How common are $350K salaries in the Bay Area?

@RealEstatebull What’s your source for the chart? I see “Paysa”, but I didn’t find more information like that chart on their blog.

Snap, formerly known as Snapchat, is in SoCal.

Took it from Money Is Made On The Purchase In Real Estate, Not On The Sale

1 Like

While looking around, I found this article. Not sure people have seen it, but I found it interesting read:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21659722-tech-boom-may-get-bumpy-it-will-not-end-repeat-dotcom-crash-fly

The base pay is close to what I posted. It’s the stock that’s a huge variable. I wonder if that value at grant or projected value at vesting? I don’t think it’s normal to get more stock every year when you haven’t gone public yet. So those might be initial grants divided by 4 to get an annual value.

That’s my guess too. But Microsoft actually grants new stocks every year with 4 yrs vesting period, but their initial wasn’t as big as others.

1 Like

Since that article the Nasdaq had a 15% correction:

People keep fighting last year’s battle, so people keep looking for tech bubbles. I say there won’t be another tech bubble like 2000 ever again in our lifetime. It’s like we had measles and will never have it again. We have the immunity.

Next time will be something different. I have not seen any signs of bubble anywhere yet.

Looking back at the last secular bull market 1982-2000 there were many corrections along the way: the 87 collapse, Mexican peso, Russian default, Asian collapse, but the US always bounced back pretty fast and stronger than ever. The current secular market started in mid 2008. We are Year 8 and I think we can easily go on for another 8 years. As the above chart tells you, we are just coming out of a correction in early 2016.

I am reading the Intelligent Investor book by Benjamin Graham, with commentary by Jason Zweig. All Zweig talks about was the craziness at the height of the dot com bubble. And people were truly crazy at the time. Go back and read some history of that time. Nowhere in the last 8 years I have seen anything remotely close.

1 Like

Usually bubble doesn’t repeat.
2000-2002 - Dot-com
2006-2009 - Subprime Mortgage

Bubble implies structural, doubt we are going to have that, may be cyclical type… so should be gentle and short.

Don’t worry my friend. Yes, we will have bubbles again. I guarantee it. It’s in our nature. It won’t be tech, and it won’t be real estate. Always something else. Always some new reasons to throw all reasons away.

1 Like

Usually is something that is happening now but we brush it aside. So could be oil? self-driving/EV related? Immigration related?

Would not be caused by RE or web/internet businesses but RE should be affected.

We are brushing it aside now because the fundamentals still makes sense. Back in the mid 90s people were right to be optimistic about tech in general and dot-com in particular. Moore’s law was in full throttle which automatically gave your computer 2x power every 18 months. Web was just created and people started to be connected and communicate online. Future was bright.

And then we got too carried away and it became stupid.

We are not at the stupid phase yet I think. People still see everything with healthy dose of skepticism. The corollary of the next bubble not being in tech and real estate is that tech and RE investors don’t need to worry too much about getting caught up in bubble, because the bubble will happen else where. But it also means the absolute best return will happen else where too. That’s what a bubble is. Return is crazy good for long enough to suck people in.

I wish I will have the sound mind to resist getting sucked in. But you know it will be freaking hard.

The best description of bubble is South Sea investment by Isaac Newton. Which segment looks eerily like South Sea? Self-driving/ EV/ hail-driving come very close :grinning:. Surprisingly, social media didn’t get into bubble stage :). May be utilities bubble caused by declining oil price?

S&P 500

Jan 1 1982: 117.3
Jan 1 2000: 2,164.69

So over the last secular bull market 1982-2000 S&P rose 12 times! OK, they are just some arbitrary Jan 1 dates, not the lowest and not the highest. For our current bull:

Jan 1 2009: 865.58
Sep 23 2016: 2,164.69

It’s only 2.5X. Again Jan 1 2009 was not the lowest. I know. But it’s for sure not 12X no matter what date you pick.

So I see a lot of runway left in the current secular bull run. And it will end with a huge bubble like last time. Actually like every single time really. A similar 12X run on 2009 level => S&P at 10K. :fire: :fire: :fire:

1 Like

These are too small to drive big bubbles. It has to be an entire asset class measured in trillions of dollars. Like government bonds. Like China.

1 Like

As far as real estate the 2000 dot com crash was a fairly minor event, unless you owned in Atherton …Otherwise prices only dropped 10-20% and recovered by 2004…The 2008 crash was caused by the Fed and government stupidity, with 125% mortgages, liar loans and Greenspa/Bush overheating the economy. .hopefully that won’t happen again either

Government debt is the next bubble. There’s no way developed countries can afford their current debt. Once the music stops it’ll make the mortgage bubble look like child’s play. The only answer will be to significantly devalue currency. Hard assets will win.

1 Like

Hard assets are aleady winning …it is hard to believe they will keep appreciating forever… I agree the next crisis has not been predicted and will hit us unprepared…that is the nature of crisis…Could ba a war…like with N Korea or any number of rogue states…A big earthquake in Cali…Hurricanes, floods…Disaster is an inevitable risk we all take.

1 Like

Ain’t they devaluing their currency already? So called, currency wars. USA has indirectly devaluing the dollar through QEs, want to have the cake and eat it… now, rate hike to prevent domestic hyperinflation (which can just come out of nowhere) yet want currency to be stable vs other currencies (so as not to hurt exporters).

Actually, one of the considerations for why I want to diversify from stocks is because of currency wars. Hard assets as pointed out by elt1 is the place to be in currency wars. Gold - I don’t like as long term its status as inflation hedge and as currency would be challenged. Collectiles - illiquid and I don’t know a thing. So left with RE.

1 Like

We have a long way to go. Debt is more than GDP. Debt growth has been outpacing GDP growth. Even the CBO says by 2032 or 2041 Medicare, Medicaid, social security, and interest in the debt will consume every tax dollar collected. We can try higher tax rates, but higher rates haven’t proved to collect more taxes as a percent of GDP. We average 17% of GDP. The only viable solution is to cut spending, and we can’t have a serious discussion about the entitlements drivng spending increases. We aren’t even in a recession and governments are barely keeping debt increases at “sustainable” levels. The next recession will drop tax revenues when debts are already at record levels.

The theory is government spending stimulates economic growth. We’ve added trillions to our debtwith government spending and what’s our growth?

National debt has tripled from 31% in the seventies to 101% of GDP till now…Every since there has been lots of hand wringing about the overhanging debt crisis…45 years of calling out the sky is falling…Kind of like the nuclear threat…Sure its out there…But cant do anything about it…and it is a chronic issue not a crisis issue…Besides it is continually solved by devaluing the currency…And quite frankly inflation is a minor concern currently