bubbleinfo.com

Here’s a spin around a granite-slab yard with a builder’s design rep.

She only mentioned the actual names of the granite for the first and third slabs pictured, so for identification purposes I made up the rest:

Towards the end of this video, Pardee’s Shaw Lorenz development is mentioned, the 136-homesite development which remains quiet (unless someone has heard more?).  They have said in the past that it would be a custom, and semi-custom development, but at this point who knows if they’ll be selling lots or houses.  They’d be smart to continue where Derby Hill left off – there would be buyers willing to pay $1.5 to $2.0 million for those same houses on acre lots, and it would be a safer bet for Pardee than selling vacant lots for custom homes.

Click here for  the last post that covered the same area, but includes jets and the same golf hole. A comment was left reminding us that the connection to the 56 freeway isn’t a done deal.

Click here for the story about the Craftsman home featured in San Diego H&G Magazine.

Plastic plumbing is back – now being touted as a “green” product.  But only a 25-year warranty?

I checked the tax rolls by zip code to count the SFRs in our regular North San Diego County Coastal region (La Jolla to Carlsbad).

It showed 67,918 single-family residences.

We have been averaging 200 detached sales each month since 1/1/09 in NSDCC, which works out to be about 3.5% of the total NSDCC housing stock being sold each year. 

For those who worry about the impact of unemployment on the local housing market, consider that we’re only selling 200 houses per month.  There are around 300,000 people who live in the La Jolla-to-Carlsbad region.

Because the tax rolls limits searching to 1,000 properties only, I sorted by the year built to help narrow it down.  Here is how it looks on a graph:

You are reading that correctly, the tax rolls show 43 houses built in 2011.  Let’s face it, NSDCC is just about done (there might be 1,000 – 2,000 SFRs left to be built in North SD County Coastal?).  With a finite inventory of houses, and growing population, doesn’t there have to be upward pressure on pricing?  I know these numbers below sound insane, maybe they expect to develop the Ramona-Borrego-El Centro triangle into the Inland Empire 2?  But the rich people will migrate to the coast – whether they come from out-of-area or homegrown:

From 10news.com:

SAN DIEGO — The vision for the San Diego region’s future is slowly coming into focus.

Led by the San Diego Foundation, the $2 million, two-year initiative – “Our Greater San Diego Vision” – aims to come up with a vision for the future of the San Diego area. It hopes to do that by identifying what is needed and asking the public to help set the course.

 A recent survey of local residents was modeled after other similar vision projects around the country.

 ”Although people love San Diego, this is the first place where they’ve seen the top issue be a negative issue,” said Mary Ball, the vice president of the San Diego Foundation.

The negative that Ball was referring to was affordability.

New numbers revealed by the research show San Diegans spend about 33 percent of their income on housing.

“People in the San Diego region spend more of their money on housing than any other region in the country,” said Ball.

El Cajon resident Caroline Schiavone told 10News, “I have seven grandchildren and unfortunately, I don’t think they’ll ever be able to live here.”

Those doubts are reinforced by numbers. According to demographers, the population will grow by 1.3 million people in the next four decades mostly from residents’ children and grandchildren. That growth is like adding another city of San Diego. To accommodate the projected growth, the region will need 500,000 jobs and nearly 400,000 homes.

How to adjust to that growth and keep things affordable was one topic of the project’s first public workshop in Santee. Other topics included transportation, education and quality of life issues.

According to the research study, one potential obstacle is public officials.

“People are concerned leaders are not looking regionally for solutions,” said Ball.

The vision project – backed by a steering community of 150 community leaders – will draw heavily on public input.

“If the people of the region speak out, we believe elected officials will pay attention,” said Ball.

For more information on the project, visit ShowYourLoveSD.org.

You can also get more information at these five upcoming workshops:

Sept. 13, 2011
Market Creek Events Center
404 Euclid Ave.
San Diego, CA 92114
6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Sept. 14. 2011
San Diego City Concourse
Copper Room, 202 C. Street
San Diego, CA 92101
9 a.m. to noon

Chula Vista Golf Course
4475 Bonita Rd.
Bonita, CA 91902
6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Sept. 15, 2011
Quantum Learning Network
1938 Avenida Del Oro
Oceanside, CA 92056
1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

CA Center for the Arts
340 North Escondido Blvd.
Escondido, CA 92025
6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

College Joe and I also stopped by the new homes being built on Hymettus. Local residents are worried that the grading has disturbed the pesticides used by previous farmers, and there were reports of neighbors getting sick.

Here is the disclosure the builder is giving to potential buyers:

Leucadia_Collection_-_Site_Q&A Pesticide Disclosure

The grading is complete, and the first seven of 19 homes are underway:

All builders are required by law to give a 10-year structural warranty on their new homes, which usually causes new-home buyers to let their guard down.  While it is prudent to get quality representation when buying a new house – in these cases, it’s imperative:

Hat tip to Kwaping for sending this along from the U-T:

With a roiling stock market and stagnant housing market, it may seem premature to think about another boom and how to cope with a potential housing shortage in San Diego County.

But that’s what area builders of for-sale and for-rent homes are talking about.

The concern is that supply will lag behind demand and lead to low vacancies and spikes in prices and rents.

Alan Nevin, vice president at MarketPointe Realty Advisors, a consulting company to the industry, says a shortage already exists in apartments, as evidenced by a 4.1 percent vacancy rate recently reported, and a looming shortage in for-sale homes in three to five years once renters with good credit want to buy.

“If we continue to grow 15,000 to 20,000 jobs a year in the private sector, I think we will definitely result in a shortage,” Nevin said. “There will be an imbalance between supply and demand, and that will gradually drag up prices, and most of that increase will come at the bottom end of the market, starter homes.”

The area has been losing jobs in recent years, but SANDAG projects a growing job market over the next few years.

The solution to shortages in the past has been to:

• Speed up development in master-planned communities;
• Sprawl out to southern Riverside County, Imperial County and even into Mexico;
• Liberalize building regulations and lighten up on developer fees to stimulate production.

But Nevin said the conditions have changed and some of these actions aren’t feasible. The result, he fears, is a reduction in homeownership — going from the present about 55 percent to 45 percent. The national rate has tended to be two-thirds owners, one-third renters.

“To me, that’s sad,” he said, but he doesn’t think Generations X or Y will lose the American dream of ownership once they start families and pine for a home of their own.

On the other side of the debate are the demographers at the San Diego Association of Governments. Chief economist Marney Cox said a shortage of for-sale homes is not likely “because prices will be too high to afford.”

He agrees with Nevin that San Diego is headed toward a renter society and points to large urban areas like New York, where less than a third of residents are owners. He figures even fewer than 45 percent of households will be homeowners.

But to handle that shift, he said, more land will have to be zoned for apartments.

“That’s where the change has to occur,” he said.

No one knows what will emerge from the economic storms. SANDAG simply tries to look at the long term and ignore monthly gyrations.

But already, their projections are off-kilter. Their current draft of 2050 population projections indicate that 7,822 dwelling units will be approved by local jurisdictions this year. But for the first six months of the year, only 2,977 have been authorized, according to the Construction Industry Real Estate Board. Even if that pace continues in the second half of the year, which history shows usually doesn’t happen, the 5,954 total would be 23.9 percent below expectations. Next year’s projection of 10,298 homes could only result if there is a sudden burst of job growth and economic recovery.

“When we forecast average growth that’s going to occur,” says SANDAG’s Edward Schaefer, “there’s no way we can hit the cycles. That means sometimes we can be a little low and a little high.”

And, he acknowledges, current economic projections point to job growth that is “pretty slow.”

“I think the housing industry will have plenty of time to react,” he said.

Click on link to read what builders have to say at bottom of article:  LINK

While the WF Condos are located in the heart of the downtown Encinitas district, which is a big plus, not all of the trendy new urban condos are enjoying such success.

Here are resident comments from Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/bluwater-crossing-carlsbad

This is a brief tour because the sales person was right on us, but you’ll get a feel for what they are offering – a standard-grade box of sticks and stucco. But they’ve sold half of their 47!

Home buyers who prefer the I-15 corridor are taking a close look at StoneBridge Estates, at the east end of Scripps Ranch.  There is a common dilemma – do you buy one of the brand-new houses now, and spend the extra $50,000 to $100,000 on the exterior…….or wait for older ones to short-sell/foreclose?

There has been some juggling between builders – here are the new-tracts on paper:

Brookfield – Serenity

4,346 sf on 0.30-acre lot = $869,000

4,040 sf on 0.39-acre lot = $879,000

4,759 sf on 0.33-acre lot = $979,000

Cornerstone – Montoro at StoneBridge

3,840 sf on 0.75-acre lot = $799,000

3,656 sf on 1.24-acre lot = $809,990

5,015 sf on 0.79-acre lot = $916,990

Toll Brothers at StoneBridge

4,022 sf to 4,760 sf on one-third acre lots min.

$849,995 to $909,995

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To compete, all resales have to do is to be willing to sell for around $200/sf, or less than the mid-$900,000s to get an audience.  The short sales look like they have been getting multiple offers in that range too.  Any listed above $1,000,000 will need to have a lot of extras.  Here is a brief tour:

For those electing to wait…..since 2006, there have been over 160 homes that closed for more than $1,000,000. But the vast majority closed after July, 2007, the end of the no-qual era. There are currently only five of those that have a foreclosure notice filed, which really isn’t bad. The highest sale I could find, $1,925,000, was in January, 2008 – the buyer paid cash.

View Larger Map