Here are some interesting mortgage data maps from the Wall Street Journal. Click on each thumbnail.

Deliquency Rates for First and Second Mortgages


Post-Boom Changes in Home Prices and Deliquency Rates


High Rate Loans, by State and Metro Areas

I wanted to give an update on the New Listings page since I see by my web stats that a lot of you are using it- http://www.slocountyhomes.com/newlistex.php

I've contacted the vendor that I use to display the property detail page when you click the MLS#. I've found that they are a day behind on the data file they are using but so far, I'm having a problem convincing their technical support group they have a problem but hope to make some progress today.

So, the newest listings at the top of the report will still say "property #xxxx not found" when you click on the MLS # but if you go down the list, the previous days new listings will display the property detail just fine. For those listings you can't get detail for, you could wait and try them the following day and it will give you the detail. Or...

For a workaround until I can get the problem fixed, you can get details of one of the newest listings by entering in the MLS# on this page:

http://www.slocountyhomes.com/search_mls_page_2.htm

Sorry for the incovenience.

Lots of updates coming!

Not only do we have end of the month statistics, but it's the end of the first quarter too. So I'll be updating the median home prices and the indiviudal city Sold reports on http://www.slowatch.com/ on April 1st (no foolin'). I also plan to break down the March Pendings Sales to show how many are foreclosures and Short Sales.

Stay tuned!

In the Fortune Small Business April 2008 edition, they have a 100 Best Places to Live and Launch and San Luis Obispo is #78 on the list. The cities are ranked for the best mixture of business advantages and lifestyle appeal.

For San Luis Obispo, here's what they say:

"Sunny San Luis Obispo boasts a mild Mediterranean climate, vibrant retail, and beautiful views - as well as one of the most tech-savvy populations around. The city is home to the prestigious Cal Poly University, creating an enviable talent pool for local businesses in addition to breeding a youthful culture.

But San Luis Obispo is wired in more ways than one: The area's fiber optic lines create superior connectivity. Not surprisingly, high tech businesses flourish, as well as engineering and architecture firms."

I sure wish the above was all true. We do have a talent pool with Cal Poly being in our backyard but I don't see any significant high tech businesses in the area. Sure, we have a few web design companies but that's about it. We had some of the larger high tech firms in Slicon Valley and elsewhere that have had satellite offices with people telecommuting but I think most have (or are) closing these.

As for fiber connectivity, the only fiber I'm aware of is the cables that go under the ocean to Japan and come out to the switching station on Los Osos Valley Road near Foothill. We can't even get Verizon's high-speed network for wireless Internet connectivity in our area.

I hope that this article is read by some entrepeneurs and we do get some high tech startup companies in the area. It would be nice not to have to rely so much on tourism. Don't know how to access the talent pool at Cal Poly though. I've tried to get students to do some programming for me and I advertised on Craigs List but didn't get any responses.

Here's the complete list

Take our Poll!

A few days ago I added a "widget" to my blog to track and map where vistors were coming from.

Following is the map of where people have accessed my blog from over the past week.

Click to view world map

Here's a nice secluded Beach retreat in Oceano for under $500,000 ($475,000 to be exact!).

http://www.1460railroad.com/

I'm catching up on some of the news articles over the past week.

I really liked the article in the Wednesday's Tribune with the headline "COUNTY HOME SALES SINK AGAIN, BUT NATIONAL PICTURE BRIGHTENS"

Once again the Tribune is behind in their reporting. I don't know why so many wait for the DataQuick sold numbers and then write articles about what the local real estate market is doing. I really think Buyers and Sellers want to know how the market is currently doing, not what it was doing 1-2 months ago which is what you get with the DataQuick numbers. I'm starting to believe that the people writing these articles don't understand the real estate process where homes go Pending Sale, then spend 30-60 days in escrow. Either that, or they don't have access to any other information than Sold info that DataQuick reports (which they get from public records).

Want the real pulse on the local market???

As I reported at the beginning of this month, in February we had over 400 Pending Sales which we haven't had since August of last year. I just checked the Pending Sales for this month thus far and we're at 476. With 3 days left in the month, I'd be surprised if we didn't break 500 Pending Sales. We haven't done that since May of last year.

But don't wait for the Tribune to report this trend as they won't have the data until May. By then, I'll have reported two more months of market statistics.

(click image for a larger one)

Whew...what a week! We took our German exchange student on a whirlwind tour of California. Hollywood, Venice Beach, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz. Today, the students took kayaks on Morro Bay. What a beautiful morning it was!

If you want to experience Morro Bay on a Kayak, I recommend Kayak Horizons. Dennis, the owner, is a longtime blog reader and he'll set you up with a kayak for a wonderful experience.

If you've tried the New Listings report and clicked on a MLS # and got a "MLS # xxx Not Found" it's not just you. It appears that the database that retrieves the listing details isn't as updated as my new reports so it takes a day to be updated. It's only the new listings from the previous day (the ones at the top of the report) that won't display the details until the next day. It you click on listing numbers further down on the report, you'll see the detail. Now that I know that the other listing database is a day behind, I've contacted the vendor that provides me the other service and reported the problem.

I have created some additional reports to help you find homes you may be interested in! I'm going to try to update all these reports every day. The reports are:

A New Listing Report
This displays the new listings for the past seven days. The newest listings are added at the top of the list. You can find this report here:
http://www.slocountyhomes.com/newlistex.php

Foreclosures and Short Sales
These reports will replace the ones I've been manually doing that required a VIP login. The REO/foreclosure listing report is here:
http://www.slocountyhomes.com/reoex.php

The Short Sale Listing report is here:
http://www.slocountyhomes.com/shortex.php

I'll be adding these to the home page and menus in the next few days. Hope you find them useful!

A fellow Realtor has a client who is moving that no longer needs their electric chair lift. It retails for around $2,450 and they are asking $550. A good deal if you know of someone that needs something like this to help them out. More info is available here: http://slo.craigslist.org/hsh/618393313.html

The front page of USA Today had a major headline today "Sales of homes end long descent" declaring that the worst is behind us. This is because the media is reporting February's numbers which as I reported on the first of this month, showed that Pending sales for the Central Coast were up as were other areas.

But, on USA Today's website was this article saying that "The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index shows U.S. home prices fell 11.4% in January from a year ago, steepest drop since S&P started collecting data in 1987."

While stronger sales do appear to be continuing this month, there is still a lot of inventory and the number of price changes continue to be pretty high. This just shows to me that there are Buyers out there that will come off the fence if they find a home that is priced right. For some sellers with homes on the market, it may take more price reductions to move their home but at least there are more Buyers out there looking now.

If you're looking for a photo site that you can share photos (and buy prints) with family and friends I'd recommend http://www.smugmug.com/.

I've been using smugmug for about 6 months now and I like it. Visitors can display photos in various sizes and easily download the photos to their computer. Or, you can order prints of any of the photos too. If you want to see it in action, here's my photo site - http://www.byrd2020.com/

This chart looks at residential solds from 2/1 to 3/21 in SLO County by the amount of Days on Market (DOM).

This chart looks at the % of List Price vs. Sale Price for different Days on Market for the 211 residential Solds in SLO County from February 1st to March 21st. Don't look at the size of the bar as it doesn't fit with the percentage reported.

This uses the List Price for comparison which is the last price the home was at before it went Pending. So, there could have been multiple price drops prior. The Just Sold reports have the Original Price as well which is what the home first went out at.

I updated the Just Sold and REO reports tonite.

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

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

Commission rates are once again a focus in the media with the market downturn. This article talks about offering 8-10% commissions to get a home sold. THIS IS ABSURD! There is something really wrong when a higher rate of commission is the determination if a real estate agent "pushes" their client to buy a particular home, especially when there is no additional services provided for the extra commission.

All you have to do is drive around to see the lack of listing services being provided with current commission rates. Just look at all the empty flyer boxes! My kids used to have a game where they counted xmas lights on houses when we drove from one place to another at night. A new variation of the game is to count empty flyer boxes. If you are looking to Sell your home, make a note of the agents who have empty flyer boxes so you know who NOT to call.

What is troubling is that if a real estate agent is "motivated" to sell a home with a higher commission rate, then how are they going to provide good representation for their Buyer? For some, closing that deal will be the priority even if there are issues that come up that may make it not in their clients best interest to proceed with that home. Or, they may not negotiate the best price for the Buyer. If I was a Buyer, I'd want to know the commission being offered the Buyers agent before I went and looked at a home.

What is a joke to me is that the example in the article has the Listing Agent getting a higher commission split of the 8% commission (55/45). If one is to believe that a higher commission is needed to motivate Buyer Agents, then the split should be something like 25% to the Listing Agent and 75% to the Buyer Agent. What extra service is a Listing Agent going to provide??

I created SloCountyHomes.com to educate Buyers and Sellers so they can make a good decision on one of the highest financial transaction most people will make in their lifetime. It used to be that real estate agents were the keeper of information and they decided what to provide to their clients. To me, this article makes it seem like Buyers are still not getting the info and are allowing agents to make decisions for them. While the services that real estate agents provide are very important, being the gatekeepers of information is NOT one of them, IMO.

If you know of anyone Buying or Selling a home, encourage them to visit http://www.slocountyhomes.com/ and http://www.slowatch.com/ so they can obtain information they may not be getting elsewhere. If you are Selling your home, the way you stand out from all the other homes you're competiting with is the way your home is marketed (photos, Internet exposure, brochure, etc.) and price. If all Buyers used a site like SloCountyHomes.com to see the homes on the market, then the way people will be motivated to see your home is how well it your home is presented. Isn't that the service you are paying a Listing Agent to provide anyways?? Then, there would be no reason to pay Buyer Agents additional commission to get them to push their client towards a particular home.

The short blog post I did the other day about how much I paid for gas resulted in a reporter for the SLO City News/Coastal News contacting me. Look for my quote in this weeks issue.

The power of a BLOG! I've had over 12,000 visits to this Blog so far this year.

I ran into this article "Great Web sites when aging parents need help" and thought I'd pass it along. My folks are 88 and 84 and my brother and I are trying to keep them in their home in the Bay Area as long as possible. Read the article here

What will the recent Fed rate cuts do to Mortgage rates?? Here's an article that dicusses it.

New Times recently gave me an opportunity to write a weekly article for their real estate section. While I really appreciated the offer, I turned it down yesterday. One of the main reasons is that I felt I would need to write articles that other Realtors advertising in their newspaper would be ok with. Unfortunately, I felt that would be too much of a headache for the added exposure I'd get and it would be virutally impossible to write an interesting article that some other Realtor wouldn't complain about. Even reporting the facts about what's going on in the market will not go over well with some Realtors if it isn't rah-rah news.

I like being able to share information in my blog and websites that I would want to know if I was Buying or Selling on the Central Coast! But, I really do like the New Times and do appreciate them approaching me with the offer.

There is some talk amongst the Realtor community about these real estate shows that have sprung up on TV. Recently, one show had a couple that was using their landlord, also an agent, to find them a home. The couple was prequalifed for an amount but did not feel comfortable at the highest level they could qualify for and told the agent. So, what did the agent do?? They showed the couple homes at the top end of what they qualified for.

This is the type of thing that gets homebuyers in an uncomfortable financial position and is just plain POOR service. Is business that bad for some agents that they need to squeeze every commission dollar out of a transaction rather than putting the client first?

What's also sad is what an agent actually makes after all the commission splits for that extra price they pushed on the clients. Let's look at an example:

$700,000 vs. $750,000

Typical commission around here these days for a Buyers agent is 2.5%. For the $50,000 additional price difference, that's $1,250 gross commission. If the agent is with a name-brand Brokerage, there's an 8% royalty deducted which brings the commission down to $1,150. Then the Broker takes their cut, which on average is a 70/30 split (30% to the Brokerage). So the agent ends up with $805. Hardly an amount that would justify putting a client in an undesireable situation. A good Realtor counts on past clients to refer other people to them if they do a good job and the $805 they may get right away may jeopardize a future referral that may make them $12,000 instead.

I know that some Buyers think that in this market they can offer a lot lower on a home and the Seller will accept it. I just ran a report for the Solds so far in March and the average price the home sold for vs. the List Price is 95.60%. So this shows that there aren't alot of Sellers willing to take a price a lot less than the List Price. In fact, this percentage isn't much different than it has been over the past few years.

If you're looking to Buy, I'd be careful in looking at homes with a lot higher price than you are comfortable with unless your Realtor can give you a reason why they may take a lot lower price before you go view it. If the home is listed at $825,000 and has been on the market for 21 days, chances aren't too high you are going to get an offer accepted at $700,000. Unfortunately, if you get your heart set on that $825K home, the ones in the $700,000 price range probably aren't going to excite you that much.

Slash, formerly of Guns & Roses, is suing his former Realtor from Sotheby's saying that the home he purchased was smaller than what he was told and it wasn't in a gated community. If I was the Realtor, I would have made darn sure that the information provided was accurate and my butt was covered if the Buyer was buying a home without even seeing it!

Here's the Central Coast market activity for the first 16 days of the month.

New Listings - 383
Price changes - 497
Pending Sales - 250

The amount of Pendings shows that the market *IS* picking up.

(click to enlarge)

We have a German exchange student living with us for a few weeks (she arrived last night). So, we took her on a little sightseeing trip today to show how wonderful the Central Coast is. One of our stops was Montana De Oro to see the tide pools. Above is a photo of Hazards which is one of my favorites. If you haven't ever been there, I'd highly recommend it. To find it, you need to go a couple miles into the park. You'll go through a forest of eucalyptus trees and then start going up a gradual hill. You'll see a pretty good amount of space off the road where you can park. There's a No dog, No campfires, and a No parking 10pm-6am sign on a tree. There may be cars already parked there but don't count on it. There weren't any when we went today. You'll climb down a little hill from the road and then follow the path. What's really cool is that you'll hear the roar of the sea and when you finally get a view, it's spectacular. Our visitor got to see a couple of starfish and climb up and down the sand dunes. Nothing like the Central Coast!

I knew this day was coming ...

I just paid $4.06 a gallon for gas :(

Here are some facts from the California Association of Realtors:

Calif. median home price - January 08: $430,370(Source: C.A.R.)
Calif. highest median home price by C.A.R. region January 08: Santa Barbara So. Coast $1,135,000 (Source: C.A.R.)
Calif. lowest median home price by C.A.R. region January 08: High Desert $234,310 (Source: C.A.R.)
Calif. First-time Buyer Affordability Index - Third Quarter 07: 33 percent (Source: C.A.R.)
Mortgage rates - week ending 03/06/08
30-yr. fixed: 6.03% Fees/points: 0.5%
15-yr. fixed: 5.47% Fees/points: 0.5%
1-yr. adjustable: 4.94% Fees/points: 0.5% (Source: Freddie Mac)

Some more restaurant news...

There's a Waffle place opening up soon where the Denny's used to be next to the 101 at Los Osos Valley Road in SLO. I'm looking forward to trying this one.

The Chili's in Arroyo Grande is also close to opening. They are hiring right now.

Here's my current list of favorites:

Chili Peppers -SLO (Broad and South)
The best dish in the area is still their chicken mole enchiladas. YUMMY!

Mexican Viejo- Arroyo Grande
This place has taken the place of Pepe Delgados in SLO for me. Reasonable prices, good food.

Thai Basil - Paso Robles (I haven't had a disappoitment here yet)

Thai Kitchen - Arroyo Grande (I'm hooked on their Chu Chee Curry)

Straw Hat Pizza - Santa Maria (with all the pizza choices I'm still partial to this chain's combination called "The Works". They have a Saturday special for it.)

Applebees - SLO, AG, Paso (Their chicken oriental salad is what I always get but my last trip to the SLO restaurant, the portion was about 1/3 less than what I get at other Applebees).

The number of Realtors declined in 2007. The last time there was a year-to-year decline was in 1996. But, there are still a BUNCH of Realtors out there. A total of 1,338,001. In 2002 there were just 876,195. To illustrate how many Realtors have sprung up since 2002, in 1980 there were 761,391 Realtors. Yep...everyone knows a Realtor!

The latest statistics for real estate websites was released for February 2008 by hitwise.com. They measure visitors to nationwide real estate sites. In February, Realtor.com was the top site at a little over 5% but that's a big drop from January when they had 9%.

This shows the continuing decline of Realtor.com as a site people are going to. Now that people have choices of sites to look for homes on (like SloCountyHomes.com), the sites with the best local information are the ones people will come back to. Realtor.com has become extremely cluttered with advertisements as the company that runs it, Move Inc., is trying to figure out how to generate revenue and lift it's stock price. What's interesting is how many Realtors don't like Realtor.com because of the outrageous prices Move Inc. charges for enhancing THEIR listings.

Unless the National Association of Realtors can figure out how to get out of their contract with Move Inc. and take back the site, I think Realtor.com will just continue to go downhill.

Here's the market activity for the first 7 days of the month:

185 New Listings
117 Pending Sales
255 Price Changes

It looks like the increase in Pendings we saw last month may continue.

The Deparment of Housing and Urban Development released the new conforming loan limits for California. It's calculated using 125% of the median home price to a maximum of $729,750. For San Luis Obispo County, the new limit is $687,500. For Santa Barbara County, it's $729,750.

Go to our Mortgage Calculators to see how a loan lower rate will benefit you.

I updated the REO Actives, REO Solds, and Just Sold reports tonite.

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

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

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

Solvang and Santa Ynez listings are now included in the MLS Search!

The Santa Ynez Valley MLS recently merged with the Central Coast MLS which means that their listings are now part of my MLS Searches.

If you go here, you'll be able to search on Solvang and Santa Ynez
http://www.slocountyhomes.com/search_mls_page1.htm

If you go to any of the MLS Map Search pages, you can choose the city from the menu above the map. I'll need to do some work to add these to the neighborhood menu at the right of the maps.

If you've driven on the 101 through Pismo Beach lately, you might have seen the work going on at the old Perko's next to the freeway (across from Prime Outlets). A new cajun-themed restaurant is going in called Huckleberry's. This is a new restaurant for the parent company, Dynaco, which also operates Country Waffles, Perkos, and Cool Hand Lukes.

Huckleberry's is a breakfast and lunch only restuarant. One recently opened in the Bay Area and is open 7 AM - 3 PM. Their first restaurant in this new chain opened in October 2007 near Visalia. Its breakfast menu includes items such as a southern quiche and a Cajun breakfast burrito. For lunch, the menu includes Cajun-inspired menu items such as catfish and mushroom-smothered skirt steak.

I haven't heard when the projected opening date is. There is temporary RV storage in the Huckleberry's parking lot which the city gave a permit until March 18th while Huckleberry's was under construction. So, it shouldn't be too much longer.

On the subject of new food places, I saw the banner for Yogurt Creations in downtown SLO the other day. It's next to the new Peets coffee in between Peets and the Thai restaurant (the old Woodstocks Pizza place!). I don't get it. Yogurt Creations is pretty much the same as Bali's Yogurt which is within yelling distance of the planned Yogurt Creations store. I highly doubt that two of these similar stores will survive. While I have nothing against Yogurt Creations, I think it will be the loser as Bali's has a better location. You can't really see Yogurt Creations from the street unless you're really looking for it. I really don't understand the business strategy unless Yogurt Creations has deeper pockets and hopes Bali's will close first. Or maybe there's something I don't know about the building that Bali's is located in and maybe they are going to be forced to move??

Allegiant Air has added two more days it departs from Santa Maria to Las Vegas. Now you can leave and return on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. They've got some insane prices right now on certain days. As low as $19! You can take a short trip and leave on the 10th and come back on the 12th and it will only cost you $38 round trip. Ok, there's convenience fees and security fees but it's still a heck of a deal.

http://www.allegiantair.com/

Following is a link to a post on a mortgage blog about a Wells Fargo list of distressed markets. SLO County is the only one on the list that isn't classified as distressed or severely distressed. I wonder if the percentage of foreclosures/short sales is what was used by Wells Fargo to come up with this?

http://tinyurl.com/2jr8vg

I did some analyis of the February Pendings which I found quite interesting.

For Santa Maria/Orcutt, 67% of the Pending Sales are foreclosures and 7% are Short Sales. Together, that's 73% of the total Pendings!

For SLO County, 23% of the Pendings are foreclosures and 5% are Short Sales, for a total of 28% of the total Pendings.

As far as what cities in SLO County made up the foreclosures/short sale Pendings, here's the list:

Paso Robles 38%
Atascadero 19%
Arroyo Grande 16%
Nipomo 10%
Grover Beach, Morro Bay, Oceano, Shandon, and SLO had the remainder (all under 4% each).

There were some pretty pricey homes on the list too including a $989,000 in Arroyo Grande, a $799,000 in Atascadero, a $730,000 in Nipomo, another one in Arroyo Grande for $639,000, and a $624,000 home in Paso Robles.

For Contingent Sales in February, 33% in SLO County were Short Sales (none were foreclosures). But in Santa Maria/Orcutt 72% of the Contingents were Short Sales and 24% were foreclosures (yep, that adds up to 96%).

Months of Inventory took a significant drop over the last month. It hasn't been in the 13's since last September. This is also a good sign for the market as the Months of Inventory uses Sold data over the past 30 days and as you probably read in my last post, the number of Pending Sales for February were also up.

As far as individual cities, inventory rose in most from the first of last month. Santa Maria, Atascadero, Cambria, Cayucos, Morro Bay, and San Luis Obispo had the largest increases.

I updated the data and charts on the http://www.slowatch.com/ site.

Central Coast MLS Statistics -Residential -February 2008
(Last months data is also included - February (January))
New Listings - 701 (671)
Back on Market - 313 (393)
Price Changes - 893 (1007)
Contingent - 102 (70)
Pendings - 445 (364)
Solds - 207 (214)
Expireds - 919 (800)
Inactives/Withdrawns - 254 (299)

There's been a lot of talk around the water coolers at Realtor offices lately that activity is picking up and the February numbers are proof of it. Pending Sales, the indictor on how many closed Sales there will be next month, broke the 400 level. As I've blogged previously, we haven't broken 400 Pendings since July of last year. Also, Contingent Sales has taken a big jump in the last 2 months. I believe this is due to Short Sales which can't be reported as Pending until the Lender agrees to the contract. I'm going to do some further analysis this month and break down the foreclosures/short sales numbers as well to see how much of the increased activity is due to Foreclosures (especially in Santa Maria).

New Listings were pretty high but the number of Expireds also jumped. I'll be doing the inventory reports later to see where we sit with Months of Inventory (MoI). Price changes continue to happen but didn't break 1000 for the month.

Solds were still around 200. The Tribune and other media will be reporting these numbers in a few weeks and will talk about how things are still down. But as I've mentioned before, if you're reading this Blog and visiting the www.SloWatch.com site, you're getting a look at what's happening with the market 4-6 weeks sooner than what you'll read in the paper.

I'll be updating the SloWatch.com site later on today/tonite.