For those who didn’t see this in our newsletter, here are my guesses on market conditions:
A little better than usual for the rest of the year due to low mortgage rates.
A little worse than usual next year due to political/election distractions.
Would you like to receive our monthly newsletter? It is primarily written by Donna, so it has that going for it, and it also has Jim’s Hot Buys which is an on-going list of the best homes for sale by price and area!
My new listing of a lovely old-Spanish bungalow by the sea!
Enjoy the captivating lifestyle of this well-established beach community that’s off the beaten path – yet steps to the sand. Houses in the 500 block on this side of the street have sold for $5M to $6M in the last couple of years (2015 & 2018)!
There are videos in the vault that haven’t seen the light of day, so while I’m waiting for some escrows to close to show more recent videos, here’s one that demonstrates that prices have been flat lately. This sold for $880,000 in April, 2017, which was $21,000 over list, and the yard probably deserved it. But it would be about the same today:
This is one of the safer-looking areas along the Neptune bluff in Leucadia, due to the landslide in 1932 before the area was sub-divided. It gives this stretch some buffer!
This just closed for $3,075,000 full-price cash and 10-day escrow:
I had 100+ people attend the open house today, which is a great response.
One of the attendees asked how I did it, and I said that I’ve been here before. When the market gets soft, you have to have both a good-looking property AND an attractive price.
Most of the houses you see for sale has one or the other. This property has both.
When buyers see an attractive listing online, they come running. I literally inputted this listing onto the MLS about 8:30 this morning. At noon we had three couples waiting.
There’s nothing wrong with the market – it’s fine! What’s wrong is your price or condition.
Are you looking for a quiet and private culdesac home with white kitchen and new master bath?
Then check out my new listing in RP! This 4br/3ba, 2,394sf house is 900ft above sea level and gets gentle breezes daily! Open floor plan, 3 full bathrooms, low-maintenance yard, central air conditioning and whole-house fans. The house and yard are great…..but wait until you see the dazzling new master bath! Great curb appeal too – with putting green in front yard!
It was 14 years ago today that I started this blog on an early-Saturday morning using a Squarespace free site with the hope of providing evidence to back up my observations – and advice to clients – that the real estate market was in trouble.
I told Donna that I wanted to get in early before every realtor was doing a blog!
I left comments and links back to the blog on Calculated Risk and Ben’s blog, which were both attracting large audiences who wondered about the direction of real estate. I did get to meet both Bill (who came to my house) and Ben when he came through Carlsbad had a blog party at Pizza Port.
I agreed with the negative sentiment on real estate blogs – which was odd and unusual because readers had never heard a realtor says things like that before.
The L.A. Times picked up on it, thanks to Marc N., to whom I am eternally grateful. I drove reporter Peter Hongaround for a day, and he filed this article on the front page of the L.A. Times on April, 2, 2009:
An excerpt:
Nowadays, Klinge said, his blog gets about 2,000 unique visitors per day. About half his clients now come to him from the blog, Klinge said. He closed 43 house deals last year, he said, down from the 61 sales and purchases he brokered in his peak year of 2004, but enough to keep him in business when many agents have quit.
Lately, his videos have been picked up on Calculated Risk, an influential economics blog whose followers include Nobel laureate Paul Krugman. In one clip, the camera pans across the kitchen of a million-dollar fixer near Interstate 5. He pointedly notes the house’s proximity to the freeway, which he calls the “De-troit river.” There’s mold under the sink and a foot-sized hole in the drywall just above the floor.
On the off-chance the real estate agent who sold the place is watching, Klinge puts in a request: “I want you to put your mai tai down, go grab your shingle and send it in to the DRE [California Department of Real Estate] right now. You don’t deserve a job,” he says. “Everyone who was on that deal deserves to be fired, even the janitor at the escrow company. This is embarrassing, $1 million. Right now it’s listed at $575,000 and that’s probably optimistic.”
Along with the house wreck videos, the site includes statistics on local home sales totals and price declines. Klinge has skewered brokers on the blog, calling them names like “clown” and “cherry-picking cheerleader” for not admitting that the housing market had tumbled. But he said no one had gotten upset enough to retaliate.
The morning the article was published, my phone started ringing before 7am. One of the first callers was a producer for ABCNews Nightline, and he wanted to send a reporter to do a piece on the crash. By now the crash was in full swing, so I agreed.
A very nice reporter named Vicky Mabrey came for a day and a half, and then this 7-minute piece ran on Nightline (after being bumped by the Somali pirates):
Thankfully we had brought on Richard Morgan the same month, and he was instrumental in being to handle the flood of client inquires that followed.
Eventually Ben Bernanke and the Fed manipulated the market forces enough to pull us out of the death spiral well before it should have ended, but I did get in a few more videos before it was over:
This one has 22,000+ views and part of it made it into Giorgio’s movie:
The pot farm was a big favorite, with over 27,000 views (and the only time I dropped a Toker 2 reference):
My old 1966 Chevy truck was a co-star in many videos:
The negativity that ensued was brutal – and not just the nasty remarks on the blog and videos. One guy did videos of my videos, and then him and his cronies bad-mouthed me as a realtor on their youtube site. Another guy was making comments on other blogs in my name, and one agent went to my own clients and bad-mouthed me to their face – and it cost me a $1.5M listing.
But I wouldn’t change a thing – it’s been a blast, and extremely positive otherwise!
Old friend Jeremiah said last week that he misses the old renegade Jim the Realtor, and correctly guessed that today’s overly-sensitive society probably couldn’t handle the truth. I agreed, and said all that is left for me is to be a great realtor and cater to those affluent folks who can participate in this high-level game.
A guy yesterday said he was going to wait-and-see how the drone bombings in Saudi Arabia are going to affect the market. But isn’t there always going to be something?
Won’t there always be a headline that makes you wonder?
Regardless of what actually does happen, the government is much more involved with interfering with the natural market forces, so the likelihood of dramatic swings is remote.
We used the Compass Concierge to pay for improvements at our new listing in Auberge just for the convenience. It meant that the seller didn’t have to bother with arranging and paying contractors – we took care of that for him, and Compass will get reimbursed out of the proceeds at closing.
The program has become very popular, and was just expanded:
Concierge Approval Guidelines for Residential Resales:
For new residential resale listings under $3 million, Concierge requests up to $150,000 are guaranteed to be approved if:
(a) the request is 5% or less of the list price (up from the previous 3%);
(b) the equity in the home is at least 2x the budgeted Concierge amount; and
(c) the home will be ready to list within 3 months of when Concierge starts paying vendors.
It makes sense to spruce up a home before putting it on the market, but it also works after we find the buyer because we can repair/improve/customize the home to their needs to help justify them paying a higher sales price.
The program is helping to grow the Compass brand too.
There are now 650 Compass agents in San Diego County, with six main offices and several satellite locations too. Here’s a look at the new office downtown:
"Jim and Donna Klinge are by far the most professional, personable and responsive realtors I have ever worked with. They provide VIP concierge level service in every area of the process of selling your home. My home was marketed so successfully that we received an offer the day after our first and only open house. Thanks to Jim's pricing and negotiating, our house is now the highest sold in our community... more "
5.0/5.0
by Ann Romanello
305973
"Jim educated us, helped us find the perfect house, and then negotiated us a great deal. I would hate to be sitting across the negotiating table from ... more "
5.0/5.0
by user6611938
332633
"Jim is thorough and will be brutally honest about the homes he shows you. He provides great service and follows through until the very end and even ... more "
5.0/5.0
by Melanie
351390
"I highly recommend Jim as a buyer’s agent. Working with Jim, we closed this week on a San Diego condo. Jim prepared a list of comparable sales to ... more "
