Chuck Ponzi February 25th, 2010

I often get questions from others as to why I seem negative on California.  I’m not.  I have lived here for nearly a dozen years, and have loved living in many areas throughout the southland.  I believe strongly in the positives of the state.  I have had opportunities to leave and not taken them.

However, focusing our entire energy on the positives means that we cane easily forget what we need to improve.  A great leader has the ability to both celebrate the successes while not forgetting the risks and failures.  One of the great potentials of this state is its ability to adapt; and many long-time readers know that I follow alternative energy very closely.  In particular, I love the ideas of small-scale energy production.  Not only because of personal independence, which I greatly favor, but mostly because so much waste and risk is created in large-scale generation and transmission.  Distributed energy grids mean that local generation can be more adaptive and reduce the possibility of large-scale outages (like during the California “brown-outs”) and grid cyber-attacks.

I see hope in California through emerging technologies.  Technologies that answer the problems of today.  If you haven’t yet heard of the “bloom box”, I recommend the below video.

Long-term California is a great place to be.  We only need to fix what is wrong with our present problems, and everyone can share in the prosperity together.

By staying current on emerging trends, you might also be able to increase your investments.  I know that my personal accounts more than doubled last year (2009) due to some timely purchases of energy-related investments.  Let’s all hope more come from our state.

• Investing
• Comments(2)

Chuck Ponzi February 24th, 2010

Proposition 13 was the “biggest tax revolt” in California’s history.

KPBS San Diego did an interesting piece on raising taxes in California and Prop 13’s effect on this.

Thirty-two years ago, Californians en masse went to the polls and approved the largest tax-limiting legislation in recent history.  Basically, it limited the property taxes that could be assigned to a property.

In response, many municipalities responded by building more hotels, retail, and more while limiting the amount of houses (municipalities earn more money from sales and occupancy taxes than on property tax).  This leaves the state perpetually building too few houses, and worse, restricting adaptive reuse of residential real estate into higher density because of the reassesment rules.

Personally, there are 3 major qualms I have with Prop 13.

1.  This is not a homestead exemption, so it does nothing to favor homeowners over landlords (who already have strong incentives through.  This is landlord welfare.

2.  Commercial properties are not exempted (they have a fixed base as well).  This is fundamentally flawed, since it favors property-owning companies who lease as their primary business.  This is corporate welfare.

3.  There is no means test.  Millionaires have the same exemptions as indigent elderly.  This is welfare for the rich.

Unfortunately, taxpayers were sold that little old ladies were getting kicked out of their homes.  While this is true, we could avoid the landlord, corporate, and rich welfare by instituting some changes to the original proposition.

Instead, we have serious imbalances because cities favor not building homes unless they have significant Mello-Roos attached to them, allow corporate transfer of assets to perpetually avoid reassesment, and allows non-citizens and non-tax payers of California to receive the benefits of everyone else’s pain.  How do you feel about prop 13?

The money shot for me?

RAND (Caller, La Jolla): Thank you for taking my call and thanks for this discussion. I would just like to put two issues on the table. The main one is something that really shocks me, never comes up in these types of discussions, which is the distinction between commercial properties and homes. Of course, nobody wants homeowners to be taxed out of their homes but Prop 13 also holds down the property taxes paid by shopping malls, office buildings, all kinds of commercial properties. And they have a loophole that homeowners don’t have, which is that they can sell the holding company that owns the property and then someone else can take ownership of that property but, theoretically, it hasn’t changed hands, just the company has changed hands. And so there’s many commercial properties in the state that have not been reassessed for many years and they’re not paying the cost of the essential services that they need to stay in business. And I think that that aspect of Proposition 13 is very unfair and needs to be changed.

• Housing Crash , Prop 13
• Comments(8)

Chuck Ponzi February 23rd, 2010

• Uncategorized
• Comments(4)

Chuck Ponzi February 16th, 2010

As if there weren’t enough disinformation about what’s really happening with the climate, we get the following, direct from the scientists who brought you global warming:

The dog ate my homework:

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Yeah, but…

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

At least we’re staying scientific:

‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

• Uncategorized
• Comments(5)

Chuck Ponzi February 8th, 2010

Those of you who know Ladera Ranch, know that at the peak of the housing market, it was a cesspool of speculating flippers gone wild.  Some of the most egregious lending happened here with Negative Amortizing loans that are quickly imploding faster than any subprime loan could.  And the size of these loans is even bigger than subprime by multiples.

Ladera was carved out of some leftover parts of Mission Viejo abutted to San Juan Capistrano, and for the most part is searing hot in the summer with no views to speak of, has insane choked off traffic to get to the 5, or you endure ever-increasing tolls from “The Toll Road Company” whose stated objective is to siphon off as much of the local wealth as possible while crying foul and getting “Community Reinvestment” money from the Federal Government.  Good to see that even if the rich won’t support the toll roads, everyone else gets to with their taxes (without the benefit of actually using the roads.

Our subject today is 40 Lewiston Court, Ladera Ranch, now for sale for $1.1M.  At the peak it sold for 2.2M, and is having a hard time finding a bottom.

Here’s the beauty.  And, by the way, this is what 3% of 1.1M will get you in OC today:

I guess Realtors here haven’t yet gotten the memo: the internet sells properties.

But, between you and me, the most interesting part is not the cesspool that your neighborhood is, but rather the cesspool that is in the back yard, lovely.  Mosquito abatement anyone?

Please, for the love of god, will some knifecatcher step up to the plate?

Edit: South OC tracker already featured this one.  She gets around.

• Bubble , Ladera Ranch
• Comments(13)