Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Palo Alto Outdoes Itself

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As many of you know, the real estate market in Palo Alto has been going bananas for years, particularly recently. I’ve written about this phenomenon here, here, here, and – my favorite – here.

I’ve lived in Palo Alto since 1991, and at the time, it was a terrible stretch for the very-young Tim to buy a house in town. In retrospect, it was one of the greatest (and few) “long’ positions of my life, since it’s worth about twelve times what I paid for it back then.

I sure wish I could buy a put option on it, though, because we’ve got to be at some kind of zany top, given the front page headline on this morning’s Daily Post. Here ya go:

0918-porat

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Irrational Real Estate

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I’ve done many, many posts about the insane real estate market here in the Bay Area. I’m not going to bore you with another “can you believe how much they want for this?” because, by now, I think you kind of get the point.

However, this week, in the venerable Palo Alto Weekly (which, as is typical for the newspapers around here, has a publishing frequency that has absolutely no correlation to its moniker) a local real estate agent, Xin Jiang (pronounced “Xin Jiang”) composed the following article, which I have helpfully highlighted for you: (more…)