Irvine Company luckboxed into one of the great large-scale land appreciations of all time. They own a zillion apt complexes in So. Cal., and they move rent prices asap if there's any movement in the market. They built a new complex near me with rentals from $3k to 10k/mo.

These days instead of buying a house in So.Cal. youngsters can pay their student loans and then pay 2x what a mortgage would cost to rent an apartment. I think death panels may be a winning political issue with millennials in a few years.

A buddy of mine rents in OC and is finding it impossible to find a place, as everyone in his area is renting to AirBnB.

Look at the leadership page for that company:

https://www.irvinecompany.com/about/leadership/

Those license plate readers are all over the place. I had a minor fender-bender in a mall parking lot last year. Since I was backing out of a parking spot, I was technically at fault but all I saw was a blur. The car was outfitted with plate reader cameras and I think he was zipping up and down the lanes much faster than a random driver would have been. I read that they're used to look for stolen cars and cars where the driver is behind on the payments. Of course the uses are bound to expand and ICE sounds like they could be a prime customer.

A company like this was involved in Trump Russia in some way, but I can't remember exactly who got the location of who in that case. Might have involved Flynn.

Darren's got a little color in him. I'm guessing his grandmother's Mexican but he tells everybody he's part Apache instead.

Not sure what Julie's story is.

Lol, not one Asian in the senior level of the Irvine Company. It looks like OC 40 years ago, but with a woman because affirmative action obv.

Needs more middle aged white guys

Speaking of California housing, the small town in Idaho I wanted to move to has had its housing costs skyrocket from all the California refugees moving out there. It's basically a wash to move out there now price wise but without all the amenities of a larger city.

Heh, related: my parents live near Bend, OR which was on its way up in 2008 but was hit pretty hard by the crash. People moving up there from California had kinda been a meme before 2008, but was starting to pick up again.

My dad just sent me an article: Bend median home price hits all-time high of $450k.

I spent a few days in Bend and I never really got the appeal. It's a nice enough town, groovy lake in the middle of it, but nothing struck me as special enough to warrant its reputation.

So Elon is saying he will pay to fix everyone’s water in flint.

On Da Ali G side we have already heard some of the targets of the seven episodes but there is a rumor Trump University might have been involved in one of them before it was shut down.

When? It's more than quadrupled in population since 1990 (+80% since 2000). It's definitely gotten a lot nicer, the brewery scene there is amazing and (excluding Deschutes) came to be almost entirely in the last ten years, the Les Schwab Amphitheater is fairly new (2001) and has surprisingly good shows and events for how out of the way Bend is.

My brother-in-law had his bachelor party there during a beautiful summer weekend - it was hot but the western dry heat that doesn't bother you too much, we sat outside drinking great local beer, walked around town through parks to breweries and coffee shops, did Cyclepub which I can't emphasize enough is a real thing that exists, it was awesome. I'm not super into outdoorsy **** but if you are, you can't deny the appeal of the Deschutes River and Mount Bachelor.

Downside, as my gf noted after going to visit my parents there: suuuuuper white.

I was there in 2012. And again, it's a nice town. But there's tons of nice towns out there. Everybody told me I needed to check out Bend, so I did, and I was like, OK, it's a nice town. Why is everybody raving about it?

Feel free to send me the nice towns whose real estate hasn't blown up yet plz (I'm not kidding, I've been thinking about leaving for somewhere I don't have to pay $1.5m for a house)

Let me put it this way: Everybody told me Bend was amazeballs. Nobody ever said a damn thing to me about Hood River.

What makes Bend better than Hood River?

papa john RESIGNS

I dunno, I haven't been there! I know they have good beer too. However the Googles tell me its median home price is $435k so you are not totally helping me with the finding a place that hasn't blown up yet part.

Lol Papa John, gonna miss your racist face canoodling with Peyton Manning during football season.

I wonder if Papa J happened to notice that resign is (almost) an anagram of a country in Africa.

Oh, sorry. Maybe try the east coast? Burlington VT and Portland ME are both around $300k median. That still seems ridiculous to me tho. I don't think there's going to be a lot of overlap between places with great breweries where all the cool kids want to live and places with cheap housing.

Olympia, Washington. Good spot for access to good outdoors, plus only 2 hours to Portland or 1 - 4 hours to Seattle. Median house price is a little over $300k.

Wrt the Pacific Northwest Aberdeen WA didn't look too pricey, you can come as you are there, and Coos Bay OR appeared reasonably inexpensive. Er..scratch Coos Bay unless you like meth.

That is genuinely horrifying

ETA: Also:

Being able to literally drive a bar down the street is something that can only be legal in a city that is 100% white.

Bend is fine, but IMO the value in OR is tons of coast. They don't much like Californians, but they learn to deal.