Nearly 130 new listings today on ZipRealty (4/19)

[powayseller]

Realtors are telling their sellers to reduce, but sellers are digging in their heels. To them, paper profits are real profits that they would be losing by lowering the price. Sellers are spoiled by rapid appreciation of recent years. The whole psychology element of investing is fascinating!

[sdduuuude]

They do if people can’t make the payment.

[docteur]

Speaking of reductions. Did anyone see the article in the Daily Business Report whereby Lennar and Larry Clemens have parted ways as part of a downsizing move?

That’s huge. Clemens is a giant in the homebuilding industry here in San Diego and for Lennar to let him go (or for him to leave) is in my opinion, a look into the future of what’s coming down the road for the entire homebuilding industry. The word on the street is a lot of builders are rethinking future acquisitions and are keeping only the prime deals, letting the others go.

See the article below:

Daily Business Report

April 21, 2006

DOWNTOWN

Larry Clemens, who headed the San Diego urban division of home builder Lennar Corp., has left the company. Clemens’ departure followed an announcement earlier this month that Lennar was consolidating its Southern California divisions. A published report said the Downtown office of Lennar would lose about one third of its staff, which numbered 25.

Bernie Rhinerson, a spokesman for Lennar, said yesterday (April 20) that he did not know how many people are left in the Downtown office. He said John Spelke, a staff member there, is now managing the office.

Rhinerson said the consolidation will have no affect on the projects that Lennar is currently involved with in San Diego. One of those is the seven-acre, $1.4 billion Ballpark Village residential, office and retail complex that it is developing in partnership with John Moores’ JMI Realty in East Village. Lennar also is partnering with Intergulf Development Group on Breeza, a 158-unit condominium development under construction at the northeast corner of Pacific Highway and Ash Street. Unclear is whether Lennar will continue negotiating the purchase of other properties in East Village for future developments. Rhinerson, however, said the company “is still looking for new opportunities.”

Clemens, one of 25 persons profiled by Metropolitan Magazine last December as “Metro Movers to Watch in 06,” supervised the move of Lennar San Diego Urban Development Group from Carlsbad to Downtown. Clemens is on vacation this week

[Gone to Colorado]

17-foot U-Haul truck:

Colorado Springs to San Diego – $599
San Diego to Colorado Springs – $1266

[powayseller]

So U-Haul has so few trucks in San Diego, that they give you a 50% discount for driving a truck there. They badly need the trucks in San Diego, for all the people in the exodus out of San Diego. I bet you would find similar stats for leaving anywhere in CA, FL, NY, etc. Has anyone looked over the UHaul site more, to see which cities/states have the highest exodues?

We could use the UHaul data as a leading indicator, where the Census Bureau lags by about 5 years.

BTW, I’m getting really excited about leading indicators. The book, Ahead of the Curve, is about that topic. Written by a Goldman Sachs economist, with 18 years in the retail sector, he writes about the cause-effect relationships of various data, and where economists make the mistakes. For example, they think that employment is a leading indicator of job growth, where in reality it is a 9-12 month lagging indicator. The leading indicator is consumer spending. I’m sure we can improve his model by adding MEW and the U-Haul data.

[rockclimber]

No. They get the deed in a foreclosure and then sell the house. Anyway, no need to get anal… The point was that people are cashing out of their houses to rent (like several of us have done on this site.) We’re not talking about foreclosure.

[Author]

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