You will have to sign up for zipreality (it is free) and look at homes in the area you want. Then go to zilliow.com and look at how much they bought the home for. Bad thing is that zillow does not show the helocs (home equity line of credits, tax liens, or seconds that were taken out). You can get a good idea. Best thing about zipreality.com is you can see the price reductions, when they listed the property, and when they made their price reductions. If every buyer looked into RE this way they would not buy for a long time. Thanks stupid people! We need you to buy to post declining numbers!

My website tracking Temecula and South Riverside County

“I normally check my “Inactive” list on Zip each week”.

Could I ask how you do that? Is there an “Inactive” section on ZipRealty? If so, I haven’t been able to find it yet. Thanks.

Sorry, bit of a misnomer…I save a bunch of places in the “my homes’ section on Zip. There’s a button on the top right of the list that allows you to to hide/display Inactive listings. Every week or so I look up the inactive properties on Zillow to see if thy have been sold. By saving them in ‘my homes’ on Zip you keep record of them that doesn’t show up on the normal saved searches.

Its also a good way of keeping an eye on properties that go inactive and then come back on the market with a new MLS#, as they’ll turn up on the saved search lists as ‘new on market’. I can then copy the data from the old inactive list over to the new listing, thus keeping a (very rough) cumlative DOM, and differences in asking price.
As I have narrow criteria for what I’m looking for, more often than not I’ll save the ‘new on market’ record. By sorting the ‘my homes’ list by something like Lot Size, and activating the inactive button, it becomes apparent that its the same property, as they will appear next to each other….

Yes, I know, a Stone Age way of doing it! But I am just a looky-loo at this point, don’t want to get any outside ‘help’ at the moment, nor want to pay subscription for any more specialsed sites.

Apologies to all the professionals here, I know you’re laughing at me now 🙂

Although, if anyone knows a way of finding out what happened to a place that went ‘Inactive’ and hasn’t sold (for free and without the help of others, as above) then I’d be very appreciative of the advice.

I do the same thing as you, speedingbullet. Amazingly it works really well and after a while you really get a feeling for the market.

I’ve worked with Realtors before and, in my opinion, they’re a real pain in the *ss. They just want you to decide on a home and buy within 30 days. They love to do that to vulnerable people who know nothing about real-estate.

Since we are looking years down the road, Ziprealty is the best way to do it. When I decide to buy, I’ll just schedule a showing with with ziprealty and I’ll buy from them.

I remember the days when you had to depend on Realtors to access the data (or the days you needed a travel agent).

I think that this crash will happen much quicker thanks to how fast technology desseminates info to the public.

@ Hank – do you have any links on the mortgage research you did? As long as its free and non-invasive, i’d like to check out a few places myself.

As for when we buy, summer 2007 is the earliest. Depends on how long the Husband can stand living here in the “Waiting Room of Hell” (to quote Johnny Drama, from ‘Entourage’), we’ll stay put as long as we can. Judging from the amount of freefall already happening we may not have to wait to much longer than Q22007 to see ‘affordable’ prices.

Who knows, life’s a mystery sometimes…

Coastal:
It has to do with the Zoning – I wondered what it was too, and found an almost understandable explanation deep in the Labyrinth of the LA County’s website. I think they’re refering to the Malibu Coastal Plan:
http://planning.co.la.ca.us/doc/plan/drp_Malibu_LUP.pdf

If you can’t link to a .pdf file then the home site is:
http://planning.co.la.ca.us/luz.htm

Scroll down to near the bottom and look under the links for the Malibu Coastal Plan.

I asked much the same question myself recently on Piggintons on this thread:

http://piggington.com/information_on_zoning

And thanks to CarlsbadLiving for posting the LAC link 🙂

If you’re looking to buy an existing home within the jurisdiction of the Coastal Commission, you won’t have have any problems. Unless you were planning to tear down and rebuild. If you buy a vacant lot and hope to develop, it just means that you’d have to get approval from the Coastal Commission.

If the Malibu Local Coastal Program isn’t yet approved by the Coastal Commission then any projects go to a Coastal Commission hearing, if the Local Coastal Program is approved then the City has the authority to hand out Coastal Development Permits.

If you purchase an existing home, the Coastal Commission has ZERO jurisdiction over you, UNLESS you decide to do something that would necisitate a Coastal Development Permit. (tear down & rebuild, addition). This is not unusual though, a large percentage of existing homes are legally non-conforming (everywhere, not just within the Coastal Zone). Meaning that they no longer meet setback requirements, height requirements, etc. This is because regulations continue to toughen.

These are always things that should be considered when buying a house. But if you are happy with an existing home, there’s no need to worry about what you can plant, etc. (unless you have HOA regulations, etc). Clearing brush can be tricky but that can be tricky anywhere, not just with Coastal.