Recent content by CraigM

I wasn't tempted because with a family you have to think about what's next, and there were lots of taxes and fees to consider. A few people I know got really crazy offers and it made sense for them to sell, but most people stayed put for the same reasons we did.

It was a very isolated case where huge numbers of Californians moved to Austin during Covid, and it's a relatively small city so prices went ballistic. Someone offered to buy our house for 4.5x what we paid for it 10 years earlier. Fundamentals didn't matter anymore, but eventually they do and...

You're probably right Avocado, the timing is a bit obvious. Regarding Chavez' daughter, yes I am sure, and it was a long time ago so she's probably worth far more now.

A couple of Lee Kuan Yew quotes come to mind: “Some people believe that, having debauched themselves in one political party or front, they can, like the phoenix, arise from the ashes of the old in the feathers of a new party, front or movement as fresh as if nothing had happened. In fact, there...

They've definitely fallen, in my area I would guess 25-30% from the peak in 2022. But that was a pretty nutty peak where Californians were door-knocking with offers. I'm not a real estate expert but seems the market is simply adjusting to fundamentals like real incomes and much higher mortgage...

That is for sure. A long time ago it hit the news that one of Hugo Chavez's daughters had something like $4 billion stashed in offshore bank accounts. God only knows how much was stashed between all his kids and relatives and cronies put together. This is the same Hugo Chavez, Christina...

Larry you might want to look into Mexico City. I was just there on a layover, ubers and restaurants both very cheap. A friend directed me to a restaurant overlooking an archaeological site in the center of town - three delicious tacos for $13, and it was the most expensive thing on the menu...

Not Patagonia the region... Patagonia the beer brand. You can find it all over BA but they have their own brew pub in Palermo. I would give it 2.5 stars.

That would certainly explain part of the price gap.

I was surprised too and just double checked my app. C$3.10 which is US$2.15. I'm at a US Starbucks right now drinking the same coffee for US$3.19. Restaurants were basically the same in Canadian dollars as they are in here in USD, glass of wine for C$12-15, pint of beer C$7. But it makes...

It's about C$1.45 to US$1 which is low and certainly helps make things cheap. Vancouver real estate is down from the peak China-buying period but still on the expensive side. BA real estate is a screaming bargain vs any big cosmopolitan city.

The Economist should start a Starbucks index. I was in Vancouver, BC recently and a grande coffee was $2.15 at the current exchange rate vs $3.25 to $3.50 in most US Starbucks. Canada has high taxes and labor costs (BC especially) so I can't imagine what accounts for the difference. Eating...

Good to know these places, will be sure to visit next time. Funny thing is I went to Patagonia's brew pub where they had 5 different ales and IPAs on tap, so I ordered a small glass of each and lined them up on the bar, and they were all the same color and tasted exactly the same.

Craft beer was probably the most underwhelming part of BA to me. Wasn't that big a deal I just drank a lot of wine instead, but it was surprising. Any North American city has at least a couple of really good breweries. Austin has so many I haven't tried half of them.

My know-nothing-outsider guess is that there is an unusually high cost to doing business in Argentina. I don't know McDonald's business model that well but my sense is they operate a bit like Costco, adding enough margin to be profitable but the real goal is attracting high volumes of customers...