Costco on a Sunday and clueless in Santee

[SD Realtor]

Two random observations from today…

Costco in Poway was pretty crowded… I was a pretty stingy consumer though… got a passport picture and a box of #5 size daipers… Went to all of the free food stands… the lumpia was particularly good. All cashiers were humping and were about 3 deep… I watched as the young couple in front of me had about $250 worth of stuff but it was mostly food…except for the two huge stuffed dogs for their kids.

*********

I checked in with a lady in Santee who is a mortgage broker. She called me about 4 months ago to sell her home. She was not happy with my price recommendation so she punted me and went with Century 21. Her home is in Blackhorse, a high end community in Santee… (stop it… I can her you snickering) Anyways she did tell me to call her every month or so and I did today. She said she has not had no activity. I asked her rather politely why she doesn’t lower her price. She went into a 5 minute diatribe telling me how she will not lower her price. What was funny was the tone she had. Totally defending her price selection… So she is yakking about it and she says hold on a minute my husband came home… she gets back on, and I told her I didn’t think the home would ever sell if she doesn’t… so she says it again, we will never lower the price… then I hear her husband in the background say yes we will! Then there is the hand over the mouthpiece and I hear some muffling… a true classic… She asked me to check in with her again next month… market should be picking up then.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

SDR: Had a couple of conversations in Temecula yesterday during our Pop Warner game at Great Oaks HS (across from Pechanga). Bunch of different teams represented, some from all the way down in Poway.

The varying attitudes were pretty amazing. In discussing real estate with the Poway folks, the prevailing mentality is that while prices might fall a little, the market will come back.

The folks from Murrieta and Temecula, on the other hand, were shell shocked. Talked to a Murrieta coach who has been trying to unload his house due to an impending job transfer. His small neighborhood has no less than four houses that are now bank owned and three more heading into REO. One of his neighbors literally packed up the whole family and moved out over a weekend. This was a month ago, and the house is sitting vacant, with an overgrown and dying lawn and the pool stagnant. This guy said he had purchased his house back in 1999, so he had some equity to give, but he said the three offers he got were all some 20 to 30 percent below his lowest asking price, which is already down some $30k from his original list price. The look on this guy’s face was complete bewilderment.

Great Oaks HS sits next to the Wolf Creek development on Pechanga Parkway, which was a complete ghost town for the four and a half hours I was there.

[recordsclerk]

SD Realtor,

What price did she want? Was she still asking 900K?

[TheBreeze]

Does she read this Blog?

[waiting hawk]

I made my normal rounds with the wife admiring all the dead lawns and drove by a realtors house that is trying to sell. The story is so sad on that one I can’t post about it as I am hoping he sells.

[HereWeGo]

SDR (and sdr, for that matter)-

Any updates on the effect of the credit crunch on the outlying markets? Are the primo areas feeling a little bite yet (TMA’s difficulties hint at this)?

[patientlywaiting]

I love costco photo center.

Want to be really stingy? You can make your passport pics yourself using a digital camera. Use a photo editing software to put 6 pictures together on a 4×6 (2×2 each) and upload to costco. They will mail to your house for free all for 17c (6 pictures). Plus you get to have the picture come out exactly the way you want. Great for obtaining all the visas to take the kids on summer travel.

[temeculaguy]

Hey Allan, what did you think of my sports park. I’m usually there a few days a week but the last two days have been the hottest days of the year so I skipped my hoops ritual. Have you ever seen a nicer sports park, I think they have four lighted astroturf football fields. Good thing they got the devlopers to pay for it before the market turned.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

temeculaguy: I LOVE that sports park! It is absolutely gorgeous. You should see the fields in Fallbrook. Oy vey.

Only drawback of artificial surface fields is that they reflect heat like crazy. It was 109 on Saturday when we played and was probably a good 20 degrees hotter on the field due to the heat reflection.

I had two players go out due to heatstroke, and we were fighting a losing battle with dehydration and overheating.

Those fields were damn nice, though.

What’s up with Wolf Creek, by the way? All of those new houses sitting empty and they appear to be building even more. Is that right?

[SD Realtor]

recordsclerk – She is still asking the same price as when she listed back in May/June 885-925k.

breeze – Definitely no she does not read this site.

herewego – I think the answer is yes. There were two homes that went pending in Scripps recently that found themselves active again. One on Reisling that was in escrow at an lp of 653k and another on Red Cedar at 875k. I cannot say these definitively fell out of escrow due to the crunch. I do believe that it will take a good deal more time before we see the real effects of the crunch. It will be hard to parse poor sales as we try to discern the cause which could be lack of credit or seasonal crapiness as we are in the cyclical downside… again though I do feel the answer is yet. I wouldn’t call Scripps/4S/Carmel Valley primo but yeah the 700k-1M category… I have seen some pretty desireable homes in La Costa Valley go into escrow pretty quick and stay in escrow.

patientlywaiting – good tip! I will need to remember that one.

tg – I rode yesterday so you should be playing hoops til you hurl…

allan – Well hard to comment on your post because it rings so true… Different folks have different opinions but I think Poway will take it hard as well… I even think Scripps will… except the home I buy… that will hold up in a magnificent manner! heheheh…. seriously though, it will be interesting to see if Poway drops %wise as much as Temec/Murrieta…

[cashflow]

SD realtor,
First, you’re crazy for biking in this heat…sounds like something my hubby would do too!

I’m watching Poway closely and I’m amazed at how sticky the prices have been throughout the summer. Also amazingly it seems to me that the properties over in Green Valley have actually been selling at a quicker rate than other areas. These are homes that are mostly priced 850K to over 1 mil. Can you imagine with the credit crunch how much people would have to have in Cash down on one of these properties to get a reasonable loan…or should I say even to get a loan?

I don’t quite get how these prices aren’t coming down dramatically right now…but am being patient.

[temeculaguy]

SD, dude it was so ^$&^%# hot, even by Temec standards, We usually only get a few days a year over 100 on the South side and we were clearly blowing that out. My body kicks into palm springs mode and all I want to do is drink and sit in the pool, an instinct that clearly goes back to my caveman days. I would have hurled early and often, Allan was losing youngsters to the heat, a middle aged guy like me would be headed to the E.R. for sure. Since all the nurses up here got stung in the stonewood scam, they would have I.D. me as the infamous T.G. and I would be dead for sure.

Allan, actually wolf creek isn’t in as bad a shape as one would think, not much of what you saw was standing inventory, most of it is within conforming range and they just slowed down, holding off on phases until the previous is sold. I took my monthly trip down there today and chatted with my favorite salesperson. They just aren’t as desperate as I want them to be and the D.R. horton inventory flood hasn’t hit just yet so I am going to sign a six month or 1 year lease next week and you won’t be rid of me quite yet. In six months to a year I’m sure things will be much worse.

[JPJones]

I think SDR touched an important point, in that we are wading towards what is perceived as the slowest season in RE sales. I hope not to jinx it, but I think once sellers hit the tail end of spring and haven’t seen improved sales numbers or at least steady prices, the downward slope will be even steeper than it was this year after the same period.

[SD Realtor]

Cashflow I hear ya… there are parts of Poway that have been darn sticky… there are some large swaths of it though that have come down… Just hang in there and be patient… you may have to wait a bit longer for Green Valley but if you got the time it will get there…

tg I have about very few hours per week when kids are down, and I am not doing some kind of work related to engineering or real estate so I gotta take what I can get… luckily I got a comrade to ride with me so it worked out…hey a trip to the hospital may have done you good… nothing wrong with nurses right? (my apologies to all the female posters for being lewd)

Hopefully next spring, (actually I think summer) will be a realization by the masses that this is for real and getting out by pricing right will be mandatory. Depends on how this credit crunch things go and such but I really don’t see how it cannot happen…

SD Realtor

[BuyerWillEPB]

She went into a 5 minute diatribe telling me how she will not lower her price.
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What a coincidence. I also will not raise my offer.

No 5 minute diatribe necessary.

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