All Forum Posts by: Yan P.

Jon K,

I will keep it open until tomorrow at 9PM to give everyone a fair shot. Otherwise I am happy to have you!

I think I can arrange that. That is if Buffett and Munger make it through the year. The recent diagnosis of prostate cancer really sucks...

I should probably put the date down: May 5th. Not this Saturday but the following.

Just so happens that one of my friends dropped out of our yearly Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting trip. That leaves me with one extra ticket.

Every year we go is a great learning experience. I thought that the BP community would most appreciate this event and I would not have to explain who Buffett and Munger are.

What I ask in exchange for the ticket is an opportunity to learn something from and network with a more experienced investor either the night before for dinner or breakfast the morning off. Throw your hat in if interested. Since I don't know a majority of the investors on the forum, I will defer to BP's influence rating system.

Let the Hunger games begin!!

Before doing an FHA take a good look at the yearly mortgage insurance fees that recently increased.They were a deal breaker for me.

Ziv Magen, I'm in the Marks, Munger, and Buffett camp as well. I believe there is absolutely no way to predict the future. But, all of them agree that you should have a fairly good understanding of the current environment.

When you buy for yield, you are still using a ratio to determine its attractiveness based on something (such as historical returns). So, you could say, "I buy when yields are above X%" and "If the yields drop below x%, I'm not adequately rewarded for my risk and don't buy." Same thing as Michael Zuber does except his is the affordability index.

As tradition, I did a poor job of asking the question. How about, what metrics do you use to determine if you are a buyer in the current market? And what is the actual number (for example: I don't buy below a 10% yield, or when I see blue pigs fly instead of pink, or...when the government says everything is fine) I was joking on the last two...

Ophelia Nicholson what signal led you to believe that you should start selling the property?

Monica Breckenridge if you have your ear to the ground all the time, how do you know that you aren't riding the market up to just have floor dropped from underneath you?

Michael Zuber which affordability index do you use?

Michael Zuber which index do you use? I don't think NAR gets down to 20%.

I was thinking about the real estate bubble and there being experienced investors out there who saw it coming and called it "obvious." On the other hand, there were also very experienced investors who were completely blindsided. My question, for investors who have seen more than one market cycle and came out of the last one alive, is what kind of analysis did you use to see it coming? Price to replacement cost; Price to rents; Transaction volumes; Mortgage qualifications? Or were you just what economist Nassim Taleb calls a "Lucky idiot"?

Nice! Since everyone on this thread is older than my tender age of 24, I must be doing something right and not a complete moron! Warren Buffett is a legend, there is no doubt about that. But realize that his early days were when the market was still hugely inefficient. The depression was still fresh in people's minds. I was at the Berkshire shareholder meeting last year and someone asked Buffett and Munger if it's more difficult to start now. They said absolutely. They were making trades like buying normal companies at .5x book value lol. Talk about margin of safety. Awesome article.