[dny]

Regarding the comment about Penasquitos Drive being the only way out, that is true only during non-emergenicies. There is a fire exit towards the north that connects with Rancho Bernardo near Camino Del Norte. They opened this during the last fire, but it took a call from my dad who was denied when trying to take PQ Drive to his house.

Also, I would say the area is OK, but there are a few questionable areas with the worst being all of the apartments/homes along Carmel Mtn Rd between PQ Drive and the church on the top of the hill. Those are mostly low income units. There is also an apartment (maybe part condo conversion now) complex at the corner of PQ Drive and Del Diablo (which intersects with Satanica, I kid you not) that I would not want to be in or by.

I grew up very close to the elementary school at the end of PQ Drive and it was a nice simple place with a great park for kids, but I think it has gone downhill a little since then. It still isn’t bad, but it’s not great either.

My advice would be to try and get a feel for the immediate neighbors is that what will really matter. Some blocks and of homes are really well kept in the neighborhood, and others are a little dinged up. I would only consider living in that area if I were to be in one of the units at the top with a view east or west. Ulitimately, as the other posters have mentioned, I think there is room for prices to fall further. No reason to jump in quite yet.

[dny]

Regarding the comment about Penasquitos Drive being the only way out, that is true only during non-emergenicies. There is a fire exit towards the north that connects with Rancho Bernardo near Camino Del Norte. They opened this during the last fire, but it took a call from my dad who was denied when trying to take PQ Drive to his house.

Also, I would say the area is OK, but there are a few questionable areas with the worst being all of the apartments/homes along Carmel Mtn Rd between PQ Drive and the church on the top of the hill. Those are mostly low income units. There is also an apartment (maybe part condo conversion now) complex at the corner of PQ Drive and Del Diablo (which intersects with Satanica, I kid you not) that I would not want to be in or by.

I grew up very close to the elementary school at the end of PQ Drive and it was a nice simple place with a great park for kids, but I think it has gone downhill a little since then. It still isn’t bad, but it’s not great either.

My advice would be to try and get a feel for the immediate neighbors is that what will really matter. Some blocks and of homes are really well kept in the neighborhood, and others are a little dinged up. I would only consider living in that area if I were to be in one of the units at the top with a view east or west. Ulitimately, as the other posters have mentioned, I think there is room for prices to fall further. No reason to jump in quite yet.

[dny]

The workers on strike receive $200/week and full benefits from the UAW strike fund (~$800M). Who wouldn’t want a paid vacation?

Ultimately for the workers, GM cannot afford to give in, and the workers will not be able to afford not giving in (darn mortage payments).

[dny]

I’ve used them for years as they pay a solid interest rate 3.25%, refund ATM fees, free bill pay, low min ($1500 monthly avg.), and have excellent customer service (no wait and intelligent people on the other end).

I haven’t looked around at the competition, but I have not had any issues with them. I keep my balance near the minimum or higher if I have bills to pay like rent or CC. You can easily link that account to high yield MMA’s that pay 5.4% and higher.

While I think highly of their basic checking, I haven’t used their CD’s or other financial products they offer so I can’t comment on those.

[dny]

I’ve used them for years as they pay a solid interest rate 3.25%, refund ATM fees, free bill pay, low min ($1500 monthly avg.), and have excellent customer service (no wait and intelligent people on the other end).

I haven’t looked around at the competition, but I have not had any issues with them. I keep my balance near the minimum or higher if I have bills to pay like rent or CC. You can easily link that account to high yield MMA’s that pay 5.4% and higher.

While I think highly of their basic checking, I haven’t used their CD’s or other financial products they offer so I can’t comment on those.

[dny]

I’ve used them for years as they pay a solid interest rate 3.25%, refund ATM fees, free bill pay, low min ($1500 monthly avg.), and have excellent customer service (no wait and intelligent people on the other end).

I haven’t looked around at the competition, but I have not had any issues with them. I keep my balance near the minimum or higher if I have bills to pay like rent or CC. You can easily link that account to high yield MMA’s that pay 5.4% and higher.

While I think highly of their basic checking, I haven’t used their CD’s or other financial products they offer so I can’t comment on those.

[dny]

If you don’t mind saying, what is the address of the property?

[dny]

If you don’t mind saying, what is the address of the property?

[dny]

To the original poster, have you ran the numbers to determine what your cost would be on a usage basis? Meaning, if you used the place for 4 weeks a year, your daily cost would be $X when considering the yearly costs for owning/maintaining the home.

I understand the desire to have your own vacation home where you can decorate as you please and never have the icky feeling that can sometimes come with hotels knowing someone else was sleeping in the bed the night before. However, it would seem to me that only the extremely rich (those who are willing to spend tens of thousands of $’s for the sake of convenience and ease) should even be considering vacation homes in today’s market.

With zero appreciation over the next few years a very plausible scenario, why would someone buy a house to make use of it for only a few weeks a year? A person would be able to stay in the nicest of hotels at a much lower cost when considering the total payments for the year.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

[dny]

To the original poster, have you ran the numbers to determine what your cost would be on a usage basis? Meaning, if you used the place for 4 weeks a year, your daily cost would be $X when considering the yearly costs for owning/maintaining the home.

I understand the desire to have your own vacation home where you can decorate as you please and never have the icky feeling that can sometimes come with hotels knowing someone else was sleeping in the bed the night before. However, it would seem to me that only the extremely rich (those who are willing to spend tens of thousands of $’s for the sake of convenience and ease) should even be considering vacation homes in today’s market.

With zero appreciation over the next few years a very plausible scenario, why would someone buy a house to make use of it for only a few weeks a year? A person would be able to stay in the nicest of hotels at a much lower cost when considering the total payments for the year.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

[dny]

Thanks for the quick check. As you mentioned, the fact that it was on the market for such a short period of time makes it even more suspiscious as the other places lingered for months. I suppose, however, that the short time on the market could mean somebody wanted it so much to overpay over previous comps.

[dny]

The majority of the floreclosure activity on W Beech is at the Aqua Vista complex, not Discovery at 850 W Beech. I rent in Aqua Vista and know first hand the issues facing this development.

AV is behind over $150k in HOA payments, and I would estimate that the breakout is about 25-30 individual units behind an average of 12 months. Many of those have never made a single payment. They are by no means in trouble as they have plenty in reserves, and there are 382 units in total so making up the difference wouldn’t be too great of a cost to the other tenants.

I also noticed that there are about 20 properties with tax liens, a good amount in preforeclosure and a couple being foreclosed upon. Also, there are about half of the penthouse units for sale that take up the top 2 floors. I feel confident in saying that every unit purchased here is underwater. Another bad sign for sellers is that the amount of sales at the building has dropped to 1 I think over the last 3 months. It is going to be ugly!!!

Sadly for some, it will get uglier as the 80 some odd unit Aperture should be done this year, and a much bigger apartment complex opens in the next year or so. They are within a few blocks of AV. If I could pick up a penthouse unit for 500k, maybe 600k, I’d probably go for it (unlikely at best, at least for the next year or two). As of now they are all listed for around 800k (for the 1249 sq ft units).

As all have echoed, DO NOT BUY DOWNTOWN!!! You would be insane. Rent downtown if you love it so much. I’m anticipating rents to fall now too, as I have seen many, many units linger even as they drop the prices. There will always be some schmuck that will overpay, but don’t let that discourage you from being rational.

[dny]

I will check into the legal center that is being mentioned. As far as fraud being commited, I don’t think that fraud was intended from the start, but if receiveing rent and not paying the mortgage constitutes fraud, then yes, that is happening.

My guess is that like many amateur flippers this guy bought with the hope that the place would appreciate in price. Once he realized that was a lost dream he decided to cut bait and let the place sink into foreclosure.

And no, the landlord’s initials are not R.S.

[dny]

I see no fault in you showing a bid for a Realtor’s assistance. It is easy to see why some (greedy) Realtors would be upset with somebody not blindly paying $17k for what could be 10-20 hours of work. Some Realtors are surely trying to maintain what monopoly power/collusionary practices are in place (standard disclaimer: not all Realtors are bad).

For my parents who were selling their home in PQ by themselves, I know they ran across many difficult Realtors. Most pressed my parents to use them as the listing agent, to which my parents always politely refused. They have just now sold their home (it is in escrow) after being on the market for about 3 months. They received multiple offers over that time period.

My parents did enlist the help of a Realtor to list the house on the MLS. They paid $99 for this, and they ended up using the same Realtor to take care of the paperwork involved in the sale of the home for a nominal fee ($500?). I would highly recommend this agent–Marti Scott–for any “For Sale By Owners” based on my parent’s experience. She was extremely courteous and provided valuable aid.

My guess is that she would also be willing to help buyers at a reduced fee by rebating a piece of the commission. You can check her website here for details: http://homesellersupport.com/index.php . I know for my parents they essentially reduced the price for any buyer without an agent by 2.5%. Any rational seller would do the same as their concern should be the price net of fees and commissions they receive.

Unfortunately, the assumption of rational behavior doesn’t carry as much weight as one would think. One agent represening a buyer who submitted an offer on the house sent a letter questioning my parents ethics because she thought they were using an agent to sell the house. I know with certainity my parents were always totally forthright about not having an agent. The signs saying “For Sale By Owner” in the front and back yard should have been an obvious indication of that fact. In any case, my parents received this letter after sending a counter-offer only $5k above the inital offer.

Why the agent would flip out over my parents representing themseves is beyond me. She would have received about $15k in commission had the deal gone through. In my mind, the agent was doing a disservice to her client because she allowed her partiality (I think she only wanted to work with other agents to keep the monopoly in tact) to get in the way of a deal. In the letter it did not mention that the price was unacceptable. The letter also mentioned how my parents had raised the deposit from $5k to $10k which was a complete blunder on her part as my parents did no such thing–the deposit was still at $5k.

My point to all of this is that if you cannot work the deal for yourself for whatever reason, I recommend using an agent who brings enough value to the table to offset any added costs. I would give Marti Scott a shot as she definitely was an asset in my parent’s dealings.

[dny]

I showed up with my $25k knowing it was unlikely that I–or anyone else–would end up submitting a bid that was successful. For me the purpose was to survey the market, and to see if there would be any people willing to pay the ridiculous prices I was expecting. I had read that the reserve would be close to the bank loan amount, which was near %80 of the purchase price. This is why I knew there would be no “deals”.

The crowd was about 100+, but I would guess that there were only 25-35 bidders. The crowd makeup was heavy on the ethnic side (about 40% asian/indian and middle eastern), with most of the bidding done by a few ethnic families–especially this one Chinese family (Funny story about them: The main monkey who I imagine owns the auction company (Piratelli?) and two other guys would maneuever through the crowd trying to encite bidding. Also, let’s not forget about the token spotter who leaps forward and screams “YELP!!!” when he sees a hand go up. Anyway, in regards to the Chinese family, they were the high bid or runner up on a few homes. They did this becaue none of their previous bids were accepted as meeting the minimmum. During a stretch of about 4 homes–10 mins–the old guy is practically standing on top of the matriarch (older woman) of the family. He continues to work her over as she is one of the few people bidding. At one point when she is second in bidding on a home at around $800k, and this is what I thought was funny, he says, “I’ll even throw in some kim-chee”. Kim-chee is of course a Korean dish, like a pungent cabbage or radish. I know these people were Chinese because I heard them talking in Mandarin.).

I knew the auction was going to be a bust when he OPENED the first house-the biggest I think at 4600 some sqft at $1.5M. This elecited a small chuckle from me and a few others. He backed all the way down to $1M before getting ending up at $1.05M.

Quick Recap of high Bids:

sqft–price
4600–$1.05M
3700–$1.00M Great BY and View
4091–$1.1M Great BY and View
3384–$900k (1 bid)
3094–$700k-$900k “a little shy”–probably 100k or so off
3094–$700k-$825k
2812–$550k-$750k
2666–$750k
2461–$700k
2336–$700k
2506–$775k
2178–$775k
2775–$650k

Again, they did not accept any of the bids, but they did say some were close (maybe $100 or $200k would be my guess as to what close means), and they would negotiate with the high bidder. Some others had nice yards and views too. All the houses were extremely well appointed. No complaints there. According to them, 2 of the 16 in total that were to be sold are in escrow. I didn’t stick around for the last one.

Seeing this farse only convinced me further that things are going to get ugly. There were probably only about eight people who bid. The auction guys did their darndest to keep things lively, but it was a tough sale giving the prices they were trying to pull off. Hope this helps those who were curious.

Also, they usually started the bidding extremely high and then worked their way down, and then got bid up by a hair. A few houses in they just said who wants to start it and soebody shouted $500k. On a few homes were this or close to it was the starting bid, there was actually some action, but not nearly enough to get the prices they wanted. Never did they just start at $50k and move up. I would hardly call this an acution format outside of the crazy Mo’s screaming when a hand went up out and the typicaly fast tongued auctioneer.

[Author]

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