I live in Scripps and specialize in the I15 corridor. I know La Costa Valley and the coastal areas very well but I would not say I am a specialist in these areas. Same goes with the what I call the eastern rim which includes Cielo, Crosby etc.. Both Jim Klinge and sdr have offices that are in the north county coastal area and would be considered neighborhood experts in those regions. Not sure if the EXACT submarket they focus in is RSF or not. They can comment.
As far as submitting a 15-20% lowball offer to any of the listings in the Crosby I would say that you would have a better chance of success in July then May. That may not preclude you from trying though. Each listing needs to be analyzed in terms of length on the market, level of distress or possible distress, etc… With that said, could it hurt to lob them an offer? No I don’t think it could at all. One thing for sure, you never know if you don’t try right? Also you let them know politely that you don’t mean to be insulting or anything like that, and if they don’t take it you check back in a few weeks.
As for the a sample of Crosby dues let’s look at the 16991 Going My Way home that was originally at 1.579 and is now 1.399. It has been on the market 285 days. They slid the price down a few times at the end of 07 and the beginning of 08 but have not budged since then. Are they due for another notch down? Absolutely. Will they notch it down 20%? My read on sellers like this is not a chance. Now I am only looking at one mapcode within the Crosby which is 1169 A2 and there have been 2 closed sales in all of 08 back in Feb. There are NO pendings and there are 7 active listings. Similarly this same listing was listed last year and expired. So to say these guys have been on the market a long time is an understatement. Are these sellers potentially in distress? Potentially they are.
As for your costs of living there? Right now they list the HOA at 475 a month and 6500 a year MR. If you got it for say 1.2M just to use a nice number you are looking at a minimum of 2k a month between property tax, hoa and mr. So that is what, 1.8%? I am to lazy to bring up the calc tool on my laptop…
Anyways like all of the high end stuff… I see these places all coming down… eventually… as they do come down they will get slurped up by people with money… so it will take awhile to get something for a million but no way does it hurt to try.