OT: Sdrealtor, thanks for the apology, and I accept it. As I said before, the world needs more men like you!
OT again: the MLS gave my realtor a zip code override; the house was listed in the MLS as a Poway zip code when we first bought it, and we listed it that way when we sold it. The buyers knew the address was Lakeside, but it was not in Lakeside either but in the unincorporated area of SD County. There was a disclosure form, where I noted this address issue in the comments. The Tax Assessor records show our property as Poway, so I made sure the buyers knew it was not in the Poway city limits. The agents who showed the home all knew it too, because when you go to mapquest to enter the address, you have to enter the mailing address city to get the address, so you have to enter Lakeside when you use mapquest. So everyone knew the address/school district difference. People move to Poway for the schools, so it’s common for the properties outside the Poway city limits which are fortunate enough to be in the Poway school district(and there are only a handful), to use the Poway zip code in the MLS.
Perhaps this is useful information for you, sdrealtor. Some realtors don’t know you can do this, and one house in the Poway school district was once listed for sale without advertising itself as such. Too bad for the sellers. I believe being in the Poway school district made my house more valuable. I would not have purchased that house back in 2000 if it had not been in the Poway school district. As far as the name calling, I’m going to overlook that.
Three points-
pseller: You are definitely correct about advertising the house as Poway (although you obviously know that!). There is a large neighborhood in Solana Beach (behind the country club off Sun Valley) that has the Del Mar zip code, but the kids go to Solana Beach schools. One would never advertise those homes as “Del Mar”.
Also, please, everyone stop picking on powayseller. Her brainy posts (and rich’s) are what keep me coming here. Ditto for sdrealtor, except his spelling/word usage! Ouch. “piers” for “peers”?
Finally, the spelling in “anonymous”. Oh no – I’ve turned into my mother….
You raise an interesting point, that is also in the book Sell Now. Per the author, the housing bubble occured in our nation’s most exlusive communities: the coastal cities, plus vacation destinations like Aspen. He attributes this to the desire for status among people who live in those towns. People in the Midwest are more grounded and conservative, he says, and don’t chase the exclusivity of the status home. He delves into the economics of status buying, where supply and demand are inversely related. For a status buyer, the more expensive the product, the higher the demand. In a large city, people set themselves apart by having a better house than their neighbor. The role of psychology and emotion surely played a part in the runup. That is Talbott’s explanation, perhaps other people have different views.
rockclimber, as far as timing the market, I am sure I didn’t miss a run-up, since we sold after the peak and prices were already softening. At the time we listed, there were isolated reports of high pricing, and the PMI study had come out. But the mainstream media, like TV and the U-T, still had headlines of rising median price.
