This is a syndicated repost published with the permission of Slope of Hope. To view original, click here. Opinions herein are not those of the Wall Street Examiner or Lee Adler. Reposting does not imply endorsement. The information presented is for educational or entertainment purposes and is not individual investment advice.
Follow the money. Find the profits!
Liquidity is money. Regardless of where in the world that money originates, eventually it flows to and through Wall Street. So if you want to know the direction of the next big moves in stocks and bonds, just follow the money. Lee Adler's Liquidity Trader tracks and shows you the monetary forces that drive markets, like the daily real time Federal Withholding taxes shown in this chart. Follow the money. Find the profits! Try it for 90 days, risk free!
It’s been a while since I’ve written a Crazy Palo Alto Real Estate post. However, I just saw an ad in our little local paper that compelled me to take keyboard in hand and offer you the latest tidbit from my fair city.
LEE ADLERI present to you the following house: it’s a pleasant place, about 3,000 square feet and on a 2/3rds of an acre lot. In many parts of the country, that’s a postage stamp, but in Palo Alto, it’s “park-like.” Take a moment to drink in this property. As I say, pleasant enough, but not exactly spectacular.
Let’s take a look around the back, which appears to largely consist of pebbles, bark, and a dry fountain. This photo was taken by a professional real estate photographer, and I’m not quite sure what they’re trying to invoke here, but “giddy backyard delights” doesn’t seem to be it.
To brace you for the price, here are some of the morsels as listed on the website, such as the fact it’s not air-conditioned and has a price per square foot of over $5,600. So if for some reason you decided to lay down on the floor, you’d be occupying about sixty-thousand dollars worth of real estate, assuming you don’t hold your arms really, really close to your torso.
It wasn’t that long ago that someone bought this house for about a hundred thousand bucks or so. Over the years, California isn’t permitted to increase property taxes more than 2%, and the tax history shows the ostensible value of this place eventually creeping above $200,000. All the same, it looks like someone got this place for next to nothing, probably back in the 1960s or 1970s.
And now, voila, here is the asking price. Seventeen and a half million dollars. Or, if you don’t have that much cash on you, the bank can put a loan together and oblige you to $65,138 every month for the next 360 months. Oh, and your property tax won’t be $3,600, as shown above. Close to $200,000 every single year.
My favorite part of the entire photo tour the house’s website provides is shown below. Most people wouldn’t notice it, since it just looks like a random photo of a neighborhood street, but as someone who knows every square inch of this town, I can tell you that – – for reasons wholly unknown to me – – they decided the best representation of the neighborhood would be Palo Alto’s one and only store for sex toys and vibrators, Good Vibrations. Maybe if the buyer is an incredibly rich female, the proximity of this retailer would take the edge off those mortgage payments.
Join the conversation and have a little fun at Capitalstool.com. If you are a new visitor to the Stool, please register and join in! To post your observations and charts, and snide, but good-natured, comments, click here to register. Be sure to respond to the confirmation email which is sent instantly. If not in your inbox, check your spam filter.
