Category — Helpful Tips

CALIFORNIA STATE AUDITOR finds CDCR laid off 3655 state prison guards just days before receiving Stimulus funds and paying out $450 million in wages, then reported 18,229 jobs “retained” as it paid out the balance of $1.08 billion in Stimulus to CDCR.

According to CDCR records, at most 5000 jobs were retained at a cost of $360,000 each.  What appears to have actually happened is Corrections paid 18,229 prison guards $59,000 each without the guards missing a day of work and no job being created.

The state now pays $48,563 a year/$133 per day to keep each prisoner while it contracts out the same service for $23,000 a year, or $63 per day to Arizona prison facilities.

This is just the tip of the iceberg at Corrections.

DR. HOUSING BUBBLE takes up this important question here.

The answer is home prices will fall significantly in California.  Home prices at 10x median annual income were not sustainable.   Given the fact that high unemployment will also become a significant factor, home prices will fall to about 2.5x annual income.  This factors in record low mortgage interest rates.

But what happens in cities in California where the population is declining?

APPRAISAL CUTS jumped significantly in September from August.

This isn’t a surprise in a falling commercial market.  This article in the CA Real Estate Journal reviews the CRE market statistics.

INMAN NEWS advice on picking URL names to optimize search engine recognition.

I have struggled to understand how search engines work.  I think this article gives good advice to use the “long tail” search, and register related names to maximize the chances your URLs will be picked up by Google, Yahoo, and other search engines.

BLOODHOUND BLOG post from Chris: Self Correcting Loop on how to achieve the highest quality profitable service.

The X generation way to quality service.  Everyone in the real estate trade would do well to understand the Self Correcting Loop and Systems.

Boomers, you’re cooked if you don’t understand the Bloodhound’s post.