All Forum Posts by: Steve B.

Bob, one cherry picked property in a specific market doesn't prove your point. Home value is inherently more volatile than cash flow on a given property on average.

Rocky, if you used leverage in 2005 buying rentals you would likely be bankrupt in 2008. If you used leverage getting into the game in 2010 then you are a genius in 2014. The answer as to your "why not" is understanding the difference between systemic and non-systemic risk. Half the people on this forum extolling the wondrous benefits of leverage would be gone tomorrow if the housing market crashed. The point isn't not to use leverage, but rather to understand it's a calculated risk.

Ethnic family!?!? How dare you sir, do you think we have some freedom of speech to point out such an insulting thing as being ethnic. Even in a online forum? "Ethnic" was politically correct 2005-2011. The proper, state mandated term is now "melanin bestowed societally disadvantaged dreamer". Please never dare to use these unacceptable monikers again

To legally rent it out as a living space it must be up to local code applicable for living spaces. Also consider it's separate mailing/street address, which may require the lot it sits on to be re-partitioned.

You can't legally rent it out as a living space if it isn't up to that code. However you can most likely rent it out as a workshop/garage/artspace etc then give the tenants a non-written wink and a nod as to how they can use it. However consider that a dissatisfied/vengeful tenant can turn you into the city at any time for a code violation. Depending on provable intent, or expectation of reasonable use, you may or may not be fined for this. You may or may not have have an activist or more passive code enforcement in your city.

Another alternative is to advertise it as one house with one ancillary building with an ambiguous written description. Then the tenant can decide what use that cant put it to non-permitted, non-designated, ADU or mother-in-law unit with no separate mailing or street address. If they end up subleasing it to their friends/family as a living unit that may go a long way to increasing the propertys rent while reducing your potential liability.

If you end up wanting to sell the property that may be an issue if the guest house has a lot of non-permitted work done connecting the utilities

Mike is your agent pushing that and telling you it's a great thing to have?

I'm sure the local police will jump all over it, just kidding, of course they won't do anything.

David, You didn't offend me, that would be virtually impossible as I don't believe in political correctness nor do I get morally indignant if someone disagrees with me. What you witnessed was my failed attempt at humor.

Also I misquoted the quote you quoted me on. The proper expression is "torturing statistics to confess your desired "truth". It may have been Nate Silver who said that but I thought it was particularily clever when I read it somewhere.

David I don't think statistics and probability are becoming more popular due to explicitly stating their sexuality having previously been in the closet. I do think computational/quantitative finance and has something to do with it, but two other factors would probably be more pertinent in their increased application.

First the golden age of objective "straight" math seems to have passed (at least for now), we can all think of great mathematical achievements, not many of which have come in the last 40 years.

secondly, this is also is due to big data and ubiquitous data availability. This is a new phenomena which the application of probability computations and statistics can take advantage of. By applying not only the science of normal math but the art of proper application we can tease trends and patters out of huge, seemingly random, data sets which uncover curious and often profitable information. In the past the amount of data and computer power to do this simply wasn't available.

One adverse affect of this big data is that formerly "objective" facts rarely exist anymore in practice. If I have a political argument with anyone we can both bring up statistical studies, ad nauseum, which militate our points and contradict each others arguments. We can effectively torture the facts out of statistics, and when it comes to politics or making ourselves correct many have a disincentive to be truthful if they can hide behind suspect statistics.

What RTOS's and platforms have you worked with? You seem very accomplished.

I would think a math grad with a good handle on C and Java would have lots of job opportunities, none of which come to mind immediately but i'm sure it would be very employable, I'm just not sure at what salary but i'd assume 60-80k.

I dont regret my first degree although I do regret not being a more diligent and dedicated student when I could learn 5x faster in my youth than I can now. I definitely regret thinking I was suitable for an 9-5 office job with a suit and tie, something I wasted four years on, in an environment I was completely unsuited for. If I could repeat it I would have started in CS rather than pick it up later.

You may also be surprised how financially ignorant some great engineers are. I remember one Embedded systems engineer interrupting a conference to repeat some non-sense he heard at a get rich quick seminar which correlated stock volatility to buy and sell signals. Another time, when I worked at Sun Microsystems, I remember a Chinese Ph'd type printing reems of financial data on the company printer in order to become a successful day trader instead of doing his job. So I think having a financial background is very useful to seeing profitable opportunites and not having on is perhaps more pernicious in not recognizing folly.

Remember Thorpe did a lot of work on probability and stock arbitrage as well as gambling theory. So along with guys like Fischer Black and Myron Scholes combined their math and financial knowledge to make a lot (and lose a lot) of money. I think combinatorics and stochastic methods have huge profit potential if applied usefully.

Hi David,

Yes I also started my first degree in the UC system as well. Before I answer your question I will take exception with you calling Engineering dumbed down from physics. In large we are just talking about levels of abstraction. My work in embedded system design and digital design would be between the analog design and computer science programming. Physics would just be the lowest level with no abstraction. You can't really say the guy who is good in physics vs. analog design vs digital design vs programming vs material fabrication vs mechanical production is doing something easier or harder. With modern complex systems you need engineers proficient in all these areas to produce a finished product. The physicist, while needing the strongest math background, would actually be the guy least able to produce a real product just as J. Scott indicated.

Are you asking about how you math background is employable? If your not a programer already and very proficient with two or more languages then I wouldn’t even consider it. While CS does have its math foundations with recursive functions, vectorization, data structures, and computing optimal data sorting algorithms, none of that is going to make you especially employable without practical language proficiency.

Investment finance would take advantage of math majors aka “quants” for all manors of making money trading and hedging risk. But to be competitive in this field your are talking about competing with the best of the best at places like Goldman Sachs, who hire MIT, Chinese, and Indian Ph.d's to move billions about making profits consistently off billion dollar transactions. I think this field is very well paid but you better be a great mathematician, like the best 1-2% of your graduate class to have a chance. Think Edward Thorpe type stuff.

Two areas that I think are viable for someone with some combination of engineering/programming/math backgrounds would be financial programming, basically maintaining code for financial institutions, or Big Data. If you can use your math background combined with some R,SPSS, or SAS programing I think there are tons of ways to make money in data mining, data warehousing, and statistical analysis.