My Workbench

From the bottom left.

If you ever get famous enough that you might need a direct line – like a batphone – well, then you need to be prepared. A solid red push button will do just fine.

The San Diego Chicken – a legend, and sorry your left hand got clipped.

Rickey!  I was at the game when he got his 3,000th hit as a Padre!

Chick, the legend. He was like a father to all of us, talking about our favorite team.

Shaq & Kobe, the duo that won three championships and could have had three more.  Between them is the golf ball I used for my only hole-in-one on a legit course in 1994.

Above is my precious two daughters in a photo I took on Esfera Drive when we lived in La Costa.  Their beauty overwhelms the wicked full moon in the background.

It’s good to have a few screwdrivers.

Attitude Is Everything

The Klinge name badge, and my grandfather’s business card with home address and phone number!

Mark Kotsay and Phil Nevin both went to Cal State Fullerton (as did Donna and I), and both were the NCAA College Player of the Year.  And they both had a great experience with the Padres!

Trevor Hoffman, the Hall of Famer.  His kids went to Cathedral when mine did and he participated like a regular guy.  He was an incredible baseball player too. Back in the 1990s he threw 95+ gas and blew batters way. But then he developed the wicked change-up that allows him to get 601 saves.

Ken Caminiti is a lesson to us all.

You always need WD-40, DeWalt drill bits, and an extra Master lock. Count on it!

Emerging Markets

Hat tip to Rob Dawg who sent in this article that suggests Salinas ranks higher than San Diego and Ventura! I cannot find the 60 metro areas on the luxury list they talk about here so not sure about the overall rankings.

Coastal California has seen a surge of interest as buyers continue to expand out from urban hubs in Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Four Golden State beach spots jumped into the top 10 on the luxury segment of the second Wall Street Journal/realtor.com Emerging Housing Markets Index, released Tuesday.

They include Santa Maria and Santa Barbara, California, in the No. 1 spot; San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles and Arroyo Grande, California, at No. 5; and Oxnard, Thousand Oaks and Ventura, California, taking the ninth slot on the ranking, the data showed. Salinas, whose greater metro area includes the highly affluent Monterey area, also made the top 10, ranking No. 8 on the index.

These regions, all north of Los Angeles, offer space for affluent families to continue working and schooling from home without having to entirely pull up roots from California.

“In general, there’s a trend toward areas with less density,” Danielle Hale, chief economist for realtor.com, told Mansion Global. “Buyers are looking for places that are less crowded, where they can spread out and have privacy.”

The index, based on June housing data, uses a slate of indicators to assess the prosperity of emerging housing markets. Those include growth in housing supply and demand; median listing prices; unemployment; wages; a cost of living measure; small businesses; amenities and the share of foreign-born residents—who contribute to the vitality and diversity of the area. In its second edition, local real estate taxes have also been considered.

The 60 metropolitan areas reviewed within the luxury segment of the Emerging Housing Markets Index are ranked based on housing data for the top 1% of each market and the weighted sum of those metrics to determine which have the hottest high-end markets.

California has a mix of densities, from big cities to small towns, Ms. Hale continued, which gives affluent buyers options when they are looking for a new residence. That bodes well for markets in what have traditionally been second-home destinations, such as Santa Barbara’s extremely affluent Montecito and Malibu, but also attractive under-the-radar coastal locales like Oxnard.

“The top markets in the mainstream ranking tend to be not necessarily vacation-oriented spots,” Ms. Hale said of the overall, non-luxury rankings, of which Billings, Montana, came in No. 1 this time around. “That’s not true for luxury.”

The influx from more dense areas like Los Angeles is certainly evident in Santa Barbara, according to Billy Rose, co-founder and vice-chairman of The Agency.

“There are bidding wars on nearly every property,” he said. “Homes are being resold not very long after they were purchased for high premiums and agents are peddling pocket listings more than ever.”

https://www.realtor.com/research/july-2021-wsj-rdc-emerging-housing-markets-index/

Showings in Other States

Speaking of other states, how is the cooldown playing out elsewhere?  Nevada and Texas are holding up, but towards the end of May, Arizona and Florida started to taper like we did here – and Arizona has been sliding all selling season (maybe due to lack of inventory?):

California is at the 0% line today, which is the same amount of showings as in the first week of January. Arizona and Florida are well under that!

Tax Burden by State

If you are thinking about moving out-of-state, here’s another data point to consider:

This year, Uncle Sam took his cut of the past year’s earnings on May 17, slightly later than usual due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many taxpayers are undoubtedly wondering how this year’s Tax Day will affect their finances, as a lot of people are struggling financially as a result of the pandemic.

Since the tax code is so complicated and has rules based on individual household characteristics, it’s hard for the average person to tell how they will be impacted.

One simple ratio known as the “tax burden” helps cut through the confusion. Unlike tax rates, which vary widely based on an individual’s circumstances, tax burden measures the proportion of total personal income that residents pay toward state and local taxes. And it isn’t uniform across the U.S., either.

To determine the residents with the biggest tax burdens, WalletHub compared the 50 states across the three tax types of state tax burdens — property taxes, individual income taxes and sales and excise taxes — as a share of total personal income in the state.

Source: WalletHub

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-burden/20494

The Current State of the Market

I was asked, “Can you sum it up in one sentence?”

Yes – the inferior homes won’t be selling as fast, or for as much, as the superior homes.

There should be a gap – a sizable gap – between inferior and superior homes. But over the last year, it got squeezed and those who were selling inferior homes really made out nicely. Not only did they sell quickly, they didn’t have to discount much, if at all.

Those are the homes that will be sitting around longer as buyers catch their breath.

But the counts of active listings are so low that it won’t matter much if they creep up a bit:

Inventory Watch

It looks like the counts of active and pending listings are on their way back to normal.

The impact depends on the price point though. The low-end market is evaporating, and if we had a surge of 25-50 new listings, they probably wouldn’t last long:

On July 22, 2019, we had 94 active listings and 84 pending listings priced under $1,000,000.

Last year at this time we had 34 active listings and 73 pendings priced under $1,000,000.

Today we have 5 actives, and 16 pendings priced under $1,000,000.

Once a homeowner starts believing that their home is worth a million-something, it would take years to convince them otherwise.

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(more…)

NSDCC First-Half Report

The number of NSDCC first-half sales are 15% higher than the 2017-2019 average number of sales, and

THE MEDIAN SALES PRICE IS +32% YoY:

NSDCC Sales, Jan 1 to June 30

Year
# of 1H Sales
Median SP
# of Sales Over $2M
Over $2M/Total Sales %
2017
1,585
$1,225,000
292
18%
2018
1,411
$1,325,000
311
22%
2019
1,379
$1,300,000
298
22%
2020
1,145
$1,400,000
267
23%
2021
1,674
$1,850,000
737
44%

In 2009, there were 756 NSDCC sales for the entire year, and only 76 of those were over $2,000,000.

In 2021, we’ve had 737 sales over $2,000,000 in the first six months!

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