Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 8:26 PM
Next Governor?
It was reported in the U-T today that Mitt Romney is coming to California - he is in escrow to buy an oceanfront house in La Jolla. He was here visiting his friends and financial supporters, the Millers, who just purchased Cliff Robertson’s old home in March for $16.5 million.
The house right next door to theirs just opened escrow on May 1st – wonder if that’s the new beach pad for Mitt?
It’s a 3 br/4.5 ba, 3,009 sf house built in 1980 on a .41-acre lot. Listed on the range $12,000,000 to $14,000,000.
The U-T suggested that Romney could be establishing residency in California with an eye on the governor’s seat when Arnold is forced out by term limits in 2010.
Posted on Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 8:26 PM in Uncategorized | 15 Comments » | 
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Nice waves!
Coconutz! | May 24th, 2008 at 10:16 pmBut Charlie don’t surf & neither does Rommney!
Mitt has a lot of big dollar supporters and an enthusiastic party cadre. I’m not surprised. We could use his skill set but California politics is so screwed up I’m afraid the carpetbagger label will stick. He’d do much better with Summerland/Montecito at 1/3rd the price.
Rob Dawg | May 24th, 2008 at 10:27 pmThere should be a law that only surfers can live in beachfront homes. I’m just sayin.
There’s a crazy vagrant yelling incomprehensibly outside my window. I’ll miss him when I move to SD.
Genius | May 24th, 2008 at 10:36 pmLa Jolla is a high-profile location for a guy like Mitt, if you ask me. Sure most residents keep to themselves and are used to other well-heeled folks around them, but it is high-density living.
Summerland/Montecito would seem to be more secluded – maybe this is just a vacation home he can share with his supporters in conjunction with his friends next door?
Or maybe he just wants to learn how to surf?
Jim the Realtor | May 25th, 2008 at 12:02 amIf Mitt was thinking about a place in CA San Diego would make a lot of sense.
1. San Diego is one of the most Conservative/Republican places in CA
shadash | May 25th, 2008 at 2:19 am2. A huge military influence
Don’t forget a strong Mormon population.
Barnaby33 | May 25th, 2008 at 6:53 amWord is that McCain is shopping the VP running mate position around. Romney seems like a logical choice.
Chuck Ponzi
Chuck Ponzi | May 25th, 2008 at 3:26 pmIt will be interesting to see him run again Meg Whittman (ex ebay ceo). Can you imagine their attack ads, "My corporation made 35 billion while I was CEO, yours only made 23 billion, vote for me"
Westparker | May 25th, 2008 at 9:07 pmFrom the NC Times. Wow!
HOUSING: Foreclosure crisis to grow before it shrinks
All five properties she owns carry the option mortgages, also known as negative amortization loans.
"Yup, big mistake," she said. "However, we wouldn’t have any of them except the original house if we didn’t use neg-am, so it was a gamble. And at the time, it seemed like a good one. Obviously, we didn’t know what was going to happen to the market."
There are 19,200 homes with neg-am, non-suprime loans in San Diego County, according to the Federal Reserve report. All of those loans are known as Alt-A, which indicates a more qualified buyer than subprime loans but less qualified than prime loans. In total, there are about 95,000 non-prime loans in the county, according to the data.
That prevalence has raised concerns among foreclosure analysts that neg-am loans will cause a new tidal wave of bank-owned foreclosures.
Tyrone | May 26th, 2008 at 12:09 amI think Mitt would be a great CA Governor or the VP. His business skills would definitly be a big +plus. California is very Democrate though (especially Central CA). A Republican Governor would really need to be in the center or a little right to win here (like Arnold). That’s not Romney.
We’ll see.
Angela
Angela | May 26th, 2008 at 4:57 amFor Tyrone:
It’s not much of a surprise if you’ve seen this chart–especially given what WE (the blog readers) know about our speculative Realtor friends (JtR excepted, of course). That said, it IS a surprise that they’re actually printing something about it in mainstream news….
http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2007/10/imf-mortgage-reset-chart.html
shoppingaround | May 26th, 2008 at 10:55 amInteresting article Tyrone, good to see some mainstream media thinking about what outfits like the NAR say before publishing it unquestioned.
I did like this quote though:
Notices of default precede bank-owned foreclosures (widely viewed as the chief culprit of San Diego County’s home price decline) by six months to a year.
Seems to me that it’s unduly shallow to say foreclosures are driving the price decline. Yeah, sure, but foreclosures didn’t fall upon San Diego like an asteroid from the sky. They were the rather predictable result of house prices becoming wildly unaffordable. If you borrow money to buy something you can’t afford, eventually the bank comes round and takes it back. It was a pretty classic bubble, with the entire self-reinforcing psychology.
IMHO, you still see this false thinking in the high priced areas. People believe they are immune to strong price declines if they live in Del Mar or La Jolla. Those markets are going to be pulled down by their bootheels. Or, equivalently, prices will simply stagnate for several years until our real 7-11% inflation (see Jim’s previously posted graph) per year erodes values just as much, but a lot more slowly. It’s the low-rent districts that have already plunged that are now, or soon will be, able to return to health. The Carmel Valleys, Del Mars, and La Jollas will bleed money as long as they are hooked up to artificial life support.
Dwip | May 26th, 2008 at 4:21 pmBingo, Dwip!
CA renter | May 27th, 2008 at 10:37 pmWon’t he be seen as a carpetbagger? I don’t believe his caretakers…I think he is positing for a 2012 presidential campaign. Arnold will term out in 2010. How is Mitt going to run a full-time campaign when he is supposed to be our governor? Meanwhile, if Mitt IS elected for prez, our own La Jolla will become the Western White House. Same as San Clemente was for Nixon.
Anon | May 28th, 2008 at 4:13 amI’m sorry, am I reading that right? Four *thousand* dollars per square foot? I’m used to "cheap" Pasadena prices and clearly must not understand the beachfront premium.
Preston | May 28th, 2008 at 10:21 am