All Forum Posts by: Matt Mason

To sum, I think this thread had some good comments and observations.  To me it is really just future trends and some areas may outperform others.  All things being equal as a buy and hold investor you want to be in the path of progress, wherever that may be.  I agree you don't want to base the majority of your investment decisions on that factor though.

Some people took this as an attack on the suburbs, which I think is unfortunate and not really the intent of the original post IMHO.  However, the title is inflammatory so I can see why that reaction took place.

I think the comments about our suburban model being unique to this country are valid.  A lot of our Metro areas became doughnut like from a functional standpoint in the last half of the 20th Century.  It seems like some of that may be reversing and our Metros are becoming more like the rest of the world.

@Matt R. 

I am a Rolling Hills graduate myself. The schools closing was more a function of the end of the school age baby boomers and the fact that the area became so expensive for young families.  A great place to grow up though wasn't it.

Not really.  They did need to reduce their workforce some, but they could have saved more money by giving back some of their expensive CA office space and letting some of the office employees go.  Here is the article on the subject for everyone else to decide.

Meyer remote employees

I have been hearing that technology will let everyone work from home my entire work career and that many people will ditch the city and work from a rural or exurban area.  With the web, why work in an office.  While this is true for some people, in many cases it is going the other way.  Yahoo made headlines about a year ago when their new CEO said to pretty much all remote employees that they either have to go to a Yahoo office or they were out of their job.  Many felt these employees were not nearly as productive as those interacting with people on a daily basis and were mostly disconnected from the Organization and just sucking up a paycheck for minimal overall productivity.

In fact the trend hasn't really played out.  In the last 20 years more professionals have been moving into the cities than moving away.  I think most milennials feel that their social media and technology connectivity while important is no substitute for human interaction.  I see in my neighborhood a lot of people gathering in cafes working on their laptops.  Seems like they could work from a suburban home but are choosing not to.

@Jen Kurtz 

I have read that book.  I think the title is a little misleading and even the author pretty much admits that.  It is important to remember that suburbs have different qualities.  Some are very far off, built fully off the automobile and more exurban in nature.  Then there are close in so called "streetcar" suburbs that were initially built off trains and trolleys from the city center.  These suburbs tend to have real downtowns and some walkability and probably have much more in common with their associated cities than more exurban communities.  These streetcar suburbs have seen a real rise in their real estate at least here locally, because they are close to the city, have a transit connection to the city, but often have much better schools and more responsive local government in many cases.  Examples in Los Angeles are Culver City, Santa Monica, Pasadena, and South Pasadena.

@Shane Pearlman , I am sure you find like in Santa Cruz that the lines of gentrification along with urban ills like homelessness is often blurred.  I know in places here like Venice and the Eastern parts of Downtown it can be quite shocking to see high end residential right on top of huge homeless populations.

@David Krulac , just as a point of clarification that 12.3% tax bracket is only for couples making over $1,017,000 a year.  CA income tax rates start at just 1% so a couple making $100k pays less than in many states.  Granted that isn't very much money, but it is more than the average US household makes.  I've seen this misrepresented by even the financial media who don't seem to understand effective tax rate vs top tax bracket.

@Shane Pearlman ,

Not sure I'd call it the end of the suburbs, but I think the trend is alive and well and has been in full effect for years now, especially on the West Coast.  I am amazed at what is happening in some of the formerly very rough neighborhoods in Central Los Angeles that I never would have dreamed of 15 years ago.  There was an article in today's LA Times on such a neighborhood.

I saw in a Bay Area newspaper last year how real estate had performed across the Bay Area since the end of the recession.  The more expensive inner city areas had vastly outperformed the cheaper outer suburban areas.  I think this goes against conventional wisdom since people think that most buyers would choose bigger lots and less crowded areas with cheaper homes.

Lots of reasons why starting with the fact that millennials don't want to sit in a car 2 hours a day and have largely rejected the cookie cutter nature of the suburbs and even home ownership to an extent to the rise of childless couples and delayed child bearing.

Of course this doesn't mean every inner city neighborhood will turn to gold and every exurb will turn to dust.  Not at all. 

Just tell her you value her judgement and opinions and respect her decision making and business acumen.  Let her know she gets a vote in everything and you will always run everything by her and that these type of major moves involve trust and a healthy partnership.  Of course, after all of this let her know that in the unlikely event of a tie vote, your vote would break the tie.

Seriously, I think sharing your business plans and even the HGTV thing is a good start to get her comfortable.

@Shane W. 

I am not necessarily an expert in the area, but from afar, I think the central location, cool ocean breezes, falling crime rates, the incoming Crenshaw Metro Line, the lack of rent control, the fact that areas around it have gentrified some all bode well for the future of Inglewood.  I've heard some good things about the Downtown area around Market Street as well.

I grew up in the South Bay and about half the adults in my neighborhood had grown up in Inglewood.  It has changed quite a bit from those days, but seems to be looking up now.  Morningside Park always has been a nice neighborhood of homes if you want to see what things might look like in the future if neighborhoods and homes are improved.

Not sure about the public schools.  I imagine they are still pretty rough and not good at this time.

Everything is relative.  When you open up to a global context especially.  I was driving around Los Angeles early one relatively cold December morning a few years ago, and there were a bunch of Central American guys bundled up about to start some construction work.  To these guys, it was absolutely freezing, and they probably didn't even own a sweatshirt until coming up Norte.  To any other American, it wasn't even a real winter morning.

Real estate has the same implications.  It is all relative to your context.