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speedingpullet
Participant@FormerSanDieagan
Wierdly enough, no.
There is some inventory tracking info over at ocrenters blog:
http://bubbletracking.blogspot.com/
but nothing LA-specific.
As mentioned above, Bearmaster does a great job on the South Bay bubble, so if you find a blog doing Westside/LA , would you mind posting a link here?
I feel bad barging in on a San Dieagan blog with irrelevant spoutings about LaLaLand 😉
Participant@ powayseller
I’m sure you already know her, but Bearmaster over at South Bay Beaches Housing Bubble:
http://sbbeachbubble.blogspot.com/
is blogging southern LA/OC county. I’m sure you could both pick each other’s brains for information on beach communities all along theSoCal coast.
Participant1) Renting – a nice 2b/2b SFR in Van Nuys. Despite it being the The Valley, we feel lucky in comparison with friends trying to find rentals in L.A at the moment – few and expensive.
2) Never owned here. Technically I now ‘own’ my mother’s flat in London, but am in the process of selling it as the Executrix of her will. And, after 6 offers in two weeks, hoping to exchange contracts before the UK housing bubble pops…
3) Judging from what I’ve read, UK prices are still going up, so have no idea what the peak will be over there. In any case I’m more interested in selling it, whatever the market conditions, as I want to use the money to invest/buy over here next year.
4) I’m a long time internet junkie, so came across Patrick’s blog sort of by mistake (back when it wasn’t subscription). From there I followed links to other HB blogs, and discovered the splendid Piggingtons!
5) Would love to buy something over on the Westside – Van Nuys summers are brutal – but now have a financial cushion. So, we’re looking for something a bit less built up than Santa Monica/West L.A. Until my mother’s passing, it looked like the only things we could afford would be condos.
6) see 2)
7) Since returning to the US in 2000 we’ve steadily been priced out.
Had we the money,we should have bought in 2000, but were dealing with relocation expenses (and culture shock) and didn’t have enough for a downpayment (always will be a 20% down, 15/30 yr fixed kinda gal 😉 ).Every time we thought we’d saved enough, prices would leap up again. Last year we thought long and hard about buying a condo, using the husband’s 401(K) money, and all the perks we could find for first-time buyers, and ARMs, but decided to rent and think about it a little longer. There but for the grace of god, etc….
Now, with a nest egg from my mum’s will and dropping prices, we can actually afford to buy something nice that we want to live in!
We’ll be looking up to a max of about 750K, as that’s what we can realistically afford, and want a place in the hills that is cooler that the San Fernando Valley.Participant“Zestimates are for entertainment purposes only”.
I’m echoing what others have said about them. Zillow is still a ‘beta’ site, and the estimates will get more accurate as more data on sales collects. Still, its kinda fun to compare the asking price on Zip with what Zillow thinks its ‘worth’..
Although I do keep a record of the week’s Zestimate, and the 2005 Tax Assessed Value in the notes section of the properties I keep on ZipRealty, on the same line as the Asking Price…it can make ‘interesting’ reading sometimes..
You can get more sensible data from looking at the comps list at the bottom of the page on Zillow, but as sales over three months old are going to be ‘aberrant’ in this rapidly changing market, it can be difficult to (Z)estimate by hand. More often than not, there will only be one or two places nearby that have sold in the last three months, so data to calculate an accurate Zestimate is often not there.
As I said in the above post, feel free to ‘take the mickey’ as they say in the UK, this is my highly unprofessional and eccentric way of looking at houses!
ParticipantSorry, bit of a misnomer…I save a bunch of places in the “my homes’ section on Zip. There’s a button on the top right of the list that allows you to to hide/display Inactive listings. Every week or so I look up the inactive properties on Zillow to see if thy have been sold. By saving them in ‘my homes’ on Zip you keep record of them that doesn’t show up on the normal saved searches.
Its also a good way of keeping an eye on properties that go inactive and then come back on the market with a new MLS#, as they’ll turn up on the saved search lists as ‘new on market’. I can then copy the data from the old inactive list over to the new listing, thus keeping a (very rough) cumlative DOM, and differences in asking price.
As I have narrow criteria for what I’m looking for, more often than not I’ll save the ‘new on market’ record. By sorting the ‘my homes’ list by something like Lot Size, and activating the inactive button, it becomes apparent that its the same property, as they will appear next to each other….Yes, I know, a Stone Age way of doing it! But I am just a looky-loo at this point, don’t want to get any outside ‘help’ at the moment, nor want to pay subscription for any more specialsed sites.
Apologies to all the professionals here, I know you’re laughing at me now 🙂
Although, if anyone knows a way of finding out what happened to a place that went ‘Inactive’ and hasn’t sold (for free and without the help of others, as above) then I’d be very appreciative of the advice.
ParticipantHi Hank!
Great minds think alike! (or, fools seldom differ, I don’t know which camp I belong to anymore..) I’m also keeping an eye on Topanga with a view to buy sometime in 2007.
Personally, I like ZipRealty much better than Realtor.com, as you get juicy bits of information like Days On Market (DOM) and price increases/reductions. Not that DOM means much these days, as quite a few places get taken off the MLS only to be relisted with a new DOM a few days later.
Once I’ve found an interesting place, I look it up on Zillow to see the real square footage (Zip tends to include unpermitted sq footage, rather than what the tax assessment says), last years Tax Assessed Value and what it sold for in previous years. The Zestimates are ‘for entertainmant purposes only’, but you do get a list of recently sold houses nearby to get some idea of what the locale is doing. Unfortunately,
I have no idea how you would find information on Inactive properties, whether pending, in escrow etc…I normally check my “Inactive” list on Zip each week and then go to Zillow to see if it has sold. If anyone knows a better way of doing this, I’d like to know too!
There’s also foreclosure.com, which I’ve looked at, but as its a paying site I haven’t signed on to it.
Also, although I haven’t done it yet myself, the LA County Offices have records on each property, and are online IIRC.
Both Zillow and Zip are free, so if you’re just a looky-loo like I am, there’s plenty to be getting on with.
ParticipantI’ve used both Quickbooks and Excel (admittedly for non-RE stuff) and I’m a big fan of Excel.
Its very adaptable, and if you learn how to use the formula bar, you can pretty much calculate anything you want to.
Plus the statistical/graphics are good, and it imports easily into Word and Access.ParticipantI keep on seeing the same places, at the same overblown prices, day after day. People are still trying to unload condos in the Westside of LA for 800K+. One advert, for a house in Sherman Oaks, has had the same price ($949K) for the last two months.The ad is posted daily.
As for the Housing Forum, its degenerated into a long, pointless, swamp for the radical HH-ers and BH-ers to hurl abuse at each other. Any innocent who strays into it accidentally, asking sensible questions and expecting some sort of information-rich, polite reply soon leaves, as thier thread decomposes into yet another fight along the lines of “Buy Now, before interest rates go up!” or “bitter renter!”.
If you enjoy watching tigers devour chunks of meat at the zoo, then CL’s housing forum will provide the same kind of excitement. If you actually want a conversation, or some information, then its about as useful as watching a cat trying to picking a lock without opposable thumbs.
ParticipantAlthough I can hardly believe I’m saying it….I find myself in agreement with GWB on this point. Updating the immigration system to allow people to work here temporarlily is a win-win situation for both sides: workers can go home with legally earned US dollars, and the Govt can tax them on it.
What’s not to like?I find it increasingly ironic/scary that when the US falls on hard times, the xenophobia increases. Its not as if these people haven’t crossed the borders in the last few months – they’ve been doing it repeatedly for years. Why the moral outrage now? How much is it going to cost to deport up to 30 million people? how much is it going to cost to put a National Guardsperson every 50 yards along the southern border? Will it cost less than the legislation to allow these people to work here, legally? I don’t think do.
By all means, tighten the border, charge employers who hire illegal labour, arrest the vile ‘coyotes’ that feed on desperation. But if you don’t implement sane imigration policies to go with the security then it will all come to nothing. People aren’t going to stop coming over the border. You might as well accept it, and legisltate for it. That way, everybody wins.
Historically, it wasn’t all that long ago that all the same things said about the Irish, the Poles, The Chinese,etc… Each time thier children and grandchildren assimiliated into the culture. We’re all mongrels.
As for Europe – can’t speak so much for France, except to say that the Muslim population by and large over there are from ex-french colonies like Algeria, Morrocco and Francophone Africa. They have thier own bones to pick with the French govt that have little to do with Al Quaeda.
The UK has a different mix – most from ex-British colonies like Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.. as well as a large population of Kuwaitis, Saudis, Yemenis on the high-income side.
The vast majority of the British Muslim population are law-abiding people who just want to get on with thier lives, and all this ‘home-grown terrorism’ is as upsetting to them as to the rest of the UK population. Crazy comes in all flavours, races and religions.I’m with you PerryChase. I enjoy practising my Spanish too 😉
ParticipantAch, don’t even get me started on Angelino driving…
..except to note an interesting law….the more expensive the car, the less likely to use signals when crossing 4 lanes of the freeway at one time.*
Its almost as if those Hummers, Mercs and loathsome Lexii actually come without signals as part of the standard package. I guess if you need to chose between metallic paint and …erm..signals, Teh Shinee will always win.
*also applies to pickups and vans that look like they’re running on a lick and a promise. In this case, they really may not have signals. Dilapidation I can deal with; oblivion/indifference to the rest of the world I won’t.
ParticipantAlso, exposure to ‘different’ foods.
My mom – originally from Shreveport, LA – insisted that I eat spicy/garlicy food from a relatively early age. Filee Gumbo was a regular in our house.
I wasn’t allowed to go “but….I don’t LIKE it!” until I’d actually eaten some. Then, a few months later, she’d try again, and soon enough there was literally nothing I wouldn’t try at least once.Consequently, I’ve eaten everything from Sea Urchin to Reindeer, and can say that the only thing I don’t like are raw onions. I put it firmly down to being given small portions of ‘adult’ food as a kid rather than cheeseburgers, macaroni and cheese, etc..
I don’t think its so bad over here, but I remember growing up in the UK and seeing many of my peers being given ‘nursery food’ for most of thier childhood. But then, garlic was a rarity in the UK until the 80’s….
And, as corroboration, almost all my food was home-cooked, and we never ever had coke/pepsi/soft drinks in the house.
ParticipantMy pet peeve:….calling properties ‘homes’.
As in “Townhome”. FFS its called a “TownHOUSE”! ARRGGHH!
When did ‘home’ and ‘house’ become synonimous?
Is this just a US thing?
I’ve never heard of houses being called homes over in the UK, so is this just a portion of ‘realtorspeak’ that was assimilated without anyone knowing?
It makes me wince every time I see/hear it.
Same way that 40-year-old men refer to going to the toilet as going to “the little boy’s room”, or using “impact” as an adjective – ie “Impactful”…
ParticipantTacky, sticky….or both 😉
On the subject of divine intervention…maybe sellers need help from St Jude:
ParticipantHehehe 😉
I love the way, even after ‘moving the goalposts’ in data collection, they still can’t get more than a 23% affordability number.
That’s still 3 out of 4 people who can’t afford to buy…
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