Archive for May, 2008
Santa Cruz Real Estate Sales Data - April 2008
May 10, 2008
Well, the numbers are in, and we’re looking better. For those of you who are really interested in knowing what’s going on with real estate sales in Santa Cruz county, I want to remind you that I have a great page on my web site that gives you all kinds of ways to look at Santa Cruz Real Estate Sales Data. Also, I offer a monthly Santa Cruz Real Estate newsletter which offers an analysis of what the numbers mean, and this month’s edition just hit the inboxes of subscribers.
OK, maybe the numbers aren’t grrrrrrrreat! like our friend Tony the Tiger would say. But they’re certainly better than what we’ve seen lately. What’s the scoop? For Santa Cruz county as a whole, sales and prices of single-family homes rebounded nicely in April compared to March. County-wide, there were 103 sales in April ‘08, compared to just 70 in March ‘08. Also, the median price of those homes rose 6.1% from March.
Comparing one month to the month before it isn’t a terribly useful exercise, however. After all, we are approaching the peak selling season, so it’s no surprise that sales numbers are up. However, it’s a very good thing that sales numbers aren’t down - that would be most unwelcome news.
It is, perhaps, more interesting to compare April ‘08 to April ‘07 - what do we see there? There, we see that the median price (again, county-wide) of single-family residences is down 11.8%, and in April last year, 132 homes were sold - so about 25% fewer homes were sold this April. The numbers are considerably worse for condos, but so few condos were sold (just 19 county wide) that it’s difficult to really gauge what’s going on in that market price-wise.
One thing I’d like to point out here is what’s happening in Watsonville. There is an enormous amount of pending home sales in Watsonville - homes that are under contract, but the sales have yet to close. Many/most of these homes are foreclosure properties - there are some staggering bargains to be had. It will be interesting to see what happens to the sales numbers and median prices when these sales close.
I really encourage you to subscribe to my newsletter. I’ve got an interesting article in there this month about the problem with the foreclosure numbers - things are perhaps not so bad as they seem. Of course, if you are one of the many unfortunate homeowners contributing to the swelling statistics of foreclosure numbers, if things get really bad, you can always just walk away.
Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 8:30am
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Santa Cruz’s Pink Man Gone Missing
May 07, 2008
If you’ve spent any amount of time in Santa Cruz, you’ve probably seen this bumper sticker: Keep Santa Cruz Weird. And perhaps nothing epitomizes the weird of Santa Cruz like Robert, the pink umbrella man. But now, suddenly, Robert has gone missing!
Imagine my dismay when I browsed over to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and saw this front page news:
[From Pacific Avenue staple seems to have disappeared - Santa Cruz Sentinel]
SANTA CRUZ - A Santa Cruz icon, the pink umbrella man, seems to have vanished from Pacific Avenue.
Shop owners and frequent patrons say they have not seen Robert Steffen, an unofficial symbol of downtown - who strolls, quite slowly, from one end of Pacific Avenue to the other while wearing a pink dress and boa and carrying an umbrella - for weeks or even months.
Now, if you happened to have stumbled upon this blog and you’re not from around here, at this point you might laugh nervously and quickly close the browser window. Or maybe, you’re researching Santa Cruz as a place to, say, spend your golden years or raise your children in a safe and nurturing left-leaning community - and you’ve just decided that hey, Santa Cruz isn’t for you.
For all you locals out there, even those of you who think Robert was kind of weird (an understatement?) - probably a part of you is going to miss him. I know I will. I used to love walking down Pacific Avenue with some friends or family from out of town and pointing out Robert - kind of like how I like to point out a deer or something when hiking in Nisene Marks Park - saying with hushed urgency, “Hey, look! See that? Cool, huh?”.
If you read the article, it seems that folks think he’ll be back. Apparently, he hasn’t really left, he just isn’t sportin’ his pimpin’ threads, and is probably working on transmorgifying himself again. I hope so!
It should be noted that Missing Robert wasn’t the only thing on the front page today. Check this out:
[From UCSC stem cell program gets $7.2M grant - Santa Cruz Sentinel]
UC Santa Cruz has received a $7.2 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to fund a new stem cell research center on campus, the university announced Wednesday.
Naturally, this kind of news gets second billing, even though it arguably may be much more significant for the community. Unless the community is Santa Cruz. It seems we’re more preoccupied about keepin’ it weird than treating, preventing and curing disease. I love this crazy town.
Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 8:17pm
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Santa Cruz Real Estate - Let’s Talk Politics!
May 06, 2008
In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s election season. Change is in the air - of course, it might all just get blown away and we’ll be back to the same-ol’, same-ol’ we’ve come to know and love for generations.
I got a nice e-mail from my friends at the California Association of Realtors today. It seems they want to put a stop to AB 2678, which would require “energy audits” every time a property is sold, to make sure that it is energy efficient. Maybe that sounds like a good idea to you - heck, who is against energy efficiency?
The question isn’t if we want our homes to be energy efficient. The question is, what is the best way to achieve that? There are all kinds of blog entries and articles on the internet discussing the pros and cons of this. Naturally, the C.A.R. is opposed to any such legislation. Here is what they have to say:
AB 2678 will require a state agency to set up a process to require point-of-sale energy efficiency audits that will cost up to $400 and ultimately will require point-of-sale energy efficiency retrofits that may cost THOUSANDS of dollars. While C.A.R. has no objection to increasing energy efficiency, AB 2678 will be both dangerous to the real estate market and grossly ineffective. Here’s why AB 2678 is a bad idea:
-AB 2678 will hurt your business. Heaping costly requirements on all sales will slow every residential AND commercial transaction, further weakening the real estate market and the economy.
-Point-of-sale approaches take too long. Research shows that only 22% of the properties most in need of energy efficiency retrofits will actually be sold by 2020. AB 2678 will be grossly ineffective in achieving its goals.
-AB 2678 will hurt housing affordability. The mandatory audit and retrofit requirements ultimately created could add THOUSANDS of dollars to every transaction. And every $1,000 increase in the price of a home disqualifies 26,600 families from owning.
Good points, good points. Personally, even though I’m a dues-paying member, I don’t fall for the C.A.R. argument hook, line, and sinker on every issue. There are many costs incurred by sellers and buyers in the purchase of real property - why not add this one to the list? It sure would be a boon to window and insulation salesmen. Might they be the folks who have sponsored this legislation? I’d be interested to see where the PAC money behind this one came from.
Now, there’s not much you can do about AB 2678 aside from writing your state representative. Maybe have a picnic lunch up at the Capitol in Sacramento while holding up a placard, pro or con. But there are a couple of measures on the ballot you might want to know about, Proposition 98 and 99.
To be honest, I haven’t studied either one of these in great detail, but they are both nominally about eminent domain. But the topic did come up at our office meeting this morning. It seems that Proposition 98 has a sneaky back-door to abolish rent control:
The provisions of this Act shall become effective on the day following the election
(”effective date”); except that any statute, charter provision, ordinance, or
regulation by a public agency enacted prior to January 1,2007, that limits the price
a rental property owner may charge a tenant to occupy a residential rental unit
(”unit”) or mobile home space (”space”) may remain in effect as to such unit or
space after the effective date for so long as, but only so long as, at least one of the
tenants of such unit or space as of the effective date (”qualified tenant”) continues
to live in such unit or space as his or her principal place of residence.
Those dirty dogs! I’m conflicted about rent control, personally - in an ideal world, it wouldn’t be necessary or desirable, but the fact is, this world is far from idea, and rent control does have its place - this is much better left up to individual localities, I think, rather than having some kind of sneaky tactics to get the voters to approve getting rid of rent control this way. So I’m going to have to say No on Proposition 98.
Proposition 99, on the other hand, sounds like a good one. It stops the government from using Eminent Domain to take property from people so that it can be sold to, say, Wal-Mart so they can “enhance the economic development of a community” or some such. I’m all for enhancing economic development, but private property rights are a fundamental part of the American system, and this bill just seems plain anti-American. Or it seems patently American, if you’re from that point of view. So it’s looking like I’m Yes on 99.
Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 7:32pm
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Grateful Dead archives now call Santa Cruz home
May 03, 2008
Santa Cruz is kind of famous. For a town (and county) this small, the area is known by a disproportionately large number of people. Maybe it’s the beaches, the world-class surfing, the towering redwood trees. Maybe they know our fine university, made famous for having no grades, pot-smoking hippies, and now, the final resting place for the Grateful Dead archives.
Doubtless, there has been much gritting-of-teeth in some parts of the community about this one. “This is just what we need,” I can hear ‘em saying. Because, contrary to popular belief, Santa Cruz really isn’t a hippie town. It may be neo-Bohemian as Bob Weir says it is, but not too many folks are dead sure what exactly neo-Bohemianism is. On the other hand, most people think they know a dirty hippie when they see one, and more than a handful can probably say they’ve seen at least one or two in Santa Cruz.
For every resident that is appalled by linking Santa Cruz any further with the patchouli set (my colleague Mike Crain comes readily to mind), there is, I am sure, at least one other person who is totally stoked that the Dead archives have come to town. And I feel compelled here to point out that it’s not just drugged-out slack-jawed stoner types who groove to the Grateful Dead. In fact, who is helping to put these archives together? To quote the San Jose Mercury News:
A blue-chip team including several Silicon Valley-based fans - among them venture capitalist and musician Roger McNamee - will oversee a $2 million fundraising campaign for the archive. Seagate Technology CEO Bill Watkins has volunteered technical support.
I’m afraid you’re going to have to count me in with the folks who think this is a good thing. I don’t really know about the scholarship aspects of cataloging Grateful Dead fan letters, or what’s to be gleaned by studying the first contract the Dead signed to record an album or two for Warner Brothers. But my feeling is that it will further cement Santa Cruz as something of a mecca for live music. And in an era when music piracy is just so easy and prevalent, I suspect that playing actual shows will be an increasingly important revenue source for musicians.
Perhaps you don’t know, but for such a small town, Santa Cruz has a very healthy live music scene. Front and center, we have the Catalyst Club, which has been host to innumerable concerts by many leading performers. I don’t know that the Grateful Dead ever played there (but apparently they did put on a pretty good show in Watsonville), but I’ve seen many amazing musicians at the Catalyst - Los Lobos, Flogging Molly, Leo Kotke, Burning Spear, to name but a few. And beyond the Catalyst, there’s Moe’s Alley, and let’s not forget the Kuumbwa Jazz Center. And for special events, there’s always the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, which is the first (and one of only two times) place I saw Phish.
To me, it’s simple. Preserving the Grateful Dead archives here at UC Santa Cruz is just one more sign that Santa Cruz has got it goin’ on. A vibrant live music scene may not provide the kind of jobs that they got over there in Silicon Valley, but I think it really is one of the key aspects of the community that make this a very special place to live.
Edit: I can’t believe this, but I forgot to mention the Santa Cruz Blues Festival and the KPIG Fat Fry - two other yearly events which bring world famous, top-notch musicians to a beautiful Aptos Village Park. Hallelujiah and Amen!
Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 10:15pm
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