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Ex-SD
ParticipantWhy does it have to be Houston or Huntsville?
Since you’re considering Huntsville, there are lots of nice, affordable communities in other cities in the south that offer more opportunities and are more desirable.ParticipantThis ran in the online version of the L.A. Times this morning………….9/29/07. Anyone on this forum going to the auction with their $5k check to register as a bidder?
latimes.com LA Land BLOG
San Diego condo auction closed to press
We had a coach in high school who often followed up his criticisms by saying, “The truth hurts, doesn’t it?” Yes, sometimes the truth does hurt. But there are ways to avoid the hurt, aren’t there? As D.R. Horton is doing today in San Diego, you can keep the press out of your condo auction.
News item from the Union-Tribune: “D.R. Horton, the nation’s largest builder, is limiting attendance at its planned auction Saturday of condominiums at two local developments, according to the firm it hired to run the event. Late Friday afternoon, Real Estate Disposition Corp. (REDC) said that only registered bidders with $5,000 in cash or cashier’s check would be permitted to attend.
More: “’We are going to be closing the auction to the press tomorrow,’ said Michael Schack, senior vice president of REDC. ‘We are only allowing registered bidders in. We are not allowing cameras, photography, press, media. It is not our choice.'”
Our take: If we ran a large homebuilding company, and had overbuilt to the extent we had to resort to auctions, we’d probably close the auctions to the press too. How does coverage of the auction help D.R. Horton? They don’t want potential buyers in Des Moines and San Antonio holding out for the “San Diego Discount.”
But if we ran a blog about housing — and oddly enough we do — we would report every scrap of information we could get about the auction, so we again ask for your tips and feedback today.
ParticipantAnd here’s some more in the West End of L.A.
http://westside-bubble.blogspot.com/2007/09/biggest-price-reductions.html
ParticipantSomething that I learned many years ago when I was a young man and worked for a very large manufacturer of big ticket items………When inventory would grow too large, the prices would drop to whatever it would take to move he inventory. Years later, I moved into the retail sector as CEO of a very large chain of big ticket items and a wholesale distribution network of selling some of these products to other dealers in the USA and Canada……………Any time our inventory would grow too large, I would drop our prices to whatever would move it. It doesn’t matter if it’s homes, cars, widgets, etc…………When inventory is too high, prices will drop to the point that it will take to move the inventory. It is a basic fundamental of manufacturing, distribution and retail that this is the thing to do.
In the bubble markets around the country, we already have a much larger than normal inventory of homes………….. add to this…….. the lack of qualified buyers, requiring down payments, no liar loans, tighter restrictions on borrowers, higher mortgage interest rates, etc. and you come up with a recipe for very large price drops to get rid of the inventory. Some builders have already smelled the coffee in Florida and have held auctions where the condos and town-homes brought discounts of 50% from what other buyers paid a year ago. Stubborn sellers who have to sell for reasons of job loss, divorce, un-affordability, etc will have to chase the falling prices of REO’s that the lenders will need to clear from their books, etc. It only takes a couple of homes in your neighborhood that sell at greatly reduced prices to play havoc with the comps when the next person wants to sell their home. This mess did not happen overnight and it won’t clear up overnight.
All this is coming to a neighborhood near you………….very soon.Patience, grasshopper!
ParticipantCashman, congratulations on having the good sense to sell when you did. You may not see prices dropping in your old neighborhood yet but you probably don’t see nearly as many sales either. I sold in the spring of 2005 and left CA. I’ve been convinced since around 2001-2002 that the housing market would collapse and I’ve always thought that it would take 4-5 years for it to spiral down to the bottom from the very top. Condos are always the first to drop……..then the SFR’s in the outlying areas like Temecula, Riverside, etc. I’m convinced that it will work it’s way to the more desirable areas. If you follow the other housing blogs in CA and in other cities, you will see that the burners are starting to warm up. There is plenty of info in the area-specific blogs that communities like Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica are also starting to build inventory, see significant price drops and feel the heat. IMHO, you have done exactly the right thing if you’ve going to live in CA for the next two to four years because I think it’s going to take that long for everything to shake out. My prediction is that mid 2011 to mid 2012 will likely be the bottom which when reached, will sit for quite a while before any appreciable ramp-up is seen again. Countrywide presently has over 12,500 REO’s (3000 in CA) at the present time and they are only one of many lenders who are sitting on foreclosed inventory. Sooner than later, these lenders will need to convert these REO’s to cash and start slashing prices. If you can avoid it, you do not want to be a property owner in a bubble market like CA when this happens. There are also over 5.1 million homes for sale nationwide.
Mo…………Total…Exist. homes…months to sell….New for sale
Aug 07…5.11 million….4.58 million……..10.0 mo………529,000
Aug 06..4.49 million…..3.92 million……….7.5 mo………568,000
Aug 05..3.34 million…..2.86 million……….4.7 mo………479,000
Aug 04..2.88 million…..2.48 million……….4.6 mo………404,000Look at the growth in inventory of homes for sale in the USA since Aug of 2004. We are headed into a bad recession and very possibly, a depression. You do not want to be a knife-catcher and you ARE doing the right thing at the present time.
September 27, 2007 at 8:09 AM in reply to: VOTE: state of the bubble collapse, Worse, OR Better than your expectation? #86077ParticipantIt’s pretty much where I thought it would be. Condos would be first to take some hard hits, then the outlying areas of SFR’s…….then it will work it’s way towards the more desirable areas. I think it’s going to take a long time (mid to late 2011 or mid 2012 to hit the bottom). Time will tell.
September 27, 2007 at 7:32 AM in reply to: Fairbanks Ranch vs. Santaluz vs. Cielo vs. rest of Rancho Santa Fe #86069Participantraptorduck: The possibility of two offers coming in at the same time that you showed interest in a home that has been on the market for 140 days is just about zero. The market is just headed in the wrong direction for this to happen on an expensive home at this time. Many agents are desperate right now because they are so used to doing “little to nothing” for making an above average income…………….now that they are having to actually work, they will resort to stupid sales tactics that are transparent to anyone with half a brain. I’m glad you told them that you weren’t interested anymore……that’s what I would have done.
You’re looking in some great areas and many of the people who posted in response to your query in this thread are pretty knowledgeable about these areas. You can’t go wrong with any of these locations. I am a huge bear at this time and right or wrong, I think that the bottom won’t come until mid 2011 or 2012 and then it will sit on the bottom for a good while. My point is that there is no rush to buy and there is likely to be a good supply of luxury homes for rent as the housing market continues marching downward.
Good luck to you and your family whatever you may choose to do.Participantocrenter: IMHO……if you wait long enough (around 2011)…..you’ll see 1999 prices. Time will tell.
Good luck!
September 26, 2007 at 10:33 AM in reply to: Nice place but never in a million years could I afford it yet. #85970ParticipantYes, someone bought it and had it moved to Santee so they could live in a higher-class community.
Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaParticipantAs Peter Boyle used to say in the sitcom, “Everybody Loves Raymond” :
*Holy Crap!
…….and……..
*Bap, Bap, Bap, Bap, Bap! (referring to his wife’s, non-stop blabbing)
ParticipantWikpedia subjects can be composed and edited by about a zillion people so whomever wrote that propaganda about Santee in Wikipedia had a self-serving agenda.
Anyone who has ever lived in San Diego knows that Santee is a crap hole. Nobody who is truly financially successful aspires to live there. Santee is not on the desirable list of places to visit when tourists are vacationing in San Diego and the locals who live in the better areas of San Diego go out of their way to avoid even driving through Santee. There are NO high end restaurants in Santee. No business that offers high end goods is located in Santee. Many long-term San Diegans refer to Santee as “The Redneck Riviera”. Those are the facts.I’m not quite sure why you posted that your child was a genius on this forum but if your child truly tested well, that simply indicates that they have the ability to learn and formulate a little easier than many other people. It is not a free pass for prosperity for the child and if you make a big deal about it with your child, chances are that they will develop a complex which will cause them to have more problems than good due to having a high “I.Q.”. If you would quit getting so emotional & get off of this ridiculous, “Santee is wonderful” kick……..people would stop making fun of your posts.
Chill out!ParticipantRent………rent……….rent…………..until 2010 (at the earliest). Then take a look at how much prices have fallen and decide if you should rent for another year or two. Prices are falling and are not going back up anytime soon so you’ll have plenty of time to make a decision that could cost you $100’s of thousands of dollars when you add up the sales price, taxes and interest that you will pay for a house that will substantially drop in value over the next three to five years.
Good luck…………and RENT…..don’t buy!September 25, 2007 at 5:33 AM in reply to: Greenspan and the Vaunted Bay Area Both Going Down #85795Participant*Greenspan is a really smart guy and he absolutely knew what was likely to happen withe the out of control, lending policies.
*Deadbeats will always accept anything that they can buy on credit because they have a mindset of “if you’re stupid enough to let me buy it on credit, you deserve what you’re going to get”. There are millions of people in this country who apply for credit cards and credit to buy cars and other items every day……and are turned down because the lenders know that they’re too large of a risk. So, Countrywide and other big companies made the bright decision to give these same people loans to buy expensive homes? Reckless, stupid, moronic, dumb and every other word you can use to describe what these idiots did because it’s very possibly going to put the entire country into a depression.
*Many of the brokers (well, the smart ones) knew what would eventually happen.
*The people who run the operations at Fannie & Freddie knew exactly what the outcome would be.
*The big boys on Wall Street absolutely knew what would happen.
The bottom line: There’s plenty of blame to go around because they’re all culpable. There is NO way to stop this huge tsunami. They can get out all the bandages that they want but it’s too big and too far along. When condo builders resort to auctions to move their properties in bubble markets like Miami, Fort Meyers and Sacramento and those properties are already selling for 50% off, it’s going to spread and get a lot worse in SoCal and the rest of California. DataQuick can keep on posting their optomistic comments and the real estate lobby can cheerlead all they want………prices will continue to fall and anyone who buys a home in any of these markets until 2010 (at the earliest) should have their head examined.
ParticipantI have never understood why anyone would pay more than $200k for any of the homes in Santee.
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