Greetings from Lake Powell!

Ah, the wonders of technology. I'm sitting here on a houseboat on Lake Powell blogging using my Verizon Kycero 650 card and an antenna booster that is suction cupped to one of the windows on the boat. They say if I can see Navajo mountain, I should get a signal so we'll see if that's the case as we move around the late this week.

I plan on calculating the MLS statistics for July and posting them after today (signal permitted).

I updated the inventory levels in the cities I have on www.SloWatch.com. What you'll see is that the inventory didn't change much in the last few weeks. Some cities had a few more, some a few less. That's good news if the inventory doesn't keep shooting up. Now if we could reduce it by 10 or 20% (for a start), that would be even better.

I was asked by a Broker in the Bay Area to photograph a new Los Gatos listing for him. It's a home built by Steve Wozniak, one of Apple's co-founders. It was a very interesting home that even included a cave. They are looking to list it around $8 Million. I'll post some photos of it once I go through them.

News Flash! New Listing in San Luis Obispo as of an hour ago. 2 Bedroom, 2 Bath with approximately 1400 square feet. This is a NICE home. It's one of those that when you walk through it, you can't find anything wrong with it (at least I didn't).

Property website is here: www.1254VistaDelLago.com

An article in Sunday's Tribune talked about the slowdown in homes going into escrow and the impact on Realtors but they failed to present reality.

There are 3500 Realtor members on the Central Coast. Say we'll end up with a total number of 1300 homes going into escrow from May 1st - July 31st. This means 2600 representations of Buyers and Sellers (1300 x 2 = 2600). If every Realtor only had one side of a transaction the last 3 months, 900 Realtors would not have made ANY money. Now if you adjusted for "Double Ending" and use the 20/80 rule (20% of the Realtors do 80% of the business) the reality is well over half of Realtors on the Central Coast have not made any money since May 1st.

If the low number of Pending sales continues, there will be *many* Realtors leaving the profession.

When I was on the radio talk show last week someone called in asking about transferring their tax base if they move.

Here's a link to the form that is required. It also describes how you qualify.

California Pizza Kitchen in SLO is supposed to open on August 1st. It's where Fresh Choice used to be.

It looks like July will end up like the last few months with twice the number of new listings as pending sales and another record month in number of price changes.

I participate in discusssion boards with Realtors across the country. The increased number of new listings is not unique to California. There has been an interesting discussion on why there is such an increase. Following are 4 types of Sellers that may be contributing to the large number of homes being put on the market:

1) Serious Sellers - These are motivated homeowners that want to sell their home and will adjust their price based on what the market is telling them.

2) Speculative Sellers - These homeowners are testing the market and a price. They are hoping they can still get top dollar for their home but aren't interested in adjusting their price if they don't.

3) Loan problems - These are homeowners that may have purchased their home using "creative financing" only to find their monthly payment skyrocketing as the interest rates have increased over the past year.

4) Investors - People looking to cash out of their current investment.

Why would you allow an agent to Double End your transaction?

One of the scenarios that still doesn't make sense to me is a Listing Agent representing both the Seller and Buyer. This is called "Double Ending" the transaction and is one of those things that most agents I know dream of. Not only do they get twice the amount of commission, but they also may get a bonus from their Broker who gives a bigger percentage cut to the agent if they Double End. When I was with a bigger brokerage, everytime an agent double-ended a tranascation, the other agents treated them like they just won the lottery.

Maybe it's because I come from a business background but I can't see how representing both the Buyer and Seller in a large dollar amount business transaction passes my "Is this good for the client?" test. I wouldn't hire a contract lawyer to prepare, review, and negotiate a contract that is also doing the same for the other party so why would I want a REALTOR doing the same???

If they are representing both the Buyer and Seller, how can each party be assured the agent is working in their best interest? If something comes up during the inspection period, will the agent be more concerned about losing their lottery payoff more than what's best for the Buyer or Seller?

If I was hiring an agent to sell my house, I'd state that I do not want them to represent the Buyer. I wouldn't want to get a "discount" on the commission if the agent represented the Buyer. I WOULD WANT FULL REPRESENTATION! There are a lot of agents promoting "Full Service" these days but will also double end the transaction. Doesn't make sense to me.

If a Buyer did approach the Listing Agent wanting to put in an offer, the Listing Agent can refer the Buyer to another agent. I wouldn't have a problem if the agents were in the same office. Then both parties have their own representation.

When interviewing an agent to sell your home, ask them if they have ever Double Ended a transaction and then have them explain what advantage that gave to the Seller AND Buyer.

New real estate market data was released today by DataQuick. They reported the percentage decrease in Pending Sales between June 2005 and June 2006 in markets in Northern and Southern California.

I'll be putting this information (and how it compares to the SLO market) on www.SloWatch.com by tomorrow.

Money magazine released their "Best Places to Live" report for 2006. You can see it here.
I didn't find any Central Coast cities mentioned...

I've been invited to appear as a guest on the Dave Congalton show (920 KVEC) this Thursday at 5 pm to talk about real estate. Call in if you want to join discussion!

Introducing a new website - www.SloWatch.com Keeping an Eye on the SLO Real Estate Market

I put together a website that will track what is happening in our local real estate market. I've taken the monthly MLS statistics that I've posted to this blog for the past two years and prepared some graphical analysis of the data. I will also be tracking home inventory in particular cities on a weekly basis to track what is happening in particular cities at particular price ranges.

What you'll see by the data thus far is:
- inventory is increasing, pending sales are not keeping up with new listings
- of the homes that are selling, they are still selling close to List price

The first half of July is not being kind to Home Sellers as the market continues to change to favor Buyers. Through yesterday there has been:

434 New Listings
209 Pending Sales

and

704 Price Changes

Here's the chart for 30 year Fixed Mortgage rates since the beginning of the year.

This is my 400th post to my BLOG!

The Pismo Beach Outlet mall has added free wireless access. Now you can Shop and Surf, which in my household would be my wife shopping and me sitting in the car surfing the net.

They say the signal should reach the entire parking lot which I find hard to believe unless they have multiple Access Points. I'm going to take my wi-fi meter out there and see how far a (useable) signal reaches.

Pismo Beach politics continues to entertain. This time it's a Councilman who alledgedly showed bad conduct at the 4th of July event according to a citizen active in Pismo Beach. Here's his letter to the City Council about the incident.

An Apple store may be coming to downtown SLO

According to an article in Saturday's Tribune, Apple Computer has interest in opening a store in downtown SLO where Express Men used to be.

I think an Apple store would fit well with the direction downtown SLO is going. Sephora, a chain store that sells makeup, is set to open soon by Pottery Barn. And California Pizza Kitchen is going in where Fresh Choice was.

So much for downtown SLO protecting the small business owner. The Apple store will definitely have an impact on the Mac Superstore out on Higuera. Plus, I don't know how Pizza Solo will survive when the California Pizza Kitchen opens 30 feet away. It should also give local-favorite Woodstocks some competition.

But, the city has to bring in the stores people want to spend money at in order to get tax revenue unless they are going to get the money other ways (like raising property taxes).

If you are reading this early on Saturday, the King of the Mountain bike race starts today at 1 pm behind the Madonna Inn.

If you have sold a home before, chances are you've heard an agent say an advantage to list with them is that they promote your home to other agents in their office. The bigger brokerages really like to use this.

I ran a report on residential homes sold in San Luis Obispo in June 2006. 59 out of the 68 homes were sold by another Brokerage than the company that listed the home. Of the 9 homes that were sold by the same Brokerage, 5 of them were "double ended" meaning the Listing Agent also represented the Buyer and received the entire commission. So...only 4 out of 68 were sold by another agent in the office.

If you want to see how messed up the Los Osos Sewer situation is, just check out the meeting agenda for 7/6/06. Note how many lawsuits are listed.

With the changing housing market, the topic of "Short Sale" is being brought up on Realtor message boards. Here's what a Short Sale is....

Say a homeowner can't make their mortgage payments. They put the house up for sale and get an offer that, when all costs of selling the home are deducted, is lower than what they owe to the lender. Instead of going into foreclosure, the lender accepts the lower amount.

The reason lenders would entertain something like this is because of the costs associated with the foreclosure process. There is a gothca' though. The amount the Seller is short is viewed as taxable income to the Seller.

While homes in some areas may not be moving as fast as they did last year, there are still areas where certain homes are in demand. For example, the inventory for homes/condos under $1 Million around Cal Poly is low right now (see MLS Map search link below). This is the time of year when students (or parents) that already don't have housing for the next school year are searching. It's also the time when a lot of yearly leases are up and owners are deciding to put homes on the market or renting them out for another year.

http://www.slocountyhomes.com/cal_poly_real_estate.htm

Where are the Buyers???

July is starting off to be another bad month for Central Coast Home Sellers. Since the 1st, we've had
- 257 price changes
- 159 new listings
- 35 Back on market

and just 76 Pendings.

Inventory has increased by 128 homes.

I hope you had a good 4th of July! I went to the Pismo fireworks event and there sure was a lot of illegal fireworks going off on the beach before the main show.

If you plan to go in the future, here's my tip. Park at the Outlet Mall and walk over. It's good exercise and you can wait until 8 pm before going.

I was surfing around looking at homes and found this photo from a home for sale in the Bay Area. This was one of the four photos featured for the home. Hmmm...wonder if the shampoo comes with the home? Can't figure out what some of the other stuff is though.

If you are traveling and needing a motel/hotel, I found a reservation system that I really like. Has good prices and doesn't charge an added "online booking fee" like the big travel sites do. You can find the reservation system here:

http://www.slocountyhomes.com/#reservations

The San Luis Obispo County Airport has plans to go larger. The plans are to extend the runway so bigger planes can use it. With that comes a bigger terminal and parking area to handle more travelers.

Something to always investigate when buying a home is where the flight path is (or in this case, where the flight path will be). I checked the Master Plan here but couldn't find anything about a proposed flight path with the new runway. It probably won't change much from the current one, just have bigger planes.

I remember reading a Letter to the Editor in the Trib about 6 months ago from someone in the San Luis Obispo Country Club complaining about the airport noise. Someone responded to that letter with something like "you knew the airport was there when you bought your home".

Bottom line is don't expect the SLO Airport to go away. It's only going to get bigger, busier, and louder!

According to today's Tribune, the Hilton chain is considering building a motel in Grover Beach near where Motel 6 is next to 101. This should help Grover get some tax revenue to fix some of those potholes!

Here is the article about Trilogy that I mentioned a few days ago.

Click to read article

RIP Surfin' Cruiser

You might have seen my PT Cruiser with the surfboards on top of it driving around a year or two ago. Well...as of today the Cruiser is no more. I traded it in for a car for my wife. I still have the surfboards and maybe one day they will ride again!

I purchased a Nissan Murano from Coast Nissan/BMW. It was a pretty good experience until we got into the room where they have you fill out the paperwork and try to sell you the extended warranty.

Two things I didn't like about this...
1) They had a microphone sitting on the table in front of my wife and I. They said they were videotaping the transaction but placement of the microphone told me they really wanted to hear what my wife and I said. They weren't recording just the transaction, but the negotiation of add-on stuff too. They left the room 4 or 5 times and I wonder how many people don't realize there is a microphone pointed at them.
2) They had a doc fee of $45 on the contract and tried to quickly go by it by saying "...and this is tax and license". I asked if the doc fee went to the dealership and the finance manager said she didn't know (which I thought was interesting). She checked and guess what, it was a dealership fee. That's when my sleaze meter started to sound. I wasn't going to pay the dealership any more than what we had agreed to (and didn't).

BTW, my wife loves the car!