Are the prices of real estate really that cheap?

So your neighborhood real estate price has dropped to levels seen in 1998 or before, but what about other parts of the world? London at one time was known as the most expensive place in the world to buy a home or even a small flat. Are their real estate prices deflated as well? What about Hawaii real estate? Surely their prices have not dropped as well. So here is what I found out:

The prices in Great Britain have dropped but not nearly as dramatically as they did in the USA. Their peak in real estate prices was reached in 2006-2007 and now they have dropped back down to 2004 levels. Their current average price is roughly $300,000 (US) compared to $100,000 (US) back in 1995.

Hawaii has some improvement in sales over the last few months but only on the homes priced under $500,000 (and there are very few of them around). Homes priced at over $600,000 are slow to sell and in fact their prices have to be cut to get them to move. The average wage in Hawaii is at $49K a year so it is obvious that the homes are being snapped up by people who do not make a living in Hawaii.

The hardest hit place in the world with the real estate market is still the USA.

Google now limits YOUR searches to your local area

With the new algorithm, Panda, Google decided to limit the results in your search findings. It now automatically limits the results of your searches to local results only.

I was wondering what was going on when I was looking for something and all I got were a few results before all the junk websites showed up. I then went to my Google search settings (found at the top of the Google search) and removed my zip code for search. The zip code was somehow found on my computer and inserted into Google search. That is stupid, what if I had just moved, or my IP was in another state?

A message to Google:
Don't mess with my search results. If I type in a phrase or a question, then just give me results, don't give me results because of my location or because some idiot has more links to that page than another website (dumb idea to say the least). Let us humans decide what we need to look at, don't make the decisions for us.

If Google keeps messing with their search engine like it has been doing, then the time is ripe for another company to step in and take its place. 

Do not use UPS mail innovations if you want a speedy delivery

I ordered a small one pound item from Walmart's online website store. I ordered the item on a Monday and the promised delivery date was to be on Thursday or Friday of that same week. The item was shipped out from their warehouse just 600 miles south of me. I received an email that the item was shipped out via USPS (the postal service) and I was given a tracking number. The problem was that the tracking number was not for USPS but for UPS. They had used what UPS calls "mail innovations."

How UPS mail innovations work is that UPS moves the shipment then delivers it to the local post office where the delivery is to take place from. Sounds good so far but here is what happened with my shipment:

• Monday - item ordered
• Tuesday - package received into UPS facility
• Wednesday - package sits at same facility as it did on Tuesday
• Thursday - it finally leaves the UPS facility 
• Friday - my item just arrives at a location which is about 300 north of me in another state!!! WTF!
• Saturday - item arrives at local post office waiting for delivery

Now I am waiting for my little shipment to arrive on Monday.


If the dumb shits in the Walmart shipping department had the brains of a monkey they would have shipped my item by regular parcel post and it would have been here in 3 days instead of 7. The shipping cost would have been cheaper too. I paid $1.97 in shipping which is about right for that package size, weight and zip code at the parcel postage rates.

Are people really that dumb?

A few days ago, Amazon canceled over 10,000 affiliate accounts. They all belonged to people who resided in California. It was in response to the new state law that went into effect. It required affiliates to pay sales taxes for items bought on Amazon through their Associates program. Rather than Amazon keeping track of the locations of who sold to whom, they decided to cancel all accounts that had a California address. But it does not end there.

While Amazon did notify all of the account owners I guess that they didn't read their emails. Many websites that I know for a fact are owned and run by people who live in California are still displaying Amazon product ads. One person I know has several of those Amazon fed web stores. He sells everything from scanner software to complete computer systems and makes a good living at it, that is until now.What he and many other people do not realize is the fact that Amazon will not pay them anymore and they might get a rude awakening if they cannot log into their account.

If you are an affiliate of any company online, you need to keep up on any changes and act on them fast otherwise you will find your income gone.............gone to another state.

Did you become a renter?

Are you one of the thousands that has lost their home in the real estate bust? Not only did home owners lose their homes but renters got kicked out too. All too often the renters were the very last ones to find out. Some of them had to move in a matter of hours not days or weeks. They paid their rent but the landlord was not paying the mortgage. I wonder if they (the landlords) just skipped out and let the renters take the brunt of the heartache while the rent money went bye-bye.

I have been hearing rumors that some of the foreclosed homes are now being rented out instead of being put on the market. That is a good idea since many people will not qualify for the new stringent loans. There is a website that lists  low income housing on the market. You can search a huge data base of 50K+ listings. When I looked at them they only listed the east coast but I didn't look too deeply. I only know when I typed in my zip code, nothing showed up.

Just last week I was driving by an older home and noticed a "for rent" sign on the front lawn. It had on it $400 a month and the sign stayed up for at least a week. It was not until a few days ago that I noticed the small word at the top of the sign that read "room." They wanted $400 for one room?? No wonder the sign stayed up that long.

Walmart has a "buy back your technology" program and it is a rip off

I was shopping on the Walmart website and happened to notice they have a program that buys your old electronics and sends you a Walmart gift card for it. So out of curiosity I played around with the little "find out the value of your device," section. I typed in the information for one of our newer laptops. It is a Toshiba with a 390GB hard drive and we bought it at Walmart for around $500.

So I typed in all the information and hit the submit button. The offer came back as, are you ready for this.................$24.00!! Are they kidding??? What a rip off. If I could buy another laptop with all the bells and whistles that, that laptop has for $24, I would be dancing in the streets.