Daily Archives: August 30, 2016

The Millennium Tower Is Sinking.

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I have been a landlord for over 40 years, but I have never owned an apartment house. Realtors have often tried selling them to me, but I have always said No. I have always believed that single family houses make the best rentals. Houses are the easiest rentals to manage. Plus, single family houses and condos are exempt from rent control by California state law, and that supersedes all local rent control laws. If you ever decide to become a landlord, my advice is that it is much better to own and rent several single family houses than one big apartment house. When I read about a landlord who is involved in some sort of horrible mess with his tenants or the government, that mess is almost always in a big building, not a single family house. Here is a dilly of a mess in a big building….

The Millennium Tower is the tallest and most luxurious residential building in San Francisco. The 58 story Millennium Tower opened for business in 2008. It is located in the financial district and is home to many high tech multimillionaires and San Francisco celebrities, including Joe Montana and Giants star Hunter Pence. It is understandable why people like that live here. The Millennium Tower has a long list of incredibly luxurious amenities. Predictably, if you want to live in the Millennium Tower, you need to have very deep pockets. These condos are very expensive. Some units have sold for $10 million. Hunter Pence paid $4 million for his condo. MillenniumTower

That Sinking Feeling. Unfortunately, the Millennium Tower is sinking. The tower was built on land that was, at one time, under San Francisco Bay, and bedrock is very far down. Beneath the Millennium Tower is almost 200 feet of mud and sand. Because of this, most of the high-rise buildings in this area have steel pilings under them that go down to bedrock. However, in order to save money on construction costs, the builders of the Millennium Tower did not drive pilings down to bedrock. Instead, they only drove pilings down 80 feet. As the result, the Millennium Tower is built on dense sand, not bedrock. That is why the building is sinking. Since its opening 8 years ago, the Millennium Tower has sunk 16 inches, and it is still sinking. To make matters worse, the building is not sinking evenly. The Millennium Tower is sinking faster on the north side than the south side. As a result, the building now leans 2 inches towards the north. The Millennium Tower is in no imminent danger of collapse, but if the sinking and tilting continue, the building may have to be torn down. Sounds unbelievable, doesn’t it?! What can be done? Well, engineers are trying to figure out a way to stop or at least slow down the rate of sinking and tilting, but it isn’t certain that anything can be done. One thing is certain. There will be a lot of lawsuits over this mess, and some lawsuits have already begun. Some of the condos in this building belong to San Francisco’s best lawyers, and needless to say, anyone can afford to live in the Millennium Tower can also afford to hire a lawyer, and a very good one too.

Prices. The sinking and tilting seem to have had little effect – thus far – on the prices of condos in the Millennium Tower. The real estate market in downtown San Francisco is so hot that buyers are willing to overlook ‘minor defects’ (as one realtor put it) such as the sinking and tilting. To give you an example, unit #502 in the Millennium Tower is currently for sale. It is the most expensive one-bedroom condo currently for sale in San Francisco. In 2012, it sold for $1.8 million. It is now priced at $3.8 million. It is a spacious unit, but still, that’s an awful lotta money for a 1 bedroom apartment! The HOA (Home Owner Association) fees are also pretty stiff here and can run several thousand dollars a month, depending on the size of your unit.

Rents. I can’t tell if the sinking and tilting has affected rents. There are quite a number of units in the Millennium Tower listed for rent on Craigslist, but prices seem to be all over the place. Some 1 bedroom units are listed at $5,000 a month while others are listed for $10,000 a month. Although these rents seem high, they are not out of line for luxury buildings in that part of San Francisco. On the other hand, most luxury apartment houses in San Francisco aren’t sinking or tilting.
 
P.S. – Does something about this story sounds familiar? Well, if you went to a Christian Sunday School when you were a kid, you are probably thinking about a line in the book of Matthew that says that a wise man builds his house on a rock but a fool builds his house on sand. Oh well. I guess the people who built the Millennium Tower didn’t go to Sunday School.

Most Organic Food Is A Waste Of Money.

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MONEY-SAVING TIPS FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS.

The only thing that I buy in the organic section of the supermarket are strawberries. Strawberries grow on the ground, they are sprayed with a lot of chemicals, their skin is thin and very porous, and we eat the skin. I will pay a little extra for organic strawberries, but most organic food is just a complete waste of money. Frankly, I can’t even figure out what the word ‘organic’ means when it comes to some foods. Like – what is organic seafood? I have never been able to figure that one out. For example, what is organic Pacific salmon. I’ve seen that on restaurant menus here in Berkeley, but what is it? All Pacific salmon comes out of the Pacific Ocean, whether it is wild caught or farm raised, and there is a lot of junk in the Pacific Ocean – including radioactive junk from Japan. It seems to me that the only difference between organic Pacific salmon and regular Pacific salmon is the price. Think carefully about buying organic food. Go online and find out which organic foods make sense, and which are just a waste of money. Most of them are. I know a lot of people in the chocolate business, and they all say that organic chocolate is a complete waste of money. I don’t know a single person in the chocolate business who buys organic chocolate for his own consumption.

SOME MYTHS ABOUT ORGANIC FOOD.

Myth: Organic food tastes better. I know people who swear that they can taste the difference between organic and non-organic foods, but blind taste tests conducted at many universities have consistently found that people cannot tell any difference in the taste or appearance of organic vs. non-organic foods. The fact that organic food costs more (and often a lot more) doesn’t mean it tastes or looks any different than conventionally produced food.

Myth: Organic food is healthier. Maybe organic food is healthier for you, but there is no evidence of that. For over 50 years, scientists have been looking for evidence that organic food is healthier than conventional food, but there is still no good evidence that people who eat organic food are healthier or live longer than people who don’t.
 
Myth: Organic farms pay and treat their workers better. Sadly, that is also not true. The USDA organic label tells you nothing about the wages or working conditions at an organic farm. Workers at organic farms are just as likely as other farm workers to be underpaid, harassed, exploited, and cheated by their employers. Michael Pollan says: “If organic consumers went to those places (organic farms), they would feel they are getting ripped off.”

Myth: Organic food is pesticide-free. This is the most widely-held myth about organic food. An apple can be sprayed with a variety of powerful pesticides and still be labeled organic as long as those pesticides were on the approved list from the U.S. Organic Standards. But organic pesticides can be just as harmful to your health and the environment as inorganic ones. ‘Organic’ does not mean ‘safe’ or ‘good for you.’ Plants produce lots of toxic chemicals. For example, potassium cyanide can be extracted from a number of organic sources, including apricot pits and apple seeds, but that doesn’t mean that organic cyanide is good for you or safe to eat.
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P.S. – The majority of my current tenants are chemistry graduate students. They tell me that potassium cyanide is definitely not good for you, regardless of whether it came from an organic or inorganic source.

Solano Stroll is September 11.

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Solano Stroll is the largest street festival in the East Bay. If you only go to one street festival this year, this is the one to go to! Solano Stroll runs for 2 miles down Solano Avenue through Berkeley and Albany. Over 250,000 people come to Solano Stroll every year. The booths are end to end and on both sides of the street. There will be over 500 booths, including 100 individual craft makers, 50 food vendors, and entertainers at nearly every street corner. Solano Stroll opens with a parade that starts at 10AM. Admission is free. Finding parking near the Solano Stroll is virtually impossible unless you arrive early, but there is a free shuttle bus from the North Berkeley BART station to the Stroll.  Plus, AC Transit runs special buses down Marin Avenue, one block over from Solano Avenue to downtown Berkeley. There is also free monitored valet bicycle parking at the Stroll. For more information, go to: Solano Stroll.