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And we’re not just talking about D-Fish signing for another three years!

The City of Los Angeles Department of Consumer Affairs has advised us that on Thursday, July 8, 2010, a new law went into effect in the City of Los Angeles that makes mortgage lenders responsible for maintaining their foreclosed properties. Here are the top seven things you should know about this “City of LA Foreclosure Registry Program:”

• Effective Thursday, July 8, 2010.
• Makes mortgage lenders responsible for cleaning up their foreclosed properties to prevent further blight and nuisance.
• Makes mortgage lenders responsible for maintaining the property as soon as they issue a Notice of Default.
• Allows the City to fine mortgage lenders $1,000 per day per violaton, up to $100,000.
• Requires mortgage lenders to register their inventory of homes in default with LA City to help building inspectors identify who owns foreclosed and abandoned homes.
• Applies to foreclosed homes in the LA City only.
• Consumers can report problem properties to LA City’s 311 hotline.

Here is a link to the the ordinance, which is in the Article 4 to Chapter XVI of the Los Angeles Municipal Code: http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2009/09-0365_ord_181185.pdf.  For questions about the new ordinance, please contact the City of Los Angeles Department of Consumer Affairs:
Inside LA County:   (800) 593-8222
Outside the County:   (213) 974-1452
For the Hearing Impaired (TTY):   (213) 626-0913
Website: http://www.lacountydca.info/

This simulation is posted on a website opposing I-5 expansion.

The freeway traffic in this area (which has seen marked improvement over the last few months since the last project was completed) deters some people from thinking about living further north.

Could a new interchange help real estate values in Encinitas/Carlsbad?

Find more videos like this on Smart Freeway Planning

Real estate withholding is a prepayment of California state income tax for out-of-state sellers of California real property.  Escrow companies are required to collect 3.33% of the sale proceeds and send to the state on behalf of the sellers.

Now they are hitting the rents too:

Beginning January 1, 2010, property managers will have to withhold 7% of all income, that exceeds $1,500, on properties owned by nonresidents to be sent to the nonresident property owner, unless the owner qualifies for reduced or waived withholding.

Read the rest of this entry »

The FAA and the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority have been installing sound attenuation treatments to mitigate aircraft noise in homes around the airport.  The goal is to reduce interior noise levels by at least 5 decibels inside the home, providing a noticeable reduction in noise level.

Here’s how one turned out:

San Diego International is the busiest single-runway commercial service airport in the United States, and second in the world after London Gatwick, with approximately 600 departures and arrivals carrying 50,000 passengers each day, and a total of 18.3 million passengers in 2007.

My kids will tell you, all I ever want to do is sit around and talk old high school baseball stories.

In 1977, I was in the first graduating class of Shadow Mountain High School in Phoenix, Arizona.  Because the school was brand new, the baseball field was still desert-like.

Every Saturday our baseball coach, William Hatcher, made us come down to the field at a very unreasonable hour.  Our job?  To pick up rocks out of our infield so we’d get better hops.

Every Saturday for three years.

You can take a barren piece of desert and make something of it – ask Curt Schilling, who became an all-state pitcher on the same field…..in a small way thanks to us.

Can something be done here?

From our friends at the voice:

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2009/09/20/government/237park092009.txt

An excerpt:

They moved into the unfinished, developing community expecting that as it grew, public facilities like schools, parks and libraries would follow. With reason: it says so in the community plan.

But the city’s budget woes haven’t been any more sparing on unfinished communities than the rest of the city. So while neighborhoods citywide worry over mayoral warnings that their parks and libraries could become casualties of future budget cuts, residents here would be satisfied if only they had a park to worry about, too.

Plans for a 5-acre neighborhood park, which residents say is overdue and sorely needed because of the community’s density, have languished.  They say the city has reneged on its obligations to provide basic services as a tradeoff for higher density.

Public facilities for new developments like Pacific Highlands Ranch are financed with special assessments on developers. The city collects a facilities benefit assessment for each parcel granted a building permit, and those assessments are reflected in homes’ purchase prices. This year, the FBA for a single family unit parcel is almost $80,000.

Who gets to fix this problem?  Barratt owns this parcel free & clear:

The City of Encinitas isn’t going to let up on their low-income housing requirement, so….

from sddt.com

Dan McAllister, county treasurer-tax collector isn’t sure if it’s a record, but with some $249 million in delinquent property taxes, he has more than a little work cut out for him. 

The nearly quarter of a billion figure is out of $4.55 billion the county set out to collect last September. McAllister noted that while there has been about a 1 percent decline in the number of delinquencies from last year, the dollar amount climbed by about $12 million to the current $249 million.

“It is a small amount relative to the overall number, ($4.55 billion) but it is still a lot of money,” McAllister said.  The treasurer-tax collector will now be sending 71,478 delinquent notices to San Diego County taxpayers who failed to pay either biannual installment of their property taxes.

When asked what he will do to collect, McAllister said late notices and calls will be made.  “And we visit people,” McAllister said.

McAllister said delinquent payers are already subject to a 10 percent penalty. Taxpayers then have until Tuesday, June 30, 2009 to pay their property taxes or an additional penalty of 1.5 percent per month, or 18 percent per year, will be added to their tax bill. Active duty military must still pay their taxes, but are not subject to the late fees.

Property owners requesting a reassessment of their property are still required to pay the amount that was printed on their tax bill statement. If they are granted a lower assessment, a refund will be issued. 

If the property owners continue to fail to pay their taxes, assessments and penalties continue to accrue for the next five years, after which time the property may be sold at a tax sale.

The types of property included range widely from land and homes to boats and aircraft, but McAllister said that more than 90 percent of the assets assessed are real property.

McAllister’s office boasts about a 96 percent successful collection rate, but he concedes this figure may well decline when an expected wave of foreclosures hits San Diego County around mid-summer. McAllister expects the market to improve after that, however.

“I remain optimistic. San Diego’s housing market has proven itself to be very resilient,” he said.

The realization that nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in property taxes are delinquent comes when San Diego County is in one of the rare times when there is a projected reduction in the total assessed valuation. It appears the projected assessed valuation for the fiscal year ended June 30 will be roughly $399 billion, off about $10 billion from $409.3 billion last year.

Some municipalities are faring worse than others.  Chula Vista, which got hammered by foreclosures in places such as Otay Ranch and EastLake, is projected to post about a 7.34 percent decline in its assessed valuation. This will mark the second year in a row that Chula Vista experienced a downturn.  Lemon Grove is projected to post an 8.97 percent decline and the city of San Diego is projected to see a 1.35 percent drop in its assessed valuation.

Some cities are bucking the devaluation trend, but these are in the expensive coastal areas of the county. Del Mar for example, is expected to have improved its overall assessed value by 4.55 percent by the end of the fiscal year in June. Coronado is expected to have climbed by 3.41 percent and Solana Beach’s assessed valuation is projected to go up by about 1.88 percent.

This year’s totals will continue to be tallied until the end of next month. Last year’s tally assessed 975,679 parcels, 159,183 businesses, 75,305 boats, 22,923 manufactured homes and 5,189 aircraft.

From today’s front page of the L.A. Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-spray-painted-grass2-2009may02,0,7272444,full.story

The Insta-Green crew arrived on Peppermint Drive in green caps and green shirts, carrying buckets of green paint.

Their mission?

Convert a long-dead lawn into a lush patch of grass worthy of any golf course or polo field.

Thanks to the city of Perris, David Milligan is raking in a different kind of green. Not long ago the town hired his company to treat an epidemic of dead lawns fronting its more than 1,100 foreclosed homes.

So far Milligan has painted about 20 lawns, charging between $400 and $700 each. After the right shade is selected, the paint is sprayed on dead grass and dirt, giving the illusion of a healthy lawn for three to four months. The paint, said Milligan, is green on more than one level. It’s made of natural, biodegradable ingredients.

After clearing the weeds, team member Brian Roberts armed himself with a long, narrow sprayer. As a sputtering pump churned a bucket of paint in the driveway, he went to work. The transformation was immediate. Inch by inch, foot by foot, brown scrub gave way to emerald-green grass. The lawn was still dead, but vibrantly so.

Roberts worked in the mortgage industry before business dried up.

“Maybe this is my way of giving back,” he said. “Maybe I put these people in this home. This may be some sort of hell for me.”

Milligan says lawn painting may be the ultimate green job. He even wonders if there’s a television show in it.  “I’m thinking, ‘Pimp My Lawn,’ ” he said. “You know how we could get something like that started?”

From Mish, click here for more details:

Link to Mish’s site with details