May median sold price, units, DOM, and $/sq.ft.

73 comments

1. 

   June 12, 2011 at 6:55 AM

   tallguy

   As for those diminishing the value of education in creating Silicon Valley 40 years ago, I say baloney. Standford and Berkeley were excellent then, just as they are excellent now. And even if the person running the company is a dropout, it is the thousands of employees working for that person who make the company. And I’d say very very few of them are college dropouts.

2. 

   June 12, 2011 at 6:57 AM

   Sully

   tallguy, how do you expect to pay for this strong education system? Nevada cannot print money out of thin air like Bernanke. The tax base here is 19th century. Tourism and gaming are in decline and have been for a while. You apparently think the low paid unskilled workers would like nothing better than to give more money to the govt run education system. I agree with the strong education bit, but only when built upon a good foundation. You seem to think we should put the building up first and worry about the foundation later.

   Perhaps it’s time to revisit the govt running the schools and public employee unions holding budgets hostage.

3. 

   June 12, 2011 at 7:17 AM

   Sully

   Also, where did you get the impression I said the valley colleges were second rate? I said Stanford wasn’t quite the electronics college it is today and certainly not on par with MIT back in the 60’s.

4. 

   June 12, 2011 at 1:54 PM

   Dubah Does

   tallguy, I could not agree with you more. But, my friend, you are whistlin’ in the wind. Nevada has a deeply ingrained hostility to education, especially higher education. It is not a coincidence that Nevada has two mediocre universities. It really is all that the great majority of Nevadans want. Send the kids to UNR or UNLV where they can get a degree to become an accountant or a nurse or a stockbroker. We do not need to be “top tier” to accompish that. NO real need to spend any more money. Hell, only about half of Nevada kids who start high school will ever graduate from there. We don’t need an MIT or a Stanford for what we got. Mediocrity is really quite fine, you see.

5. 

   June 12, 2011 at 4:25 PM

   tallguy

   Sully,

   You said it yourself: we have a 19th century tax base. This taxation model is incapable of building and supporting the economic infrastructure needed for a 21st century economy. Until we insist for real change from our political leadership, we should not complain about our nation leading unemployment rate, nation leading foreclosure rate, nation leading underwater homeowner rate, and 50th best education system. They are all related, and at some point Nevadan’s are going to have to pay for more investment in our future if we want to do better than that.

6. 

   June 12, 2011 at 5:40 PM

   Clearwater

   So tallguy, I have a question for you.
   Brian Sandoval ran on the platform of “no new taxes.” He was quite clear about that throughout his campaign. (In the end he had to agree to lift the sunsets on some taxes for two more years because of the impact of the Supreme Court decision.) He has made it clear that he does not support any new taxes either in the form of a corporate income tax, a personal income tax, or any broad based business tax. In other words, let’s just keep the tax structure that we have.
   Gov. Sandoval ran over his opponent with about 57% of the vote. The election was not close. Did not the people speak? Or did the people just not speak the way you wish they had?
   What do you make of that and, as you say, the “people insisting on real change from our political leadership”?

7. 

   June 13, 2011 at 12:03 PM

   tallguy

   Neither candidate presented a plan for anything different from the status quo, so sure, the people spoke, but nobody was stepping up to tell Nevadan’s any real solutions to the problems in the state or presenting any real choices about any of these issues related to Nevada’s future. More of the same is always easier and more popular than we have to do something different. And voters really don’t seem to care much about truth or logic from any candidates these days, or much reward true leadership or new ideas. Its too easy for an opponent to brand them as “scary” change, even if its desperately needed. We get exactly the political leadership we deserve even if its bad for us, after all, we collectively elect them in. I’d say the more personable and telegenic candidate won, but I think we all will suffer over the long term because of the easy decisions he chose to make.

8. 

   June 13, 2011 at 2:11 PM

   Sully

   tallguy, another possibility for the apparent vote of confidence in no new taxes. The BLS recently published average wage in Carson/Reno area at $20/hr or about 40K a year.
   RGJ recently published Reno city employees average wage (after all the layoffs) at 80K a year.

   You now have people making half of (what is supposedly) underpaid govt employees paying for benefits and pensions that they probably do not receive themselves. Do you think that might have some bearing on voters in the private sector saying no to any new taxes. It was either that or the fact they didn’t want another Reid in office, having a very poor alternate choice in the other race. 🙂

9. 

   June 13, 2011 at 2:58 PM

   bob_c

   i suspect the median income is lower than reported (except government workers)

10. 

    June 14, 2011 at 6:26 AM

    tallguy

    From RGJ today…

    Glen Atkinson, acting director of the Center for Regional Studies at UNR, called it “a poor performance” by the Legislature.

    “Nothing was accomplished to move our state to a more sensible structure for our economy in 2020,” Atkinson said. “The tax base remains narrow and will be increasingly mismatched with the dynamic global and national economies that are based heavily on services and intangible property rather than real estate and commodities. For years, all we’ve done is patch potholes along the way (when it comes addressing the tax structure). We didn’t even do that this time.”

11. 

    June 14, 2011 at 7:29 AM

    Sully

    tallguy, I concur. I had hoped the Gov would back off a bit and try to make lemonade out of this lemon. Instead he appears to want the lemonade without even using a lemon.

12. 

    June 14, 2011 at 9:14 AM

    rory

    Until the mining tax loopholes are adressed, Nevada’s tax situation will only worsen. The big problem is nearly all of our elected officials are in the pocket of Barrick and the other big players. Harry, Brian, Dean, they are all one big happy cabal of political stooges for the mining industry. It’s frightening to consider a industry which mines finite resources pays less effective income tax on percentage basis than I pay on a pair shoes. Aint life grand?

13. 

    June 14, 2011 at 2:24 PM

    Dubah Does

    To all you newcomers, tallguy, Sully, bob c:
    You guys just don’t get it. You sound like you think are saying something new, something revealing, something insightful, when you comment that Nevada has a backward tax structure that needs to be modernized. In the early 1980s, the first study was conducted regarding Nevada’s antiquated tax structure. It said Nevada needs to modernize with a more diverse tax base. Another was done in the 1990s. It said the same thing. Both were discarded by the Legislature.
    You all seem to think that this is a matter of just getting enough people enlightened. It is not. It is a matter of overcoming the institutionalized power of the entrenched, immovable, special interests that have run this state, and continue to run this state.
    So go ahead and continue to point out the editorials, the talking papers, the studies, the latest tirade from the latest academic, about what a bad situation we have now. I have lived here for 55 years, and it has never changed.
    tallguy, you seem like a fine well intentioned fellow, perhaps a bit academic, but well meaning. Let me tell you something: you can stay here until 2035, and things won’t change.
    You can continue to say the obvious, but eventually, perhaps, you will realize that all you are doing is howling at the moon. Just like nothing changed in the 1983, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2011 Legislatures, nothing will change in the 2013 legislature. Or the 2015. Or the 2017. And on and on.

14. 

    June 14, 2011 at 2:35 PM

    Phil

    There is nothing very unusual about a state’s dominant industry getting its way in the legislature. The oil boys always got their way in Texas and Alaska. The auto boys always got their way in Michigan. The mining and gaming boys get their way in Nevada. Nothing unusual about this to Nevada. It’s called politics. It happens everywhere where one or two rich industries have ingrained political power in a state.
    Until the miners and the gamers see a political and economic benefit to them in the revamping of Nevada’s tax structure, it will never happen. The task isn’t to get into a power struggle with them, which you will always lose (see Dubah’s fine post above), but to figure out a way to bring them along.

15. 

    June 14, 2011 at 3:07 PM

    Sully

    Dubah, you’re quite right, however I have relatives that have lived here longer than you who say the same thing, almost verbatim, with a few cuss words thrown in.

    It didn’t take me 2 months to find out that most locals really don’t give a hoot about change. Perhaps, you’ve become immune yourself and go off on your merry way doing your own thing. Easy to do, compared to Silicon Valley the stress level here is non existent. I find myself not noticing the taxi ads anymore, I don’t think about the first impression they give off to visitors although I once thought they were tacky and showed little if any class.

    Since I’m a native Californian, I have little to show for a good example. So if you think things are controlled tightly here – move to CA and deal with the public employees unions running the state and draining your wallet.

16. 

    June 14, 2011 at 3:22 PM

    tallguy

    Great post Dubah. Much truth to your words. What year did you stop voting?

    There’s a famous quote I know of: “The duty of a good citizen is to keep their mouth open”.. I refuse to quietly sit by as those who can game the system to the detriment of the many do so. If voters cannot changes the rules when necessary, we are further from a democracy than even I think, and I am a pessimist about politics. At heart, I must resist, and encourage others to resist, because I don’t think we can just all go quietly into the night when the system is supposedly built and maintained by us all and it affects our opportunities and quality of life. Keeping your mouth open means complaining, pointing out the facts, and getting others to complain as well, because that’s the only way to steer the ship.

    Sign me up for the Nevada spring.

17. 

    June 14, 2011 at 7:12 PM

    MikeZ

    MikeZ: Who exactly do you think creates jobs? University graduates, particularly in the “hard sciences”, with big and new ideas and access to investment capital. That’s how it works.

    Who says those university graduates have to be local?

    The bay area, despite it’s high tax burden, became what it is for technology because of a collision of three forces: excellent higher Ed (both public and private), investment capital (VCs on Sand Hill Road, their first big win was Sun), and a desirable place to live with a great climate.

    The Bay Area! The Bay Area was a rare confluence of opportunity. How many hundreds of other areas built schools and universities and failed to become the Bay Area? Lots. You shouldn’t cite the exception to prove the rule. Ths isn’t Field of Dreams: “if you build it, they will come.”

    Better education is a fine adjunct to jobs and to a thriving economy but it’s not going to lead the way to receovery.

18. 

    June 14, 2011 at 8:40 PM

    Woodrow Stool

    “Better education is a fine adjunct to jobs and to a thriving economy but it’s not going to lead the way to receovery.”

    Congratulations. That is the stupidest thing I have read in my 50+ years. You really do not have a clue. What exactly do you do for a living?

19. 

    June 14, 2011 at 9:32 PM

    Dubah Does

    tallguy, I never have stopped voting. But I have long ago lost the illusion that it makes much difference to what happens in Carson City. The Democrats get the majority, then the Republicans get the majority, then the Democrats again, then the Republicans again, then the Democrats get the governorship, then the Republicans get the governorship, and round and round they go, through the decades. And nothing changes. And the miners and the gamers (or, perhaps more accurately, the lobbyists for them) continue to run the show.
    Nothing wrong with “keeping your mouth open” but you will get lockjaw before the vested interests run out of lobbyists.

20. 

    June 14, 2011 at 9:55 PM

    Phil

    Mr. Dubah speaks much wisdom. Most people might think people named Raggio or Dini or Guinn or Miller had the most impact on Nevada’s tax policy over the past 25 years or so.
    Have you all ever heard the names Whittemore, Ernaut, Vassilladis, Ferraro, Wadhams ?

    These latter 5 have had an influence that it immeasurable in formulating Nevada tax policy over the past 20 years. And you can’t vote against any one of them, tallguy.

21. 

    June 15, 2011 at 6:23 AM

    Sully

    For a newbie in the area this diatribe is very interesting and entertaining. I think my friends over at Doolittle & Sitmoore INC. would be very interested……….

22. 

    June 15, 2011 at 8:42 AM

    revelo

    Something people often forget is that, by definition, 50% of any group has to be below average. Applicable to many situations. For every dollar one poker player wins, another player has to lose a dollar (disregarding the house cut). For every dollar a smart money investor earns in stocks, a dumb money investor has to lose a dollar (disregarding the baseline return earned by the market as a whole), and so on.

    If Reno is to attract an above-average number of high-tech, high-paying jobs, then some other city has to attract a below-average number of these same jobs. Who might that be? Reno already has more tech jobs than many mid-size cities can say. Reno is in competition with places like Boise ID, Spokane WA, Medford OR not the San Francisco area.

    Right now there are 2 major industries ripe for massive restructuring and deregulation: higher education and healthcare. The restructuring and deregulation will become an urgent necessity once this recession ends and the boomers begin to retire en masse. We’re talking 2015 timeframe or thereabouts. This will cause strong inflationary pressures and high real interest rates, which will tend to crush asset values (stocks, long bonds, housing, commodities). The people who own those assets (the rich and powerful, retirees dependent on their house and 401 values to maintainn their standard of living) won’t stand by and let that happen. So there will be extreme pressure on politicians and massive propaganda on the boob tube to quit kicking the budget deficit can down the road and cut spending. All sorts of sacred cows will be slaughtered. Education and healthcare, home mortage interest, military industrial complex–all of these special interests will be thrown under the bus.

    Reno and Nevada in general could anticipate these massive changes, and thereby set themselves up for a 20 year boom. Right now, higher education is massively expensive, but there is really no need for all this expense. Someone said something about drama and French. If you’re interested in drama, read some books, participate in some plays, write some critical essays to be read and critiqued by other students interested in drama. Doesn’t cost a thing. Don’t even need books nowadays, since everything is on the computer. Don’t need a theater–just present the productions in a local park. Want to learn French? Go live in France for a few years. Better yet, go live in one of the Francophone countries in Africa, since cost of living is much less there.

    UNR could easily set itself up as the premier university offering ultra low-cost education by replacing bricks-and-mortar with virtual education as much as possible. Obviously, for things like chemistry labs, you need bricks-and-mortar. But not for chemistry theory. All you need for chemistry theory is a way of testing students on their understanding. Right now, progress in education is held back by the accredidation boards, which are in thrall to the whole educational industrial complex. But Nevada is a sovereign state and, as such, has quite a bit of power to force change on the accredidation boards. It can tie them up in lawsuits, refuse to recognize accredidation by other states if they won’t recognize Nevada’s system, use Harry Reid’s power in the Senate to force some change on the Department of Education, etc, etc. What I envision is 100,000 students at UNR, mostly studying via virtual education, and only showing up on campus for testing and lab courses. I see no reason the COST (not the price, but the cost) of higher education for science and engineering couldn’t be reduced to $5000/year, or to $1000/year for subjects which don’t require lab courses. That’s the total cost, and there is no reason a cost that low cost couldn’t be paid by the students. In other words, the state wouldn’t need to spend anything on education if the cost could be brought down low enough. Right now, books alone cost more than $1000/year for many students. But why? Why not pay some UNR professors to write some new textbooks and give them away for free? Better yet, hire some top-notch professors in India to write the textbooks, since you get more bang for your buck there Make UNR the world’s leader in free textbooks. (Right now, it is MIT which is taking the leadership role here.) Since much of the education would be virtual, students wouldn’t have to live in Reno, but I suspect many of them would. Reno is inexpensive and most kids are anxious to leave home and experiment with living on their own at age 18. Bring 100,000 college students into Reno and some of those students will surely create businesses. If nothing else, that many students would absorb the excess housing supply.

    As for healthcare, right now many Americans are going to Mexico, Thailand, India and other developing countries to get low-cost medical and dental care, primarily for discretionary stuff. Dental implants, for example. Now dentists are fond of telling you how they spend 7 years studying to be dentists and then a residency after that, but the fact is, mos of what they do is not much different from what a jewelry repair technician does. It’s basically just a matter of hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills in the fingers, patience and attention to detail. Sure, you do need a guy with 7 years of education wandering around the office, in case something goes wrong. But for the most part, people with 6 months training could do the work. Right now, though, regulations require that dentists perform implant, not technicians. So they are charging like $10K, when it costs under $1K in Thailand. Again, Nevada is a sovereign state. It can change the regulations. Why let that $1K go to Thailand? The materials and overhead cost maybe $500 (assuming you get some competent industrial engineers from Walmart or Costco organizing things), leaving $500 for labor. If the work is done by technicians making $30/hour rather than dentists wanting $200/hour, there is plenty of room in that $500 to take the time to do the job right. Suppose Reno becomes a center for assembly line dental implants. A million implants/year at $500 of labor is a pretty big payroll. And that is new money for the most part, from people traveling to Reno from out-of-state. That money will then circulate in the city for a while before leaving to pay for the things Reno imports. (I’m assuming the $500 overhead is for things Reno imports, like the implant itself and the other materials and equipment. Actually though, some of that overhead would also be stuff Reno produces itself, like buildings.) Also, people traveling here for implants could be expected to spend additional money on airport services, hotels, restaurants, gambling, other services, all of which employ precisely the sorts of high-school graduates that Reno has in excess. And there are other areas in healthcare were regulation is standing in the way of lower costs.

    There will be fierce resistance to attempts to deregulate both education and healthcare. Too many special interests want to keep things the way they are. University professors won’t like being replaced by computers or cheaper professors telecommuting from India. Dentists won’t like it that technicians can perform implants for $500 of labor cost versus the $5000 the dentist expects. But this fierce resistance, once overcome, becomes a formidable barrier to competition from other states. If you think making big changes here in Nevada is difficult, consider the difficulty of making big changes in California. It was precisely resistance to change that allowed Nevada to be the nation’s leader in easy divorce and gambling for so many decades. There is no such thing as a competitive advantage with divorce law, any state could have changed their laws to match Nevada’s, but for many decades they didn’t.

    Nevada culture is friendly to libertarianism, as well as to the dubiously ethical concept of skipping across states lines into Nevada to do things that aren’t permitted in other states. The changes I am describing above fit that culture, so they aren’t pie-in-the-sky like this idea of making Reno some sort of high-tech mecca.

    BTW, I’m sad to read about billdrummer’s daughter being sucked into the NYU scam. NYU has been aggressively targeting insecure young people from fly-over country for some years now. Kids who think they can overcome their provincial middle-class background by going to school in New York. NYU is not Harvard, not by a long shot. If billdrummers daughter had been admitted to Harvard, and she had near 800 scores on her SAT’s, as opposed to being salutorian at a medicore high-school in nowheresville, so that she could legitimately be expected to graduate in the top half of her class, then I’d say go ahead and borrow the $200K tuition. But NYU? Fuggedaboutit. A Harvard degree really does open doors, mainly because, unless you are the daughter of a Harvard alumnus, Harvard only admits you if you really are Harvard material, and therefore people looking for Harvard material know where to go to get it–Harvard. Going to NYU after growing up in Reno is like tattooing sucker on your forehead. (It’s different if you grew up in NYC and Daddy is really rich and able to pay cash for your tuition, in which case an NYU degree signifies that, well, Daddy is really rich. Sort of like a degree from USC aka University of Spoiled Children.) billdrummer, show your daughter some tough love and tell her to go to UNLV if she’s anxious to get out of Reno and live on her own for a while. Imagine this were 2007 and your daughter were about to buy a McMansion using $200K of money she had just inherited from an aunt–knowing then what you do now, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to convince her not to throw $200K down the toilet? STUDENT LOAN DEBT IS NON-DISCHARGEABLE!

23. 

    June 16, 2011 at 9:29 PM

    Zen

    Revelo,
    Right on! You are on to something. I have also told anyone that would listen much of the same, especially concerning higher education. Kids today do much of there socializing virtually, so why not extend that to their education. I can’t tell you how many lectures I sat through with 300+ students in the room with me. Students should be taking these classes, and many others virtually. There should be tens of thousands of students in some of these virtual classes, and be taught by the best professors in the country. Students should be able to view lectures when and where they find it convenient, not at a predisposed time and place. Almost any class I ever took, could have been provided virtually. Ultimately, what you get out of a class is what you put into it, and has nothing to do with where the lecture is held. I see no reason why you couldn’t be educated equally well in the comfort of your own home. There will have to be a support system to field questions and a social network to connect students, both of which should be easy to do. There will also need to be some brick and mortar presence to take care of hands on lab and field experience, and maybe to provide a testing center. For the most part though virtual education should be, and at some point will be, the way we are educated. Nevada should lead the way. Think of all the brick and mortar recently placed at UNR that could have not.