LA Fire – How To Help

The first responders have done an incredible job evacuating so many thousands of people at a moment’s notice. It will be one of the major stories of this fire because of how few casualties there are – it’s been a miracle.

How you can help:

You can support the Red Cross by making a donation online, by calling (800) 733-2767 or texting REDCROSS to 90999.

GoFundMe has created a centralized online hub housing all verified fundraising pages related to the wildfires. The hub will be updated with accounts as they are verified by the GoFundme team. At the top of the hub is also GoFundMe’s Wildfire Relief Fund 2025.

The California Community Foundation distributes grants to affected communities through its Wildfire Recovery Fund. The foundation’s team utilizes data from CalFire and CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index to ensure their grants target the neediest communities with both intermediate recovery and long-term support. You can make a monetary donation online or by mailing a check to the “California Community Foundation” at 717 W. Temple St., Los Angeles 90012. Include “Wildfire Recovery Fund” in the memo.

Musicares, a nonprofit safety net of health and welfare services for the music community, is offering anyone in the music industry (with five or more years experience in the music business) with immediate assistance including $1,500 financial assistance and $500 food vouchers. Contribute to Musicares efforts by making an online donation.

Best Friends Animal Society, has activated two pet pantry locations in Los Angeles that can provide essential supplies including pet food, cat litter, pet beds and other necessary items as well as human sanitary products for those who have lost everything. Contribute to the pantries here: donate online. All funds go toward emergency assistance to pets impacted by the wildfires in Los Angeles. Donations top this fund are also directly supporting pet lifesaving work in the area.

There is also a call for supporting the Los Angeles Fire Department by donating to the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation. The foundation is seeking monetary donations to equip firefighters battling the wildfires with items including emergency fire shelters, hydration backpacks and wildland brush tools. Click here to donate.

My favorite video of a local fire – no homes were lost!

L.A. Fire Impact

Jackie said I should do a post on the fires, but I don’t have any personal knowledge of what’s happening or have anything to add to what we are seeing on television.

But I’ll add a couple of thoughts.

The Cost of Insurance Will Increase Dramatically – If You Can Get It. The unwillingness of major insurers to underwrite policies in California has caused more dependence upon the California Fair Plan, which has $200 billion in reserves and $300 billion in exposure:

Another concern is what the fires could mean for the California FAIR Plan, the state’s last-resort insurance plan for those who lose or can’t find traditional coverage.

Over the past half-decade, the number of homeowners on the plan — a state-mandated insurance pool with buy-in from private insurers — has more than doubled to around 350,000. That’s pushed the FAIR Plan toward the brink of insolvency.

Many who lost homes in the L.A. infernos were likely on the plan. According to an analysis of FAIR Plan data, there are more than 26,000 FAIR Plan properties in ZIP codes impacted by the fires across Los Angeles County.

If insurers cannot cover those liabilities, it’s possible they could pass on those costs to all of their home and business customers in the form of higher premiums.

“We are one event away from a large assessment — there’s no other way to say it,” California FAIR Plan President Victoria Roach told lawmakers last year. “We don’t have a lot of money on hand, and we have a lot of exposure out there.”

The insurance industry will probably have major changes in store besides premium hikes. The deductible amounts could go much higher, and forget about getting the guaranteed-replacement policies.

One great alternative is private firefighters. They are on the job in L.A., and we’ve seen them in Rancho Santa Fe during the last fire here. Instead of insuring to rebuild your home, how about preventing it from burning down instead? For many, that would be worth the extra cost.

Open Space Is A Major Liability. Cities like Carlsbad are proud of having major portions of their cities dedicated as open space. I’m sure the gnat-catchers are benefiting, but what about the people? Everyone complains about the high cost of housing. Can’t we live with a smaller patch of open space and build more homes? It would reduce the city’s liability from fires and provide more housing opportunities!

Above is Denk Mountain, also known as Dead Mountain. It’s just scrub brush and a few trails for hikers and mountain bikers. There are probably a few thousand people every year who enjoy those benefits, but the vast majority of the 110,000 people who live in Carlsbad have never heard of it and would be radically affected if another fire comes blowing over it like it did in 1997.

Or how about Calaveras? Look at the homes surrounding this open space just waiting to get burned up some day. Try to get fire insurance for one of these canyon-front homes today!

Another benefit? Make the home builder put all the power lines underground while they are at it, which would make everyone happy!

We’ll carve out some trails too, don’t worry. But is the beauty of these areas that great? Not really – not when a nickname is Dead Mountain. Let’s pave paradise – for our own good!

Some have said they have never seen anything like these fires. But it’s happened before:

Our First Listing of 2025

Check out our new listing!

506 S. Freeman St.

3 br/2 ba, 992sf

YB:1944

LP = $1,399,000

Are you looking for an updated beach bungalow that is walking distance to everything downtown Oceanside has to offer? This is it! Hardwood floors, like-new kitchen and baths, new paint, 2-car garage, big backyard with detached office plus lemon, fig and avocado trees – wow! Great candidate for adding an ADU.

Recent comps include 208 S. Ditmar 2br/2ba 1,106sf closed for $1,385,000 on 12/16/24; 310 S. Tremont 3br/2ba 940sf closed for $1,375,000 on 10/24/24; 713 Stanley 3br/1ba, 996sf closed for $1,300,000 on 9/19/24.

https://www.compass.com/listing/506-south-freeman-street-oceanside-ca-92054/1750199079927778353/?origin=listing_page&origin_type=copy_url&agent_id=5b51d51d9474a8364b9a8353

Two hours after listing input:

 

Attractive Pricing Is Key

Why should home buyers be optimistic about 2025? It’s because sales have bottomed (hopefully):

San Diego County Annual Sales of Detached-Homes:

2003: 28,251 (high point)

2021: 25,252

2022: 18,378

2023: 14,003

2024: 14,837

It’s still going to be a challenge though.

This website says there are 530,430 houses in San Diego County, and this one says 634,366 houses. It means that last year somewhere between 2.3% to 2.8% of the total houses county-wide sold last year.

Yes – more than 97% of the detached-home owners in SD County didn’t sell last year!

About the best we can expect is to get back to the 2022 level, which would be a 19% increase in sales, year-over-year. It would take a major price adjustment for sales to go that crazy, because rates are going the wrong way and inventory will probably be going up, not down.

How will pricing break out of the gate? Won’t home sellers – the vast majority of them selling their home for the first time in 10-40 years – want to add a little mustard to their list price, just to see?

It’s easier to imagine that scenario, than agents talking their sellers into a very attractive price this early on.

We’ve received offers on my listing on La Costa Avenue but everyone wants a 10% discount, even though I think I have it priced in already. I’ve been hoping that a slew of new listings nearby will hit the market this month in the mid-$2 millions to make my $1,995,000 list price look more attractive.

How am I doing so far?

Here is the first nearby competitor, and it’s priced the same as mine!

https://www.compass.com/listing/2014-saliente-way-carlsbad-ca-92009/1748808396982187689/

Yikes! Bad for me, but great for the 92009 buyers.

If more of the 2025 listings hit the market with an attractive price, we could have frenzy-like conditions!

January Listings Contest

Knowing the number of NSDCC listings in January will give us a feel for how hot the market might be for the rest of the year. If there is a big surge this month (more than +20% over last January’s count), then the market could get sluggish in a hurry. If there is only a modest increase – or maybe just the same as last year – then it’s going to be a fairly hot spring selling season.

There have been 26 new listings so far this month.

We will take guesses until Friday. Here are those received so far:

211 – Eddie89

213 – Shadash

246 – Anne M

267 – Surfrider

273 – Susie

280 – doughboy

303 – Tom

307 – Jun

317 – CB Mark

318 – Nick

328 – Majeed

337 – natalie

353 – Derek

355 – Skip

365 – Leo

421 – Giving Cat

Leave your guess – or revise your old guess – in the comment section!

In mid-February (to account for the late reporters), the guesser with the closest number will receive four tickets to a Padres game!

Need some evidence to make a smart guess? There is more research data on the last post:

https://www.bubbleinfo.com/2024/12/16/contest-for-padres-tickets/

To give you an idea where our seats are, I took the photo above at last year’s wild-card playoff game vs. the Braves. The guy with the buzz-cut hairdo sitting next to the dugout is the owner of the Braves. Those seats are reserved for the visiting team’s owners, so you might meet some glitterati when you go! Autographs are certainly in play too, depending on the willingness of the players. Go early!

Inventory Watch – First of 2025

On December 9th, there were 401 active listings bertween La Jolla and Carlsbad.

Today there are 298 actives.

It would be natural to think that the reason the count dropped so much was that sellers were cancelling their listings in preparation for a new approach in 2025.

Get this – there have been 77 new pendings since December 9th – wow! In December, 2023 there were 78 NSDCC sales, and last month there were 133 sales – a 71% increase year-over-year!

I’m convinced there will be a surge of inventory this year, but if it were to stay under control, we might have a real frenzy on our hands. Especially if sellers can be reasonable about their list price.

Before the pandemic, there were always 500-1,000 active listings laying around. Will buyers ignore the recent ultra-low inventory counts and be happy to have more homes to consider – and not get intimidated by a bigger group of actives?

It looks like the count of NSDCC active listings will reach 400+ next month. Here is the recent history of when we reached 400 actives during the Covid years:

2024: Mid-May

2023: Early July

2022: Mid-June

2021: Never

As long as buyers don’t mind seeing the inventory count growing faster than it did in recent history, we could see frenzy-like conditions shortly.

Housekeeping: As of today, I have changed back to using the SDAR MLS. The north-county CRMLS insisted that realtors sign a very restrictive policy about how we use the MLS data, and I couldn’t go for it.

The difference on the blog is how the two companies classify house sales. The CRMLS for north county calls them SFRs, and a few agents load their attached homes or PUDs into the MLS and call them SFRs. The choice at SDAR is simple choice – either detached or attached. As a result, there are 11 fewer actives in SDAR today than there are in CRMLS.

One other minor thing. This blog can no longer be accessed while outside the United States (I don’t think). There is too much garbage going on behind the scenes and we are trying to clean it out to improve the speed. Let me know if you have any insights!

(more…)

January Listings Are A Precursor

Virtually everyone is reluctant to predict the future of the real estate market. Even most realtors will throw their hands up and declare, “Who knows?”.

But around here, one fact has been clear and it tells us what we need to know about the rest of the year. The number of NSDCC listings in January ends up being 8% to 9% of the total for the year:

NSDCC Listings and Sales Data (La Jolla, Del Mar, Solana Beach, RSF, Cardiff, Encinitas, and Carlsbad)

Real Estate 2025

It means that by mid-February we will be able to predict how many listings there will be in 2025, and thus, give us the likely direction of the market for the rest of the year.

I’ve been saying for three months that there is going to be a surge of listings, and it could be 15% to 20% more than there were in 2024. We’ve been doing the contest for Padres tickets to help put a spotlight on the January listings, and it has never been more interesting to see how many will hit the market this year!

Tomorrow, I’ll do a summary of the guesses so far and give everyone the rest of the week to enter or revise their guess so come back Monday morning.

The chart above gives more data for the analytical folks to craft their guess.

My Thoughts:

The last frenzy before Covid was in 2013. Pricing was stuck in a fairly tight range for the previous five years, but listings dropped and sales took off in 2012 and pricing followed in 2013 with a little more inventory. The variables weren’t all the same as today, but you may want to apply a similar effect from the animal spirits to today’s market. Or maybe not?

With another 9% increase in the median sales price and cost-per-sf in 2024, it shows that there really hasn’t been any limits on pricing. Will 2025 be the year that it changes? If so, will it be caused by another surge in listings? Or is there enough money floating around that more listings will cause more sales at higher prices like it did in 2024? It could go either way.

What about the political climate? Pro-Trump supporters are elated and will gladly join the buyer pool. Anti-Trump people are fearing the worst, but like we saw during the pandemic, fear is a fantastic motivator and it causes people to want to hunker down…at any price.

I had more people attend my open house yesterday on La Costa Avenue than I’ve had at the previous seven OHs. Most were just getting started, and the basic need for housing will keep them looking around. Will they buy? We’ll see.

We round-tripped four of our 17 listings in 2024 – and three of those were since the commission debacle on August 17th. Successfully working with buyers had already been a major challenge for agents, and now it’s worse. The affluent buyers will probably always want professional help, but will there be many, if any agents left who are willing to devote months of effort just to have their commission rate dangled in front of the seller for their approval?

Will the market survive it all? Yes, because there isn’t anything that price won’t fix!

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