Talk Elections

5 congressional districts, here we come!  :D

This is not good.

A) Which sicko wants to live in a desert ?

B) Aren't they running out of water there at some point in the next few years if this growth continues ?

Ever been to one?


Two feasible solutions have been proposed:

1. A pipeline that feeds from a deeper point in Lake Mead can be constructed, given that the current ones will soon start sucking air if the water levels continue to drop.

2. A pipeline that feeds from the underground water tables upstate can be built.  Expensive, and the rural communities are already manning the trenches in opposition, but I can see this happening in the next few decades anyway.

Also, a law was passed back in 2006 banning new houses from having lawns or gardens that require water to maintain.

No, why would I go there ? To get killed by the sun and rattlesnakes ?


What about a pipeline from the Pacific Ocean to Las Vegas ?

Beside the obvious cost issues, isn't salt water pretty useless?

In the gulf countries they are desaltifying the salt water from the Indian Ocean. Maybe that's an option for Las Vegas too (or better desaltify it in CA already). But yeah, the costs of this would probably be massive.

This would be incredibly expensive, and desalination would be incredible expensive again. I think a better solution would be to ban green lawns in Phoenix, Tuscon and Las Vegas outside of Public parks.

Of course they are, nothing has changed since before the crisis. The market is still vastly skewed towards new development and cities still don't understand zoning or development laws in any way. The old adage I allude to in my signature has turned from generational ignorance to something probably close to a collective memory of a few months. We learn nothing from our mistakes and have no interest in real solutions to problems.

Okay, I assume you're just f[inks]ing around now.  Rattlesnakes?  Seriously?



It would be.  That's why I already listed for you the two feasible options under consideration.

Conceivably, desalinization might play an indirect role in providing Las Vegas the water it wants.  It might be practical to pipe desalinized water to the Imperial Valley in place of the Colorado River water that now goes there and then have other users take more water further up the Colorado.

But why would California build expensive desalinization plants when we can get water from the Colorado already? Unless Nevada and other Colorado river states chipped in, I don't think California will be reducing the amount it takes from the Colorado.

Oh dear, you must have had a bad experience when you visited.  What happened?

Agreed, but the scheme I laid out could conceivably be the least expensive scheme for the upstream users to get more water.

Also California may need to do that anyway.  The Colorado is horrendously overdrawn already.

A) Me.  I'd love to live there.  LOW humidity and sitting by the pool at 90 degrees with a 5% humidity is awesome.

You can have humidity that low?  As a resident of South Carolina's 2nd Congressional District, I say that "You Lie!"

Chapped lips, guys.  Chapped lips and premature wrinkling.

As for the subject of the thread - it is really astounding that they are building homes again.  I would have thought the only homes to be built nowadays would be for the very high-end luxury market - say at least 800,000-1,000,000 dollar plus houses (double that for CA, etc.).  This income bracket is doing well as is this housing bracket.  But everything below is sheer deflation.

Upper middle class neighborhoods in Socal are in rather pronounced price upswing at the moment actually. I even see signs of life out in the desert in those gated golfing communities. Indio however is still prostrate.

A) I could never live in a desert. I live in Cleveland and I would rather it rain/snow more.

B) Yes, but there're ways to fix that, as JR detailed.

I don't know 'Indio' but I would assume it is the area out in the Eastern part of the LA metro.  But when you say 'upper middle class' in Socal what is the price range?  Does that designation fit my $1.6-2 million conjecture above?

Oh, areas where lower end houses are around 750K or so might be near the break point as a guess. It is amazing to look at an LA County map. The areas with appreciation are very tightly correlated with chic.

Indio
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Where are you seeing this map of price changes?

Here is a toy (http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/search/3035614/) you can play with.

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http://goo.gl/maps/GnIo
Could this be why?

No one commutes to Indio, probably not even from Riverside or San Bernardino. Rather the area is a retirement community which creates some jobs, there is substantial farming close by, and there was also a substantial boom there in housing. Those jobs building the houses are gone now and the neighborhoods where those construction workers would live are still in trouble. The more wealthier areas there which would mostly be purchased by retirees seem to be doing ok now. That area overall has a lot of income inequality. It's GINI coefficient would be very high.

Yea nobody commutes to Indio, but people commute from it to Riverside and San Bernandino at least, right?

Oops, I meant to say nobody commutes from Indio. Anyways, basically nobody commutes from that area across the mountains into Riverside or San Bernardino. Except in the rate case where one spouse works in Indio and another works in Riverside/San Bernardino. It's just too far to go and the cost differential in houses is not that high. And indeed there are places like Banning and Beaumont in between where you could live cheaply (another disaster zone).

A lot of folks in Indio, and next door even more downmarket Coachella, service folks who live in places like the below, about 5 miles away from the snap of downtown Indio I posted above. I cannot imagine an area in the US with a higher GINI coefficient. It's the next "best" thing to Mexico. After Lehman however, folks living to the south and SW of Indio near the base of the Santa Rosa Mountains, required less of those services, and had less money to pay for them. Many simply did not show up at all for "the season." (The monied zones are mostly empty in the summer.) So that along with the end of construction, caused the area to just basically shut down for awhile. I would guess about three quarters of the more upscale restaurants failed in the area for example, causing more job losses for the Indio area folks.

But things are picking up now rather substantially - other than construction of course which is still at a standstill.

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I invite you to come take a look at the Mississippi Delta or New York City.

I've never seen Corrado Gini's name treated like an acronym before.

 The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that sales of previously occupied homes fell 5.4 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.37 million homes. That's the fewest since October.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-home-sales-drop-5-140239145.html