The original lineup of the Red Devils (from Huntington Beach) included a female lead singer who played rockabilly:
The guitar and bass players are brothers – later they ditched the girl and teamed up with the drummer from the Blasters in 1988 and added harp player Lester Butler to create a more-rocking blues band:
For those looking for a unique oceanfront opportunity at what seems like a reasonable price, check out this house at Moonlight Beach. The Scripps family owned it until 1994, when they sold it for $850,000. This owner paid $3,750,000 cash in 2009:
It has been listed for two weeks, and has already had two offers! Maybe we can take a collection and call it the bubbleinfo beach house?
Hat tip to bode for sending this in from the latimes.com:
A Bank of America Corp. employee assigned to deal with delinquent mortgages has been arrested on federal charges of accepting more than $1 million in bribes to allow homes to be sold far below their market value.
Kevin Lauricella worked at a BofA facility in Simi Valley where he focused on short sales, said Ariel Neuman, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles. Short sales are transactions that allow borrowers in default to satisfy their mortgage debts by selling the property for less than they owe.
A 28-count grand jury indictment, unsealed Tuesday, listed 18 properties allegedly sold in late 2010 and early 2011 at prices below those the bank would have approved. Lauricella is accused of enabling the sales by improperly approving short sales and falsifying bank records.
Most of the homes were in the San Fernando Valley, but others were in Corona, Coto de Caza, Beverly Hills and Bel Air.
“The buyers would either resell the homes at the actual property values or in some cases would refinance the property at the actual value, thereby extracting profits on the deals,” Newman said.
Lauricella, 28, of Thousand Oaks, entered a not guilty plea Tuesday before a federal magistrate and was released on a $100,000 property bond, said his attorney, Ronald D. Hedding. Hedding said he had not yet had time to study the evidence against Lauricella and could not comment.
Documents filed with the indictment indicated the government seized Lauricella’s Chevrolet Suburban on grounds it had been purchased with criminal proceeds and intended to try to take away his home.
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-bofa-short-sales-bribes-20131016,0,2008694.story
Speaking of those high-tech internet tools we use to determine value….
This is from the FHA Underwriting Manual of 1936:
307 (2.) It must be noted, too, that sales prices are of varying usefulness and importance according to the rapidity with which price levels of real property may be changing. In an unusually active sales market, such as exists in “boom” times, accompanied by rapidly rising prices, the stimulus given to prices by strongly competing buyers becomes such that fairness, as regards the prices paid, disappears.
Stability and permanence are nonexistent at such times, as well as in times of rapidly declining prices, and the prices then obtained in sales are almost worthless as useful information in estimating value, though their frequency, coupled with pyramiding prices, constitutes a warning of the imminence of a reversal of the price trend. Only in times of comparative stability of the price structure are sales prices of substantial worth in valuation work.
Read the full article discussing home valuations during booms here:
The internet dominates the real estate business today, and buyers want to make quick decisions using their favorite web tools. If they do seek advice, are their realtors any better at determining what a house is worth?
Auction.com is trying to break into the traditional home-selling business.
I believe that the open-bidding format is the most transparent home-selling process and will someday have a place at the table. But auction.com comes from the old-fashioned auctioneering business, and insists on perpetrating two shady practices – an excerpt from Bloomberg:
Bliss Morris, CEO of First Financial Network, an Oklahoma City-based loan broker, said Auction.com misleads bidders by failing to disclose the reserve prices required to close deals and secretly bidding on behalf of sellers to drive up prices.
“You don’t know who you’re bidding against,” Morris said in a telephone interview. “If you have a reputable auction house, they’re not bidding against you.”
Those practices are common in the industry, said Frieden, a native of Anaheim, California, who started trading property 30 years ago and moved to Australia in 1989 to study real estate auctions.
“There’s no mystery about this, and nothing unusual either,” Frieden said of the process. “Well over 90 percent of all reserve auctions are done without publishing the reserve price. And the auctioneer has the right to bid on behalf of the seller to protect the reserve price.”
Read the full article here:
Congratulations to Robert Shiller for winning the Nobel Prize!
Trish Regan: “Then why buy a home? People trap their savings in a home. They’re running an opportunity cost of not having that money liquid to earn a better return in the market. Why do it?”
Robert Shiller: “Absolutely! Housing traditionally is not viewed as a great investment. It takes maintenance, it depreciates, it goes out of style. All of those are problems. And there’s technical progress in housing. So, new ones are better…
“So, why was it considered an investment? That was a fad. That was an idea that took hold in the early 2000’s. And I don’t expect it to come back. Not with the same force. So people might just decide, “Yeah, I’ll diversify my portfolio. I’ll live in a rental.” That is a very sensible thing for many people to do.
“If you think investing in housing is such a great idea, why not invest in cars? Buy a car, mothball it, and sell it in 20 years. Obviously not a good idea because people won’t want our cars. It’s the same with our houses. So, they’re not really an investment vehicle.”
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Reasons to Own:
None of these may have much, if any, investment value. Can we stop talking about housing as an investment? Why are we addicted to that conversation? Buy a house because you need a place to live.
Most of us know our good friend and realtor Tom Stone from www.calculatedriskblog.com, where he has been commenting for years. He also joined us on the Blog Talk radio segment with Bill McBride here at the 61:50-mark (from January, 2012):
He also produces his own blog, doing his part to educate the consumer – something I wish all agents would do. If you don’t want to do your own blog, no problem, at least try to contribute by making comments here and other blogs – like Tom, who even makes fashion statements:
HT to RD!
This neighborhood supports better quality – there are big bombers on every block. Look at the south end of this street, for example:
Unless you are completely in love with this floor plan, wouldn’t it be better to start over?
My contribution to a big article on pocket listings in the OC Register:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/mls-529529-pocket-home.html
Other agents say pocket listings are never a good idea.
If being on the open market is good enough for Kobe Bryant, arguably the biggest celebrity in the O.C., then it’s good enough for everyone,” said Jim Klinge, a Carlsbad Realtor. Bryant’s 8,471-square-foot home in Newport Coast’s gated Pelican Ridge, with a shark tank, hair salon and “extra deep” swimming pool, went on the MLS in August for $8.59 million. The home is still for sale.
Often, homes start out as de facto pocket listings without the sellers’ knowledge, Klinge said, as many agents ask sellers to sign a form allowing them to exclude a home from the MLS for longer than a 48-hour period.
“Agents will tell you it’s because they need time to develop their marketing, but in reality they are shopping around the listing first to their own buyers, then among agents in their office and their waiting buyers, and then if all else fails, the listing gets inputted onto the MLS,” he said. “This practice happens in virtually every office, big and small, and among the most successful agents to the rookies.”
His advice? “Sellers should check the Internet themselves to verify their home has been properly listed on the MLS for sale, and advertised to the open market, before negotiating an offer.”
Klinge thinks that off-MLS listings hurt not only sellers, but buyers, too.
“If a seller has found a buyer, and wants to dupe him into paying too much, he might try to tantalize the buyer with an ‘off-market opportunity,” Klinge said. “It is the reason why buyers should insist on buying only those homes on the open market.”
Read the full article here:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/mls-529529-pocket-home.html
Are you looking for an experienced agent to help you buy or sell a home?
Contact Jim the Realtor!
CA DRE #01527365, CA DRE #00873197
