Archive for August, 2008
August 21, 2008
Like Christina, I’ve been playing with the new neighborhood pages as well—there’s a ton of interesting information for buyers, sellers, and curious owners like myself who like to know how much their property is worth in the current market.
One of the most interesting features to me is the graph that is meant to help buyers decide if they should wait for a price reduction, or bid now. It’s a bit complicated to follow, but once you figure it out, it really gives an insider’s view of how the market is working in a particular area.
The graph to the right is for the 90027 area. The black bars represent homes that sold without any price reductions. You can see that 5 houses listed in the past 2 weeks have already sold – no reductions. About another 14 sold within 16-45 days without lowering their prices, and about another 16 patient sellers got full asking price by waiting somewhere between 46-90 days for the right offer.
At the other end of the spectrum, 7-8 houses that have been on the market 120+ days have also had four or more price reductions (the dark blue bars). But the majority of those sitting on the market have still only had one price reduction (red bar). So for the 90027, it looks like houses are still moving without dropping the price.
From other info on the neighborhood page, though, you can see another interesting trend—the current median listing price for the 93 homes on the market is $1.399, but the current median selling price is $872,000. That’s a big difference—and it looks like buyers are coming in with low offers even without the official price drops. The median per-square-foot listing price in the area is $564 for houses, and the median selling price is $472. So armed with that data, a buyer can definitely get a clear picture of what an acceptable bid is right now in the area. And even though houses do seem to be selling, that offer may be considerably lower than the asking price.
August 21, 2008
Last time I wrote a post, I took a look at some of the information that Redfin’s neighborhood pages yielded in the LAX area. I’ll now be covering real estate for Woodland Hills and its surrounding communities.
I thought I’d familiarize myself with my new area and (conveniently) bring you along for the ride.
First, a very brief history. I did a little investigating and found out that Woodland Hills is the site where the treaty to end the Mexican War was signed. This event allowed California to become our 31st state. (Who knew?)
Let’s take a look at the 91367 zip code, the part of Woodland Hills that sits north of Ventura Boulevard and is generally more affordable than “south of the Boulevard.” According to our neighborhood pages, the most expensive home in the area is $4,800,000 (yikes!) and the least expensive home is $175,000.
The current average listed price per square foot is $342, while the average sold price per square foot is $302.
Just for kicks, let’s also look at the DQ News stats. Year-over-year prices for single-family homes have dropped 26.5% for July from 2007 to 2008. But their median price is at $319 a square foot for July in the 91367 zip code.
Is anyone here shopping in this area? If so, drop a line and let me know if you’re looking for specific information. I’ll do my best to accommodate where possible.
August 21, 2008
The LA Times reports today on Griffith Van Griffith—the great-grandson of the man who donated the land for Griffith Park to the city. Aside from having a great name, Griffith also has a sound social conscious, and considers himself and his family as stewards for the park’s well-being. That’s why he’s headed to City Hall today to lobby for the green space to be designated as a historic-cultural monument, which would give it protection against future development. As the Times reports:
At 4,218 acres, Griffith Park would be the largest such monument in the country. Griffith said the designation is needed to prevent commercial developments similar to those briefly proposed by city officials in a 2005 master plan.
That plan, which cost the city $400,000, included aerial trams, parking structures and revenue-generators, including restaurants and lodging, to the horror of some Griffith Park boosters. The city soon scrapped it.
But Griffith’s proposal has its skeptics, including City Council member Tom LaBonge—who is known as a big supporter of the park. LaBonge fears the designation will interfere with his own hopes for infrastructure upgrades someday in the future when the city actually has cash for such things:
“This is a park, not a preserve,” said LaBonge, who sports a well-worn white Dodgers sweat shirt and totes a football when he hikes the park’s Charlie Turner Trail nearly every day at sunrise.
“I’m all for designation of buildings and spots of significance in the park, but right here?” LaBonge asked, circling his finger over the dirt trail path one Friday morning, “Would it be something to designate? I’m not sure.”
The article also has a great photo gallery of the park and the Griffith family. Worth checking out.
August 20, 2008
Trees need to be trimmed, and large trees are expensive to trim. Further, large trees can usually only be trimmed by a crew using expensive equipment. Large trees with diseases or infestations require expensive care. Established neighborhoods, like those in Glendale and Pasadena, have lots of homes with mature landscaping and large trees.
These facts hit me only after I moved into my current home, and I offer them to the Redfin Forum first time home buyer who posted here and asked for advice about “the complete financial picture of home ownership.” There are plenty of replies dealing with the current market, taxes, insurance, and investment formulas, so check those out. I’m giving advice here only on the facts I learned above. Careful readers have probably already noted that the word ‘expensive’ appears in each of the first three sentences of this post.
A huge camphor tree, whose trunk took up the width of the parkway, offered plenty of morning shade in the front yard of our first home. Of course, parkway trees in Glendale are a city responsibility, so the branches never concerned us.
We sold that home (story for another time), and our current home has plenty of afternoon shade, but it comes from four large trees in our back yard.
Shortly after we bought the house, my husband and I invited a contractor friend to evaluate the driveway and garage. I remember our friend commenting on the trees: he said he liked to tell clients that even Bill Gates couldn’t buy a mature shade tree planted in just the right spot – it had to have been there for decades.
Perhaps Bill Gates couldn’t buy the tree, but he could certainly afford to have it trimmed as often as needed. Within a year, extended branches on two of the trees, which the previous owners had ignored, were encroaching on the open space in our yard. Both trees are at least 30 feet high, and some branches were weighed down almost to the ground. The total trimming bill, as I recall (and this was back in the year 2000) was $750 for all four trees, and yes, I think I did shop around.
When the crew finished I looked at the bare upper branches of two of the trees and wondered if they would ever thrive again. But Brazilian Pepper trees (classified as a weed in Florida, I learned) grow back quite quickly, and within two years we called for estimates again.
This time around, we were also concerned about the white sticky weblike material draped over much of the leaves, and the small gnat-like white insects flying around our faces in the back yard. This was a whitefly infestation, we were told, and we got a referral to an agricultural specialist. The total bill for tree injections (which actually did solve the problem and it has been at least 6 years now) was over $300. Of course we paid for another round of tree trimming at that time.
There was another round after that. And now I think we need to call for estimates again. I’ll have more warnings for first time home buyers about landscaping and tree issues in upcoming posts. For today, I’ll conclude: be sure to add in the costs of maintaining the living structures on your property as well as the built ones.
August 20, 2008
At last, some positive news in the monthly sales numbers: July home sales were up year over year for the first time since 2005, rising to their highest level in more than a year. From the DataQuick news release:
A total of 20,329 new and resale houses and condos sold in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties last month. That was up 16.7 percent from 17,424 the previous month and up 13.8 percent from 17,867 for July a year ago, according to San Diego-based MDA DataQuick.
Last month’s sales count was the highest since 21,856 homes were sold in March 2007, though it still fell 23 percent short of the average July sales total since 1988, when MDA DataQuick’s statistics begin. From last September through June, sales for each month were at an all-time low for that particular calendar month, with the exception of April which was the next lowest. Last month’s sales total was the first since September 2005 to rise above the year-ago level.
“What we’re looking at is a fire sale of properties in newer affordable neighborhoods that were bought or refinanced near the price peak with lousy mortgages. What we’re still not seeing is this level of distress spreading to more expensive or established neighborhoods,” said John Walsh, MDA DataQuick president.
The L.A. Times story notes that Los Angeles was the only county whose sales were down from last July.
Los Angeles County, the one exception to the trend, hasn’t been hit as hard by foreclosures and has relatively fewer discounted homes for sale. That’s probably why it saw a slight decline in sales instead of the increase seen in neighboring counties, said John Karevoll, MDA DataQuick’s chief analyst.
Does this mean we’ve hit a bottom? Likely not; most economists think prices will fall further. But when people think the price is right, they’ll buy.
G.U. Krueger, an economist with Irvine-based real estate advisory firm IHP Capital Partners, said the uptick was evidence that the “price mechanism is working” — that is, lower prices are bringing buyers back into the market.
But he and other experts believe that prices will take months to hit bottom, citing the wave of foreclosures and the tightening of lending standards because of the continuing credit crunch.
“Higher sales are great, but foreclosures are still high and people need to appreciate that more discounts may be coming,” Krueger said.
But some people never learn. The speculators are still out there. From the L.A. Times story:
For bargain hunters like Dale Smet of Santa Clarita, the timing is perfect.
“I’ve been waiting for this market,” he said.
Smet, who works in marketing for Southern California Gas Co., said he carefully conserved an equity line of credit during the boom years, which he tapped to pay $300,000 cash last month for two foreclosed condos near his house. And that was after being outbid on a handful of other bank-owned homes in the Santa Clarita area.
After a 15-day escrow, Smet did the necessary cosmetic repairs himself and said he had no trouble finding renters willing to pay about $1,500 a month for each unit. He hopes eventually to take a first mortgage on each with monthly payments that he figures would be less than his rental income.
“This isn’t risk free. But I don’t care if home prices go down,” Smet said. “I’ll just buy more.”
Sigh.
Recent Redfin posts:
My Favorite Listings Sold or Off Market in Pasadena 91107
The New Bailout Plan: Donald Trump
Why My Sale Price Wasn’t Really My Sale Price
August 18, 2008
Home sale trends in East Pasadena are plainer than the signs in today’s Zen Monday entry on Pasadena Daily Photo. The photograph looks like it was taken in the foothills of zip code 91107, and its No Parking signs point outward in front of a fenced-off empty parking lot.
Four buyers can now park in front of zip code 91107 homes I’ve tracked on Redfin’s newly upgraded Favorites page. Two other sellers are still waiting to park somewhere else.
The change in status of my Redfin Favorites caused by these four buyers is now easier to track, and the Favorites page is easier to use. Individual listings can be expanded without opening a new window.
If you store Redfin email updates on neighborhood listings, you can also find original listing prices on sold properties (these disappear from the MLS when the property is sold). Here’s my report:
Six Pasadena 91107 listings I featured in previous posts have sold or gone off market, while 5 are still active.
SOLD:
1265 Michillinda Ave.
$750,000 (7/30/08)
Listing price: $769,000 (6/5/08)
1385 Rexford Avenue
$634,000 (7/9/08)
Listing price: $689,000 (5/13/08)
1475 Riviera Drive
$620,000 (6/20/08)
Listing price: $689,000 (6/6/08 – came back on the market after falling out of escrow)
3710 New Haven Road
$820,000 (7/18/08)
Listing price $888,000 (6/4/08 – came back on the market after falling out of escrow)
OFF MARKET:
930 Crestview Drive
Listed at $750,000 and reduced to $725,000 before going off the market.
620 Mercedes Avenue
Listed at $620,000, eventually reduced to $565,000. The last email I received on this property showed its status as “contingent,” however, no sale appears to have taken place and it is now off the market.
ACTIVE:
I list two of the five remaining favorites below. The first one is priced at almost $100 less per square foot than all the others. The second is the most expensive of the five.
3690 Mayfair Drive
$625,000
3 bed/2 bath
1,750 sq.ft.
$357 per sq.ft.
On Redfin 80 days
No photos of this house are available.
1155 Rexford Drive
$800,000
3 bed/2 bath
1,698 sq.ft.
$471 per sq.ft.
On Redfin 73 days
This is advertised as a view home and a short sale subject to lender approval. Since the last sale price is $550,000 (2003), it appears the sellers took out their bubble equity.
August 18, 2008
Not long ago, we heard that Ed McMahon was close to losing his Beverly Hills mansion to 
foreclosure. Somehow, this 85-year-old man who was once reputed to be worth $200 million was unable to make the payments on his house. His agent blamed the problem on a neck injury that rendered him unable to work for 18 months, which says that McMahon has so completely squandered his fortune that he is forced to bring home the bacon into his mid-80s.
But McMahon’s celebrity was on his side. After a deal for the house — listed at $4.6 million — fell through at the last minute, McMahon’s real estate agent, Alex Davis of Alex Davis Estates, published this letter in the Los Angeles MLS Open House Guide, pleading for someone to help out the poor guy before his house and belongings got taken away from him.
Never one to shy away from publicity, Donald Trump announced last week that he would buy McMahon’s house and lease it back to him. The deal will be a short sale, meaning that the lender (Countrywide) will have to accept less than what is owed on the house to avoid the hassle of foreclosure.
One question: Will McMahon be able to make his rent payments? He’s being sued by at least two lenders, who claim he owes them $250,000 and $275,000, respectively. He also owes American Express about $750,000. Thankfully, Trump doesn’t need the money, but we’d hate to see him have to evict McMahon in a year or two.
For his part, McMahon is at least honest about what got him into this mess. “If you spend more money than you make, you know what happens,” he told Larry King in a June interview on CNN. Yes, but not everyone can use their fame to attract a rich benefactor to bail them out.
August 18, 2008
Sunday morning, my husband and I decided to venture out to West L.A. to see a movie at The Landmark, on Pico Boulevard (“Tell No One” — a French-language thriller/love story). We left early to find a nearby cafe to read the paper and eat breakfast.
We stumbled upon the Colony Cafe on Pico, a cute little place with a neat, clean patio with ceiling fans. While my husband ate his peanut butter, jelly and banana panini and I ate my steelcut oats, a nearby customer asked to look at our real estate classifieds. I asked him what he was in the market for.
He said he was looking for a house in Santa Monica, where he says he has been watching prices come down since 2006, when he sold the condo he’d owned for five years for “more money than he’d ever dreamed of.” He’s been renting and sitting on that pile of cash, waiting for prices to come down to where he thinks they should be. “I’ve been patient,” he said.
He introduced himself as Ari. His observations: Some sellers are smart and getting ahead of the market by pricing their properties at around $700 to $750 per square foot. But too many have their places listed at between $900 and $1,100 per foot. Sooner or later, he said, all the prices have to come down. He expects to eventually be able to pick something up for around $550 per square foot.
When does he think he’ll get his price? Six to nine months from now, he said. His wife, who was there with their two (very cute) preschoolers, said something like she’d believe that when she saw it; clearly she’s ready to move.
Didn’t he think there were tons of people just like him, waiting on the sidelines to pounce on a deal? “Not that many,” he said. (That pile of cash must be pretty big.)
Of course, I told Ari about Redfin and what a great resource it would be for him. “Is it better than ZipRealty?” he asked. My husband jumped in and said he thought it was. Good man! So, Ari, if you’re reading this, hello; thanks for the blog-post fodder; hope you like Redfin; and good luck with your home search.
Oh, and I decided to look up Redfin’s Santa Monica neighborhood stats to see how accurate your observations were. I’m impressed. The most recent data shows Santa Monica homes selling for a median of $779 per foot, with the median listing price at $923.
For everyone else: If you go to redfin.com, enter a ZIP or neighborhood, and click on “View [Your Neighborhood's] Inventory and Pricing Trends,” you’ll soon be as knowledgeable about your nabe as Ari is about his.
Recent Redfin posts:
LAX Neighborhood Pages are Here: Whoo Hoo!
Little League, Soccer Fields Remain Free in Glendale
Mandate for Low-Income Housing: Helpful or Hurtful?
August 16, 2008
I’m excited. Redfin recently launched yet another fun-filled, informative feature – their neighborhood pages. You’ll find everything from the median prices of homes in the area to stats that tell you whether or not you should wait for another price reduction when you buy a home. You can also check out stuff like what the climate is like and map out the local schools.
Let’s take a little look-see at the LAX area, for starters. If you punch in 90045 (Westchester) and click the “View inventory and pricing trends”, you’ll find a graph that shows that the list cost per square foot and selling cost per square foot are getting pretty close. Once upon a time, the gap was far apart. Perhaps it’s a sign the prices for Westchester are leveling out?
Now, let’s try the 90293 zip code (Playa del Rey). Here, you’ll find a graph showing a wide disparity between the cost per square foot of sold homes and listed homes. Perhaps sellers in this little community by the beach should do a reality check.
And finally, let’s look at Playa Vista – 90094. Survey says that although there appeared to be about a $100 per square foot disparity between the listed and sold cost per square foot back in April of 08, there is now very little discrepancy between the two.
And with that, I’m leaving the LAX area blog. Sniff, sniff. Look for coverage from me in Woodland Hills (my new neighborhood) and the surrounding areas. Hope you’ll stop by and read my posts!
August 15, 2008
A community backlash just defeated Glendale Parks, Recreation and Community Services Commission’s plan to charge hourly fees for youth sports leagues using city fields. At a special meeting yesterday, the commission reversed its July 2 decision as it faced unified opposition from local Little League and AYSO representatives.
Jason Wells of the Glendale News press covered the story and published this update today.
Thousands of dollars from each league would have been necessary to pay those fees, which the commission wanted to cover maintenance costs and needed improvements. Families already pay annual league registration fees of $100 or more per child and added costs for equipment and transportation.
The commission is now seeking alternatives including corporate sponsorships and donations.
Sponsorships have paid for improvements in the past. Just two years ago, parents of former Glendale Little Leaguer Carlton Valvo II, who died in the World Trade Center attacks, donated $10,000 for the new scoreboard and other improvements at Glendale’s Babe Herman Little League Field.
The city of Glendale is upgrading its sports fields on a rotating basis, closing one at a time, which makes scheduling games, practices, and regular maintenance on the other fields problematic. Scholl Canyon baseball fields, with views as spectacular as its golf course views (pictured here by Tropico Station), are currently being upgraded.
