Selling on Craigslist to make ends meet

This is not good... :(

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A nationwide survey finds more and more Americans are now selling their personal belongings at swap meets, second-hand stores and online auction sites just to make ends meet, in some cases even parting with family heirlooms just to put food on the table.

San Diegan Sylvia Hackett is spending her weekend at Kobey's Swap Meet for one reason.

"To make money… I can't make ends meet," she said.

Hackett says she's trying to unload some of her most prized possessions - including a cross and a set of collectible figurines - even though their sentimental value to her far outweighs their sale value.

"I don't want to get rid of some of it. I really don't want to sell it, but I need the money," she said. "I won't be buying much of anything other than food with it. With the economy the way it is, and the price of gas what it is, it's very hard."

Hackett is far from alone. More and more families facing rising costs and mounting debt are taking more and more desperate measures to make money, such as selling personal items like engagement rings and wedding bands online. The number of for sale listings on Craigslist, for example, has shot up more than 70 percent since last July.

At the Treasure Trove in City Heights, which has been buying and selling jewelry, coins and other collectibles for more than 40 years, it's pretty much the same story.

"With the unemployment and the lay-offs and the cost of living going up, people are always looking for a way to get a few more bucks to make ends meet," store owner James Hill said.

Hill says some customers try to sell family heirlooms to pay their bills.

"I sometimes even talk to people and say, 'Do you really want to get rid of that? Your grandfather gave it to you or gave it to your dad and your dad gave it to you....' So sometimes we even counsel people," he said.

But for many people like Sylvia Hackett, who lives on a fixed income, there often is no choice.

"You do what you have to do to make it. This is an expensive state - very expensive," she said.

A new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds 44 percent of Americans say that rising gas prices are a serious problem for them, followed by health insurance, paying their rent or mortgage and paying for food.

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La Jolla

Everytime I hear or see or read something about California, Los Angeles, Orange County or San Diego my eyes and ears prick up. I'm like a sponge absorbing everything that I can so I can be informed before I move there.

Ideally, I think if I didn't have to worry about factors such as proximity to work, traffic and transport, cost, etc I would want to live in La Jolla.

Everything that I've read on it makes it seem so idyllic.

La Jolla (pronounced lah-HOY-yuh) is a wealthy seaside resort community of up to 42,808 residents within the city of San Diego, California.

The La Jolla area was known as “La Jolla Park” at least as early as 1886. The origin of the name is obscure. Some say it is a corruption of “ahoy”, called out by sailors seeking the attention of people on the shore. Promoters of La Jolla claim it is from the Spanish “la joya”, meaning the jewel. A more likely though less glamorous theory is that “La Jolla” is a corruption of the Native American word “Woholle”, meaning hole in the mountain, referring to the caves in the north-facing cliffs next to La Jolla Cove Park. The La Jolla band of Luiseno Indians, who inhabited the area for centuries before the arrival of the Spanish.

The most compelling geographical highlights of La Jolla is its ocean front, where residents and visitors can enjoy the alternating rugged and sandy coast line and view wild seal congregations. Popular sandy beaches, dotting the coastline from the south to the north, are:

* Children's Pool Beach
* La Jolla Cove
* La Jolla Beach and Tennis property
* La Jolla Shores
* Scripps
* Black's Beach (leading up to Torrey Pines State Reserve)
* Windansea Beach

Walking along the beach at all times (but especially at sunset) is popular recreation. Those ambling along may be able to glimpse the “Green Flash”.

Downtown La Jolla is noted for its jewelry stores, upmarket restaurants and hotels. Prospect Street and Girard Avenue also have several famous boutiques and restaurants (including local favorites, such as the Girard Gourmet and Harry's Coffee Shop). Notable for its architectural and historical presence is the La Valencia Hotel, which used to welcome movie stars on retreat from Hollywood during the silent film era.

Check out the beautiful La Jolla photos on Flickr.

Map

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The Vanishing Middle Class

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New York Times, July 22, 2006

Published: July 23, 2006

SOME big American cities are flourishing as at no time in recent memory. Places like New York and San Francisco appear to be richer and more dazzling than ever: crime remains low, new arrivals pour in, neighborhoods have risen from the dead. New York is in the throes of the biggest building boom in 30 years, its population at an all-time high and climbing. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg proudly promotes his city as “a luxury product.”

But middle-class city dwellers across the country are being squeezed.

This time, they are being squeezed out by the rich as much, or more so, as by the poor — a casualty of high housing costs and the thinning out of the country’s once broad economic middle. The percentage of middle-income neighborhoods in metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington has dropped since 1970, according to a recent Brookings Institution report.

The percentage of higher-income neighborhoods in many places has gone up. In New York, the supply of apartments considered affordable to households with incomes like those earned by starting firefighters or police officers plunged by a whopping 205,000 in just three years, between 2002 and 2005.

Does it matter if there is less room for a middle class? In strictly economic terms, plenty of economists say, it may not. But they also say that in the long run, those cities may become places where they and other city lovers would prefer not to live.

Obviously, cities benefit economically from the presence of the rich. Tax revenues go up when the rich pour into what some economists now call “superstar cities,” places like New York, San Francisco, San Diego, Boston and Washington that attract highly skilled people but have limits on the ability to build housing. In New York, fewer than 13,000 of the 2.3 million households that pay income tax are expected to account for nearly 30 percent of city income tax paid in 2006.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the percentage of households earning more than $100,000 a year rose to over 30 percent in 2000 from approximately 7 percent in 1970, said Joseph Gyourko, a professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “Is that area worse off?” he asked. “At least so far, there’s a lot of evidence that economically they’re better off. Land prices are really high, lots of people want to move there.”

Of course, cities need police officers, firefighters, teachers. But as long as they can get the labor they need from somewhere nearby, some economists say, middle-class shrinkage may not hurt. In Southern California, developers import construction workers from Las Vegas and put them up in hotels; costs go up but rich clients can pay. Firefighters who want to live in high-priced cities can work two jobs, said W. Michael Cox, chief economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “I think it’s great,” he said. “It gives you portfolio diversification in your income.” Pay for essential workers like plumbers and cabdrivers will tend to go up, he said.

But sociologists and many economists believe that there can be non-economic consequences for cities that lose a lot of middle-income residents. The disappearance of middle-income neighborhoods can limit opportunities for upward mobility, the authors of the Brookings study said. It becomes harder for lower-income homeowners to move up the property ladder, buy into safer neighborhoods, send their children to better schools and even make the kinds of personal contacts that can be a route to better jobs. The Brookings study, which defined moderate-income families as those with incomes between 80 and 120 percent of the median for each area, found that the percentage of middle-income neighborhoods in the 100 largest metropolitan areas had dropped to 41 percent from 58 percent between 1970 and 2000. Only 23 percent of central city neighborhoods in 12 large metropolitan areas were middle income, down from 45 percent in 1970.

Meanwhile, New York University researchers reported last month that the number of apartments affordable to households making 80 percent of the median household income in New York City dropped by a fifth between 2002 and 2005. Nationally, median household income ranges from just above $20,000 in Miami to around $40,000 in New York and Boston and about $60,000 in San Francisco.

“People have a stake in the place that they’re living in,” said Chris Mayer, a professor at Columbia Business School. “If you have a police and firefighting force saving their city as opposed to somebody else’s city, it makes a difference. In the same sense, local shopkeepers just seem to be better. What happened on 9/11 was really about ‘our city.’ ”

Mr. Mayer, who recently moved with his wife and three young children to New York, said he believed that it was important for children to grow up in a place that is racially, ethnically and economically diverse. He calls those places more vibrant. In most places, the upper middle class is less diverse than the middle, he said. New York would be less attractive to him without its still-expansive and lively middle.

“This trend toward living and interacting with people who are like you is intensifying a lot,” said Professor Gyourko, who lives in the affluent suburb of Swarthmore, Pa. “I do not meet the full range of incomes and social classes within my neighborhood. Well, think about what happens if metropolitan areas like New York, San Francisco and the like turn into my suburb. You’ll have even less interaction. The most interesting and potentially foreboding implication of this sorting is that it changes the way we view life.”

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California's population tops $38 million

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May 2, 2008

SACRAMENTO – California's population has topped 38 million, making it home to one in every eight Americans.

The state Department of Finance estimates that the Golden State topped the 38 million benchmark by nearly 50,000 residents Jan. 1. That's up by nearly half a million people, or more than 1 percent, from a year ago.

California now has about the same population as that of Poland.

The department also says Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city, now has more than 4 million residents. That's about half as many as in New York City.

Finance officials previously thought Los Angeles topped 4 million last year. But revised estimates released yesterday lowered the 2007 projection.

California's fastest-growing city was San Joaquin, which added just 4,500 residents. That was enough for a 17 percent increase in the small Central Valley community.

With the addition of 19,240 people, San Diego, the state's second-largest city, has an estimated 1.3 million residents.

The San Diego County population has reached 3.15 million.

$38 million is about 1.5x the entire population of Australia!! Wow!!

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Expats and investors lured to San Diego

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It had to happen sooner or later.

With the falling dollar, San Diego area real estate has become a screaming bargain to foreign investors around the world. Real estate prices in many prime US locales have already declined, and must be irresistible for those who are seeking to purchase San Diego luxury homes and condos with Euros or Canadian dollars.

Now, many Americans who have been living abroad are considering a return home, where the purchasing power of the dollar isnt being decimated every other day. From their perspective, real estate in Florida, Arizona, Nevada and California look like the same bargains Canadian and Euro-packing investors are buying.

We received a call earlier this week from an American living abroad who intends to sell his inflated European estate and move to the sunny and balmy climes of San Diego. He will exchange his invested Euros for dollars, and invest them in blue chip American real estate, where he and his wife can enjoy an active retirement in Americas Finest City.

San Diego’s own Brian Brady with Mortgage Reports wrote a recent article about how Canadian real estate investors are buying American real estate in droves. Brian is currently working with one Canadian real estate investor seeking to buy a Scottsdale, Arizona home, while another Canadian is looking for a second home on the San Diego coast.

Both investors from Canada will enjoy not only the depressed pricing in both real estate markets, but will also appreciate their Canadian dollars (aka Loonies) buying 30 percent more than they would have a year ago.

Many Americans living in Canada may also be considering a move back across the border, because the cost of living in the United States now is so much less than a Canadian lifestyle–which must be paid in Loonies.

In the years ahead, it will be interesting to see how many second homes in America are owned not only by foreign nationals, but by former American expatriates as well.

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Cost of renting an apartment

I had a look at Craigslist again for the umpteeneth time and made a quick Excel spreadsheet of various suburbs and calculated the average cost of renting a 2br apartment/condo. Then I divided the cost by 2 since I'll probably be sharing with someone else.

Hillcrest - $744.07
Mission Valley - $867.53
University Town Center (UTC) - $885.90
La Jolla (shores/village) - $1,072.17
Little Italy - $1,288.50
Marina - $1,417.63
Gaslamp Quarter - $1,473.06

Obviously other areas are cheaper but I've chosen probably the most expensive areas!

Currently in Sydney we're paying approx. $1,462.00 AUD (which equates to $1,365.60 USD, $682.80 if you divided it by 2) a month, that's for a 2br apartment so that is slightly less than the cost of a 2br apartment in San Diego.. but our apartment is in a suburb 45mins out from the downtown area, whereas the above areas are in downtown or not far from it.

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