March 26, 2008

Weekly News Round-Up

Let’s start off with something a bit less depressing than normal: Tuesday morning’s Chronicle ran a story on the front page titled “A Tidbit of Good News in Home Sales Data.” Yeah! The good news is that home sales were up in February; the bad news is that the data came from the NAR, notoriously optimistic and prone to glorifying anything that helps the industry. Being a good reporter, Carolyn Said does get an independent take on the picture painted, and Ken Rosen, chairmen of the Fisher Center for Real Estate at Cal stated that, “It is not a recovery. It is wrong to interpret it that way.” So the article is a see-saw, but it’s nice to see something positive for a change.

On the other hand, over at SF Gate yesterday afternoon, the headline read: Local Home Prices Tumble. Damn…and the morning started off so well. James temple reports on the current S&P/Case-Shiller numbers and we see that Bay Area home prices are down 13.2%, which beats the hell out of Miami and Las Vegas, both of whom are in the -19% range. And if I remember correctly, the Map of Misery I wrote about a few weeks ago, also showed Charlotte maintaining housing prices; one of the few places to do so.

America’s obsession with credit, or living on borrowed money, is called on the carpet in a recent article by Michael S. Rosenwald in The Washington Post. “Why We Borrow Until It Hurts” speaks to the majority of Americans in one form or another. We want, we need, we spend; far surpassing our current incomes. It’s a good article and one we should all read and take to heart.

Over at Bloomberg.com they are blaming California for the sub-prime mess, calling our fair state the birthplace of the sub-prime industry. Why do they always have to pick on us? Daniel Taub and Dan Levy are the culprits this time, with their article “California Leads U.S. in Defaults, Home-Price Decline,” which reports that California leads the U.S. in foreclosure filings. Well, duh, look at our population. Texas is the only state to come close with more than 14 million people less than us. In fact, according to Wikipedia’s count, the Bay Area alone has 7.2 million people in its 9 counties, which is more than the population of 27 U.S. states.

Recent headlines show Santa Clara and Santa Cruz Counties hurting in current crisis. But then again, who isn’t? The Santa Cruz Sentinel ran a story, “Real Estate Slump Hitting County Residents Hard,” while on Patrick.net there is a great picture of a row of realtor’s sales signs stacked along one street in San Jose. Looks like it will be awhile before anyone will get to meet their new neighbors!

My mother has been telling me about foreclosure bus tours that take place up in the Sacramento area for some time now. Then a friend living in Las Vegas told me about one that she went on. Now I see they are hitting the Bay Area. Barbara Hernandez of the Contra Costa Times reported last week on “Foreclosure Tours Take Off,” which chronicles the Repo Home Tour Bus, a business that has prospered in recent months. The brainchild of Cesar Dias, these types of bus tours seem to be catching on all over the U.S. I guess as long as homes get sold, we shouldn’t be too hard on someone that is capitalizing on the misfortunes of others.

And a bit of crowing on the Redfin side of things. Yesterday CEO Glenn Kelman wrote a corporate blog post titled “The Redfin Advantage: Bigger, Broader, Higher Statistical Confidence.” Redfin staffers crunched one year’s worth of number, of both Redfin sales and those of agents outside Redfin, and found that there is an advantage to using Redfin. An advantage that saves the average buyer over $15,000. To read all the glorious details, go here.

Recent Sweet Digs Posts:

• Oakland Price Reduction Hop About Town
• One Full Moon Is All It Takes
• Alameda, Albany and Emeryville: Inventory, Highs, Lows and Sales
• Sellers Shun the System and Go It Alone
• Gingerbread House in Alviso for $499K