Robert Abalos is the author of Investing in Land, the most widely sold real estate book in publishing history with sales in more than 91 countries around the world. This blog offers news and advice for real estate investors and land developers.
The only reason 1963 is cited is because new home sales figures only go back that far. 2011 was also the worst year for new home construction on record.
Where are the gurus who predicted in 2007 that all would be well by 2011?
One now widely discredited guru in the advertising for one of his 2006 seminars claimed that 2007 was "Your Last Chance" to get in on all the real estate bargains. All those foreclosures were going to get quickly scooped up and smart investors were going to make millions by 2008.
Since 2007, real estate prices in this guru's own local market has fallen another 25%. Some last chance, huh?
Investment gurus of all kinds, and especially the "Nothing Down" get-rich-quick in real estate type, sell nothing but optimism. There message is BUY NOW, THINK LATER. Real estate prices are always headed to the moon and if you are smart you will get in on their program---for $495 up front, of course.
The next time you consider buying ANY real estate book, home study course, seminar ticket or whatever, find out what the author was saying about real estate in 2004 and 2007-2008. Most real estate authors have websites these days, Twitter accounts, Facebook, and more.
Before you spend $295, $997, or $2,500 or more on some real estate investing course, find out how good a prognosticator your future instructor/teacher/guru really has been in the past.
If you get nothing but bullish sentiments both times you can see with your own eyes how good there 2012 predictions will be---which I'm sure are 1,000% bullish, brimming with nothing but blue skies and clear sailing ahead.
For the record, I was warning investors in both 2004 and 2007 NOT TO BUY properties.
I'm warning you still.
U.S. residential real estate is a bust until at least 2020. Basing a retirement plan or future income needs on single family home values is reckless and downright silly.
In fact, this book has sparked a new personal obsession. To find and research the original Blanding homes built for the famous Cary Grant film.
One of my favorite real estate movies of all time is the 1948 classic MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE. This extremely funny comedy is on the American Film Institute's 100 Years....100 Laughs list at #72.
The Mr. Blandings of the title is Jim Blandings, played by Cary Grant. He lives with his wife Muriel (Myrna Loy) and their two daughers in a tiny Manhattan apartment. Jim works in the advertising game and normally writes copy that drives others crazy. But one day Mr. Blanding is smitten with an advertisement for some homes in Connecticut and he is hooked, literally.
After buying a fixer-upper with the plan to rehab the place, the Blandings soon realize they are in far over their heads. Think Tom Hanks and Shelly Long in the 1986 comedy, THE MONEY PIT which recycled many of the jokes from BLANDINGS. Jim and Muriel make just about every mistake novice real estate investors make. Only in the film it's funny. In real life, it's heartbreaking.
Eventually the too-smooth-by-half lawyer friend of Jim (the brilliant Melvyn Douglas) enters the picture to help and only seems to make matters worse!
In the end of course, as it must in every 1940's era Hollywood film, everything works out for the Blandings. Jim's ultimate lesson, which he recites like a good ad man, should put chills up the spine of any experienced real estate rehabber:
"Some things you do buy with your heart."
YIKES!
What I learned from my new Los Angeles architecture book THAT I NEVER KNEW is that the Blandings home actually was built and still stands in Malibu Creek State Park. Here is the passage in the book.
Wikipedia says that 73 Blandings homes were built all around the United States as a promotion for the film. Some of these Connecticut Colonials were sold by raffles. Sixty of the homes were equipped with General Electric appliances and promoted by GE, an early example of cross promotion. The advertisement from this source is below.
These are some still frame captures from the film that show the classic Connecticut Colonial style.
One blogger posted that this photograph is of the original movie set home in Malibu Creek State Park which is now used as an office.
I certainly will be visiting Malibu Creek State Park to visit this movie set myself. Films from M*A*S*H to the original PLANET OF THE APES were also filmed there.
Wiki lists sixty cities where Blandings Homes were built. If you know anything about a Blandings home in your city, please contact me at robertjabalos@gmail.com. A photograph would be amazing. A story even more fascinating. They just don't do movie promotions like this anymore!
I am working on a project concerning the National Environmental Policy Act (42 USC 4321, et. seq.) and Presidential Executive Order 13337.
I am seeking a legal researcher who has familiarity with civil engineering concepts and can do write up some briefs and other executive summaries on matters related to large scale industrial development projects.
This project should last 2-3 months. Compensation is by agreement in advance depending how much research you can do and when you can do it.
I am looking not just for a person who can do legal research but also has some familiarity with Federal environmental regulations and can coherently write about them, often with short deadlines. I am prepared to hire two part time workers if I can't find one full time person.
Other responsibilities of this position may include editing and proofreading documents, doing supplemental legal research beyond the two provisions described above, and other non-research assignments related to the completion of the project such as indexing and collating research documents.
My office is in downtown Seattle but face-to-face meetings are not essential so applicants beyond the Seattle area certainly qualify. This position does not involve travel of any kind.
Successful applicants will certainly be considered for future employment opportunities.
Please describe your work experience in an email to RobertJAbalos@gmail.com.
Do not send me emails with attachments. If you want to include a resume or some other document please copy-and-paste it within your email. Emails with attachments will not be opened.
If you walk around downtown Seattle for about ten minutes you can't help but notice all the ground floor retail space vacancies, especially for restaurants, coffee shops, and cafes. The number of empty storefronts is unprecedented.
Here are a series of photographs I took along Seattle's Third Avenue this week. THREE vacancies in just one block. This is not some distant commercial district but literally the city's downtown core just blocks from thirty large urban hotels, Pike Place Market, and the Washington State Convention Center.
So why all the vacancies?
Politicians like to talk about the "bad economy" as if it were a monster like Godzilla that ate up all the good jobs. Panda bears eat eucalyptus leaves. The Bad Economy eats jobs.
Sorry, but a bad economy is really little more than poor political choices that affect business owners and indirectly employees looking for jobs and real estate investors trying to lease out commercial space.
Just look at the business math for restaurant owners and the real estate investors that want to lease them space.
Washington State, for example, just raised the minimum wage for 2012 to $9.04 per hour. Unlike 44 other states, in Washington minimum wage workers receive the full hourly wage PLUS tips, in other words, no "Tip Credit."
Inevitably, when wage costs increase the number of employees decrease. Business owners aren't stupid. If the cost of labor per hour rises, simply decrease the number of hours you need to buy.
In other words, don't hire new workers or fire some that you already have.
70% of Washington State restaurant owners are cutting staff or reducing business hours. In other words, reducing the number of labor hours they have to buy.
What does all this mean? If you are a low skilled employee of a restaurant like a waitress or hostess you can make $20 per hour. But you are also trapped into a job where it is difficult to leave. Where else can a high school dropout earn a skilled machinist's wage? Plus you work harder and longer to earn that higher wage since there are, on average, fewer workers per shift.
If you are real estate owner trying to lease space, it means the mom-and-pop breakfast place that served eggs and coffee in the lobby for twenty years is now gone---along with all of its employees, tax revenues, and business dreams.
But the story gets worse.
Seattle, in an effort to prove it is a more progressive city than Portland or San Francisco, recently gave nearly all salaried workers five days of PAID sick leave per year. Only two other cities in America, Washington DC and SF, provide such a benefit. Once again, who really pays the cost for this public largess? It's not the Seattle City Council who passed the law. It's the employees who won't get hired and the business owners that will either pay yet another cost that cannot be passed on to their customers or go out of business.
It is now more expensive to park in downtown Seattle than in Manhattan in New York. Something is wrong there---especially if your business is trying to attract customers with cars such as suburban homeowners.
The epidemic of restaurant vacancies in downtown Seattle is no accident and this contagion is likely coming to a city, county, and village near you.
It's not Godzilla that is destroying the Seattle downtown commercial core, it's these monsters below.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here a few million "words" on the job report released today. Pick your source. Why should I write more criticisms of the unemployment numbers released today when thousands of other writers and commentators have already done so for me?
Until there is a gain in unemployment, a REAL gain, there will be no bottom to the U.S. residential real estate market. Realize the gain in employment is a sign of the bottom, not a catalyst for a new bull market.
When I listened to the lyrics, I realized how appropriate they are for the upcoming year. Here they are.
Came in from a rainy Thursday on the avenue Thought I heard you talking softly. I turned on the lights, the TV and the radio Still I can't escape the ghost of you What has happened to it all? Crazy, some'd say, Where is the life that I recognize? Gone away But I won't cry for yesterday, there's an ordinary world, Somehow I have to find. And as I try to make my way, to the ordinary world I will learn to survive. Passion or coincidence once prompted you to say "Pride will tear us both apart" Well now pride's gone out the window cross the rooftops, run away, Left me in the vacuum of my heart. What is happening to me? Crazy, some'd say, Where is my friend when I need you most? Gone away But I won't cry for yesterday, there's an ordinary world, Somehow I have to find. And as I try to make my way, to the ordinary world I will learn to survive. Papers in the roadside tell of suffering and greed Feared today, forgot tomorrow Ooh, here besides the news of holy war and holy need Ours is just a little sorrowed talk (Just blown away) And I don't But I won't cry for yesterday, there's an ordinary world, Somehow I have to find. And as I try to make my way, to the ordinary world I will learn to survive. Every world, is my world (I will learn to survive) Any world, is my world (I will learn to survive) Any world, is my world Every world is my world
