Homescopes

Downtown Los Altos is hosting its annual New Year’s Fun Run at 9:00 a.m.  The 5K race/walk/stroll starts at the corner of Main and State streets and is a three and a half loop through the streets of downtown Los Altos.  No registration is required and there will be free refreshments (usually coffee cake, bananas, oranges, water and hot coffee).  Dogs are welcome, but bikes are not. 

I hope to see you there!

Pictures below are from last year’s run:

Before the run - Bear (our dog) won!

The race/walk/stroll begins!

The initial sprint - notice, none of my family is near the front.

Got a little red postcard in my office mail box yesterday from respected local structural pest inspectors, Premier Termite & Construction.  I called owner, Kevin Palmer, to see if it was okay that I post his special offer so that you can benefit from this also.

Premier is offering pest inspections for $50 off the normal price between now and May 31, 2009.  Mention “special” when booking your inspection.  Normal price for a single family home (under 3,000 square feet) is $275; regular charge for condos and townhouses is $200.

Premier is based here on the San Mateo County coastside (Half Moon Bay), and works throughout San Mateo County and some outlying San Francisco neighborhoods.  They’ve been in business for 20 years.

If you find a suspicious looking creepy crawlie while you’re doing your winter clean up, give Kevin a call and he can probably tell you what it is.  650-726-7756.

Related articles:

Munch, Munch, Munch:  Coastside Firms interrupt bugs’ lunch by Armadillosoft.com

Structural pest control treatment options:  Coastside Real Estate and Lifestyles post 2/7/2008

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I found this via Laurie Manny who tweets I follow on Twitter. It comes from an Uncle Jay Explains on YouTube.

Not surprisingly, sales were light during the week of December 22 through 28 in our area of the south Santa Clara County towns of Morgan Hill, San Martin and Gilroy.  Last week there were 16 residences that went from active to pending status - down from 39 sales the previous week.  Of these, 13 were single family homes and 3 were townhouses/condominiums. 

Of these sales, the list price ranges were:

Below $200,000 = 1 sale (6% of total)

$200,000 - $500,000 = 11 sales (69% of total)

$500,000 - $800,000 = 2 sales (13% of total)

$800,000 - $1,200,000 = 1 sale (6% of total)

$1,200,000 - $2,000,000 = 1 sale (6% of total)

As of December 28, 2008, there are 621 residential (single family homes and condos) listings active on the market in Morgan Hill, San Martin and Gilroy, and 228 pending residential listings.  Therefore, 27% of the total listings are pending under contract as of this date, still a healthy number for this time of year.  Many of the pendings are short sales and therefore take a long time to close.  This could keep our pending percentage up artificially high. 

Tune in next week for an update on the number of sales in South Santa Clara County!

This is a weekly feature to keep you informed about the real estate happenings in Yountville. Besides just real estate info, I hope to give the readers of my blog some insight into the heart of Yountville using a variety of media including photos, tidbits, gossip and other fun things. If this is of interest to you, I would love hearing from you. If there are other cities here in the Napa Valley, such as St. Helena or Calistoga, you would like this feature expanded to, let me know.

STATS FOR LAST 7 DAYS

new listings 1, sale pendings 0, sold 2, expired 0, withdrawn 1

new listing              6585 Oak Leaf Court, $550,000, 2 br 1 ba, 768 SF

new pending         

new sold                  1907 Vintner Court, $665,000, 3 br 2 ba, 1,384 SF

                          12 Tallent Lane, $2,800,000, 4 br 4 ba, 3,600 SF 1.01 acres

new expired                                                

withdrawn               1974 Adams Street, $1,295,739, 3 br 2.5 ba, 2,195 SF

AVERAGE PRICES, DAYS ON MARKET                  

current listings for sale    20   avg price $1,041,597 avg days on market 158

current sale pendings        

sold in last 6 months           11    avg price $924,241 avg days on market 160

          Facts, numbers, SF from BAREIS and/or Napa County

                     tax records,  accuracy is not guaranteed

Included here in its entirety, is the December 25th article in the Yountville Sun by its Editor, Sharon Stensaas. It truely gives one the sense why many come here to be satiated and entertained, but also to live here in this magically little town. Enjoy.

As visitor-dependent Napa Valley businesses brace for the full effects of the “slow sea­son,” which traditionally runs from December through February and into March, local businesspeople are sharing concerns that this off season will be considerably more “off” than usual because of the nation’s economic crisis.
But read some of the public­ity currently being circulated about Yountville, and it would seem this little village is posi­tioned to fare better than most in the weeks and months ahead. Yountville looks good in print.
Last week The Earth Times released a story on Business Wire with the headline “Oasis in an Economic Downtown: Napa Valley’s Yountville Sports Silver Lining With Impressive Stats on Tourism; Estimated $100 Million in New Construction and Bo)ost in Room Rates.”
Earth Times, a news website that publishes reports on a wide variety of topics, opened its Yountville story as follows, “As the economy sizzles into the sea, one city in Northern California is bucking the tourism trend with impressive results. As top destinations are struggling with falling occu­pancy and average daily room rates, this city located 55 miles north of San Francisco posted a $25,000 increase in transient occupancy tax revenue (TOT) for July/August ‘08, annual 8.3 percent gain in average daily room rates and annualized occupancy rate of 75.6 percent which represents a miniscule 0.4 percent drop!”
It doesn’t stop there.
“In these trying times, scur­rying for the competitive tourism dollar has translated into transport promotions, rock bottom room rates and added-value attractions driving most destinations. While there are always off-season deals to be had throughout Napa Valley and Yountville, this culinary bastion of just four square miles has quietly evolved into a textbook study of recession-proof marketing ..
“With nine hotels and six coveted Michelin stars, the town’s silver lining is due to a variety of factors, from careful master planned growth to a strong loyal. base of clientele and solid mix of group/leisure business. Add to that an esti­mated $100 million in new construction of hotels, restau­rants and renovations in 2008/2009, a recent Stardard & Poor’s AA+ rating (July /2008) due to strong local tourism ­based economy, exceptionally strong financial performance and dedicated revenue stream from the town’s TOT, and the message is clear: This is the Little Town that Could.”
Yountville’s key survival techniques were identified as “an aggressive marketing com­munications program posi­tioning Yountville as the West Coast’s top epicurean and favorable ‘green touring’ option linking all visitor assets via walking or biking.”
Intervicewed by Earth News for the story were Mayor Cindy Saucerman, Town Manager Steve Rogers and Villagio Inri’s Director of Sales and Marketing Steve Andrews.
If Yountville is being seen as green, it is about to get even greener in the New Year, with the planned opening of the Bardessono inn on February 2.
While these 62 inn units are yet to be experienced first­hand, the application of green features have already attracted ink in a number of building industry publications, and the public relations firm handling the property is positioning it as “Amedca’s Greenest Luxury Hotel.”
Aspiring to achieve Platinum LEED Certification for the inn, eco-developer Phil Sherburne, as his publicity describes him, wants to erase the notion that being green involves “wearing a sack-cloth coat.” His concept is that the highly personal nature of Bardessono hospitality may be nurturing and restorative.
The property will get approximately half of its electricity from a 200-kilowatt photovoltaic solar system dis­cretely mounted and con­cealed on the inn’s flat-topped roofs.
To heat and cool guest rooms as well as the property’s domestic water supply, a sys­tem of 82, 300-foot geothermal wells were drilled to work with a specially developed ground source heat pump system.
“Up-cycled” materials are being incorporated throughout the new inn, and they include recycled steel, green glass tiles and fly ash concrete. (Fly ash, a glass-like powder recovered from gases created by goal ­fired electric power genera­tion, is a recyclable material often ued as a replacement for Portland cement.)
Locally-sourced and sal­vaged Monterey Cypress, Walnut, Redwood, Eucalyptus and California Bay Laurel wood is being used for every­thing from siding and ceiling beams to furniture and bath­room flooring.
The hotel’s entry features local stone salvaged and recut from the Bardessono family’s original homestead.
Meanwhile, Thomas Keller’s name and stellar repu­tation on the international stage of culinary arts, continue to generate so much media the Yountville Chamber of Commerce suspended its clip­ping service several years ago because it couldn’t afford to pay for the constant blizzard of clippings Keller generated with a Yountville mention. (A clipping service tracks mentions of a specific word or words for its clients by clip­ping the stories bearing those words from thousands of pub­lications of all types from around the globe. Clients gen­erally are charged a basic fee as well as a certain amount for each clip containing the word or words it has specified.)
And Keller is developing his own green profile. In May he will be honored by the Monterey Bay Aquarium with the Conservation Leadership Award at the Cooking for Solutions celebration for his efforts in promoting food prac­tices that protect the health of the ocean and the soil.
And more local publicity is sure to come from the Keller organization next month, when French Laundry sous chef Tim Hollingsworth goes to Lyon, France, as the first American to compete in the prestigious Bocuse d’Or World Cuisine Contest.
Whether this proliferation of publicity will actually pro­pel paying customers into local inns, restaurants, galleries, tasting rooms and shops remains to be seen, but tiny Yountville is generating more than its proportionate share of industry ink.

I have written two posts about how most loan modifications programs will not work and the other. Even if they did work, they would be extremely unfair as the “help” would more likely go to people who made NO cash down payment at purchase as opposed to people who actually used their own cash to buy a house. I have been especailly critical of government efforts to get involved in loan modifications which in my opinion are best left to the borrower and the lender to work out.

Tom Royce of Real estate Bloggers indicates the federal Hope for Homeowners program has taken 312 applications - 312 - that’s like 3.5 applications a day in the entire country since the program was first instituted. Our brilliant Washington DC leaders have allocated $300 BILLION dollars for this program - are you kidding me? This is a total boondoggle. Tom contrasts this government program with a private program Hope Now that has helped 2.2 MILLION homeowners.

Does anybody in Washington pay attention?

I hope Obama comes up with a better plan but I fear the Washington DC culture is so corrupt - our elected representatives care more for looking good in front of the TVs and spreading taxpayer cash around to their cronies - that I have my doubts.

Lower priced listings sold robustly in our area of the south Santa Clara County towns of Morgan Hill, San Martin and Gilroy.  Last week there were 39 residences that went from active to pending status.  Of these, 37 were single family homes and 2 were townhouses/condominiums.  The number of active listings in our area was reduced by 50 since last week!  Many sellers choose to remove their listings from active status during the winter holiday season.

Of these sales, the list price ranges were:

$200,000 - $500,000 = 28 sales (72% of total)

$500,000 - $800,000 = 6 sales (15% of total)

$800,000 - $1,200,000 = 4 sales (10% of total)

$1,200,000 - $2,000,000 = 0 sales

over $2,000,000 = 1 sale (3% of total)

As of December 21, 2008, there are 638 residential listings active on the market in Morgan Hill, San Martin and Gilroy - a drop of 50 active listing since last week, and 233 pending residential listings.  Therefore, 27% of the total listings are pending under contract as of this date, still a healthy number for this time of year.  Many of the pendings are short sales and therefore take a long time to close.  This could keep our pending percentage up artificially high. 

Tune in next week for an update on the number of sales in South Santa Clara County!

Montara average and median home prices have consistently trended up over the last ten years. That’s as far back as the MLS data will go. Annual sales volume has also gone up…that is, until 2008. Why?

In my opinion, the top reasons are: a market correction that was first noticed in weaker markets in Q4-2006, fewer qualified buyers due to tighter lending qualifications, credit markets unstability, and lack of understanding of available loan products. Add California’s economic woes creating jobs uncertainty and the homeowners who have Option ARMS with a reset date coming in 2009 to this. (Look for an upcoming post on why homeowners with these loans will affect you.)

Overall, Montara has not taken the hit of other San Mateo County and California areas because there have been qualified buyers out there who want to live here and pay to do so. Median sales prices have risen most years since 1998 and are now in the $830K range. Average sales prices have also risen most years since 1998. 2008 average sales price for Montara single family homes to date is $926,800.

However, the higher price points have already begun to adjust. For example, a 3rd Street home was listed for $1,299,000 and sold for $1,150,000 in Oct 08 (the last sale in Montara). A Cedar Street home started out at $1,200,000 in July 2007 and sold for $998,000 in July 2008. Looking at the expireds, cancels, and price reductions in the last two months confirms the trend is continuing. Montara’s 2008 entry level price points in the $600K-$800K range have sales prices more in line with the list price so far; we’ll see what happens. Q4 usually quiets down, but the higher inventory may be causing more sellers to rethink strategies.

2008 Median sold prices by Quarter:

* Q1 - $740,000
* Q2 - $830,000
* Q3 - $847,500

# of closed sales in 2008 - 15
($599K to 2.6Million Sold prices)
# of available homes - “Active” in MLS - currently - 20
($375K to 4.5Million)
# of available lots - 9 ($199K to $4.5Million)

Don’t let the average and median prices fool you…Montara is an eclectic community that offers a wide range of price points. One sale can alter the numbers significantly. Since newspapers report median and average numbers, that is why I will include those numbers in these neighborhood posts. Search Montara homes to see all the price ranges and home styles.

Note: Sorry for not posting in a while. Busy times plus working on a website glitch. I’m working from the html page, not the editor (more difficult for a non-techie, but wanted to get the information out to you. If something doesn’t show at your end, please notify me so I can bring it to my webmaster’s attention. Thanks for reading and for your patience!

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There are 42 homes currently priced under $300,000 in East Palo Alto and east Menlo Park.

Here is list of homes and asking prices.

Most of these homes are REO or short sale foreclosures.

Lenders are anxious to get these homes sold and “off their books”.