Arizona Real Estate Notebook

I like to follow the Southern California real estate market looking for trends that may be coming to Arizona. It looks like a neutron bomb hit this area of the San Diego area. The buildings are standing but no one lives there. The resulting effects, shown in an analysis by The Californian of foreclosure and sale […]

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“The report found that when comparing the median price of a home throughout California in 2007 to 2006, the cost fell from $554,500 to $488,640.”

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Do you have enough homeowner’s insurance? As many as 40 percent of the 14,000 homeowners who lost their houses in California’s devastating forest fires last month are discovering they don’t have enough insurance to rebuild, according to the California Department of Insurance.

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Yikes! This is ground zero in the California real estate bubble. Atwater is suffering the most. Its median home sales prices have plunged 41.6 percent since the peak. This weekend, Pacific Union Homes dropped the price $140,000 on one of its new Claremont Reserve homes. That 3,144-square-foot, five-bedroom house is now $352,310. Prices are way down […]

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San Diego leading economic indicators down sharply in August.

There were only 211 single-family housing permits, which was the lowest monthly number since January 1993…

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The UCLA’s Anderson Forecast of the California real estate economy skews very negative so keep that in mind. The rate of population growth and job growth in California given in the article are much lower than in Arizona. Those two factors, among others, put California real estate at a real disadvantage compared to Arizona real […]

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The story is about one street in Chula Vista that is ground zero for foreclosures in San Diego County. In the last few months, foreclosure has hit 1326 Little Lake Street. And the house across the street: 1327. And next door: 1330. And 1346, and 1401, and 1406, and 1413, and 1425, and 1448. And others. It […]

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Amy Gonzales, a home buyer who was struggling to pay her readjusted mortgage with Countrywide Financial Corp., turned to the San Diego Home Loan Counseling & Education Center, which is funded by the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development. The center helped her secure a fixed-rate, interest-only payment for five years. By then she […]

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San Diego condo update.

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The overall median home price in San Diego County ($489,000) was down 1.3 percent from June’s $495,500 and off 2.2 percent from July 2006’s $500,000. That not much change from a year ago but a lot of change from June.

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In the middle of the article is an intriguing tidbit; some high rise condos under construction in Downtown San Diego have been converted into hotels.

I wonder if we’ll see any high rise condo projects in Arizona being converted to hotels.

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Here’s one economist’s opinion on when the California real estate market will rebound.

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The writer starts out painting a negative picture of this Los Angeles luxury condo project under construction that is being offered for sale. Later on you find out its not so clear. A nearby project under construction actually sold at a good price so this developer may just want to lock in a profit right […]

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San Diego County median home price in May 2007 was $385 per square foot. Notice the variability is appreciation from one zip code to the next.

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First it was the new home builders last fall who said a turn around might occur in 2008 which was more than a year away. Now it looks like 2008 is the earliest for San Diego home resales. I bet new home builders are wondering if 2008 will be down as well. If it […]

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Example: Zoslocki said Patterson forces developers to pay more than $96,000 in fees per home, plus extra costs if it is built inside a community facilities district. He said fees per home are $57,659 in Modesto and $53,741 in Oakdale, and both cities charge more for homes in community facilities districts. (Hmmm, If Arizona cities increased the […]

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Some California real estate marketd still red hot. Others ice cold.

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Californians like to invest in areas with a fixed supply of homes because they’ve seen how prices have increased over the decades in the coastal areas of California. However, with the super slow increases in employment in California, its advantage Arizona when it comes to employment growth and housing demand. For investors, California has limited supply […]

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This economic report on California’s housing sector from UCLA was reported all over California and picked up nationally but this article from San Diego was the best one. In California, the pace of new-home construction has declined by about half since the 2005 peak, and sales of all types of housing have fallen off by close […]

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Another good article on the outlook for San Diego. Best quotes: Leamer said housing markets tend to go up and down, but cycles are different for price than for sales volume. Typically, sales fall first and fast following booms, while prices decline later and drift down slowly. “The volume cycle has already made a major adjustment,” he said. […]

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Here’s a real estate fraud story from San Diego. The best quotes. “Some of these people made well over a million dollars in a couple months time.” It turned out, he said, the [real estate agent] had been involved in the purchase of 17 properties over a period of just a few months. All of the sales were […]

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This fraud isn’t in the same league as the one below but look at the names involved, Realogy and Prudential! The suit, filed on Wednesday in the central district of California, seeks to recover ‘illegitimate profits’ generated by ’sham’ joint ventures formerly operated by Realogy Corp., Prudential California Realty and Property I.D. Corp. Under California law, home […]

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According to the National Association of Realtors the median home price in the United States fell 0.8% from a year earlier but in the bubble bloggers favorite state, California, the median price of a single-family home was actually up 6.2 percent from a year ago. Go figure. This is the worst bubble burst […]

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Montecastro and Stonewood Consulting are accused of engaging in a scheme by which they used inflated appraisals to obtain mortgages larger than the selling prices of the properties their clients purchased. Stonewood took the difference between the actual sale price and the mortgage amount as compensation in addition to regular sales commissions, the complaint said. The department […]

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