Jersey shore is underwater, but you still can’t get a good deal

From CNBC:

A hidden time bomb? A ‘Big Short’ investor sees financial disaster brewing in housing markets

More than a decade after a U.S. mortgage meltdown threatened to destroy the international financial system, a “Big Short” investor once again sees financial disaster brewing in the real estate market.

Dave Burt, CEO of investment research firm DeltaTerra Capital which aims to help clients manage climate risk, was one of the few skeptics who recognized the housing market was on the brink of collapse in 2007.

He helped two of the protagonists of Michael Lewis’ best-selling book “The Big Short” bet against the mortgage market in the lead-up to the 2008 global financial crash. As it turned out, they were right and made billions.

Now, Burt believes an overlooked climate risk could see history repeating itself.

“I’m always on the lookout for these big systemic issues and there’s a few of reasons for that,” Burt told CNBC via videoconference.

“Professionally, if something is mispriced, then as an investor, which has been my job for most of my career, your main opportunity to add value is to identify something that is either too cheap to purchase for your clients or something that it is too expensive to sell for your client,” he said.

“From a personal perspective, and this is partly based on that professional perspective, I’ve seen when that goes wrong, how impactful that can be on economies and society and our most vulnerable. And I’m really thinking through the post-global financial crisis period here in the U.S. from 2008 to 2012 where there was a huge amount of human suffering.”

Burt said DeltaTerra Capital’s research suggests that 20% of U.S. homes have “meaningful exposure” to a mispricing issue because of flood risk. If realized, he warned the fallout could resemble the extraordinary correction seen during the global financial crisis.

“We think of this repricing issue as maybe a quarter of the size and magnitude of the [global financial crisis] in aggregate, but of course very, very damaging within those exposed communities,” Burt said.

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104 Responses to Jersey shore is underwater, but you still can’t get a good deal

  1. dentssdunngan says:

    First

  2. dentss dunnagan says:

    second

  3. dentss dunnagan says:

    third

  4. Fast Eddie says:

    Based on what Old Realtor stated the other day, I assume this house will go for ~ the same hammer price as the one his client bid on. He said the ask was 725K and 27 offers later, the price was at 900K. It’s astonishing but it’s not. So, I expect this one to follow the same path:

    https://www.trulia.com/p/nj/ridgewood/136-s-irving-st-ridgewood-nj-07450–2088566848

  5. Fast Eddie says:

    Sold for 525K, renovated (I can only imagine) and listed at 899K. There looking for a score, not a sale. If I’m dropping that kind of wood, it ain’t happening on this one:

    https://www.trulia.com/p/nj/township-of-washington/988-adams-pl-township-of-washington-nj-07676–2006763260

  6. Fast Eddie says:

    $5.6 mil is a reach on this one. Yeah, nice house, nice locale but c’mon, what are we selling here?

    https://www.trulia.com/p/nj/ridgewood/240-crest-rd-ridgewood-nj-07450–2006513647

  7. 3b says:

    Fast: You pay for the name too you know, Township of is in itself worth an extra 100k.

  8. Fast Eddie says:

    3b,

    Brown wainscoting and a gray stick-on floor in that room with the fireplace? Really? That Wash Twp. house is disgraceful at that price tag.

  9. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Holy chit!!

    Fast Eddie says:
    April 6, 2023 at 7:06 am
    $5.6 mil is a reach on this one. Yeah, nice house, nice locale but c’mon, what are we selling here?

    https://www.trulia.com/p/nj/ridgewood/240-crest-rd-ridgewood-nj-07450–2006513647

  10. grim says:

    Here’s the house down the street from me.

    https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/14-Sherwood-St-Wayne-NJ-07470/39793163_zpid/

    Anyone want to make some bets on the closing price?

  11. Old realtor says:

    Eddie,

    That Ridgewood house is the one my buyers offered on.

  12. Fast Eddie says:

    Old Realtor,

    I had a feeling it was the house.

  13. Fast Eddie says:

    Grim,

    720K?

  14. Old realtor says:

    What they are selling for $5.6 million is a 1.5 million to 2 million dollar house and a building lot worth about 1 million. Seller is the listing agent. House is about 3500 GLA. Sales of much larger nearby homes with similar views have been in the 2.5 to 3 million range.

  15. trick says:

    Wayne’s taxes seem high consider the mall and other tax revenue places, figured they would be closer to Paramus.

  16. Fast Eddie says:

    Sales of much larger nearby homes with similar views have been in the 2.5 to 3 million range.

    That is the price range I have the house at. 5.6 is a big stretch.

    As a side note, I notice condos and townhouses are approaching “silly” numbers as well.

  17. Fast Eddie says:

    Wayne’s taxes seem high consider the mall and other tax revenue places, figured they would be closer to Paramus.

    Willowbrook Mall and the route 46 corridor are not in the same league as Garden State Plaza and the route 17 stretch.

  18. trick says:

    Agree but still seems high,

  19. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Wayne has a done a great job of holding down the taxes since 2017. Barely moved.

  20. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Initial jobless claims 228K vs Est 200K. Would have been bullish last month, now everyone is positioning for a recession.

  21. grim says:

    I’m up 5% from 2017, not terrible, but am up 34% from when I purchased in 2011.

  22. grim says:

    Find it hard to believe anyone can spin a 228 print on jobless claims as a negative.

  23. Bystander says:

    People are crazy to buy a that house in Wayne with 16k tax bill. I pay 9200 for my nicer CT house with great downtown on the water. Schools are as good if not better. The commute would be similar, probably 1:15 to NYC but no bus BS, straight ride into GC. I could never commute by bus again. F-in inhumane and stressful. Hell, if you can off near 125th then a little over 1 hour. In 20 years, you save 134k in taxes.

  24. Libturd says:

    By,

    I pay 20K for a house on a lot half that size built 40 years earlier. Keep in mind, it would be 24K, but Gator did nicely with our flood pictures.

  25. Libturd says:

    Grim, gonna go $675K on the Wayne home near you.

  26. Libturd says:

    A year has now gone by and the Nasdaq is pretty much unchanged. Surprising.

  27. Libturd says:

    In that same period of time, DNA is down 65%. Not surprising.

  28. crushednjmillenial says:

    Just listened to post-indictment speech by Trump. I cannot wait to vote for him again. The Establishment must be checked. Alvin Bragg has made a mockery of rule of law.

  29. The Great Pumpkin says:

    And I am sitting here buying the fire sale….Let’s go!!

    Libturd says:
    April 6, 2023 at 10:05 am
    In that same period of time, DNA is down 65%. Not surprising.

  30. The Great Pumpkin says:

    All I hope is that DNA doesn’t run this year….continues to hand in this range so I can buy up the cheap shares.

  31. Libturd says:

    Heck BBBY is 38 cents.

    Now that’s a firesale. DNA is probably severely overvalued.

  32. Bystander says:

    ..like all cult, voting for him was never in doubt. He could say anyhting.

    Glad people like Jordan Klepper exist to show logic of these red hat free thinkers so concerned with establishment.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK0Rv444dQc

  33. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Lib,

    What is BBBY building? What is DNA building? That’s what matters to me. Just think of it like this….people that invested in this new technology called plastics way back when all became millionaires when it took over the market. Same thing I am doing with DNA….investing into the early stages of syn bio manufacturing.

  34. Trick says:

    Mother has a similar size house in Mahwah and pays just under 9k, move over to Ramsey and it would be 18k

  35. Fast Eddie says:

    A year has now gone by and the Nasdaq is pretty much unchanged. Surprising.

    Nothing built, nothing back, nothing better.

  36. grim says:

    What’s the value of current inventory at BBBY, I ‘ve got to imagine just the inventory being valued at greater than the current $0.31 a share.

  37. Phoenix says:

    Not true. You just aren’t one of the class that is benefitting.

    A rising tide lifts all boats, unless you have chained 70 percent of them to the dock. Then they sink and their occupants drown. It’s the plan.

    A year has now gone by and the Nasdaq is pretty much unchanged. Surprising.

    Nothing built, nothing back, nothing better.

  38. Phoenix says:

    Guess the government doesn’t want to accept it’s own legal tender. Guess FedNow will be accepted.

    Increasingly, U.S. national parks are switching to cashless payment for entrance fees and other charges. Critics say that hurts equal access to public lands.

  39. grim says:

    What is BBBY building? What is DNA building? That’s what matters to me. Just think of it like this….

    What is BBBY selling? What is DNA selling?

    BBBY did $6 billion in sales last year.

  40. grim says:

    I have no interest in digging in to DNA’s revenue – but I’ll tell you, if it’s based on their enzyme business, you better be careful – there are plenty of very innovative companies in that space, and what they are doing with fermentation is not at all unique or disruptive.

  41. grim says:

    Oh fuck all why did I even bother to look.

    They are making their money from covid test kits?

    That business was so incredibly fucking corrupt, based on political favoritism, lobbying, and likely kickbacks

  42. Phoenix says:

    Princess went to Wharton. Lineage like a thoroughbred. So altruistic, doing her thing to help the underprivileged students. Yet somehow, somehow with all of the money and elitist education she became a criminal. Too good looking and connected to do any real time, however:

    When the time came for Charlie Javice to make a decision about college, she considered attending school in Canada in order to cut costs. Thanks to family help, scholarships and student loans, she ended up attending the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, from which she would graduate in three years.

    Javice has done her homework. Frank doesn’t focus on the Ivy League borrower, as many loan-refinance startups do. Indeed, many users are lower income, and some have spent time in prison. Javice supports online education, which is largely used by minority and lower-income students and, she says, unfairly demonized.

    And because women hold a disproportionate amount of student loan debt in this country, Frank is “not as masculine around money,” Javice said.

    “I’ve never seen anyone more dogged about how to tackle this seemingly intractable problem,” said Eisenberg, who has known the founder since she was 19. “Charlie has plowed through it with determination and grace.”

  43. grim says:

    I’m a customer of Novozymes, BASF, DSM, Kerry Biosciences, Specialty Enzymes.

    They all make exogenous enzyme we use in mashing and spirits production. These are all produced using genetically modified bacteria and yeast in large scale bioreactors, purified, and sold.

    These guys are all doing the exact same thing, have been doing it forever. They excel in the large scale production you need for this science to work. Any one of them can pivot into pharmaceutical production far easier than DNA can scale it’s understanding and expertise in the space.

  44. Libturd says:

    BBBY is interesting. Management made a few mistakes at the absolute worst time. Otherwise, it would be relative smooth sailing for them. What’s not to say they don’t come out of dry dock smelling like a rose again?

    Not that I’m advocating that any take on the risk. But if I were a gambling man, I would bet about the same on BBBY than on the perpetually failing Ginko at this juncture.

  45. grim says:

    Hell, 40 years ago on Rt 3, Roche had it’s large scale biopharma reactor labs and were doing experiments using yeasts and bacteria to selectively produce pharmaceutical products and precursors.

  46. grim says:

    Hell, our process for making Jamaican style dark rum leverages this exact same “technology”

    We ferment molasses with a mix of specific yeast and bacterial strains necessary to produce the right mix of flavor and flavor pre-cursor compounds. This includes leveraging pure strains of Clostrydium Butyricum to produce butyric acid, Propionibacterium Shermanii to produce propionic acid, lactobacillus brevis to produce lactic acid and other flavor components. Through distillation this compounds are reacted with ethanol and other fermentation byproduct alcohols like isoamyl alcohol to produce the flavorful esters typically associated with these rums using the Fischer esterification process. The yeasts we use have been selected and genetically modified through series of selective breeding and fermentations to isolate and emphasize specific yeast characteristics that make them ideal for rum production.

    That’s my “foundry”

    What’s my valuation?

  47. Libturd says:

    But they didn’t have the fancy name, like Ginkgo Bioworks.

  48. grim says:

    Was Gingko Covid Test Company taken?

  49. BRT says:

    And they also didn’t choose their ticker to feed off the hottest stock at the time, MRNA. How many people were like “I have MRNA, let me buy DNA as well!”

  50. ExEx says:

    10:30 Do you follow the news are just “Faux News” because they are not the same thing.

  51. leftwing says:

    “Here’s the house down the street from me.”

    I can see that…can’t opine fully as I have no idea on location or school district, nor do I care about lacking ‘prestige’ factors (address or split)…but at least that house is livable and for years beyond the purchase. 4BR, real yard, real outside entertainment areas, no need to carry your groceries inside during pouring rain or over ice….does it need some renovating inside, sure, but at least at that price you have funds to spare and you also have the ability to actually grow a family in that house so you can do it over time as needed…

    Taxes $18k, that’s bat shit crazy. Punched into my old hometown, which recently had a re-assess, looked at sales prices LTM…sales and assess are close in value, and taxes are hanging 2.0% or just a hair under that value. And that’s a town with very few ratables.

    For Wayne, with all those businesses…over 2% and potentially appreciably over is insanity…how much useless bureaucracy and freeloaders do you have stuffed in all levels of local government.

    That tax rate there, alone, is all I need to re-iterate my point on consolidation…keep your big government, bloated municipal models away from my small well run town.

  52. Libturd says:

    Forget Silk City. How about, Pingpong Nanocoin Biosynthoptics ChattercloneGPT. You could probably get a 4 billion marketcap on the name alone.

    Lord knows, Pumps would back the station wagon up for it.

  53. leftwing says:

    “What’s the value of current inventory at BBBY, I ‘ve got to imagine just the inventory being valued at greater than the current $0.31 a share.”

    It is if you ignore the whole right hand side of the balance sheet, otherwise likely negative, no?

    “I have no interest in digging in to DNA’s revenue…Novozymes, BASF, DSM, Kerry Biosciences, Specialty Enzymes. They all make exogenous enzyme…”

    And into the vortex…

    I tried to explain that the biotech tools and supplies space is well defined, especially regarding valuations…no ears. No one, including the company, assigns any material value to the COVID revenue, all recognize it was ephemeral. It functioned as nothing more than a short term capital bridge, ie. that revenue provided badly needed ST cash the company was burning. Did the analysis, pretty detailed, on here last month showing what it’s cessation means for their cash balances runway….obviously not good.

    Bigger picture, it is mind boggling to me how CW gets assigned this ‘disruptive’ guru tag by repositioning shit that’s been around for up to half a century – space, internet, genomics – as something new.

    Still can’t wait for TelephoneDoc to blow up….a non-profitable industry specific call center that in her the-sky-is-pink reality is somehow a genomics company….

  54. The Great Pumpkin says:

    I cant think of a stock with higher upside potential. Not saying they will deliver on that upside, but if they do…

    I don’t think you guys understand what DNA is doing….

  55. ExEx says:

    I always wondered what was up down there:

    “Florida has the most lead water pipes in the US with an estimated 1.16million with the Environmental Protection Authority saying even low exposures could be harmful to children.”

  56. NJCoast says:

    You couldn’t pay me to live north of the Driscoll Bridge. I had to go to NJPAC last week, Parkway packed, Turnpike packed, McCarter Highway forget about it! Usually I’m in and out of a venue while most are sleeping but that wasn’t the case this time. If I had to commute on those roads every day I’d shoot myself. Live down here and commute to the city on a high speed ferry sitting on the deck with a cocktail on the way home.
    And those McCastles in Alpine, even the new builds with stone exteriors, cement balustrade, ornate moldings, and Tuscany kitchens, are so ‘90’s. Don’t they know it’s all about black framed windows, modern stark interiors, and immense kitchen islands with waterfall edge countertops?
    And then there’s the commute from up north just to put your toes in the ocean in the summer. It’s not worth the property taxes to live up there. My grandkids are in the same public school K-8 Deal Elementary that my kids and I went to. One class of each grade, 16-18 kids to a grade. Best kept secret as they accept pupils outside of Deal tuition free.
    I can’t believe what people pay to live up there.

  57. BRT says:

    The reality is, any single pharma company that is worth anything gets bought up by the big companies. It’s always been the case. I know several professors who had startups, decent product, great market, all got bought out by companies like BASF. They do it for the patents.

    There’s a difference between the hype machine talking about the future and all the possibilities and a company that actually demonstrates results. Regeneron comes to mind. They have a clear track record of being able to design and produce monoclonal antibodies for just about anything in a timely fashion. It’s not talk or hype. They actually do it.

  58. ExEx says:

    I always thought Red Bank was a hidden jewel.

  59. 3b says:

    A 36 year old man threw himself off the third level deck of the Garden Sate shopping mall in Paramus. Its getting to be an epidemic out there .

  60. The Great Pumpkin says:

    DNA does not want to get bought out….CEO and team have said this numerous times. Why do you think they went SPAC? So they have total control of their baby.

    BRT says:
    April 6, 2023 at 11:31 am
    The reality is, any single pharma company that is worth anything gets bought up by the big companies.

  61. BRT says:

    lol, is that why they continue to sell their shares?

  62. Libturd says:

    “lol, is that why they continue to sell their shares?”

    You beat me to it.

  63. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Again, I don’t think you understand what Jason Kelly and team are putting together. They are not trying to cure anything….they are simply trying to reduce the cost of R&D to the point that any company not using them would be stupid. They are so ahead of the game and see the BIG PICTURE. AWS of syn bio. The apple app machine….etc. You don’t make the product, you take a percentage of future revenues. You guys totally don’t understand it. It’s a win win for the customer, the business, and human society.

    Why would a company spend so much time and money developing their own lab and research when they can use DNA at a much cheaper cost? Just wait….it’s all about the down the road revenues. They are not only focused on healthcare….they are focused on any material used to build things. Understand this. So, they are not strictly a bio company….they are an everything company that can become a giant monster in time.

  64. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Those are shares from the SPAC deal….they still have plenty of shares. Are they not allowed to sell? Still have a bunch of class A shares that they will never sell.

  65. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Go look at a chart of how they are bringing costs down year over year….only a matter of time. If you are expecting profits in 2023, you don’t understand the company at all.

  66. The Great Pumpkin says:

    My biggest fear right now is not having the company go bankrupt….it’s having the stock run up before I can buy all the cheapies.

  67. trick says:

    Silk City-Created by Science.
    Guess your not advertising as organic

  68. Libturd says:

    Pingpong Nanocoin Biosynthoptics ChattercloneGPT/DBA Silk City

  69. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Thanks to its ground-breaking synthetic biology projects, the company is reportedly valued at more than $1 billion after raising over $429 million in total funding from its investors, who include Cascade Investment, the investment firm owned by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

    But it took Ginkgo nearly a decade to get to that point.

    Shetty and three of her co-founders — CEO Jason Kelly, Barry Canton, and Austin Che — each obtained a Ph.D. from MIT in 2008 and were working with professor Tom Knight (also a co-founder) on synthetic biology research projects when the group decided the best way to keep their work going beyond their Ph.D. research was to launch their own company.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/21/bill-gates-backed-start-up-ginkgo-bioworks-prints-synthetic-dna.html

  70. grim says:

    Don’t look under the hood at a Jamaican distillery.

    My science project would look downright healthy in comparison.

  71. The Great Pumpkin says:

    “We wanted to see how far we could take it,” Shetty tells CNBC Make It. “So, we decided that a start-up was the best venue for being able to pursue our mission [and] our passion, which is to design biology.”

    The group formed Ginkgo in 2009 and spent the next several years surviving off of government research grants as they fine-tuned their process of genetically engineering microbes, including building automated tools that the company uses to collect genetic information from organisms, transform cells and rewrite DNA.

    This was in the early days of the financial crisis and Ginkgo had no luck attracting outside investors. Money was sometimes tight, and so the co-founders improvised. For pennies on the dollar, Ginkgo bought the incredibly expensive equipment it needed from other biotech firms that had gone out of business due to the economic downturn.

    “We put together our first lab for about $150,000, which is roughly 10 to 100 [times] cheaper than what most to biology labs get built for,” Shetty tells CNBC Make It.

    Ginkgo’s star began to rise in 2014, when the startup became the first-ever biotech company to get the backing of tech start-up accelerator Y Combinator (which counts the likes of Airbnb and Reddit among its past participants). “Synthetic biology is one of the fastest-growing areas of tech right now, and Ginkgo is leading the category,” Y Combinator president Sam Altman told TechCrunch in 2015.

    In March 2015, Ginkgo raised $9 million from investors as part of the company’s first significant fundraising round before picking up another $45 million (from a group led by Viking Global Investors) just a few months later.

    “That was incredibly exciting to us, because it meant that real people, real investors on Wall Street were valuing our technology and what it could do for the world,” Shetty says of Ginkgo’s first major financing.

    That money, and the other major investments that followed, paved the way for Ginkgo’s rapid growth. The company has expanded from about 20 employees to roughly 200 over the past three years, Shetty says, with the early investments representing “the fuel you need to be able to build and launch a rocket ship.”

  72. joyce says:

    leftwing,
    Maybe you can help me understand. Why is tax rate (and not the average or median tax bill) the metric used for comparing different locations? I remember JCer also focused on the rate when making comparisons and I wasn’t understanding then either. To provide relatively the same level of services, it should cost a similar amount whether it’s Harding or another town, but the cost of houses and therefore rate will be very different, right?

    leftwing says:
    April 6, 2023 at 11:09 am

    tax rate there

  73. Libturd says:

    That’s crazy. But after seeing the beer fermented in a dead squirrel carcass, nothing surprises me in the beverage biz.

  74. Fast Eddie says:

    11:06 AM

    Do you follow the news are just “Faux News” because they are not the same thing.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_BU5hR9gXE

  75. ExEx says:

    Yuck Yuck Yuck…. boomer humor

  76. Boomer Remover says:

    Drove through Teaneck earlier today to drop someone off. Like traveling through a time portal. Everything from those concrete plate floor interchanges to tired capes. Worn house after worn house.

  77. Phoenix says:

    3b says:
    April 6, 2023 at 11:38 am
    A 36 year old man threw himself off the third level deck of the Garden Sate shopping mall in Paramus. Its getting to be an epidemic out there .

    Sure is. Put plenty back together that didn’t succeed. Now they have more problems than they started with.

  78. BRT says:

    My kids were collecting the cicadas during that swarm a few years ago. They made a “swimming pool” for them with a 5 gallon bucket and kept putting them all in it. They added some grapes and figs. I came upon it a few days later and it was literally cicada beer.

  79. leftwing says:

    “the company is reportedly valued at more than $1 billion after raising over $429 million in total funding from its investors, who include Cascade Investment, the investment firm owned by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. [2018]”

    So basically this changeling is valued exactly the same as five years ago and despite the flat value Gates lost his shirt due to dilution.

    “The reality is, any single pharma company that is worth anything gets bought up by the big companies.”

    As Pumpkin acknowledges DNA is not a biotech drug discovery company, it is a tools and supply company. The question is not *whether* they would be bought out, but *can* they be. Rarely does a tools company get bought out by pharma, it destroys value as no existing pharma customer is going to use a competitor’s subsidiary for development. It is entirely impossible for any existing tools company to acquire DNA…the losses are so big for the upcoming years no existing company could withstand the EPS dilution, not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars of negative cash flow that would need to be funded post-acquisition.

    Rock, meet hard place. High growth companies that are not growing rapidly have a serious problem; high growth companies that are not growing rapidly and are strongly cash flow negative for the foreseeable future have…well, a really big problem and shares trading like a penny stock…

  80. leftwing says:

    Joyce, never thought about it….I guess I use it as since it is easy for comparing towns…I wouldn’t need to find or calculate mean/median tax bills, and also don’t need to adjust for the mean/median house price. Paterson mean tax bill is a heck of a lot lower than a haughty town tax bill, but what is that telling me…can’t derive any conclusion on efficiency of services…bigger factors affecting that comparison are density and the shitty (low cost) housing stock I suppose…not questions I would try to answer through comparing taxes…

    In any case Harding is probably not a good comp for anything tax related as they don’t have a HS, they ship them to Madison on a per student cost basis.

  81. trick says:

    That’s crazy. But after seeing the beer fermented in a dead squirrel carcass, nothing surprises me in the beverage biz.

    That would fall under organic, if they didn’t feed the squirrel antibiotics and it was free range

  82. Libturd says:

    trick,

    You’ve been spending too much time at Whole Paycheck. I laugh whenever I see their flyer with the air-chilled, all natural, anti-biotic free, cage free, organic, vegetarian fed, drumsticks.

  83. joyce says:

    Re: Harding, agreed just picked a town that came to mind first. Thinking about a $20,000 tax bill on a $2,000,000 house vs $8,000 bill on a $400,000 house… the rate doesn’t tell me anything due to all of those factors you mentioned.

  84. Libturd says:

    I’m off to Jacksonville and then Gainseville. Wish us luck.

  85. trick says:

    I’m as cheap as you, or try to be.
    Ended up paying for my 1st brake job this weekend. Have done them every 50k miles on my 4runner. Took the front wheel off and one of the 4 pistons was frozen. Wasn’t the 1st time I have replaced a caliper, figured no problem. Even with an impact wrench couldn’t get the bolts off, spayed 1/2 can of PB blaster with no effect. Toyota’s make great engines and trans but are know to rust and with 150k miles not surprised. At this point I couldn’t get the pads back in so had to get it towed. $1500 later got the truck back. Figure I’m still way up, with over 30 brake changes over the years. Just hurts to put out money on something that should only take 45 minutes.

  86. Libturd says:

    I hate that. Once tried to replace the rear wiper motor on Old Reliable (my 95 Civic hatchback). Saved $500 buying the motor at a junkyard. I shattered the hatch glass installing it. Cost me $500 for a new back window. And now I had a 20 year old wiper motor.

    Did a fun project today. My super reliable dishwasher finally broke. It’s a Maytag from 2011. Thermal fuse popped. Bought an OEM fuse for $25 shipped. Popped it in, good as new. Took me an hour to get the damn door aligned to get the screws back in and it was HOT today as we haven’t put the window AC units in yet. Still, probably saved $300 to $400 and a week waiting. Best of all, no runs to the Orange Store.

  87. trick says:

    Ya, recently easy projects have been turning into major pains, Good Luck in FL

  88. 3b says:

    Lib: Enjoy your trips and time with the family. We have some coming up as well. Looking forward to them.

  89. leftwing says:

    Haha, I’m not getting our conversation Joyce…I guess I use tax rate as an indication of town efficiency insofar as they are good stewards of my payments and what they ‘demand’ of me…of course there are a lot of other more important factors when I purchased a house…location, schools, proximity to major airport, etc…

    Theoretically, more dense municipalities should have lower tax rates as much of municipal spending is, if not fixed, at least not linear and they often have more ratables.

    If I see a town that is above the ‘median’ of tax rates and it’s in a populous town (Wayne), has reasonably expensive house prices (Wayne), has a number of ratables (Wayne), and has high tax rates (2.5%+) it tells me something’s wrong…far from the highest criterion for me but one that gives me some context and basis to evaluate taxes.

    Ditto Harding…tax rate at 1% tells me to look further and, yeah, basically they’ve not developed a HS, there is no wastewater management infrastructure (septic), fire/ambulance/officials are volunteer, and there aren’t excessive services.

    IDK personally how I would compare taxes across municipalities if not rate other than finding two identically priced homes and then seeing what percentage the tax represented of each of them, ie rate.

    Just the way my brain works I guess.

  90. joyce says:

    LOL, you’re not getting it? Because I understand and agree with everything you’re saying. I was just wondering why you and other use the rate. Perhaps, it is as simple as it being readily available and other data points are not. My only point was that even a low(er) or high(er) tax rate in a given town compared to others in and of itself doesn’t mean much without further context.

  91. BRT says:

    Whenever I drive through Harding, I aire those barns. You could house a 6 person family in them.

  92. leftwing says:

    LOL, gotcha! Agree as well.

    Harding is pretty. Very quaint and laid back for the wealth.

  93. leftwing says:

    Frozen Four on ESPN2 for you hockey fans. MN up 4-2in the third over BU. QPac v Michigan at 8p

  94. Fabius Maximus says:

    About to leave the house to go to LGA to pick up Mrs Fab and one of my kids from Jacksonville. They spent a few days at Jacksonville Beach and loved it. The kids all have different Spring breaks this year. I’m taking the other two down next week for their Spring Break.

    JetBlue just delayed the flight to 1AM so check your outbound Lib

  95. leftwing says:

    You have a place there Fabs?

  96. Fabius Maximus says:

    Left, no but looking. MIL is in West Palm, which is a little Trumpy for me.

  97. Fabius Maximus says:

    Scroll up to the top post. What is up with Lindsay.

    https://twitter.com/ResistMonsters/status/1643979850552852481

    Banner day for the GOP with TN going full Fasc1st

  98. Juice Box says:

    Fab your understanding of Palm Beach?

    Seriously?

  99. leftwing says:

    LOL, JB it’s Fabs…I’m not breaking his balls just saying we all know where each other stands….

    Serious recommendation Fabs although it sounds like you’ve been there, I know someone down that way from NJ…more bluish collar and ‘FL professional man’…lots of Mustangs, Camaros, and pick ups with mufflers big enough to stuff a basketball up the pipe…surprised you would view it as more liberal than a higher end area, from what I’ve picked up maybe the volume is lower but the Red/Right is for sure deeper and lower IQ. Except for the recent college grads in the three blocks off the beach.

  100. Fabius Maximus says:

    Juice,
    While it skews Dem, there are lots and lots of old while angry GOP dudes on every golf course.

    I love Flight Aware. Got Mrs Fab rebooked into EWR. Shes in the air so I think I’ll pick up some Ferry St BBQ on the way to the airport.

  101. Juice Box says:

    Anyone who wants a house tour of the palm beach world I know a realtor. Ex Wall Street and scratch golfer too. BTW golfed with everyone, you name the name for an game and bring your checkbook if you want any sq ft as it seems to be outrageous pricing now.

  102. leftwing says:

    Forno’s bar, Luis for the martini, grilled octopus appie as the order but comes as a dinner with greens, bread, etc. Best deal in town, off prime hours you still get the local union and police captains, be nice to Luis he’ll top you up for free.

    Devs game tonight? Guessing it’s over but maybe some residual traffic fyi

  103. The Great Pumpkin says:

    Florida is no longer a “swing state.”

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