Popular Mechanics explores the world of deck materials here.

Although redwood is by far the number one decking in California, this is changing.  Trex and other “plastic” deck material manufacturers are a growing share of the market.  Plastic polyurethane decking material is about the same price as redwood, and will last forever… or err… for a very long time.  I prefer Trex over redwood for decking material.

Doctor Gloom And Doom Housing Bubble has been running his series of posts on understanding the Great Depression. Read the whole post.  It is extraordinarily doubtful there will be a repeat of the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Ben (”Whac-A-Bear, Whac-A-Fannie”) Bernake is a student of the Depression.  What brought on the severity of the Depression was collapse of the money supply.  In the 1930 not enough currency existed to support a market economy.  Farmers dumped milk, eggs, and products.  No one could buy them because there was no money, no dollars.  Today we talk about “liquidity” and the money supply.  While I have agreed with the good Doctors analysis, I doubt “Whacky” Bernake and the Fed are going to make the same mistake again.

As of the passage of the housing bill, presumably tomorrow, about $1 trillion dollars, $345 billion for mortgage lender bailout, and $600+- billion Fed line of credit for Freddie & Fannie.  That’salota mortgages.  Freddie and Fannie will “own” the mortgage market again.  But there will be liquidity.

Because this bailout is funded by the taxpayer, there some negative consequences.

Up until recently there has been an economic perfect storm of declining home prices, financial markets crisis, a falling dollar crisis, and rising energy cost crisis.  These four, coming at the same time, is unique.  From a purely analytic view, Negative Dynamical Volatility was setting in.  Chaos.  Each crisis whacked was worse than the preceding crisis, and each crisis occurring at more and more frequent intervals.  Negative Dynamic Volatility is a condition that precedes chaos.

It is not over yet.  But doing a quick bit of math, the $1 trillion liquidity infusion will dampen the volatility and create some stability.  Real estate will probably not lead the nation into a depression.

I’M CHANGING THE TONE and content of Realestateblocks.  Realestateblocks has been chatty and irreverent.  The new tone and content will be academic.  Operations Research was my original professional career choice.  However, I switched to law because I was alone in the library too often at night.

The general public is unfamiliar with Operations Research.  OR is a Ph.D. discipline.   OR professionals created the first digital computers, computer programing, computer science, management science along with a host of other achievements affecting the lives of all Americans.  This switch to an Operations Research perspective of real estate should appeal to viewers who like, and are familiar with, physics, math, chemistry, engineering, management science, computer science, economics, as well as real estate professionals who want a deeper understanding of the real estate market.  And it should be fun!  I don’t have a Ph.D. in Operations Research consequently the math will be light!  Ha!

Off we go into Complex Dynamical Systems Analysis of real estate….

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THE VIEW in San Francisco is often spectacular.  Here is a night pic of the SF and Bay at night from Curbed SF. Wow, this is what I like.

BLOGGING has been light while I was on vacation at Clearlake, CA.