we haven't made a point system for yet. The above setup is only three points because the first truck is not a Uhaul. We are still trying to figure out how we would point rank that if it were.

Once Mr S. saw a Uhaul car carrier carrying Uhauls. But we weren't together and he didn't get a photo of it. So it didn't count at all.

Photo's also count. Occasionally one of us will have a photo show up on their phones if we are not together, and that counts. Also if you see one on the TV.

Whatever.

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Palo Alto art festival.



Today I was in Palo Alto. Mostly I'm in this for the chalk art........... and Shake Shack. Palo Alto is my closest one.

Palo Alto always feels amazing. It feels like nothing can hurt you there. I mean, the burbs aren't bad. But it feels like nothing bad ever happens in Palo Alto.

You run into the dogs of Palo Alto instagram. I mean, this dog defs has to have an insta - right? Look at that smile. This one got tired of my shit pretty quick and got nippy. But dogs will be dogs. You takes ur chances.







All of the artists were super chill about letting you take photos. I was sort of surprised.



The chalk art this year was super lean. And it was all super non controversial kinda stuff. Fish and animals.











More dogs of insta. (probably)



I have to admit - I sorta want to try these Segway skates. It's the first time I've seem them in real life.

Saturday, August 24, 2019

Back to ol' timey stuff.



I still have stuff from Monterey to post, but I got bored. You should know by now that happens here. And I love this car to death. It combines two of my favorite car trends.

Bare metal. And Ratrods.

They parked this car in a very tragic spot so you couldn't really get great shots of it. They put it right in front of the food stands. So, there was no getting a clean shot no matter how long you waited.













Friday, August 23, 2019

You know how people put fake deer in their yards?



Well Monterey puts real deer. Yes, they are all over the golf course, but this is right downtown. And they are super not afraid of people. This one was about 10 feet from me. They walk the streets like the turkeys do in my town.













The rumor mill on Fry's Electronics is really heating up.

Remember when I went into Fry's Electronics about a month ago and was shocked that they had taken out display racks. Their inventory looked missing. And it generally looked like the store was going out of business?

Well I'm starting to hear those rumors from all over now. The rumor mill is that their suppliers cut them off. But the official Fry's story is that they are having trouble getting things from China. You can make up your own minds.

I've heard exact same stories as mine from Fountain Valley Ca.  Roseville Ca. Burbank Ca. And Renton Wa. Removed display cases with a very noticeable lack of inventory.

Thursday, August 22, 2019

We are definitely in a declining market.

There are some crazy things happening in real estate in my city.

First - I have five Mobile homes on the market. When it's unusual to see one.

I also ran across a really modest house in a nice neighborhood. Looks well enough kept. They put it on the market Oct last year for 775,000.  It's a 3 bed 1 and a half bath -  slightly less than 1300 square foot house.

In November of last year they lowered the price by 15 grand. That made no difference. They removed the listing in January. Re-listed it on August 8th for 634,572. That's a 140,428.  price cut. They had been bumping it down a few grand every few days to 626,381. Now it's up for auction.

If I had to guess - the price cuts triggered them to be in negative equity and they gave up. There have been so many price revisions that I can't see past last year so I am only speculating.

It's been a long time since we have had a zero bid market. Especially for what most would consider a starter house. It's the first one I've seen since the grand ol' days of the recession. Previously things had just been sitting a while. So I wouldn't draw too much yet. But if we are getting to that point in the market.......... it's gonna get cray cray.

This type of stuff will definitely cause shivers through the economy. If that is your neighborhood - everyone in that neighborhood knows about that house. And that kind of stuff spreads like wildfire.

This is why Trump is banging the drums on rate cuts.

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Funny how quickly things change.

July 24, 2019 Based on what people are searching for on Google, a recession is nowhere near.

August 21, 2019 Based On What People Are Searching On Google, A Recession Could Be Imminent.

When your house loses 10.5% of it's value in one year like San Jose has - it's not the "fake news" as Trump likes to say that is causing people to become fearful. That's real money. Something is pulsing through the economy.  Could be the strong dollar. Could be the trade wars.  People are exceedingly aware that if you own a million dollar house (which I'm sure every house in San Jose is now) you have just lost 100 grand in value. That might even put people who have bought in the last two years underwater.

Make no mistake - Trump had to call China on it's shit. We were just passively giving everything we owned to China. It's not paranoia to say that China could have owned us one day. But no one should have thought this would be painless.