North County Price Reductions – 2

[balasr]

Here are a few more from the Vista Shadowridge area.

2**7 WHITE BIRCH DR, Vista, CA 92081
Price Reduced: 06/16/06 — $699,000 to $697,000

You might wonder about the 2K price reduction. Zillow sez:

Sale History
06/25/2004: $695,000
06/11/2002: $410,000
11/17/2000: $361,000

Looks like a flip which failed. The greedy guy probably waited 2 years to avoid paying more tax. Now he’s trying to sell $2K above his sale price. There’s something fishy with this listing. He doesn’t have any photos of the inside of the house. Only the outside and canyon views. BTW, that particular street is *very* nice. Nice views, quiet, seems like a good family neighbourhood. The elementary and middle school are pretty good too.

Check out 1**7 WHITE BIRCH DRIVE, Vista, CA 92081. The seller bought for $60,000 (that’s right no typo), about 5 years back. He says he’s “motivated”. Listed for $600K with a total 20K price reduction from original price. Again no photos of the interior – mighty strange.

1**5 ELM RIDGE DR, Vista, CA 92081
Price Reduced: 04/11/06 — $529,900 to $500,000
Price Reduced: 06/07/06 — $500,000 to $479,900
$479900**foreclosure date set end of this month**subject to lender approval**submit offers**

The seller seems to have squandered away his equity if you believe zillow (on Hummers?). There are a whole bunch of almost similar homes on sale in that gated complex. We checked out most of those a few months back.

1**1 MONSERRAT WAY, Vista, CA 92081
Price Reduced: 05/18/06 — $489,000 to $469,000
Price Reduced: 06/14/06 — $469,000 to $440,000
Price Reduced: 06/15/06 — $440,000 to $439,000
Days on Market: 65

This is in the Calypso legends gated complex. This is a condo. But there are also detatched condos there. A whole bunch of them have been languishing in the market for many months now (almost all of them are empty!). Use the zip-realty map feature on that complex, it’s weird, a whole bunch of triangles in one place. BTW, This condo has $264/month association fee! The realtor in the open-house helpfully offered that I wouldn’t have to share the (bigger) swimming pool with the detatched condo folks. Right! The detached condo HOA is about $95/month. Anyone who pays more than $200K for this condo is out of their f*king minds, given the rental rates in that area.

[sdappraiser]

“Check out 1**7 WHITE BIRCH DRIVE, Vista, CA 92081. The seller bought for $60,000 (that’s right no typo), about 5 years back.”

Wrong. It was a partial transfer between husband and wife. Not a purchase price.

“The seller seems to have squandered away his equity if you believe zillow (on Hummers?).”

Gotta love the arm chair analysis from experts with incomplete data. You should become an appraiser, at least then you could get paid for being so nosey.

[balasr]

Thanks for the info about the 60,000 purchase price. But, what’s your problem with me speculating about *another* house which is in forclosure, and which was purchased for much less than the current sale price? Is it not fair to assume that he must have tapped his equity since it is in foreclosure?

Many of us are trying to buy homes and using tools to examine areas we are interested in. Is that being nosey? If it is, then so be it.

[powayseller]

I am nosy, too. I checked the tax assessor site to find out how many late tax filers exist on my street, and I regularly check foreclosure.com for NOD and auctions on Poway homes. When I still had my Realtytrac.com membership, I snooped even more: I looked at the lien history of the NODs (foreclosure.com doesn’t provide it).

Sometimes the databases we check are not accurate. Then we get false information. This is too bad, but I think we should point the finger at the database, not at the snooper.

I quit my realtytrac.com subscription due to their inaccuracy. Whenever a homeowner brought his NOD up to date, realtytrac did not list it as Inactive. I let them know why I quit my membership.

Tracking the falling prices and NODs is a great way to track the declining market, and to find out how people got themselves into these situations.

If this were reported in the newspapers, I wouldn’t need to spend this time researching, uhm, I mean snooping…

[Anonymous]

SDAppraiser

So what? Does it really matter? I got the gist of what he was trying to say. It will not make any difference in the long run. The trend is in place and you can say whatever you like but residential property is going nowhere but down. Call me on this 12 months from now. If I am wrong beat the shit out of me because I deserve it. You do not need to be very smart to figure this one out.

I have never ever seen a chart, such as the one for home prices in San Diego, that has not corrected in any asset class in history. Nothing grows to the sky and just keeps on growing, “albeit slowy” come on… just look at a chart.

If you buy into this “prices are going to level out” thing and you buy now you have just subscribed to the greater fool theory.

Yeah, go ahead and tell me this is not what you said. You were just challenging his facts…what was the point of that? I would just write it off. No sense in trying to argue for something that is moot.

[Bugs]

SDAppraiser didn’t say anything about being in opposition to anything. He just made a comment about the apparent entitlement some of us feel about looking into our neighbors lives. In his defense, I can tell you that appraisers and other banking and financial services professionals who regularly handle personal information are subject to privacy laws that regulate the use and dissemination of that information. You wouldn’t want a professional to take that responsibility too casually.

Just because the personal information is available doesn’t mean that it’s not an invasion of privacy to bandy it about so casually on an internet forum. These people are not rock stars and they haven’t agreed to trade their privacy for fame and fortune.

[sdrealtor]

Ditto that

[powayseller]

I respect that Bugs and sdrealtor do not disclose their client confidential information. However, I took no such professional oath. I respect your compassion for these homeowners, but you cannot save them from the embarassment they are going to feel over their foreclosure and bankruptcies. I did not appreciate the “armchair analysis” comment from SDAppraiser; what is his problem with the analysis? I would think he would be upset with the incorrect data, rather than the person who looked it up.

balasr is in his right to post this information. Unlike me, he did not disclose full addresses or names. I find his and ocrenter’s posts interesting. I would post this same information.

I appreciate property information like this, because it helps me track the market. As I wrote before, if this information were available in the newspaper I wouldn’t need to snoop. Imagine the U-T, or Bugs or sdr giving us data (leaving out names and addresses) of the percentage of sellers that are underwater, the % of foreclosures, the borrowers who cannot meet their mortgage obligations. Then I wouldn’t need to snoop. I don’t expect you to prepare these reports for us, so the only way that folks outside the RE industry can see the market in action, is via foreclosure databases and ziprealty.com.

Homeowners with NODs know their status is public, and that NODs are published in local papers, scoured by foreclosure investors, and possibly their neighbors and friends. I would try my hardest to bring up the payments or sell the house to avoid the obvious consequences of default, and potential embarassment if people finding out.

I would like to know why the realtors and appraiser are protective of the sellers in trouble. We should spread this out for everyone to see, so people can learn and not make the same mistakes. This should be used to help other people, not hidden from the world, Please, I beg you, spread the word on these people. Personal stories are so much more powerful than charts or surveys.

[sdappraiser]

There is a big difference between a professional or matter of fact analysis (which Rich does so well) and the ‘armchair’ analysis many on this forum attempt to perform. Just because information is in the public domain doesn’t mean it should be spread around for your amusement.

I met a girl once, we hit it off and she gave me her email address. I googled her address and found a posting she had recently made on an anonymous forum. She was looking for information on laser hair removal because she had severe and uncontrollable black nipple hair growth – it sounded pretty bad. Suffice to say, I could never look at her the same way again (not that there is anything wrong with nipple hair if any of you are also afflicted with this).

Should that information be spread around so people can learn from her experience? Powayseller, what is your email address or full name? I bet there is something out there you wouldn’t want spread around. Tell us about your biggest and most embarrassing mistakes in life so we can all learn.

Too many of you find great joy and satisfaction in other’s ill fortune. You attempt to come off like your just educating yourself and trying to teach others, but it’s obvious you are desperately trying to validate your own choices in life. It’s too bad you find so much amusement from other’s misfortune or bad timing. You just can’t wait to say “I told you so.” Hope it makes you feel better. I see the bad stuff every day, and let me tell you it’s a bummer. We are talking about people’s lives – and their kids. Maybe they all deserve it for being so greedy eh?

Please don’t take any of this as a personal attack, just my own armchair analysis. Like I said, at least I get paid to do this. Imagine the good that could be done if a few of you applied the same energy and focus into something more tangible than an internet forum.

JMHO

[Bugs]

I can’t speak for how realty agents look at it, but I can tell you that appraisers are trained to look at their assignments strictly in terms of property characteristics. We’re not supposed to be interested in the leather whips and chains these property owners keep in their bedrooms or whether we like the color of their carpets or whether the house is a mess when we look at it – those are all personal characteristics that are basically supposed to be invisible to us as we do our thing. Whether I like the property owner or hate them, my professional opinion is supposed to remain unaffected because I’m not appraising the individual, I’m appraising the property. In fact, I try very hard to not have any kind of relationship with the property owners beyond that which is necessary to do my job.

So if you want to look at paired transactions to see if there’s a loss in there, or you want to talk about data and trends, that’s one thing. Putting an individual’s name to it and personalizing it is unnecessary and uncalled for. Everyone here knows what it means when a person is taking a loss. Singling that individual out for additional attention doesn’t add anything good to the analysis and it doesn’t help us to better understand the situation. IMO.

PS, you can correct me if I’m mistaken, but I remember a couple months back when there was a certain amount of discomfort and dismay when one poster looked up another poster’s listing in the MLS and then made comments about the individual as well as their personal decisions. That’s an example of what we’re talking about here. It added absolutely nothing good to the discussion and only served to create a problem. A problem I hope to not have to see again.

I’ll be completely candid about this – I’m hoping to influence your opinion on this subject.

[novice1027]

I guess the take away message here is… if we have an uncontrolled problem with black nipple hair, we should be using a psedonym. I’m sorry but that cracked me up!!
Now I can say I have definetly learned something on this site.

[powayseller]

Bugs, I wish you had not brought up sdr’s threat to publish my name and address at a time when I was an anonymous poster on this website. It is in the past and he apologized and I wish to leave it at that. However, I will respond only because it fits in well with the theme and you brought it up. I will never bring this up on my own. Regarding sdr’s post to publish my name and address, it was done in a malicious way because he was angry with my post about Sell Now. My response was, “Hey, you found me” and I explained my situation. I was a little spooked by his fascination with me, and why he would look me up. It was lostkitty who said it was creepy.

It is in poor taste to research somebody who is anonymous on an internet forum and trying to find out their name, address, employer, salary, financial records, or health history. sdr is bent on staying anonymous, but he threatened to publish my name. So for that reason, I now agree it was in poor taste, although at the time I did not realize it.

Back to the point. NODs and tax liens are already published in the newspaper. It is perhaps embarassing but fair to post this information. If you find it bothersome that the tax liens and NODs of individuals are published on forums or newspapers, perhaps you ought to start with the county recorder and request that this be kept private.

The posters did not publish any names, and they put down incomplete addresses. I agreed to stop posting names, and stick with full addresses. The people we are writing about don’t know us, we don’t know them, and they are just data points. Nobody is being embarassed. With this context, what is the harm? Lighten up!

Schahrzad Berkland

[sdrealtor]

For the record, I never threatened to post your name nor was it in repsonse to your Sell Now post which I have no recollection ever seeing or reading. In fact, on numerous occasions I said I would never post it. It was neither malicious nor done in anger. It was done to caution you against disclosing too much personal information which would allow someone to identify you. I let you know I was able to do so and hence others could but never once said I would do it.

As for them being merely data points, was it not you that said we need to get more specific personal stories out there. Sounds like a bit more than merely data points.

[powayseller]

I like the personal stories, and I agreed to not post any names. I do agree with all of you that we don’t want to cause further embarassment to these people. However, our discussions here do not cause any embarassment to them, so the worry is not justified.

Also for the record, I wish people would stop bringing up the past. Let’s move on.

[balasr]

Bugs,

Thanks for the comment and all the participation in this forum. I personally have benefited from the “free consultations”.

That said, let me suggest an alternative point of view. You say:

“These people are not rock stars and they haven’t agreed to trade their privacy for fame and fortune.”

I don’t see why rock stars or any other stars are entitled to any less privacy. I don’t think Angelina Jolie appreciates 10 photographers tagging behind her when she is buying clothes or something. It is certainly ok if someone *agrees* to some publicity so that it helps their movie. I don’t think that translates into them agreeing to trade all their privacy (all the time) for money. But it’s part of their life and unfortunately they have to deal with it. I would say that homeowners in “rock star” living places like San Diego, will have the same problem. There will be people like me who are fiscally conservative and who want to buy. But if I put 100K down in a 500K loan (a stretch for my 105K salary already), I’ll get a shack. We are looking for supporting analysis on when to buy and I for one appreciate ocrenters analysis. It helps me a lot. People like me are going to be analysing this stuff and reading about it. That’s the bottom-line and there’s going to be a “market” for it just like the “National Enquirer”, although I think we are “better” than the National Enquirer :-).

Re: privacy. It’s not like I published their names or anything. Actually I don’t know anything other than what I wrote in my post and am not bothered to find out either. That’s of no use to me. My motivation is to see if the market is at least turning, and following ocrenters examples in his blog, I have been looking at the Shadowridge area in Vista.

Note that it’s *quite different* for realtors and appraisers. You have access to things like social security numbers, bank account information, salaries, etc., which are sensitive. So you do need to be subject to privacy laws. But publicly available info like selling prices are fair game. In any case, it doesn’t warrant angry outbursts about “armchair analysis” etc. I do admit that my comment about hummers was gratuitous, but my point was merely that there are a number of people who have squandered their equity away. This might bring prices down faster, I don’t know (I certainly hope so).

We can disagree on what to write in a public forum in something other than an in-your-face way. It doesn’t serve any purpose. I respect your point of view, but that’s an opinion and not facts, and we are not going to come to any agreement if our premises on what is “private” are different. I have written above, why I think I haven’t violated anyones privacy.

BTW, I’d be surprised if more than a few hundred people are reading this forum (*). I consider it more as a support group for me than anything else. My point of view is so different from other people regarding house-prices that I need some forum to virtually meet some like-minded people. I don’t see anyones privacy being violated practically, even if house sale prices are assumed to be sensitive information.

(*) with all due repects to Rich of course. It’s a fine web-site and I do think more people need to read the stuff here!

[Author]

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