Robertson Wrap Up

by | Apr 14, 2018 | Bubbleinfo TV, Builders, Carlsbad, North County Coastal, Sales and Price Check, Why You Should Hire Jim as your Buyer's Agent, Why You Should List With Jim

It was almost four years to the day that the drone visited Robertson Ranch – before the development began.  Here is a post from 4/17/2014 when I was still piloting the drone, and hit my peak elevation:

https://www.bubbleinfo.com/2014/04/17/drone-at-robertson-ranch/

They only have six houses left to sell, plus the models, which means they’ve sold nearly 300 houses at an average of about $1,100,000 (guessing) in the last 2-3 years – or about 100 million-dollar-houses per year:

I’ve sold multiple houses across the street from the R-Ranch for less than $200,000. Now that they can get 13x times that money on what was a strawberry field five years ago is mind-boggling.

Redfin Estimates Based on List Price

by | Apr 13, 2018 | Jim's Take on the Market, Why You Should Hire Jim as your Buyer's Agent, Why You Should List With Jim | 10 comments

It took a glaring mistake by a listing agent to expose it, but it makes what Redfin does all the more obvious.

This listing was inputted this morning with three extra zeros attached, and she didn’t notice for a couple of hours. Maybe because the listing agent hasn’t sold anything since 2016?

In the meantime, Redfin calibrated their estimate of value and 5-year history based not on a fancy algorithm or superior knowledge – nope, they just take the list price and bump it up or down a couple of points.

House Hunters is fake, zestimates are a joke, and ethics sound great until a realtor can double their pay by tilting the table.

The industry is just here to make money off you.

Get Good Help!!

Birth Rate and Housing Demand

by | Apr 13, 2018 | Jim's Take on the Market, Market Buzz | 5 comments

I saw an interesting presentation yesterday about the demand for housing.

They noted that household formation begins later in life, usually when people reach their 30s.  In the last downturn, it didn’t help that the population growth of those in their early-30s has slowed, and they attributed the birth rate going flat in the graph above to Roe vs. Wade in 1973.

But today, those in their early 30s were born in the mid-1980s, when the birth rate was increasing:

Voila, we should have more potential home buyers reaching their household-formation age, and want to become homeowners!  Hopefully they can all find good-paying jobs to make it affordable, or the Bank of Mom and Dad swoops in with a big down payment!

Zillow Crowds the Field

by | Apr 12, 2018 | ibuyer, Jim's Take on the Market, Listing Agent Practices, Zillow | 3 comments

Whoever spends the most money on advertising will win, and Zillow spends around $100,000,000 per year.  Who can keep up?  In the video he says that 90% of the home sellers chose to hire an agent, rather than sell to Zillow:

Nearly one year ago, Zillow shook up the real estate industry when it announced that it was getting into the home selling business by launching “Zillow Instant Offers.”

In the program, homeowners looking to sell their home in the test markets of Las Vegas and Orlando are able to get cash offers for their home from selected investors interested in buying it, all within Zillow’s platform.

As it turns out, that was just the beginning.

Zillow announced Thursday that it will begin buying and selling homes directly to and from homeowners.

To repeat, Zillow itself will soon be buying homes directly from sellers, then turning around and reselling them.

According to Zillow, the program will start small and test in two markets, Las Vegas and Phoenix.

But the program represents a huge change in the business model for Zillow. Back in 2015, Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff said that the company views itself as a media company, not a real estate company.

“We sell ads, not houses,” Rascoff said at the time. “We’re all about providing consumers with access to information and then connecting them with local professionals. And we do a great job of giving those local professional high-quality lead, they’ll covert those leads to at a high rate and then want more media impressions from us. So we’re not actually in the transaction, we’re in the media business.”

But that’s not the case anymore.

Now, Zillow sells ads and houses.

According to Zillow, its homebuying program will roll out “this spring” in Phoenix and Las Vegas.

The company said that home sellers in those markets will be able to compare an agent’s comparative market analysis to offers directly from Zillow or from other investors.

Zillow says that it when it buys a home, it will make the “necessary repairs and updates” and list the home “as quickly as possible.”

Now, what appears to make Zillow’s direct buying program different from companies like Opendoor and OfferPad is that it does not cut real estate agents out of the process.

According to Zillow, a local agent will represent Zillow in the purchase and sale of each home, which will enable agents to earn commission on the purchase and sale.

Link to Article

Zillow interview from Mo Moghari on Vimeo.

My New Listing in West Carlsbad

by | Apr 12, 2018 | Bubbleinfo TV, Jim's Take on the Market, Listing Agent Practices, Why You Should List With Jim

My new listing in west Carlsbad has strong estimates of value:

I mention in the video that the house across the street just sold for $1,325,000, but it’s not on the MLS – it was an off-market sale.  Will it help propel our sale?  Maybe – as long as buyers and their agents know about it!  P.S. The zestimate dropped $18,763 once the listing populated from the MLS to Zillow.

Link to my listing on Zillow

Open house 12-3pm this Saturday and Sunday!

NSDCC March Sales

by | Apr 11, 2018 | Jim's Take on the Market, North County Coastal, Sales and Price Check | 3 comments


Detached-home sales between La Jolla and Carlsbad are hanging tough – and still no flood of inventory, in spite of much higher prices!

NSDCC Stats for March

Year
# of Sales
Avg. $$/sf
Median SP
Avg DOM
# Houses Listed in March
2013
299
$404/sf
$840,000
49
503
2014
219
$518/sf
$1,040,000
51
433
2015
298
$501/sf
$1,137,500
46
497
2016
252
$526/sf
$1,143,665
43
532
2017
258
$477/sf
$1,074,000
45
506
2018
255
$567/sf
$1,375,000
40
438

TT – Closet & Drawer Organization

by | Apr 10, 2018 | About Kayla, Jim's Take on the Market, Trendy Tuesday

This week we are going to tackle the closet and dresser. Now everyone is going to have something different in size so you decide what is the best option for you! In my opinion, I think it gives everyone a piece of mind knowing that your closet and drawers are in order and you can see everything clearly – rather than trying to get dressed for work and can’t find that matching sock or that favorite blouse to wear for your big presentation.

First thing’s first, go through all your clothes and get rid of stuff you will not wear. Here’s a great question to ask yourself while doing this – “If I was out shopping right now, would I buy this?” I did this and half my closet was gone LOL.

Here are some tricks you can try at home to give you that piece of mind you’ve been wanting!

1. Drawers – Group Items by Category – This is kind of an obvious one. Sort each drawer by their type – undergarments drawer, top drawer, etc. It’s even better when you split your categories more than once. With the tops drawer, you can split it into tanks, short sleeves, and long sleeves!

2. Closet – Store all your seasonal clothes – Why would keep all your winter coats/sweaters in your closet in the middle of summer? Storing away your colder climate clothes is key! There are many way you could do this. I’ve seen people buy those storage benches and then place them at the end of the bed. If you don’t have much square footage to work with, then you can buy containers that go under your bed – I did this in college!

https://www.westelm.com/products/mid-century-storage-bench-h2622/?pkey=cbenches&isx=0.0.1011

Link to Under Bed Box

3. Drawers – Roll > Fold – I just did this with my sock drawer (that was originally jam packed and overflowing) and it worked WONDERS – now my drawer is only half full! I do this with cotton shirts and sweats too. It will really make a difference, especially if you’re one to have a hard time letting go of things! Drawer organizer work great too!

Drawer Organizer

4. Closet – Adding Another Bar – You can easily double up your closet space by adding a second bar! If you don’t want anything permanent, these expander bars have become really popular and I can see why! Longer items on the top, shorter items on the bottom.

Closet Rod Expander

**Special Tip** for Drawers + Closets – Add Lavender – By adding a small cotton or linen bag of dried lavender, you will keep the moths away and continue to have beautiful clothing! Not only is lavender a repellant, but it’s also antibacterial and anti-fungal.

Regulating SFR Investors?

by | Apr 10, 2018 | Foreclosures, Foreclosures/REOs, Jim's Take on the Market, Local Government, Real Estate Investing | 3 comments

Now that the big investors have virtually stopped buying homes, a legislator wants to find a way to regulate them.

Typically the term “institutional investor” refers to private investment firms that buy dozens of residential properties with the explicit aim of generating a steady income stream through rentals. Often they invest the money of wealthy individuals and public pension funds, like those established for California state workers and teachers.

The best example is Blackstone, a publicly traded Wall Street firm that barrelled into the country’s single-family home market in the depths of the Great Recession in the late 2000s. Through its residential investment-focused subsidiary, Invitation Homes, Blackstone is now the largest owner of single-family homes nationwide. In California, they own about 13,000 homes.

But firms such as Blackstone have stopped buying wide swaths of California homes. According to the real estate data firm ATTOM Data Solutions, which defines institutional investors as entities that buy 10 or more homes in a given year, institutional investors accounted for less than 2 percent of the state’s single-family home and condo sales in 2017.

That’s a pretty steep drop from as recently as 2012, when institutional investors accounted for about 7 percent of sales.

Why the decline? California no longer has a glut of cheap houses that can be easily gobbled up in foreclosure auctions. A sustained economic recovery and a lack of construction of new housing has sent housing prices skyrocketing. It’s now too expensive for institutional investors to buy lots of California homes. Blackstone’s Invitation Homes bought only 82 California houses last year.

(more…)

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