My latest pop culture obsession is the classic documentary Grey Gardens, which I’ve watched a number of times over the years. I re-watched it recently, and it’s as fascinating as ever.
Slope of Hope Blog Posts
Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.
Deadbeats
This post isn’t going to get me any nominations for a humanitarian award, but here goes…………..
My family owns a number of rental properties in the San Francisco Bay Area. The apartments were acquired decades ago at cheap prices, and they have been good sources of monthly income. The tenants were reliable and paid on time. The “Past Due” column in the monthly report was always a row of 0.00s. Until recently.
I scrolled through the latest report, and I saw entries like this……….
(more…)Four REITS Overbought
Housing Feeling the Heat
As interest rates have been strengthening (seen below by way of the ultrashort-on-bonds instrument TBT)………

Oh Hi Mark to Market
I penned a recent post describing how the good people at Zillow had slashed the ostensible value of my lovely private residence from $8.4 million to $4.8 million (maybe they just like flipping digits?) Given the relatively smooth sailing of Zillow data, this was curious to me, until I stumbled upon an event that might have jostled their statistics: the sale of the home of my next door neighbor:
