Health Care Bubble?

Paranoid Renter over at Sacramento Land(ing) believes that the next bubble will be in healthcare:
"
The bubble I see is one where there are too many jobs created in healthcare and auxiliary industries. So the way I see this playing out:
- Lots of nurse positions; nurse salaries go up marginally. Nursing schools make out like bandits.
- Doctors salaries skyrocket and they start switching jobs like crazy to take advantage of pay hikes.
- Artificial shortages of drugs drive up prices of drugs and help the pharmaceutical industry report record profit.
- Lots of administrative positions created ("director of customer care for the hospital", etc.) and tons of bureaucracy in billing and hospital management. [For the record, my insurance/billing is not yet complete for a blood test I had last March!]. Errors in billing (usually amounting to overbilling) will proliferate.
- Insurance will cover less and charge more resulting in record profits for insurers."


My response, which was too long and not at all housing bubble related:

Nurse positions are chronically underfilled and have been for years. This article in USA Today sums it up fairly well. A bout 4 years ago, I sent away for a bunch of free promotional stuff , including a neat video, to encourage young people to go into nursing. I set up my table and video and posters and brochures at a local high school job fair, and there was enormous interest. During the fair, which also had representatives from Cal State (it has a nursing program) and American River College (ditto) , I was approached by one of the career counselors from one of the colleges, who told me that they had a waiting list several years long to get into their nursing program. The problem isn't convincing people to consider a career in nursing, it's convincing nurses to get the pre-requisite Masters or Doctors degree and teach nursing. Nurses make more by practicing their profession than by teaching it.
Laws mandate clinical nursing instructors supervise a very limited number of student nurses on the floor, as well, and that also tends to limit the number of students that can be admitted to a school.
We are currently importing a very substantial number of foreign nurses to fill positions that Americans want to fill and are unable to find training for.
It is hard to imagine a situation in which there will be an over-supply of nurses. The government already offers incentives to Colleges of Nursing, and while I would not turn down a pay raise, neither do I feel that I am not compensated enough . The laws of supply and demand work pretty darn well in nursing: we're in demand, and we get damn good salaries and benefits. We get paid more in California, because it is an expensive state in which to live and because it has a severe nursing shortage. California law mandates ratios of from 2:1 in Intensive Care units to 5:1 on Medical/Surgical floors. Considering the multitude of drugs and IV fluids/medications, and treatments, and assessments that must be performed a ratio of 5 :1 is not at all generous. Any parent who has ever cared for more than 1 sick child will immediately grasp this. People are not hospitalized for minor ailments any longer. Most routine surgeries go home within a day. My knees, hips and feet constantly ached when I worked on the floor, and it was a true aerobics and weight-lifting work-out. Statistically, the best care is of course one on one, but that is not economically feasable for any but the very sickest patients. Studies show that increasing the ratio beyond 5 patients leads to an increased mortality rate.

Doctors do not usually get salaries; they are usually in private practice and they receive compensation from a variety of sources. The exception is Kaiser docs, who do work for Kaiser and receive a salary. They also don't have to worry about paying their staff, including billers and coders and "authorization" clerks and not just the hands-on workers that take your vital signs when you see your MD. They don't have to worry about obtaining coverage for vacations, seminars or emergencies. They don't have to worry about malpractice insurance.

Medicare Part D has already driven up the cost of pharmaceuticals because the government is not allowed to bargain with drug companies on the price of the meds, and the drug companies are allowed to stop covering a medication in the middle of your coverage period if they want to, but the consumer is not allowed to choose a new plan until the next coverage year begins (and there are over 67 drug plans in California, btw). The Veteran's Administration, who up until the current political administration had provided excellent care to veterans since they cleaned up their act after the Vietnam War, actually gets very good prices on medications by driving a hard bargain. So do several HMO's who provide prescription medicine coverage.

There are already multitudinous layers of bureaucracy in healthcare. Your doctor, your clinic, your hospital (again, unless you are a Kaiser member) must staff entire departments who do nothing but submit and re-submit bills to insurers, trying to meet all their demands for verification and proof, and trying to get procedures authorized. Each insurer, and there are dozens of them, has different rules and paperwork. Medicare is probably the single biggest payer that most healthcare providers deal with, but it is not in the business of denying care to ensure fat CEO compensation and shareholder dividends, so it is tedious but quite possible to actually get paid under Medicare. There will always be administrative costs associated with healthcare; we are talking about people's lives and well-being. We are talking about your child, your mother, your lover. The state has regulations and inspectors, the feds have regulations and inspectors, and most hospital systems have the good ol' "Quality Assurance" department who keeps coming up with new goals to meet. And mistakes STILL happen, at an alarming rate.
Single-payer healthcare is more likely to reduce the need for clerical and administrative staff than to increase it. Knowing one set of regulations and codes is much more efficient than employing the staff necessary to specialize in each and every insurer's regulations.

Finally, insurance has been covering less and charging more for years now. Private insurance costs have risen at over twice the inflation rate in the past 2 years. Things have gotten so bad that even corporate capitalists are now screaming for a single-payer healthcare system -- at least the ones that don't work in the health insurance industry are. At this point, the greed of the few has pushed the tolerance of the many over the edge. Insurers refusing to pay for life-saving operations or procedures which are not experimental, but are very expensive, is now a fact of healthcare in the US.

Is this a "bubble"? I don't think so. Technically, a "bubble" arises in the financial sense when a commodity is irrationally valued without any basis in fact. The facts are that we DO have a growing population, of which an increasingly large number are living long enough to develop chronic illness. Additionally, we have made technological advances and are able to perform procedures that will add years to people's lives. None of this fits the definition of a speculative bubble.

I Give Up

When we moved to this rental in El Dorado Hills we believed that we would only be staying for 6 months -- maybe less.

That was nearly 2 years ago.

In the past week, a Streng atrium model home came up for rent on Craig's List. My daughter and I went out and looked around the yard, pool, etc. and peered in windows and I decided to pursue it. Sig went down and looked at it separately from me, but we both did the tour.
Frankly, it's not worth the rent they're asking. The property management guy did emphasize that the owners would be doing some fix-up and painting, to be fair. But the bottom line is that this Streng was somewhat poorly maintained, and the owners did some things that it would be hard for me to live with in this particular style of house: they took out one of the planters and put in planking which lays beneath the level of the room just enough to trip you, they put up a chair rail in the area off the kitchen (doesn't fit modern style at all, and since you have to look at it from all over the main open room, it's a constant thorn in your side). These are major design flaws that I would not feel free to correct in a rental house. In addition, they removed the Oriental-style lanterns and hung some kind of smoked-glass ugly lights, and of course put ceiling fans in. Ceiling fans seems to be the hot item that original owners switched the great modern globe lights or lanterns out for.

If it had been up to me, a notoriously impulsive person, I would have put a deposit on the place and moved, because I love Strengs. But Sig was not that impressed, and we sat down and made a pro/con list:
Pro: Cmyst likes Streng atriums and this is a Streng atrium.
Con: Sig is worried that the doggies will pee on the plants (not the end of the world, certainly...) and that grandkids will delight in removing the rocks, throwing the rocks, and perhaps eating the rocks (which could be bad if the doggies DO pee on the plants...)
This prompted a discussion on how much I really love this particular model and how it is likely to be what I end up purchasing, one day, if I'm not too old, and if mortgages are ever able to be obtained again without 20% down, and if house prices once again revert to their historical norms.
Pro: The yard is much smaller than the one we have, no lawn, no maintenance other than turning on the irrigation system in the summer to maintain the ground cover. Sig was very excited about this. Our present gardens are way too much for us, consisting of several pathways and decks and gazebo. Even hosting parties of up to 20 people, we use about 1/4 of the available areas comfortably. In addition, we have a huge front garden area that gets used even less. But we must still maintain these areas, as our landlords are notoriously lax about providing gardening services as were promised, but neither have they made any noise about raising our rent so we just do a lot of maintenance and keep our yaps shut.
Con: There is no real area that is safe to host large outdoor parties (which we do about 3 times a year) or to set up the grill in a way that the cook can maintain conversation with any diners. The yard is perfectly fine for a couple who never entertain more than 2 other friends. For a couple with a large extended family, it does not work.
Pro: It is closer in to Sacramento, and the neighborhood is safe. It would be much easier for me, as most of my work visits are in the area.
Con: Sig believes it will be noisier and that there will be more traffic congestion problems. I disagree with him, and really --- I know these neighborhoods lots better than he does.
Pro: No water bills! We are currently spending about $125/mo on water bills, an unexpected expense when we moved from an un-metered Sacramento Co. to metered EDH Co.
Con: Other utility costs MIGHT rise. The incredibly large skylight, which I love, might also be a huge energy cost from lost heat in winter and incoming sun/heat in summer.
Pro: There's a swimming pool and a hot tub, functional, and pool/spa servicing provided. There really isn't any con to this one, and Sig really wanted that pool. He talked a lot about it. Me, I want the hot tub.

So far, we pretty much have balanced pros and cons. But there are a final 3 cons:
Con: We would have to spend $3,000 minimally to move into the house. We will probably get a return of our current deposit of $1800, but that would be long after the Christmas season and it's likely we wouldn't get the full amount, no matter how clean things are. That's just the reality.
So, our entire savings would be depleted and we'd have to borrow for kid presents (only kids get presents in our family, which has made the holiday a lot more enjoyable for the adults) and for a post-New Year's weekend trip that we've already planned and made reservations for.
Con: The rent for this smaller house with a smaller yard in an OK suburb is the same as for our current house in a much safer, quieter and more upscale in reputation suburb.
BIG CON: We'd have to move. Sig feels that since I work outside the home and he doesn't, he'd have to do most of the moving, like he did when we moved here. We'd have to hire movers for the appliances and beds, as Sig had a neck/back surgery history that is supposed to prevent him from really heavy lifting. That would probably cost an additional several hundred bucks. Moving is an incredible hassle and is one of the main reasons that I want my own home: when I do purchase, I never intend to move again. That's it. No more moving.

There really was no logical decision other than to stay put. IF the Streng had been more nicely maintained by owners who understood they had a modern home, not a country home; IF the rental rate had been $300/mo. less; IF the yard had been a little bigger.

So, I'm really bummed now. I had plans to start a new Blog on my rental Streng. I was hoping to finally be done with waiting, even though I still can't afford to buy any decent Strengs that are on the market currently. I took a farewell tour of all the neighborhoods (minus the Elk Grove one, it's just too far to go on a Friday just before rush hour) where I have tracked Strengs: off Hemlock in Citrus Heights, the Northgate area where the rental house was, the Wildflower Circle area of Carmichael. And I gave up. There is no sense putting any more energy into this pursuit because it is fruitless. Prices will EVENTUALLY come down, but until they do I think it's best for me to just put Strengs out of my mind and do what I said I was going to do way back in my first post: settle in here, put up some pictures, de-clutter the boxes from the Den and perhaps fix that upstairs guest bedroom into a little office so I can remove all my work-related stuff from the dining area. Maybe I'll buy a good refurbished hot tub; there's a spa area with 110 and 220 already hooked up just outside. Maybe Sig will get a telescope for the upstairs deck. We talked about all of this when we first moved here, and I think that I've finally accepted that it is time to actually LIVE and that it is entirely possible to do that in this rental house.

The Incipient Moment

For many years, we have been told that the Chinese symbol for "Crisis" consisted of "danger" and "opportunity". In fact, the lower symbol is not "opportunity". It is roughly translated as "crucial point". Our misinterpretation of this Chinese symbol is in itself symbolic of the current
mental state of the housing market.
Many of us have adapted psychologically to housing prices that have been outrageously out of whack with fundamentals. We are at that point now where prices in the Sacramento and Central Valley area have fallen off substantially from their ridiculous highs of 2005. In comparison, some houses are beginning to look like bargains.
But is this an "opportunity"?
Or is it really that crucial point where the market and our economy pause before the crisis in all its full-blown destruction actually begins?

This past week has been a challenging time in my 2 year journey into the Sacramento area housing market. As I have mentioned before, I have a fondness for Streng homes.
These mid-century modern tract homes can be found in clumps and individually from the most exclusive neighborhoods like Shelfield Oaks in the Arden area to rusty working class neighborhoods in Elk Grove and Foothill Farms. No one is building tract homes like these any longer, though in my opinion some of these struggling builders could do far worse than to emulate the Streng's sense of style and add in some eco-friendly materials and energy-efficient components like they are doing with the same old tired stucco designs that have been promoted as the apex of tract home luxury and class. From the first time I ever stepped inside a Streng atrium model, I was in love; but at the time I had a house and I didn't pursue the matter. Now, that mysterious house with concrete paths and indoor gardens is no longer a mystery. I know what it is, and I know where to find it. But it's not any individual house that I'm in love with. It's the design of these homes that I have fallen for. I am currently tracking any reasonably-priced Streng in the Sacramento area. (Those under 400K, which means the Arden area is out of my league). I prefer the atrium models, but the other models have design elements such as clerestory windows and open-beam ceilings, that make them nearly as attractive to me.

My first, and relatively minor, challenge came when a Streng with very good bones came on the market in Elk Grove at a price that was 50K less than the other 3 Strengs in that area were asking, and with much less and relatively easily remedied futzing around with the basic design elements. (These houses can be prey to over-zealous flippers who want to upgrade them right into granite counter top mediocrity). In comparison, this house seemed to be a real bargain. And to give this owner their due, they priced this house with the right attitude. I even went to the trouble of looking into pre-qualification and what my payments would be, and that is where I pulled back. Because even though the house was priced at about 3 x my income, and was the best priced house in the neighborhood, it was still priced too high. It had a paper gain of well over 150K in 10 years, roughly doubling its asking price. Moreover, the crime rate of the area was well over the national average and household income, while still over the regional average, was a little low for the asking price. Because I recognized that the seller had at least made an effort to price well and was offering the most home for the money in that area, I was actually pleased when it went pending. A month or so later, though, it was back on MLS and had taken a further 10K price reduction. This caused me to reflect a lot on the advisability of buying in to what is still a sinking market.

Then, this week I was driving through Foothill Farms and decided to tour a neighborhood that I knew was loaded with Strengs, just to look at them. I like looking at what people have done with their Streng, and will never pass up the chance to detour into neighborhoods where there are a lot of them. Sometimes I eat lunch and do paperwork in my car in these neighborhoods, just basking in the hip wonder of it all. And to my astonishment, there were 2 houses for sale that I had missed in my weekly MLS trolling. When I got home to my computer and looked them up, it turns out they were priced below my parameters, which I set months ago in order to eliminate houses that were too far gone to rehab. These houses were not too far gone, and the neighborhood was solid and relatively quiet, filled with other Strengs that showed a lot of pride of ownership and a commendable level of respect for modern design. One of these two Strengs is a foreclosure, and it's being offered at just over 200K. It needs some work, and I've no idea what the inside is like, but on either side are very nicely maintained neighbors. Now, 200K is pretty damned reasonable in general. And I am inclined to want to look at this house more carefully, which would mean involving one of the Sacramento Bubble bloggers who is an agent -- and I don't want to do that unless I'm really serious. But it's hard to know if I'm really serious without seeing the house on more intimate terms. And even though this house is priced pretty well now, will it hold that value? If prices revert to their 2001 averages, it would not. In fact, if prices revert to 2001, this house in Foothill Farms is still priced about 70K too high. It's still 4.5 x the median household income for the neighborhood, which is still a little high -- though admittedly not as crazy high as the 10 x income in some places. There are other things to consider, too: the neighborhood isn't bad, but it isn't stellar. The house is not the atrium model that I love. There is multi-family housing in the area. Even from casual observation of the outside of the house only, it needs some serious sprucing up. Will other, more "move in ready" Strengs start hitting the market at the same pricing level in the next year? Or will it really take as many years as some people are predicting for the market pricing to fully correct to a sane level? I am not getting any younger, and while I don't want to throw money away, neither do I want to rent until I'm too old to be physically able to landscape and paint and renovate. I would like to spend a few productive years "coming home" to a place that I can make mine, instead of spending those years in a rental that I don't feel the freedom or inclination to modify to meet my needs.

Is this the opportunity within the crisis? Or is it the crucial point where the crisis really begins?
When in doubt, it is prudent to stop and think. Perhaps the turning of the year will bring further illumination.

Happy New Year!

(Haunted house courtesy of Business Week -- check out their take on it.)

A couple weeks ago the Bee had a really funny comment to an online article about the dismal state of housing in Sacramento, from a woman who insisted that she had to abandon her house, because it was haunted and was freaking out her child and nanny.

I don't know about this woman's house, which from the sound of it was in a new subdivision and was new construction, and therefore unlikely to have the built-up psychic trauma that is (as everyone knows) a key factor in a haunting. But I'm pretty sure that I lived in a haunted house for about a year. In fact, when referencing that time period, the kids (grown now) and I can always pinpoint the time frame by using that year as a reference, cited as "when we lived in that haunted house".

So, in honor of the popular conception of Halloween, here is my haunted house story:

My ex-hub and I, and our four kids, were happily barely surviving in Sebastopol when we were called back to Illinois due to a family emergency. At the time, real estate back there was in the same dire straits as it is here now, and instead of renting an apartment we "bought" a house contract for deed, since we could not get conventional financing. It was an old Victorian house that would have been way too expensive for us, except for the fact that it was in a working class neighborhood that was slowly deteriorating. It had the usual gingerbread trim, but my friend Sharon was upset about the "evil face" that was carved into the trim over the bay windows. It really wasn't an evil face; it was just a bearded male face, very stylized and surrounded by stylized leaves. Inside, there was a first floor parlor that you entered from the front door, and stairs leading up to the right. There was a room off the parlor that we used as the master bedroom, a storage room under the stairway, and a kitchen, bathroom, dining room and living room to the left. Upstairs, there was a huge open area with a large walk-in closet and a bathroom to the right, and two bedrooms to the left. The bedroom nearest the stairs had a closet with a door in the back that opened up to a stairway that led up into the attic.

Almost immediately upon moving into the house, my oldest daughter refused to sleep in the bedroom assigned to her, claiming that in the middle of the night the door in the closet sounded as if it was opening. The youngest child was sleeping in the large open area, and she complained about noise from the bathroom. We dismissed these complaints, and told the kids that the house was very old and that old houses made funny sounds and old pipes often rattled. Eventually, both the girls moved into my oldest son's room (it was the actual master bedroom, we just didn't want any of the kids sleeping downstairs, for security and safety reasons). It looked a little bit like a dorm room, but easily held all three beds and everyone's toys.
Over the course of the next few weeks, I noticed that none of the kids was using the bathroom upstairs. They even moved their toothbrushes down to the first floor bath. The first floor bath was quite a bit smaller than the second floor bath. It aggravated me, but I didn't question it. I think I had some notion that it had something to do with us using the first floor bathroom to toilet train the baby, and the other kids thinking that made it the "kid bath". Or them wanting to take their baths downstairs in the evening close to the rest of the family, because the house was much bigger than we were used to and even my ex and I agreed that there were times it felt kind of spooky. You never really felt alone in the house, even when you knew there was no one but you there. After the kids abandoned the upstairs bathroom, I was doing my very infrequent house cleaning one afternoon and decided to make sure it was clean. It was a fairly large room, and the door shut while I was cleaning the tub (which was actually dusty by that point). I didn't think too much about it, although I did have a very uneasy feeling while in there. It also had an odd odor, which I tried to attribute in my mind to just not being used. When I finished cleaning and tried to open the door, it wouldn't budge. Now, these were old doors and you needed a skeleton key to lock/unlock them. After what seemed like several minutes, but was probably just a few seconds, of me tugging frantically at the door it finally popped open and I got the heck outta there. When I closed the door to test it, it opened quite easily.

Another time, I came home from class (I was in college at the time, and chronically exhausted) and put my books and study materials on the dining room table, as was my usual habit. I changed clothes, and started dinner. No one was home except me at the time. When I went into the dining room to begin studying, my books were gone. I was really irritated, because I knew I had put them there. I demanded, "Give me back my books!". No one answered. I then began looking all over the first floor for them, to no avail, and finally became distracted by the kids coming home and finishing dinner prep. When I opened the large built-in breadbox to get the rolls for dinner, there were my books. There is no way that I put the books in that breadbox.

At that point, I was beginning to think that something was not right with the house. Things would go missing constantly, which often happens when you have kids and cats, but it was very odd things. And they would show up in very odd places. I attributed the sense of always being watched and never being alone to the cats, as I also attributed odd noises and clatters to the cats. The books-in-breadbox incident was really disturbing to me, though, especially after being locked in the bathroom. Plus, the kids were acting weirder than usual. They had enjoyed skating in the basement, which was half finished, for several weeks after we moved in. Then, they stopped that and seemed to just want to hang around with us in the living room all the time. Sometimes, when I woke up in the morning, I'd find all of them asleep on a pile of blankets on the floor at the end of our bed.

So, I gathered them all together, and told them about the book incident and the bathroom incident, and asked them if they had noticed anything strange about the house. They told me very disturbing anecdotes about a glowing green man in bib overalls who hung out in the basement, and being pinched at night. They claimed that the windows in the bedroom they were all sleeping in often opened, and that they had an absolute dread of the closet that led to the attic and the upstairs bath. It turned out that was why they periodically ended up in our room on the floor. Everyone, including my ex and I, had experienced "corner of the eye" movements that seemed like someone walking up the stairs or across a room, but when you actually turned to look there was no one there.

We all decided that the house was haunted, and then we debated how to deal with it. First, we decided that we'd just verbally acknowledge the ghost whenever something happened. We decided that no one would ever go, or be asked to go, into the basement or the upstairs first bedroom or bathroom alone. If anyone felt genuinely threatened, they were to tell me what happened. If something odd happened and it wasn't really threatening, we asked the ghost to knock it off. These measures did help a little, as did the feeling that we were all in it together and no one had to feel silly about their fears. But looking back on those days, that was an absolutely eerie house. The most beautiful house I've ever lived in, and yet there was that constant sense of foreboding that kept any of us from ever really relaxing there.

Eventually, we inherited another house from my mom and decided to let the contract house go back to the owner -- it didn't go against our credit, since he still held the deed. We hired some movers to help us move the beds and wardrobes out, and as they were going down the stairs they kept complaining about the poor ductwork and how there was a freezing cold spot on the landing. This was in July, with the front door open and the weather was humid and warm.
There was no duct opening anywhere near the landing, of course. We had a window air unit in the downstairs bedroom, but there was no central air in that house -- only a furnace in the basement. I remember exchanging knowing glances with my oldest daughter when the movers made that comment.

The Sig has a much more threatening and frightening story of living in a haunted house, but it's his story so I can't tell it. In the spirit of the season, feel free to tell us yours!

(BTW, what we call Halloween was the Celtic New Year, which they called Samhuinn. And trick-or-treaters came about due to the seasonal reflection on the deaths of members of the community and the custom of leaving food out for them, which morphed into young people dressing as shades and going from house to house begging for food. The original Jack O'lanterns were turnips, which had a skull-like quality. Any produce left in the fields after Samhuinn was considered inedible and as belonging to the local nature spirits. )

Forward into the Past

Greetings from Sciath ingen Aort, a Gael from Dal Riata circa 600-ish A.D. She is good-natured, if somewhat stubborn, and prefers the wilds to civilization. She wears simple tunics and leggings most of the time, but has a bog dress and some simple pins and torques for ceremonial occasions. Because there were historical Celtic female warrior chieftains, and also female remains in barrows that gave every indication of being those of important warriors, Sciath's role as an archer and light fighter/hunter/ranger is somewhat reasonable. The last thing that Sciath would be doing is attending Court, addressing people wearing ornamental head-gear with honorifics, and kneeling to them. She would be more inclined to be aiming at them.

And such is just one of the anomalies of Life in the Current Middle Ages, as the Society for Creative Anachronism likes to phrase it. It rests heavy on Sciath, and I'm none too pleased with it, either.

I joined the SCA under duress. I was a member of a much smaller group of friends who had been debating Celtic myth, history and languages for years. At some point in time, a couple of our founders ran across some SCA folk at some lecture or other, and they became friendly, and soon we were being dragged into all manor of aggravations such as Court and lessons in how to recognize and properly address SCA nobility. I've told them from the very beginning that not only is this historically inaccurate when it comes to our particular era and culture, but I find it personally distasteful. I usually avoid the whole mess by avoiding Court and walking away when I see people with funny pointy metal hats coming my way.

Be that as it may, I was a card-carrying Scadian for about 4 years and then I just got burnt out on it all and let it lapse. The main "War" that we attend is the Great Western War and it is held in the Kingdom of Caid (Southern California), where our friends live. In Caid, we have a household that now numbers over 35, and we are thus guaranteed an encampment and food and drink, and companionship. Unfortunately, we live in the Kingdom of the West (central and northern Cali, Alaska, Nevada and the Pacific Rim countries). The West is the original SCA kingdom, the elite of the elite. And it is incredibly difficult to find a niche here. There are more pointy hats and elite warrior/knights and artist/scholars ("Laurels") and organizer/scholars ("Pelicans") than it is possible to avoid. While some of them try to be helpful, there is more often than not a certain unconscious arrogance and clique-ishness. Many of them have known one another for decades, and there are now people who are third generation Scadians in the West. Since we only go to Caid once a year, in order to progress within the SCA we tried to find friendship in a local group, and it didn't work well. The Sig tried harder than I did, because that's just the kind of nerd he is. He researched period cookery and won the Kingdom level cooking award as the damn very first thing he did, which of course meant that we had to go to Court at our first event in the West, and we didn't have our household/friends around to show us the ropes. No one knew who we were, and you would have thought from the looks that he got that he had arrived at Court via teleportation from the Stargate or something. But soon enough, he made friends with the West archers. The Kingdom archer at the time was one of about 5 people in the West who went out of their way to try to assist us and teach us a bit, but he was difficult to access most of the time. Eventually, the Sig was just planning archery events and winging it. And then, I injured my knee two years ago this month, and since we hadn't really made any West Kingdom connections or friendships beyond the Ranger folk (and they tend to be a very solitary lot by nature) we kind of gave up as I was no longer able to trek around in the godforsaken areas that were set aside for field archery.
Last October, the Great Western War was cancelled due to our long-time site having a literal meltdown from the heat wave which fried much of the wiring for the lighting and control buildings. We didn't see our household in Caid again until this year, at the new GWW site in Bakersfield. And as happens EVERY DAMN TIME we all get together, the Sig and I began to get energized again about archery, and brewing, and cooking. We successfully avoided Court.
We came back and looked up the local group, and were very excited when it appeared that the local group was just forming up. Maybe we wouldn't be noobs again -- or at least, we could be noobs with other noobs. Sig has already volunteered to travel to Tres Pinos next weekend to judge a seige cookery contest at the Crown tournament (please, don't ask me to explain tournaments and Crown and heirs and succession. It's insane).

I am cautiously hopeful, but I have since learned from email correspondence with the Shire Marshall that the group we had thought was just forming was in fact an established group that had been inactive for awhile. If they are very needful of members, we will probably have found our SCA niche. This is about the fifth time we've done this, though, and the other four times never got us to the goal of fitting in and feeling comfortable. In fact, we'd been talking about selling the pavillion tent (don't ask...) and the period encampment gear. So, in about a month we'll have a better idea of where we stand here in the Shire of Mountain Gate (El Dorado county).

What does this have to do with housing? Not a thing. Which is good, even if this Shire turns out as disappointing as the old Province of Golden Rivers (Sacramento/Arden/Carmichael). Because obsession with the housing bubble and the MLS is even more boring, frustrating and aggravating than Court. Sometimes, you have to walk away from it and take a breather.

It Really Is The Bottom Line

There's a certain comfort to the rituals that we all engage in.
One of my own is the Sunday browse through the MLS with a big latte', hopefully conducted before anyone else is awake so that I have blissful peace and total self-indulgence. I started this ritual right around October of '01. At the time, I didn't believe that I had decent enough credit or a large enough income to qualify for a mortgage, but I enjoyed looking and thinking about the various areas in the greater Sacramento metro, and seeing what people had done with their properties and what the trends were in renovation, etc. As Fate would dictate, even though I adored the job I was holding at the time, outside forces compelled me to seek another position and suddenly I was earning enough to actually afford to buy a house. My RE agent and his mortgage broker both assured me I qualified for quite a bit more house than I really wanted to take on, and eventually I ended up with an entirely reasonable mortgage on a nice condo about 10 minutes from my job.
Over the years, I continued to browse the MLS and noted that prices seemed to be going up a lot. A co-worker advised me about 2 years into my mortgage to refinance, because interest rates had dropped and equity had increased, and I could get a lower house payment. Amazingly, this was true. I also took most of the equity out at that time, in order to pay off about 50K in combined student loan and credit card debt, which gave me a little bit bigger house payment but I got rid of hundreds of dollars of monthly payments and saved thousands in interest that I would have paid out over the years. A year later, I decided I needed to make a change in jobs again, and accepted a position that paid less but was much less stressful. I also took a month off, and my friend and I went to an SCA "war" in Arizona with friends, and then met some other friends in LA and stayed in Hollywood for a couple days while visiting the Getty museum. On the way home, the Sig and I stopped in Santa Barbara for a day on our "Sideways" tour of wineries. In order to take that month off and that little vacation, I again refinanced and took out about 10K, probably the most foolish thing I've ever done, and also probably worth it for my sanity's sake. On the up side, about 4 months into my new job, I was offered the exact same position with a different employer who was willing to pay me the prevailing wage for my years of experience and I again ended up earning a very good income and benefits, and vacation time.
A year into my now very satisfying (financially and professionally) job, and still reading the MLS, I began to think that I needed to move. The Sig and I had to walk the doggies four or five times a day, from our top-floor condo. Our guest bedroom had gotten cluttered with exercise stuff, SCA stuff, archery stuff and books, and we had to store most of our camping stuff in a storage facility a few blocks away for about $100/month. We had ambivilent feelings about the condo community, which consisted of some really great people and some really crazy ones. And I was also paying attention to a guy named Bonddad from DailyKos who was saying that there was a housing bubble. I didn't understand "bubbles" at the time, but I knew people that had lost homes in the 80's and 90's due to ARMs and felt an aversion to them. I also knew that people were spending a lot of money on cars, trucks and furniture and that most of the houses on MLS seemed to have been upgraded with new kitchens and baths and pergo floors lately. I decided it was a really good idea to sell, and once again my same RE agent and his same mortgage broker associate told me that I'd qualify for about twice as much as I could afford. Only this time, I didn't want a condo, and that left us looking at houses that were horribly disappointing. Out of about 10, only 1 of them made us feel like buying, and someone beat us to it, THANK GOD. Once the condo sold, and we had 30 days to find a place, we decided to try renting a house instead and we were very pleasantly surprised at the variety and cost. It was a no-brainer at that point.

Nowadays, after having rented for about 18 months so far, it's still a no-brainer. Only now, instead of mortgage brokers telling me that I can afford a 500K house with no money down with a 610 FICO, they're telling me that they'll lend about 250K and I have to have at least 5% down to get a 6.25 % interest rate first mortgage with a 10% second mortgage for the remaining 15% down. 10% is a little high. IOW, I need 20% down now to qualify for a reasonable interest rate for about 2.5 x my income, and the only reason I can even get a 10% rate on a second mortgage is because my FICO is now around 800. And no guarantee that those interest rates and the down payment requirement will stay where they are until the houses that I am interested in drop into the 250K range, which will probably take at least another year or two. (And the mortgage broker I spoke with kept emphasizing "and of course we will need proof of your income".)

So, think about this, home sellers. Really think about who is out there to buy your house, and what they can qualify for, and whether they can REALLY qualify at all.
It's a damn shame that so many people made so much money on this Ponzi scheme for so long, and that you didn't. But the fact is, you waited too long. If you really do need to sell these days, you have to be willing to accept an awful lot less than some people got in 2005 or even 2006.

As for me, I could have done better. I could have another 10K in the bank right now, if I'd not have taken that month off between jobs and that very frugal camping trip to the SCA Estrella War and to LA (Travel Lodge, not Hilton) for Sig to see Grauman's Chinese Theatre and the Walk of Fame and "Hollywood" sign. But I can't really complain, because I bought that condo with no money down, a marginal FICO, and 50K debt. And I am now debt-free, with a few thousand in a money market account, and a FICO of 800. And being debt-free, after 20 years of struggling to pay off debt, is such a wonderful thing that there is no way that I am ever going to pay more for being able to say that I "own" a house than I would pay to rent that same house, minus tax and mortgage interest.

I still maintain my ritual of MLS browsing. And I've developed a strong interest in modern architecture and design. I still have my very short list of Streng homes on the MLS in neighborhoods where I would probably be one of the higher income residents -- not ones in Davis or Arden Park, where I'd be the poor kid on the block. Sometimes, one of these homes that I track goes off MLS, and I usually go to check on it when I find myself in the area, to see if it looks empty or if it looks sold. And if it looks sold, I never feel sorry that I didn't put an offer in, even though I do feel sad when I take it off my list. I tend to think that in another year or less, I might just be seeing it on the MLS again. Besides, even though they really aren't building more Strengs, people still do sell them, and when one door closes another door opens. My list has been pretty stable at about 5 houses for the last six months, from a high of about 12 houses a year ago. And the bottom line is that no matter how much I like a house, if I can't afford to buy it and still eat and enjoy a few weekends in Tahoe or Monterrey or a yearly vacation to see family back east, then it's not worth it.

Gardener Included

When we made the decision to rent our current place, it was after we'd looked at probably 5 or 6 other houses. Our criteria were relatively simple: safe neighborhood, fenced in yard, no really big dogs in the neighboring yards, not near a school or church (traffic).
Every place we looked at had fencing falling down, including this one. Every house we looked at had a large dog in the next yard, some of which were busily engaged in trying to dismantle the fencing (which they had nearly done in a couple of the places), including this one.
But by the time I drove all the way up to El Dorado Hills to look at this place, we had a good grasp on the typical rental yard size, and it seemed to go down as the size of the house went up. The biggest house we looked at, in Roseville, had the smallest and most useless yard. One of the reasons I sold my condo was because we wanted a house with a yard, for our dogs (very tiny dogs, 13 pounds and 8 pounds) .
And this house had YARD. Man, did it ever. The front yard was about twice as big as the entire yard of the McMansion in Roseville, and it had a walkway meandering through it and a little alcoved patio just Bistro table sized and perfect for sitting at and watching the neighborhood. The backyard was like a park, complete with trails and a little bridge, and a small barn-like outbuilding that we later discovered had power and lights.
So, it was easy to ignore the big dogs in the yard behind the house, because there was a little ditch and a gravel drive between the fence and the main yard, and the rear fence was very sturdy and reinforced with heavy metal posts as well. The side fencing needed some repairs, which we figured we could easily do. Our main concern was the extensive gardens and landscaping, because I have a bad back and bad knees (I used to ski and mountain bike) and Sig has two fused vertabrae in his neck and isn't supposed to be doing much lifting and hacking. But, according to the property management company, "Gardener included" in the rent.
So, we jumped on the rental and felt pretty good about it. And we didn't expect any gardeners to show up until later in the spring, when it stopped raining. But spring turned into summer and we still didn't see any gardeners, and the pathways were beginning to get over-run with vines and bushes. One of the trees appeared dead, and there were several large, heavy branches hanging over the rear patios (there are four patio areas at this house and one deck off the upstairs master bedroom). The rose bushes were going nuts. There isn't any lawn at this house, a great blessing that I have come to really appreciate, but things were growing in the multiple flower beds that I wasn't sure were supposed to be growing there. So, we called the property management folks and asked when, exactly, the gardeners were scheduled to begin.
And a day or so later, the owners of the house showed up. THEY were the gardeners. And they're very nice people, but they're not spring chickens, either. Their first "gardening" went well enough, and we found out which plants were good and which were unwelcome, and how to turn on the irrigation system, and that the tree I thought was dead was always the last tree to leaf in the spring. Sig felt very uneasy with the owners working outside while we sat inside playing computer games, so we had to go out and "help". A few months later, they came back and we all raked and blowed the leaves into about 25 large yard leaf bags, and they cleaned the gutters. This spring they came back, and did some weeding, and they were going to fix the trellis that had fallen over the shed door due to the weight of the roses on it. They said they'd be back in a couple of days, but they never did come back.
By now, we had purchased a wide assortment of clippers and trimmers and trowels and shovels and rakes and brooms and a wheelbarrow and a leaf blower. And we just hacked the roses down so that we could get into the shed, and let them kind of fall to the side. It isn't quite as lovely as the heavy spray of flowers over the shed door, but it's a lot less deadly. Sig had mentioned mulching the large side yard that's outside the side fence. There are several neighbors facing that yard, and their yards are very tidy. The side yard looked kind of desolate and forsaken. The landlord told Sig that the ivy that was growing in the front/side yard would eventually work its way around and that mulch wasn't needed.
So, Sig went to Home Depot and bought mulch. He bought over 30 large bags of redwood mulch. He didn't know that it would be cheaper to just order a truckload of the stuff to be dumped. He's from New York City, for pity's sake. The side yard looked great when he had finished, and the neighbors made a point of telling him so. "We didn't want to wait for the ivy to cover it", he told the neighbor. "I've lived here for over 15 years and the ivy has NEVER covered it", the neighbor replied.
Then, early this summer we went out into the front yard and pulled out a lot of creeping, tangled prickly things and dried weeds, and discovered the front yard irrigation tubing and fixed some of it. And that was pretty debilitating, to tell you the truth. We were pretty gnarly that day.
And today, I went out to do a little "spot" weeding and discovered that a large evergreen bush on the side yard was growing down so far into the roadside ditch that it was impeding the flow of the run-off. The main street into our neighborhood is along that side yard, and all the run-off goes down that ditch. I had to pull out mats of weeds that were growing in it, and then Sig came out with the power trimmer and we hacked and pulled and cursed and sweated and finally got the damn drainage ditch clear.
And yesterday, Sig fixed the front door. The landlord had attempted to fix it a few months ago, but his repair job only lasted a week or so. The front door is very nice, a big double door with a thumblatch handle that you depress and pull to open the door. Only, the latch was broken. So, even if the door was unlocked, you couldn't open it from the outside. It bugged Sig to no end that he had to keep letting people in the door. We decided to just fix it because the last time the landlord had not really fixed it, and he'd been here for hours. Sig bought an entire new kit for the door, with deadlock and handle and knob. All we needed was the handle, but they don't sell just handles. You have to get the whole enchilada, and it isn't cheap.
We also have ductwork that periodically becomes detached from where it is supposed to be, and the two front (west side, with really big windows) bedrooms get no cooling at all. We didn't realize this until a relative came to stay with us just as the summer was really heating up. And we also have periodic problems with mineral deposits in shower heads and the kitchen spray faucet. I really suspect that the hot water heater is getting ready to go belly up. And the garage has a horrible odor. When we first moved in, we thought it was probably from a dog that was probably kept in the garage. It's not. We don't know what it is. There's a crawlspace next to the garage -- which is where the handyman who came out to "fix" the ductwork went. ("I have to come out here a couple times every year. They really need to just put in new ducts," he told Sig.) If you leave the door from the garage to the den open, it will stink up the den. There's a pantry off the den that smells very faintly of the same odor.
If this was my house, I'd either fix these things -- and in the case of the ductwork, for sure I'd fix it -- or I'd deserve to live with them. But it's not my house. Sig feels that we should just go ahead and hire a landscaper. But we can't afford to do that, which brings up rant #2 for the month of September: when we first moved in here, we were saving about $500 a month. Now, we are unable to save anything. Zilch. We are racking our brains trying to figure this out, and the only thing we can figure is that gas, food and utilities must have gone up. We don't eat any different than we always have, and nothing else has changed. A year ago, I wouldn't have batted an eye about hiring a landscaper. But after wrestling with the household budget for the last 3 months (when I first started noticing that money was leaving faster than it was arriving) it's obvious that we don't have any money to waste on someone else's house, and that perhaps one of the reasons we aren't able to save money any longer is because we are spending it on fixing the house, fixing the yard, and tools for fixing the house and the yard. For a house that isn't ours.
So, I'm kinda peeved at this notion that renters are evil people who will tear up your house and who will make neighborhoods deteriorate. I'm sure that some renters are like that, but in my experience, and this is not the only landlord/tenant situation I've been in, the problem lies more with the OWNER. They usually don't want to pay anything out to maintain their rental property. They no longer take pride in it. They resent you if you call them to report a problem. They want the monthly rental check, and otherwise they want to forget that the house or apartment exists.
I love the yard here, and we aren't strictly speaking playing "by the rules" either. I have a young family member staying with us (we have 3 bedrooms) so that she can afford to attend college, and we didn't bother to notify the property management company or get permission from the owners. We figure the owners aren't going to care, as long as we're quiet and clean. And the property management company would only want another $50 to run her credit, which is silly, since her income has nothing to do with us renting this house. I hate moving, and it's expensive to move. You never get your full deposit back, no matter how clean you leave a place, and before you even get your partial deposit back you need to pay your new landlord a deposit and first month's rent. It's very expensive to move when you're renting. It was my goal to ride out the housing storm in this house, for the duration.