Happy 4th of July!
July 04, 2008
It’s 4th of July once again, and it looks like it’s shaping up to be a pretty nice day in Santa Cruz. My blog has been languishing this past little bit. I have been crushingly busy - and that’s a good thing, considering how many Realtors are suffering the fate of the Maytag repair man.
It’s actually been kind of slow on the news front, though. Don’t get me wrong, I have no shortage of anecdotes. Actually, here’s a good one from just last night. I took some clients up to see a rural property. The listing agent had told me OK to show, just go on over any time, someone is always home. And indeed, someone was home. There were at least a dozen cars parked in the driveway. Don’t worry, it was a big driveway - the house is on about two acres.
I go and present my card to a guy standing by the front door. He didn’t talk to me. A little kid about 7 years old or so took my card, went inside, came back after a minute, and said, “Pass”. You’re thinking, maybe, that’s a strange thing to say - but in Spanish, you’d say “pase” - which basically means come in. So we did.
It was kind of surreal. In case you don’t know, I speak Spanish fluently. I mean, fluently-fluently. My-wife-is-from-Peru-fluently. So I talk to the people who are living there, and nobody talks back. Nobody said a single word. Not one. They just gawked at me. My clients wrote to me this morning and said, … [we] thought we had found our way into a Coen brothers movie.”
Yah. Anyway, we got out of there after just a couple of minutes looking around, it wasn’t the most hospitable home showing I’ve had, and I don’t think my clients felt very comfortable. I was OK with it - I’m used to feeling kind of like an interloper, inserting myself into people’s homes like I do pretty much on a daily basis.
But as for news - that hard-hitting, insightful news that I know you’re dying to hear - pffft. Not much. There is basically a great unease in the market. To be honest, nobody knows what is going on, really. The optimists in the crowd say that the turn around is right around the corner. Prime real estate isn’t taking too much of a hit in values (true, actually). Others say that it’s going to get worse before it gets better (always possible, just look at the unemployment figures, gas prices, and the consumer confidence index).
There are people buying up a storm, though. Those foreclosures go quick-quick-quick. There’s a reason for that - and it’s not because they are beauty queens. It’s because they’re cheap. It’s because their price points are back down to 2001, 2002 levels - and much of the rest of the market has retreated only to about late 2004, early 2005. It’s because with some of these places, the cost of owning is, truly, just a tad higher than renting the same property, and there’s big upside potential.
I don’t know what’s going to happen, really. Things could get worse, or once Barack Obama becomes president, things could get lots better. Or they could get lots worse - come on, let’s face it, Barack is kind of a wild card. But property prices are getting to the point where they are affordable to a great many more people than in recent years - and while prices may continue to drop, I say, if you find a deal on a house you love at a price you can truly afford, then there’s probably no time like the present to buy it.
Anyway, I hope you have a safe and sane 4th of July!
Tags: 4th of july : barack obama : coen brothers : maytag
Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 9:42am
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Housing recovery prediction: Next year - Santa Cruz Sentinel
June 30, 2008
It’s time once again to play the game - when is the housing market going to recover? The Santa Cruz Sentinel is taking another stab at it:
[From Housing recovery prediction: Next year - Santa Cruz Sentinel]
Don’t expect the housing market to recover this year.
Robert Kleinhenz, deputy chief economist for the California Association of Realtors, forecasts a turnaround next spring.
Just thought I’d pass that along. I had a bunch more stuff I wanted to talk about, but it’s 11:33 PM and I still have lots more “real” work to do tonight before hitting the hay and gettin’ back at it tomorrow morning bright and early.
Tags: market data : real estate : real estate industry : real estate sales : Santa Cruz
Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 11:34pm
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Santa Cruz Fire Safety
June 24, 2008
There are many homes in Santa Cruz county that are in wildfire and forest fire hazard areas. With all the fires raging this year, it’s good to think about fire safety. If you have a house in an at-risk area, here are some resources you may want to take advantage of:
Homeowners Checklist – How To Make Your Home Fire Safe
Why 100 Feet? 100’ Defensible Space
Communities At Risk – Federal List by County
General Guidelines for Creating Defensible Space
Firefighting Equipment
Wildfire Safety Tips
www.WildfireSolutionsGroup.org
Professional Consulting and Services Provider
Tags: fire safety
Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 9:28pm
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Marisa Miller, Santa Cruz Local, Back in the Press
June 21, 2008
Our home-grown Supermodel, Marisa Miller, is back in the press! Marisa graces the cover of Maxim Magazine’s July 2008 issue.
I had a subscription to Maxim magazine once upon a time - it was a freebie or something, when it first came out. I admit, I didn’t read it for the articles. I read it for the advertising. They showcased all kinds of cool bling-bling which, while being a little too cool for me, was interesting to look at nevertheless.
You may recall that I wrote up a blog entry or two about Marissa when she became the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover girl, also this year. It seems that Marisa is on something of a roll. Congratulations Marisa, Rock on!
Tags: Marisa Miller
Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 7:51am
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Santa Cruz is on fire!
June 21, 2008
When the Loma Prieta fire broke out a few weeks back, I wanted to post a blog entry about my experience with it. I had dropped my wife off at Cabrillo College, and she had noticed the haze in the air. “Wow, that looks like smog!” she said. “Nah,” I said, “that’s just fog or something.” After I dropped her off, I headed south to Watsonville and I saw that it wasn’t fog at all - I had the radio on, and I was hearing the news on KGO.
When the Bonny Doon / Martin fire got started, I was off in Las Vegas, so I missed the hubbub, but that really freaked a lot of folks out, I know.
And yesterday, I was headed once again to Watsonville, and there was a jam up. I could see way down by the Mar Monte exit that there were no cars, but right in front of me, there were a bunch, all jammed up. Then I looked over the horizon - smoke. A CHP cruiser drove by on the shoulder, and soon we were being herded off the road. I took San Andreas Road down to Riverside and got into Watsonville that way, just 45 minutes late for my appointment.
They’re calling this third fire the Trabing fire. The folks I had gone there to meet were very gracious about my delayed arrival. The above picture is the the cloud of smoke arising over their neighbor’s house. It cast an eerie orange light over the neighborhood, and little particles of ash were floating down.
It’s kind of depressing. Three forest/wildfires in Santa Cruz in the space of a couple of months? I think it’s going to be a long, hot summer. As I watched that huge plume of smoke, I thought (not for the first time) how horrible it must be to live in, say, Baghdad, where I imagine you’d see plumes of smoke like that quite often - but probably with a darker hue and laden with more toxic chemicals. Yet another reason, I guess, to be thankful for what you have and thankful for what you don’t.
Tags: santa cruz fire : wildfire
Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 7:38am
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