Little Town Blues
Wed, Sep 1st 2010 at 10:06 am
I admit it, I sometimes feel intimidated by my fellow Homescopers. They impress and wow me with a lot of sale statistics on their particular markets which are rather overwhelming. I, on the other hand, belong to a Multiple Listing Service that represents only about 700 real estate agents. At any given time, this service has approximately 1533 active residential listings in its data base. Geographically it spans the areas of North Lake Tahoe that include Placer County and some of El Dorado County, all the way to Donner Summit, Truckee, Martis Valley, Plumas and Sierra Counties.
Okay, so now I have provided the reader with some stats for the day.
People ask me “how is the market up there?” Well, that is a difficult question to answer. Our market is about 50% full time (people who live and work here) and 50% resort. Our resort market is made up of some very expensive second homes and some not so expensive homes. Here is the skinny on these markets and how they are doing — sans statistics.
The full time market is still quite slow — at least in the area of buy up customers. People still seem concerned about whether or not they will have a job next month and therefore are not thinking of expanding the size of their homes but only trying to hang onto what they have. The one area where that is different is in the lower end or the first time buyer strata. If you are looking for a home that is priced under $350K and is in one of the neighborhoods that is considered full-time, you will have a lot of competition.
The second home or resort market should be, as I said, bifurcated into 2 areas. The luxury market and the reasonable market. To simplify things, the reasonable market would be homes that are priced under $800K. These homes are moving and they are moving well — as long as they are priced right and perceived as a value. In particular the Tahoe Donner subdivision, with all of its amenities, is the most popular area and the one area that, throughout all of this market downturn, has consistently sold properties.
So there is the long and short of it, for those of us who just want an overall view. More real hard statistics later in the month.
Written by kappy mann // Leave a Comment
Oakland Habitat Build
Tue, Aug 31st 2010 at 12:35 pm
I participated at a Habitat for Humanity Build at Edes Avenue in Oakaland last week with about twenty-five volunteers, many from Coldwell Banker. There are more than 1,500 Habitat chapters in the US, the Edes Avenue site is managed by Habitat East Bay with a mission is to provide environmentally sustainable homes for families with limitied income.
The Coldwell Banker volunteers worked alongside independent volunteers. Among them an empty-nester couple from Livermore who told me they volunteer weekly, a digital art designer who told me she’s always wanted to volunteer for Habitat so she was granted a day off work at Lucas Films to help finish the homes.
Led by six Habitat leaders, we were asked to choose which task we’d like to work on. Most of the fifty four homes at Edes have been completed so our choices were finish details like closet shelving, baseboards, hand rails and spackling and painting.
In addition to learning how to use a chop saw I learned a few other great things about Habitat for Humanity.
—Qualifying families contribute 500 hours of “sweat equity”
—Habitat is giving more attention to acquiring and rehabilitating vacant, foreclosed homes. Wall Street Journal July 2, 2010
—Habitat worked with the Center for Creative Land Recycling transforming an abandoned auto salvage yard into a Leed Certified neighborhood of environmentally sustainable homes.
Sign up to Volunteer!
Written by Julie Bartlett // Leave a Comment
36 Hours in Sonoma County (is not enough!)
Fri, Aug 27th 2010 at 3:26 pm
I am an avid New York Times reader, and have the print newspaper delivered to my small farm in Sonoma County. It used to be a great thrill to walk down to the street and grab the morning’s paper after feeding the horses. Now I read the Times on my iPhone and iPad, and am scaling back the print subscription to the weekends only. It seems less unusual that I can access an urban paper in a rural environment. But that’s ok, I still like being able to read and share articles with friends, family and clients.
So this morning I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Travel section of today’s New York Times features our very own Sonoma County, and offers some apt comparisons of our end of the wine country to our very touristy cousin, Napa, to the east, as well as a pretty diverse To Do list.
IF you’re looking for a chocolate pinot noir sauce, keep driving. The rustic region of Sonoma County may be a wine lovers’ playground, but it lacks many of the touristy trappings of its more upscale and better-known neighbor, Napa.
Lacking touristy trappings is fine by me, and it takes a lot longer than 36 hours to discover everything there is to do here! (But I do think you can find chocolate pinot noir sauce, just don’t tell anyone!)
Written by Pam Buda // Leave a Comment
Short Sale & Bankruptcy – What do YOU think?
Fri, Aug 27th 2010 at 12:50 pm
We value your opinion, reader so we would love to hear what you think about this:
I was at an office meeting this week and one of the agents described the following scenario in one of his short sale escrows — true story. The agent was representing the seller of a home which was in escrow as a short sale that had been approved by the seller and the bank which held the note. The buyer was approved and ready to close on the house when about 3 days from closing the sellers filed bankruptcy. The sale was frozen which means that the buyer can’t buy and the seller can’t sell and, of course, the agents cannot collect their commissions on the deal that they put together.
The question from the agent at the meeting was should they file to become one of the vendors that the bankruptcy court orders paid? My answer was yes, of course. The agent had provided the service that was contracted for. He had brought a bonafide offer that was approved by the seller and their bank. The agent did what was contracted for — so he should be paid. What do you think?
Also, I was wondering what you might think of this scenario in general. The seller was able to stay in this house without making a mortgage payment for about 1 year. Now that the situation has changed and they have filed bankruptcy, more than likely they will be able to stay in the house for another 6-12 months without paying a mortgage. Yes, the bankruptcy will destroy the sellers’ credit but not paying your mortgage for a year probably had a similar affect on the credit too.
If someone out there has an opinion on either of these issues, I would like to hear it.
Written by admin // Leave a Comment