To moms and grandmas everywhere, Happy Mother’s Day!
Speaking of kids, Kayla will be starting her weekly-video series on Wednesday!
This is my mom and I in the middle during her 80th birthday tour of the old haunts around Oakland. On the left are my two brothers and sister, and on the right is Uncle Tom and Sally.
We are standing in front of my grandparents’ house, which my parents inhabited once my grandma passed. The current owners were gracious enough to allow us in for a tour eight years after they purchased!
This was one of the houses sold by my sister during her brief stint as a realtor. When her and my mother insisted that the list price be over $2 million, I had her send me the comps. I told her it would sell for $1,500,000, which resulted in catcalls and boos, and the expected “what do you know about this market!”.
More Team 10 coverage on the fraud being perpetrated by Kelley Zaun and Carousel Properties. Zaun claims that the reason she hasn’t forwarded any of the rents she collected to the rightful homeowners is because she got sick, then had a software snafu.
In the story below, Zaun is making it sound like innocent mistakes were made and it will all get sorted out.
But she has done a couple of things that don’t appear so innocent.
In the case I know, the tenant complained to her that the landscaping wasn’t being maintained. She told him that landscaping is an additional charge of $200 per month, which he starting paying. But she never told the homeowner……and never sent a landscaper!
She also finally sent the three-months’ worth of rent owed to the homeowner, but two days later the bank reversed all charges.
The victim I know still hasn’t received any money.
Carlsbad police are investigating a North County property management company after numerous homeowners complained the company took their money.
Team 10 first reported on Carousel Properties in April. Homeowners told Team 10 that the company and the owner, Kelley Zaun, collected money from their tenants, but never gave it to the homeowners.
A Carlsbad police spokesperson confirmed a case has been filed with their department, but did not go into specifics.
Rinda White hired Carousel Properties to manage her Vista home. She said the company owes her $1,800.
“We haven’t been able to travel to see the grandkids, we haven’t been able to buy things for our home that we normally buy. We’ve just been operating with gas and groceries,” White said via Skype from Texas.
Martin Benowitz said Carousel Properties owes him about $8,000.
“I was more than a little bit irritated,” Benowitz said.
Zaun has not spoken to Team 10 and her lawyer has not returned Team 10’s phone calls and emails.
Homeowners, however, showed Team 10 an email dated Wednesday that said Zaun is getting “additional help in all areas of my business; most notably, my bookkeeping.”
The email goes on to say she has an offer to join another company and feels it’s the “best possible system” for the homeowners.
Justin and Michelle Wilson didn’t have much of a choice when they turned a $1.58 million ugly duckling into a $3 million swan.
There were very few options in Mountain View, Calif., within their $2 million budget, and each house they liked got snapped up in a bidding war. So they settled for a dated $1.58 million beige-and-brown Tudor-style house and gave it a $600,000 makeover that took seven months. Now, the contemporary home’s facade features stucco, stone and steel as well as a striking portico.
“It makes us happy to drive up and come home,” said Mr. Wilson, a 34-year-old financial executive.
While the dynamic is playing out in a number of U.S. cities, California’s plight is particularly intense because of Proposition 13, a 1978 amendment to the state constitution. It set property taxes based on 1975 assessments and capped future property-tax increases at 2% a year.
The catch: When a home in California is sold, the property is reassessed based on its current sale price, resulting in a large tax increase for the new buyer. To avoid this tax hit, many homeowners simply stay put rather than move, which further suppresses the inventory of home listings and keeps prices high.
“Prop. 13 has a strong tendency to keep people in homes longer than they otherwise would be,” said Paul Habibi, a professor of real estate at the Ziman Center for Real Estate the University of California, Los Angeles. “If the market is rising faster than the assessed values, you have all the economic incentive to stay in place,” Mr. Habibi said.
A study released in 2005 by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Cambridge, Mass.-based think tank, found that in California, on average, homeowners stay put for 1.4 years longer than in other states due to Proposition 13. In coastal cities, the “lock-in effect,” as the study called it, is even higher. Homeowners in Los Angeles stay put over two years longer, and San Francisco homeowners keep their homes over three years longer than homeowners in other states.
Yesterday, Tom Ferry mentioned that 50% of licensed agents haven’t sold a property in the last year. Enough already!
An excerpt:
The Golden State opened the gates to real estate licensing for undocumented immigrants in January 2016.
Noncitizens are now able to apply for and obtain a real estate license, a leap forward into economic stability for their households — and headlong into significant opposition from many California residents.
California has made significant strides in immigration reform allowing undocumented immigrants to maintain a better quality of life than in other states. California law allows immigrants with an Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) – for paying income taxes – to obtain driver licenses and work permits, attend California colleges with in-state tuition and purchase homes. Immigrants are even able to apply for ITIN mortgages, although lending standards are higher for financing without a social security number (SSN).
Agents can use the new license eligibility law to expand their brokerages and teams, make new industry connections and reach into new California markets. Licensed immigrants bridge the stigmatic gap between California citizens and noncitizens by having direct contact with members of the public, helping immigrants attain better accommodations and assimilate without facing the pompous attitudes of xenophobic “patriots.”
Dick Dale… invented surf music in the 1950’s. Not the ’60’s as is commonly believed. He was given the title “King of the Surf Guitar” by his fellow surfers with whom he surfed with from sun-up to sun-down. He met Leo Fender the guitar and amplifier Guru and Leo asked Dale to play his newly creation, the Fender Stratocaster Electric Guitar. The minute Dale picked up the guitar, Leo Fender broke into uncontrolled laughter and disbelief, he was watching Dale play a right handed guitar upside down and backwards, Dale was playing a right handed guitar left handed and changing the chords in his head then transposing the chords to his hands to create a sound never heard before.
We’re about halfway through the spring selling season!
The Zillow Group said that it is best for San Diegans to sell their house in March. But a few years back, I wrote this article suggesting that May is also a good time, because you can pick up on the momentum of others who have already sold around you:
But it’s also the time of year when active listings may start stacking up. What happens when houses aren’t selling? Sure, you can just lower the price, but are there more variables to consider?
We were faced with that problem in Santee with the big-view house.
Though the single-level floor plan and extensive upgrades were desirable, we weren’t getting any bites while listed for $1,199,000. A bigger two-story house on the other side of the street had closed for $975,000 on March 1st, and the general perception was that the westerly view was preferred (even though obstructed by roof tops at ground level).
But another factor was that there have only been two houses in the history of Santee that sold for $1,000,000 or more. One of those was in 2008 – not exactly a usable comp.
The house directly across the street was also listed for sale, at $1,228,000 for a two-story that was 12% larger. With us at $1,199,000, it was a standoff – neither stood out as the obvious buy.
The key point?
A standoff means somebody has to go first.
When there are multiple houses for sale that are all priced about the same, it’s too easy for buyers to go into paralysis – and wait for the sellers to go first.
So after 30 days on the market, we lowered our list price by $80,000 to $1,119,000. At $109,000 under the neighbor, we looked like the better buy on paper. We had been keeping a steady open-house schedule, and the following weekend I found our buyer.
After we went pending, the house across the street did lower his price to $1,149,000, and he found a buyer a couple of weeks later (still pending today).
Who won?
Both sellers won, in my opinion.
We consciously took the more-certain route by being the first to lower our price, and dropped it enough that the gap between us helped to make us look more attractive. Then once we were pending, someone took comfort in knowing they wouldn’t be the only buyer on the street over a million, and bought his house.
A secondary point is how quick we moved. After 30 days we didn’t have any significant action around our $1,199,000. Rather than keep waiting and hoping for more weeks or months, we agreed on the more aggressive plan.
If we hadn’t, we’d be sitting around today with about 100 days on the market. At that point, potential buyers got you – they know your price is wrong, and the first price reduction might get ignored. Then sellers are chasing down the market as the selling season starts to run out of gas – don’t get in that position!
