Bubble Literally

Investing in empty unlived in unbuilt houses? Who is going to rent them? Who are the hordes of people moving there? There are hordes of Californians buying speculatively but not living there. But quite fitting for a gambling city.

Real estate investors cast watchful eye on Las Vegas' high stakes housing game

Market so hot speculators could end up burned

I have a knack for timing the market, oppositely. When I graduated from CS, it was the absolute worst time to be in the job market. When I'm ready to buy a house in a year or so, the real estate market will have peaked for the next ten years.

Retirement CoHousing

An ad for a posh retirement community in San Mateo got my attention somehow: Peninsula Regent.

Later, when I was reading articles about rising rates of people choosing to never marry, some of which mentioned new families of "intentional communities" and cohousing, I saw a connection.

These retirement communities for wealthy old people, which have shared dining and other facilities, and household services, are pretty much the same idea as cohousing, although the latter is pictured with liberal green hippies and the former with rich retired capitalists.

This type of housing, facilities, and services are built together in planned communities for old people in retirement centers and students in dorms. For some reason society isn't expecting each of them to cook, clean, and do everything for themselves, but the busiest age group of people in their working prime are expected to operate in nuclear families in suburbs doing everything themselves in addition to childcare which the former do not have to worry about.

Perhaps change in social structures and lifestyles will actually start with retired people. As is said, that the Baby Boomer generation which coined a new name and definition for each phase of life they went through, from hippies to yuppies, they will probably redefine retirement when that begins in a few years as well.

Single Women

Women in Asia are starting to say 'I don't'

It sounds like Japan, Singapore, and South Korea are ahead of the United States in the gender and (non)marriage (r)evolution. But maybe that's because the situation for married women is even more oppressing. At some point, the numbers such as birthrates low enough to endanger population size, and lack of women willing to marry, will force changes, whatever they may be.

It's time for some new traditions for never-marrieds

Women: Single and Loving It