San Francisco Office Market Stays Hot
San Francisco office market has been frothy since recovering in 2004. The recovery has been so fast and steep that developers are starting to construct properties speculatively, while investors acquire properties with large chunks of vacant space. San Francisco’s office market’s net positive absorption of 356,140 sf in Q2 included 149,812 sf in the south financial district and 87,990 sf on the north waterfront, according to Grubb & Ellis. Midyear citywide class-A rents were up 16.6% since a year ago, to $38/sf, while average sales prices ranged from $253/sf to $395/sf.

Soon or later on your journey through life, you’ll come across an offer that just seems to good to be true.  

Well the truth is, it probably is.

Here’s just one example, known as the “Martingale System”.  This has been around for thousands of years, yet even today you’ll see it being peddled as a “guaranteed way to beat the casino”.

It involves placing “evens” bets on either red or black in the game of roulette.

The system is:

Stake 1 unit.

If you lose, double your bet. 

Once you start getting some serious money together, you’re going to face a major challenge. 

You’ll want to splash out.

Well here’s how to overcome the problem:

Don’t.

Remember the importance of time in the compound interest formula.  Time is your friend IF you let it do its work.

Yes, it’s tempting to buy some of the goodies in life, like that designer jacket that “spoke to you”, or a new car, or a 48” plasma TV screen.

Don’t fall for it.  Instead of wasting your money on consumer junk that will quickly drag you back into poverty – invest it to make more money.

The other variable in our formula is the rate of return, commonly known as the “interest rate”. 

As we saw previously, increasing the interest rate has an even more dramatic effect than the number of periods.  In fact, it’s the single most powerful factor in multiplying your wealth. 

A simple number pattern shows how this works:

1 x 1 x 1 = 1

2 x 2 x 2 = 8

3 x 3 x 3 = 27

4 x 4 x 4 = 64

5 x 5 x 5 = 125

As we saw earlier, the number of periods has a huge effect on your total rate of return.

The more periods there are, the more multiplication takes place.  And each successive period multiplies a larger number than the last one.

For example:

1 x 2 = 2

2 x 2 = 4

4 x 2  = 8

8 x 2 = 16

This is just simple arithmetic, so simple that a child could understand it.  Yet it’s exactly how the rich get richer.