The Allman Brothers Band
A couple of old classics, take your pick – or watch both!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Allman_Brothers_Band
More Drone
If I lose the drone, “too bad, you’re not getting another one.”
There was some real panic today when I lost the wi-fi connection – which also terminated the camera feed – while the drone was over the lagoon. For a moment, I was thinking about going for a swim!
‘Rich And Everyone Else’
Hat tip to daytrip for sending this along from the latimes.com:
http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-home-prices-20140416,0,4794538.story#ixzz2z43iQrQ7
Excerpts:
Southern California home prices are surging as the spring buying season heats up, with the median price in March hitting $400,000 for the first time in six years.
But a deeper look at the market reveals a recovery divided between the rich and everyone else.
The market for high-dollar homes is hopping, with sales on the rise and buyers launching bidding wars. But sales of low- to medium-priced homes have plummeted during the same period — with many potential buyers priced out.
Carey Chenoski, a real estate agent in Redlands, said she has seen less interest in homes for sale lately as first-time buyers struggle to afford the new higher prices. There are more homes on the market than last year — which is keeping further price growth in check — but they’re not selling.
“Lately on Saturdays and Sundays, you see open house signs everywhere,” she said. “The houses that last spring would be gone in the first day are sitting maybe 60 days.”
That, in turn, is frustrating some sellers. Chenoski recently saw the price on a three-bedroom in Redlands reduced to $299,000 from $315,000 — and it still didn’t sell. So it was taken off the market.
It’s a different story in pricier pockets of the region, where high-end sales are climbing, all-cash offers remain common, and well-priced homes go fast.
“We’re getting multiple offers on just about everything,” said Barry Sulpor, an agent with Shorewood Realtors in Manhattan Beach, where he said there is a new wave of tear-downs and new construction in prime beachfront locations. “The market is really on fire.”
This is a marked shift from a year ago, when investors raced to scoop up bargain-rate homes with cash offers and plans to rent them out. That sparked price increases at the low end and sapped the supply of those homes. Now investor activity is down, but for many, prices remain out of reach.
In fact, prices of lower-end homes have risen a greater percentage over the last year than prices of expensive homes, despite the current bidding wars on high-end properties.
Still, some signs indicate a broader recovery may be brewing.
The number of homes listed for sale in March, while still historically low, was up 54% in the Inland Empire and 64% in Orange County compared with the same month last year, according to the website Realtor.com. The job market is gradually improving, says Appleton-Young, which should make more buyers more confident. And investors are slowly backing out, said Derek Oie, an agent who has done many investor deals in the Inland Empire.
That’s making room for families and first-timers who were crowded out this time last year.
“You are seeing a lot more traditional buyers come into the picture,” he said.
Still, the spring buying season in Southern California got off to a “very slow start” in March, said DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage. And from her office in Redlands, Chenoski doesn’t see much evidence that’s changing in April — so far at least.
“Springtime is usually a pretty hot market,” she said. “We’ll see what happens.”
http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-home-prices-20140416,0,4794538.story#ixzz2z46EMQhD
Eastern Scripps
This builder paid $20 million for the land in December, 2010, and have already sold over 50 homes averaging around $1M each. This site was a pile of rocks three years ago – here’s a tour of the neighborhood now:
Incessant Bubble Talk
We keep seeing more bubble-bursting articles being published – and the perception may be more important than the reality if consumers are addicted to soundbites and read no further.
This article promises proof that the bubble is about to burst:
But there is no proof in the article, just more speculation from an ivory-tower type who rattles off the same tired speculations, including lagging incomes, unaffordability, FHA, blah, blah, blah.
Regurgitating the same old beliefs ignores the reality – the market is driven by the affluent. Because listing agents give preference to cash buyers, the rich folks have a distinct advantage, and they have been gobbling up investment properties and most of the quality homes in which to live.
I am really sick of this old adage – from the article:
Without housing affordability there cannot be a rise in first-time buyer participation.
Without the entrance of first-time buyers, those wishing (or hoping) to move up to a larger home or relocate into other neighborhoods will not be able to so, at least not readily. This can produce a cascade effect on housing prices, starting to drive them downward to reflect a decrease in demand.
There are many first-timers buying homes – they pay cash, or have a big down payment so they can compete. Besides, first-timers aren’t the only buyers interested in the cheaper stock – BlackRock and other investors are happy to buy up all of the cheaper homes so those sellers can move up.
Here’s another from the same article:
If housing prices begin to fall, wouldn’t one expect the investors to at least consider dumping homes onto the market to minimize potential losses? If they did so, the aforementioned cascade-effect would drive prices down even further.
This is the new normal, where we have learned that unless sellers can get top dollar, they aren’t interested in selling. Investors have already gained 10% to 30% appreciation, if they lost some or all of that, they wouldn’t dump at any cost – they’d wait until next time.
The new lesson has been learned right before our eyes – don’t dump properties; instead let’s resort to any other means necessary, including bending the foreclosure and accounting rules. Ben Bernanke said as much here:
https://www.bubbleinfo.com/2014/03/03/bernanke-stopped-the-flood/
The general public needs to become wise to these gyrations. The fix is in, and the new normal is unlike anything we have ever seen or imagined. Wall Street will conspire with BigGov to ensure that there is a floor – and you might as well get your share while you can.
The media insists on scary headlines, rather than exploring the truth – and they wouldn’t mind if we did pop another bubble, whether we need to or not.
Don’t believe anything you read, and only half of what you see!
Escalation Clause
In the spirit of fair play, this isn’t right. But in a market where buyers get tired of losing, you can’t blame them for trying alternatives. Agents should have a standard policy/strategy on how to handle the escalation clause – get good help!
From the Boston Globe:
Katrine and Stephen Campbell were up against stiff competition from 10 other bidders for the Reading home they wanted to buy. So the couple tried an aggressive strategy to give them an edge: Instead of making a specific offer, they promised to top whatever turned out to be the high bid by an additional $5,000.
The increasingly popular tactic, known as an escalation clause, worked. The Campbells bought the four-bedroom house late last year for $597,000 — or $18,000 above the original list price, including the extra $5,000.
“We must have looked at 50 places before making a bid on a house,” said Katrine Campbell. “We made only one offer — and we got it. The escalation clause gave us an edge.”
In a sign of how competitive the Boston-area housing market has become, the maneuver is becoming part of the area’s bidding war landscape, brokers and other real estate executives say. Some report there hasn’t been this much escalation clause activity since the last house-buying frenzy 10 years ago.
There are several kinds of escalation clauses, but all involve an agreement to top the high bid on a home by a set amount of money — often $5,000, and sometimes more.
Potential buyers who offer such arrangements usually insist on a brief amount of time, an hour or less, to follow through or to back out once a top bid has been established.
Skeptics say the clauses are potentially risky and a needless ploy that could backfire by alienating some sellers. It can also lead to disputes about whether buyers or sellers have complied with escalation clause terms, they say.
“It’s a tactic that’s not going to appeal to everyone,” said Peter Ruffini, a regional vice president at Jack Conway Realty in Norwell and president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors.
“It sounds a little risky to me. It sounds sort of like issuing a blank check to sellers.”
Blood Moon
Turn your gaze to the stars tonight for an eerie and spectacular view of the “blood moon.” At 12:53 a.m. ET, the Earth will begin to position itself between the sun and the moon for the first of a series of four total eclipses to conclude in September 2015.
The phenomenon is known as a tetrad, in which the moon is completely covered by the earth’s umbral shadow for four eclipses in a row, as opposed to only partial eclipses that fall in the outer penumbra. But rather than succumbing to complete darkness, the moon will glow red as it receives the refracted light that spills over the Earth’s circumference.
The series is a rare occurrence in history, with large spans of time, such as the 300 years between 1600 and 1900, witnessing none. But the 21st century will be more promising, according to Fred Espenak, who works for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and specializes in eclipse predictions.
“Frequency sort of goes through 585-year cycles,” the astrophysicist explains. “So you go through centuries where you don’t have any, and centuries where you have a number of them.”
The next tetrad will begin in 2032.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/miss-rare-blood-moon-lunar-eclipse-tonight/story?id=23316736
Here’s how it looks from our house, taken by Natalie between homeworks!
1:10am, with the eclipse starting to wind down:
1:30am. The blue star is Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, and the 15th brightest star in the night sky. It is a blue giant and a variable star of the Beta Cephei type located 260 light years from Earth.
Reader JQ sent this in, taken from his house:
H-Tracker Back on Track
The Department of Numbers, aka Housing Tracker, did correct their local San Diego inventory count this week.
http://www.deptofnumbers.com/asking-prices/california/san-diego/
Previously they were always higher than the MLS, and we thought it was due to them adding FSBOs, new-builds, or whatever else is for sale but not on the MLS.
But they are tracking the MLS very closely now – today’s MLS count is 6,697:
The asking-price trend looks about right too – sellers’ optimism is increasing – but their corrected asking-price numbers today (all much higher) are going to skew the trend lines for the next couple of weeks. They were a little behind previously:
Get good help!
Inventory Watch – Prime Time
We are heading into the best part of the selling season, and once we get past tax day and Easter it should be full steam ahead for about two months. New listings have increased by about 20% in the last two weeks, and buyers have responded with additional pendings (scroll to bottom).
North SD County’s Coastal Region (La Jolla-to-Carlsbad)
The UNDER-$800,000 Market:
| Date | ||||
| November 25 | ||||
| December 2 | ||||
| December 9 | ||||
| December 16 | ||||
| December 23 | ||||
| December 30 | ||||
| January 6 | ||||
| January 13 | ||||
| January 20 | ||||
| January 27 | ||||
| February 3 | ||||
| February 10 | ||||
| February 17 | ||||
| February 24 | ||||
| March 3 | ||||
| March 10 | ||||
| March 17 | ||||
| March 24 | ||||
| March 31 | ||||
| April 7 | ||||
| April 14 |
The $800,000 – $1,400,000 Market:
| Date | ||||
| November 25 | ||||
| December 2 | ||||
| December 9 | ||||
| December 16 | ||||
| December 23 | ||||
| December 30 | ||||
| January 6 | ||||
| January 13 | ||||
| January 20 | ||||
| January 27 | ||||
| February 3 | ||||
| February 10 | ||||
| February 17 | ||||
| February 24 | ||||
| March 3 | ||||
| March 10 | ||||
| March 17 | ||||
| March 24 | ||||
| March 31 | ||||
| April 7 | ||||
| April 14 |
Relative Deal
There hasn’t been many times recently that we’ve seen a Davidson home for sale on a culdesac in Carmel Valley for low-$300s psf:
Jim Klinge
Klinge Realty Group
Broker-Associate, Compass
Are you looking for an experienced agent to help you buy or sell a home?
Contact Jim the Realtor!
- 682 S. Coast Hwy 101, Suite #110
Encinitas, CA 92024 - (858) 997-3801 call or text
- klingerealty@gmail.com
CA DRE #01527365, CA DRE #00873197
