August 18, 2008
Home sale trends in East Pasadena are plainer than the signs in today’s Zen Monday entry on Pasadena Daily Photo. The photograph looks like it was taken in the foothills of zip code 91107, and its No Parking signs point outward in front of a fenced-off empty parking lot.
Four buyers can now park in front of zip code 91107 homes I’ve tracked on Redfin’s newly upgraded Favorites page. Two other sellers are still waiting to park somewhere else.
The change in status of my Redfin Favorites caused by these four buyers is now easier to track, and the Favorites page is easier to use. Individual listings can be expanded without opening a new window.
If you store Redfin email updates on neighborhood listings, you can also find original listing prices on sold properties (these disappear from the MLS when the property is sold). Here’s my report:
Six Pasadena 91107 listings I featured in previous posts have sold or gone off market, while 5 are still active.
SOLD:
1265 Michillinda Ave.
$750,000 (7/30/08)
Listing price: $769,000 (6/5/08)
1385 Rexford Avenue
$634,000 (7/9/08)
Listing price: $689,000 (5/13/08)
1475 Riviera Drive
$620,000 (6/20/08)
Listing price: $689,000 (6/6/08 - came back on the market after falling out of escrow)
3710 New Haven Road
$820,000 (7/18/08)
Listing price $888,000 (6/4/08 - came back on the market after falling out of escrow)
OFF MARKET:
930 Crestview Drive
Listed at $750,000 and reduced to $725,000 before going off the market.
620 Mercedes Avenue
Listed at $620,000, eventually reduced to $565,000. The last email I received on this property showed its status as “contingent,” however, no sale appears to have taken place and it is now off the market.
ACTIVE:
I list two of the five remaining favorites below. The first one is priced at almost $100 less per square foot than all the others. The second is the most expensive of the five.
3690 Mayfair Drive
$625,000
3 bed/2 bath
1,750 sq.ft.
$357 per sq.ft.
On Redfin 80 days
No photos of this house are available.
1155 Rexford Drive
$800,000
3 bed/2 bath
1,698 sq.ft.
$471 per sq.ft.
On Redfin 73 days
This is advertised as a view home and a short sale subject to lender approval. Since the last sale price is $550,000 (2003), it appears the sellers took out their bubble equity.
August 18, 2008
Not long ago, we heard that Ed McMahon was close to losing his Beverly Hills mansion to 
foreclosure. Somehow, this 85-year-old man who was once reputed to be worth $200 million was unable to make the payments on his house. His agent blamed the problem on a neck injury that rendered him unable to work for 18 months, which says that McMahon has so completely squandered his fortune that he is forced to bring home the bacon into his mid-80s.
But McMahon’s celebrity was on his side. After a deal for the house — listed at $4.6 million — fell through at the last minute, McMahon’s real estate agent, Alex Davis of Alex Davis Estates, published this letter in the Los Angeles MLS Open House Guide, pleading for someone to help out the poor guy before his house and belongings got taken away from him.
Never one to shy away from publicity, Donald Trump announced last week that he would buy McMahon’s house and lease it back to him. The deal will be a short sale, meaning that the lender (Countrywide) will have to accept less than what is owed on the house to avoid the hassle of foreclosure.
One question: Will McMahon be able to make his rent payments? He’s being sued by at least two lenders, who claim he owes them $250,000 and $275,000, respectively. He also owes American Express about $750,000. Thankfully, Trump doesn’t need the money, but we’d hate to see him have to evict McMahon in a year or two.
For his part, McMahon is at least honest about what got him into this mess. “If you spend more money than you make, you know what happens,” he told Larry King in a June interview on CNN. Yes, but not everyone can use their fame to attract a rich benefactor to bail them out.
August 18, 2008
Sunday morning, my husband and I decided to venture out to West L.A. to see a movie at The Landmark, on Pico Boulevard (“Tell No One” — a French-language thriller/love story). We left early to find a nearby cafe to read the paper and eat breakfast.
We stumbled upon the Colony Cafe on Pico, a cute little place with a neat, clean patio with ceiling fans. While my husband ate his peanut butter, jelly and banana panini and I ate my steelcut oats, a nearby customer asked to look at our real estate classifieds. I asked him what he was in the market for.
He said he was looking for a house in Santa Monica, where he says he has been watching prices come down since 2006, when he sold the condo he’d owned for five years for “more money than he’d ever dreamed of.” He’s been renting and sitting on that pile of cash, waiting for prices to come down to where he thinks they should be. “I’ve been patient,” he said.
He introduced himself as Ari. His observations: Some sellers are smart and getting ahead of the market by pricing their properties at around $700 to $750 per square foot. But too many have their places listed at between $900 and $1,100 per foot. Sooner or later, he said, all the prices have to come down. He expects to eventually be able to pick something up for around $550 per square foot.
When does he think he’ll get his price? Six to nine months from now, he said. His wife, who was there with their two (very cute) preschoolers, said something like she’d believe that when she saw it; clearly she’s ready to move.
Didn’t he think there were tons of people just like him, waiting on the sidelines to pounce on a deal? “Not that many,” he said. (That pile of cash must be pretty big.)
Of course, I told Ari about Redfin and what a great resource it would be for him. “Is it better than ZipRealty?” he asked. My husband jumped in and said he thought it was. Good man! So, Ari, if you’re reading this, hello; thanks for the blog-post fodder; hope you like Redfin; and good luck with your home search.
Oh, and I decided to look up Redfin’s Santa Monica neighborhood stats to see how accurate your observations were. I’m impressed. The most recent data shows Santa Monica homes selling for a median of $779 per foot, with the median listing price at $923.
For everyone else: If you go to redfin.com, enter a ZIP or neighborhood, and click on “View [Your Neighborhood’s] Inventory and Pricing Trends,” you’ll soon be as knowledgeable about your nabe as Ari is about his.
Recent Redfin posts:
LAX Neighborhood Pages are Here: Whoo Hoo!
Little League, Soccer Fields Remain Free in Glendale
Mandate for Low-Income Housing: Helpful or Hurtful?
August 16, 2008
I’m excited. Redfin recently launched yet another fun-filled, informative feature - their neighborhood pages. You’ll find everything from the median prices of homes in the area to stats that tell you whether or not you should wait for another price reduction when you buy a home. You can also check out stuff like what the climate is like and map out the local schools.
Let’s take a little look-see at the LAX area, for starters. If you punch in 90045 (Westchester) and click the “View inventory and pricing trends”, you’ll find a graph that shows that the list cost per square foot and selling cost per square foot are getting pretty close. Once upon a time, the gap was far apart. Perhaps it’s a sign the prices for Westchester are leveling out?
Now, let’s try the 90293 zip code (Playa del Rey). Here, you’ll find a graph showing a wide disparity between the cost per square foot of sold homes and listed homes. Perhaps sellers in this little community by the beach should do a reality check.
And finally, let’s look at Playa Vista - 90094. Survey says that although there appeared to be about a $100 per square foot disparity between the listed and sold cost per square foot back in April of 08, there is now very little discrepancy between the two.
And with that, I’m leaving the LAX area blog. Sniff, sniff. Look for coverage from me in Woodland Hills (my new neighborhood) and the surrounding areas. Hope you’ll stop by and read my posts!
August 15, 2008
A community backlash just defeated Glendale Parks, Recreation and Community Services Commission’s plan to charge hourly fees for youth sports leagues using city fields. At a special meeting yesterday, the commission reversed its July 2 decision as it faced unified opposition from local Little League and AYSO representatives.
Jason Wells of the Glendale News press covered the story and published this update today.
Thousands of dollars from each league would have been necessary to pay those fees, which the commission wanted to cover maintenance costs and needed improvements. Families already pay annual league registration fees of $100 or more per child and added costs for equipment and transportation.
The commission is now seeking alternatives including corporate sponsorships and donations.
Sponsorships have paid for improvements in the past. Just two years ago, parents of former Glendale Little Leaguer Carlton Valvo II, who died in the World Trade Center attacks, donated $10,000 for the new scoreboard and other improvements at Glendale’s Babe Herman Little League Field.
The city of Glendale is upgrading its sports fields on a rotating basis, closing one at a time, which makes scheduling games, practices, and regular maintenance on the other fields problematic. Scholl Canyon baseball fields, with views as spectacular as its golf course views (pictured here by Tropico Station), are currently being upgraded.
August 15, 2008
LA is a constantly growing city–so much so that city official estimate that we will need 110,000 new housing units over the next eight years just to keep pace with demand. And not all of those can be in expensive Westside highrises. The LA Times reported recently on the City Council’s proposal to mandate that new developments include units for low-income residents:
The plan, which is nonbinding, calls for the City Council to introduce a proposed law by the end of the year to mandate that developers build units for poor people…New condominium and apartment projects in neighborhoods such as Brentwood, Studio City and other affluent parts of Los Angeles could be required to include units for very poor people…
But critics of the plan worry that putting restraints on developers in a crunch market could halt development altogether:
Carol Schatz, chief executive of the Central City Assn. and an opponent of past inclusionary zoning proposals, said any rules that required developers to provide too many apartments to very poor people could “create another nail in the coffin of the housing market at the worst possible time.”
The Daily News also reported on the mandate where critics pointed out that the language the council used sounds like they are opening to allowing bigger developments that would change the face of the neighborhoods they are in—possibly overtaxing existing resources like parks and schools:
“The message I take away is that the goal of the city of Los Angeles is growth, almost to the point of uncontrolled growth,” said Rita Villa of the Studio City Neighborhood Council. “They’re not planning the infrastructure to support it.”
So what do you think? Is it a good idea to saddle developers with this type of restriction in a bad market? Or is it necessary to keep LA a livable city for the average and below-average income earner?
August 15, 2008
Back in May, I blogged about the significant number of homes in the Redfin database that were clearly bank-owned, yet had not been put back on the market by the lenders. Now, according to this post from the Sacramento Real Estate Statistics blog, based on research from Deutsche Bank, this practice could be widespread.
[B]ank-owned homes frequently do not show up in resale inventory, or MLS listings. The extent to which bank-owned homes do not appear in MLS listings is difficult to quantify because it depends on each bank or servicer’s timeline and approach in handling foreclosed properties.
The research estimates that there could be as many as 88,843 foreclosed homes in Los Angeles County, although only 62,379 have actually been listed for resale on the MLS. In San Diego, there could be more than 12,000 foreclosures that haven’t hit the MLS — a significant percentage more than the 18,000 listed now.
It’s easy to find hidden foreclosures on Redfin. Go to any neighborhood or ZIP and do a search that includes recent sales for the last six months or so. You can tell which homes are foreclosures by the oddball sales prices, like, say, $761,405 – it’s rarely a round number.
Here are some random ones I found just now on Redfin:
8961 Tree Farm Lane, Riverside
Sold for $263,891 on 4/30/08
2018 Lemnos Drive, Costa Mesa
Sold for $805,454 on 6/11/08
1785 Deavers Drive, San Marcos
Sold for $432,808 on 5/21/08
So why are lenders holding on to these properties? According to a report included in the May post, some aren’t quite prepared to swallow the huge losses, so they’re holding on, hoping for a market rebound. In cases where mortgages are held by multiple companies, all parties must agree on the best course of action, which snarls progress. Lastly, lenders are so overwhelmed by the volume of distressed properties that they don’t have time to deal with them.
Once these foreclosures finally land in the MLS, it’s hard to imagine them not depressing prices even further. In the meantime, who’s taking care of these vacant, languishing homes? Lenders would be wise to hire some people to process these properties; not doing so is just delaying the inevitable.
Recent Redfin posts:
Mandate for Low-Income Units: Harmful or Helpful?
Why My Sale Price Wasn’t Really My Sale Price
Southern California Water-Saving Tip: Block New Development
August 15, 2008
Last time I wrote about my home sale, I mentioned a few scenarios that could have cost me thousands and thousands of dollars if I had done things differently.
Well, this time around, I’m going to wrap things up with why my sale price wasn’t really my sales price. There are two main reasons why my sales price doesn’t really reflect the true amount of money that exchanged hands. (You can guess how much, but I won’t tell.)
1. The buyers sweetened the deal with a cash sum on top of the sales price that went into escrow. Why did they do this? The only explanation that I got was that one of the buyers (out of the couple) wanted to spend more than the other buyer. Regardless, the commission paid out to the buyer’s agent was slightly less, so who was I to complain?
2. The buyer’s agent only charged a commission of 1.5% and not 3%. Somehow, during the course of the negotiations, the agent dropped his commission from 3% to 1.5% in order to get the deal to happen. That’s quite a drop. Incidentally, the realty company has a mortgage company component to it and I wonder if somehow he got some kickbacks.
If anyone has any theories on why he was able to conduct business with such a low commission (other than desperation), feel free to drop a line.
August 14, 2008
Actress Hillary Danner (cousin to Gwyneth Paltrow and niece of Blythe Danner) and husband Jason Renfro are selling their extremely beautiful Highland Park Craftsman home—to move a few doors down to an even larger extremely beautiful historic home. (The couple has already vacated, according to their agent).
The house is listed at $695,000 and is a 4/2 with 2,317 square feet—it’s also a registered Historic Monument. Although the couple never applied for the Mills Act, listing agent Robert Alan Hanson of Keller Williams Pasadena says he thinks it would be a “shoo in” for the tax break.
The house is on Professor Row in Highland Park - near the corner of Ave. 50 and Figueroa, where the original Occidental College once stood. In fact, the listing says it was built by Elizabeth Young Gordon, the wife of Occidental College’s Vice President in the late 1800’s. The street is a long block of historic Craftsman homes, in an area that Hanson says “has been in rapid transition for the past five years” with lots of trendy new shops and restaurants opening up.
The place will be open Sunday 2-5 pm and next Thursday from 10-2. It’s also featured in the the book Inside the Bungalow: America’s Arts and Crafts Interior. If you’re into Craftsmans, it’s a great chance to peek inside a bit of LA history.
August 14, 2008
OK, I might be exaggerating, but loft prices downtown do seem to be in a free fall - it’s one of the few places in LA where you can easily find under-$300,000 properties that aren’t fixers. You can also find lots of places that, no matter how nice they are, have been sitting on the market while potential buyers wait to see just how low desperate developers will go to move their brand-new vacant units. That’s rough for private owners who need to sell. When it comes to areas in LA-proper (excluding those far-flung spots like Palmdale), downtown seems to be one of the areas hardest hit by the current market.
But that’s not really my point today. My point is barbeque. Ever since the giant Orsini complex started gobbling up the corners of Cesar Chavez and Figueroa, I’ve been wondering what happened to BBQ King - the little joint that was displaced by this development. Oh, how I’ve missed meat cooked in an empty oil drum. Can you imagine my excitement, then, when I saw angelenic.com’s blog about BBQ King’s new 7th Street location, where it’s joined by Showbiz Ribs? No, you probably can’t—which says only good things about your eating habits.
But back to real estate: Downtown is hurting. No shocking news there. But like everything in real estate, it’s all about location, even within this one neighborhood. Because as anyone living downtown will tell you, it’s really multiple neighborhoods with very different feels. For example, The Arts District is only a few city blocks from the Staples Center area, but they attract different types of people and businesses. I think a savvy buyer who understands the lay of the land could pick up a great deal right now, if you’re willing to buy and hold for a few years—but there are a lot of lofts in the less-developed and/or less desirable areas of downtown that I would steer clear of. I think some of the complexes that are in, shall we say, “pioneering” areas are going to see even greater price drops. Here are a few that have been on the market more than 50 days:
- $525,000 in the Toy Factory Lofts. One the market 204 days. There are about a 1/2 dozen lofts for sale at the Toy Factory right now, ranging in price from about $359,000 to $$700,000.
- The Little Tokyo Lofts also have a lot of units for sale (some are short sales), including this bare-bones listing for $299,000 that’s been on the market for 57 days. To get a better sense of what this building looks like, here’s a 1/1 unit listed for $390,000 that’s been on the market for 237 days!
- You can also have your choice over at the Higgins building, but this one looks interesting. It’s a lender-approved short-sale for $275,000 and it’s been on the market for 296 days.
