It looks like we have an offer (and possibly) a contract on the house. We got the initial offer this morning, and it came in at just 5% under our listing price, and with a very short closing date (June 30). After a few rounds of back-and-forth, by this evening we seem to have settled on a price that's just about 2% below the listing price, with a closing date of 7/21.
All in all, not too bad for having it listed only a week (and over Memorial Day weekend yet).
The weirdest thing is that the negotiations have to go through TWO agents. I can understand why the agents want to do that, since it give them control, and sellers (and buyers) can do ill-considered and often irrational things. But it makes it very hard to negotiate, because there's very little flow of information. They make an offer, and we counter. Then they counter, and so on. Unfortunately, since all we get is doubly filtered, neither party can determine what the other party's key concerns are, so the negotiation comes down to price (and sometimes the closing date). It feels like two people shooting at each other in the dark blindfolded.
Now that this seems to be in order, all we have to do is find another place to live in. So, it's another 250 mile trip this Thursday round two of house shopping (round one was in April). We've got about nine or 10 that seem reasonable, so by this time next week we could have a new house under way.
Stay tuned!
This Week's Carnival Of The Capitalists
This week's COTC is up at Working Solo. As usual, there are far too many pieces to comment on them all, so here are a few that I thought were worthy of note (or at least that were in areas I found interesting):
Nickel at FiveCentNickel looks at taking a home office deduction.Once again, there are lots more posts in the carnival - these are just the ones that tripped my trigger. As always, your needs and interests are likely to be different from mine, so look around.
Bill at Ask Uncle Bill give us 10 career strategies for getting ahead. A must read for new graduates.
Josh Cohen of Multiple Mentality give us some of the "unintended consequences" from price capping in "About capping gas prices, and capping in general".
Scott Peterson at Red Cloud Research highlights the weaknesses in the international systems used to handle derivatives trades.
Henry at InsureBlog presents a post titled "Playing SOLItaire" where he asks "What if a stranger owned a life insurance policy on you? It's real, but is it dangerous?".
In two mortgage-related posts Dave Porter of Pacesetter Mortgage both asks and answers the question "Do I have to sign form 4506 at my mortgage closing?", and Dan Melson of Searchlight Crusade provides an analysis of the different available real estate loan types.
Memorial Day and The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc
Just a short note to honor all the brave men and women who have given their lives defending our country.
Peggy Noonan is one of my favorite writers, and Ronald Reagan one of my favorite speakers. Last night, I was skimming through her book "What I Saw at the Revolution" for about the twentieth time. I came across the section where she tells the story of the crafting of how Reagan's D-Day anniversary speech "The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc." I still think it's one of the most moving speeches I've ever heard. It honors the Ranger unit who scaled the cliffs at Normandy at great cost (losing almost 60% of their unit to casualties over a couple of short, brutal days).
In case you're interested, here's an audio clip of the speech, compliments of American Rhetoric.
Have a good Memorial Day.
Peggy Noonan is one of my favorite writers, and Ronald Reagan one of my favorite speakers. Last night, I was skimming through her book "What I Saw at the Revolution" for about the twentieth time. I came across the section where she tells the story of the crafting of how Reagan's D-Day anniversary speech "The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc." I still think it's one of the most moving speeches I've ever heard. It honors the Ranger unit who scaled the cliffs at Normandy at great cost (losing almost 60% of their unit to casualties over a couple of short, brutal days).
In case you're interested, here's an audio clip of the speech, compliments of American Rhetoric.
Have a good Memorial Day.
The Enron Guilty Verdict
Not surprisingly, the verdict in the Lay/Skilling trial came back guilty (Skilling was acquitted on some of the insider trading counts, but got nailed on almost everything else). All in all, it's not that surprising, since Tradesports was predicting this outcome with 2-1 odds back in April.
Yes, they're dirtbags, and they took actions to mislead shareholders. But I have a bigger gripe with these two. Their actions gave politicians a veritable pinata to beat on (they could hit it from any number of directions and have something good come out) when pushing through regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley.
Far-reaching legislation like SOX has provided a lot of fodder for academics looking for research topics (in fact, I've done some). But it's also drastically changed the American capital markets, and I doubt for the better. The negative effects of SOX aren't limited to the drastically higher compliance costs they've foisted on public companies (particularly for smaller firms, when measured on a percentage basis). They also include the less obvious but still economically significant costs to our economy of decreased likelihood of entrepreneurs deciding to to go public (and the related trend of more public companies deciding to go private), increased incidence of foreign companies deciding not to list their stock on American stock exchanges (or delisting if they're already there), greater difficulties in attracting qualified board candidates because of increased time and liability costs, and overall greater conservativism as executives focus excessively on compliance rather than shareholder wealth creation.
If you want a flavor of what some of the more well-known commenters in the blogosphere have to say, here's a quick tour (to be updated as new posts of note occur):
Yes, they're dirtbags, and they took actions to mislead shareholders. But I have a bigger gripe with these two. Their actions gave politicians a veritable pinata to beat on (they could hit it from any number of directions and have something good come out) when pushing through regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley.
Far-reaching legislation like SOX has provided a lot of fodder for academics looking for research topics (in fact, I've done some). But it's also drastically changed the American capital markets, and I doubt for the better. The negative effects of SOX aren't limited to the drastically higher compliance costs they've foisted on public companies (particularly for smaller firms, when measured on a percentage basis). They also include the less obvious but still economically significant costs to our economy of decreased likelihood of entrepreneurs deciding to to go public (and the related trend of more public companies deciding to go private), increased incidence of foreign companies deciding not to list their stock on American stock exchanges (or delisting if they're already there), greater difficulties in attracting qualified board candidates because of increased time and liability costs, and overall greater conservativism as executives focus excessively on compliance rather than shareholder wealth creation.
If you want a flavor of what some of the more well-known commenters in the blogosphere have to say, here's a quick tour (to be updated as new posts of note occur):
- Professor Bainbridge, with thorough commentary and a nice link s as usual
- The WSJ Law Blog with some other links to video footage
- A diarist at Daily Kos wh0 (not surprisingly given the source) lays it all at the Bush's feet
- Larry Ribstein, who raises an interesting question about the insider trading verdict
- Professor Bainbridge again with an extended answer to Ribstein's question on insider trading.
- Barry Ritholtz, who has an Enron trivia question
Advice For Aspiring Economists from Greg Mankiw)
Greg Makniw has out some great advice together for aspiring economists. He gives advice to undergrads here. As expected, it's all right on target. I've summarized it here, with my comments following in italics :
- Take a lot of math and stat courses
- Choose your economics courses from professors who are passionate about the field and care about teaching.
- Use your summers to experience economics from different perspectives.
- Read economics for fun in your spare time. To get you started, here is a list of recommended readings.
- Follow economics news. The best weekly is The Economist. The best daily is the Wall Street Journal.
- If you are at a research university, attend the economic research seminars at your school about once a week.
- For math and states, try to take at least calculus (derivatives are everywhere in economics, and you'll find your share of integrals too), linear algebra (used often in econometrics) and real analysis (gets you used to doing proofs)
- Spending time around passionate teachers is a good way to ramp up your own enthusiasm (particularly if they're good teachers)
- The remaining suggestions boil down to "immerse yourself in your field." If you want to be an economist (or a finance person, or whatever), spend as much time either doing it or reading it as you can.
Auction Theory (from Economic Principals)
Economic Principals has an article summarizing some of the successes of Auction theory over the last few decades. They highlight its role in the privatization of Eastern European government assets, the FCC wireless spectrum auction, and even eBay.
Read the whole thing Here.
Although not mentioned in the article, auctions have also made significant inroads in finance. Dutch auctions have been used for years in stock repurchases, and auctions are even being used (albeit infrequently) for issuing stock in an IPO.
Read the whole thing Here.
Although not mentioned in the article, auctions have also made significant inroads in finance. Dutch auctions have been used for years in stock repurchases, and auctions are even being used (albeit infrequently) for issuing stock in an IPO.
The Aplia Econ Blog
I just recently came across a new site called The Aplia Econ Blog. It's a group blog, and is intended as: "a place to explore current events that relate to your econ classes."
It looks promising, so check it out.
It looks promising, so check it out.
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