mark nottingham

Bay Area

Location, Location, Location

Wednesday, 13 February 2008

I’m back in the Bay Area for work, and out of curiosity I thought I’d check in on the housing market here. After updating my super-secret source of housing sales, I tried something new; charting price paid for square foot by county.

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Week One in Melbourne

Sunday, 24 December 2006

It’s Christmas Eve, and Charlie and I have been on the ground in Melbourne for a week. So far, we’ve got a new mobile phone (sweet), checked in with his school, and looked at a lot of apartments, trying to find somewhere to live for a few months while we house-hunt. Not quite as fast as I’d like, but not too shabby. Meanwhile, most of our possessions are about two months behind us, somewhere between San Francisco and Singapore.

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Seven Year Itch

Wednesday, 15 November 2006

In a nutshell: After a lot of angst, back-and-forth, and false starts, we’re moving back to Melbourne next month, seven years and a few days after we arrived in San Francisco. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows us well, although many of our Australian friends have expressed that they won’t really believe it until we step off the plane.

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The Flipperdex

Monday, 16 October 2006

I’ve been playing with sales data for houses in the Bay area for a while, and have always wanted to come up with an index of same-home sales — reputed to be one of the more accurate ways to do an index, because you’re not having to compensate for differences in intrinsic value between different houses.

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Bubble Fun

Thursday, 25 August 2005

It seems that the debate has switched from if there’s a housing bubble to when and where it will pop.

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Arguments for Buying a House Now

Sunday, 1 May 2005

In the interest of equal time, two quotes attributed to Keynes;

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More notes on the Bay area housing market

Saturday, 5 March 2005

Carlos sent me an interesting summary page about the Bay area housing bubble. I wish there were more links substantiating the assertions there (a few ring false), but it is thought-provoking.

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Why I Won’t Be Buying a House in the Bay Area Soon

Monday, 31 May 2004

Benjamin Wallace-Wells’ “ There Goes the Neighborhood” captures what many have been saying for a while now; it’s a bubble, a bubble, a bubble.

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Caltrain Scheduling Changes (and other thoughts on Public Transport policy)

Friday, 6 February 2004

Caltrain has proposed a set of schedules that re-introduce weekend services and tweak a number of trains’ timings and stops, to enable “bullet” service.

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Traffic

Wednesday, 7 January 2004

Anitra is trying to beat a head of traffic that’s built up behind an accident upstream; was able to check on the excellent SF Bay area real-time traffic map. I used one of these when I first moved to the Bay area, but it went away; Google found us another one.

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Cheap Eats

Wednesday, 7 January 2004

What a steal. If you live near San Francisco, or are visiting this month, make sure you check out Dine About Town — three-course, chef-selected prix fixe menus at over a hundred restaurants, $19.95 for lunch, $29.95 for dinner, all through January.

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Now I remember why I switched...

Friday, 12 December 2003

The other day, I bought a copy of an extremely nifty piece of software, Virtual PC. It didn’t come with an OS, but that’s OK, because I have a copy of WinXP Pro on a box that I’m not using, so I can move it over to the mac (after appropriate decommissioning, etc.).

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Frank Chu update

Thursday, 28 August 2003

As previously noted, I often pass San Francisco figure Frank Chu on the way to and from work.

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A sign of bad times?

Friday, 16 May 2003

Hmm. Passed the 12 Galaxies guy on the way home from work today. Usually, he’s very polite and keeps to himself. This time, he was yelling at passers by and waving his sign at him. Violently.

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