Leprechaun Gold


First, thank you, Jeff, for your kind comment on Harry Potter Day.

So, where HAVE I been for the last (dang!) nearly two months?
  • Well, yes, reading Deathly Hallows. And re-reading all the other Harry Potter novels, just to see the entire plot line in perspective. But that only took me a week.
  • Two weeks, yes, to recover from three months of self-imposed overtime from tutoring on top of a full-time job... Make that a month. That's most of it.
  • I discovered a magical place called Frazier Mountain, a collection of seven tiny hamlets tucked into interconnected folds in the wall of mountains halfway between Los Angeles and Bakersfield. In the seventies, a developer tried to build it into a resort or a suburb, but it was too low to have consistent snow like Big Bear, too high to be a refuge from cold weather like Palm Springs, and both too limited in buildable area and too far from either LA or Bakersfield to be a convincing suburb (and with winter snow road closures, to boot). I went there on two different weekends, rejoicing in dilapidated rustic charm. Close enough to LA to visit if I really want, and rents are cheap, too. If only I didn't have to commute, I'd move.
  • And then there's the stock & option trading. Another part-time job on top of my full-time job. It's been a challenge, too, as you probably know from reading/listening to/watching the news.

Which brings me to my subject:

It's all vanishing in the sunlight, isn't it?

As the hopes of Frazier Mountain being a Big Resort vanished in the '80s, as the hopes of Dot-Com nirvana vanished after 2000, so the real-estate fed boom of the last few years is vanishing like faery gold in the morning. My tiny hoard is in reasonable shape; a little of my holdings have vanished; the rest are thoroughly defended. Daily.

I once wrote the Macintosh adaptation of a real estate market simulation entitled "Baron." (I had also done the commodities market and helped with the stock market game adaptations.) The thing about Baron was how deadly dull it was. It used real-life historical data; each turn represented a month. And it still dragged. A full cycle of the real market took about five years, and after you finished the game, it felt like it, too.

Five years, folks. And this cycle has been artificially prolonged. I figure someone could buy half of Frazier Mountain for a song in about, oh, 2009.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the bottom of the real estate market and its attendant fallout. It's still a long way down.


Posted: Mon - August 13, 2007 at 10:27 PM   | | | | |

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