Archive for April, 2009
Million dollar views for the first time buyers
April 15th, 2009 Categories: Aquathlon and Duathlon Race Reports, Client Testimonials, San Diego County Community News, San Diego County Fixer of the Week, San Diego County Triathlon Race Reports, San Diego county Real Estate News, Triathlon Club of San Diego Race Reports, What to do in San Diego
SAN DIEGO– Lately I have been working with quite a few first time buyers. With the interest rates hovering at or under 5%, home pricing back to levels creating a near record high affordability rate and the $8,000 tax credit, it’s no wonder these buyers are entering the market.
For the first time buyer with the active lifestyle looking to buy in a central location with a huge upside potential, I have the perfect home in the north Bay Park area. How do I know this home is ideal for you? I have in the sold two homes within this pocket in the last two months and here is what those clients have said.
“This is one of those rare finds in San Diego. It’s centrally located, easy freeway access, quiet, safe, and it has an amazing sweeping view of Mission Bay and the ocean. It also has a unique charm found only in older San Diego neighborhoods. With these amenities, this is easily a
million-dollar plus neighborhood. And most of the neighborhood is filled with expensive houses to prove it. There are only a small handful of original houses available, tucked away in between these higher priced, remodeled homes. If you are lucky enough to catch one of these original homes up for sale, you can live in a million-dollar oceanview neighborhood for a fraction of what such properties usually go for.”– closed escrow 2/11/2009
and
“After searching for 2 years, I found this house in Bay Park with an awesome view, in a great neighborhood that is centrally located. I saw a lot of fixer uppers in okay neighborhoods, or better houses in questionable neighborhoods, but this house and location had the best potential. I have been enjoying my bay/ocean view out on the deck every night!” -closed escrow 3/23/2009
This 2 bedroom 2 bath home at 3635 Princeton Avenue provides you with amazing southern views from downtown over the bay and to the west facing the ocean overlooking Pacific Beach. From the deck you can see the transition area for the Triathlon Club of San Diego races on Fiesta Island on race day and on the 4th of July you will have front row seats to the Seaworld fireworks show.
It is a downhill coast to Mission Bay for your Fiesta Island workouts and it doesn’t get much more convenient for getting those extra minutes of sleep before heading down on race day for your triathlon or 10K.
Additionally all the events, including those Friday night swims at La Jolla cove, and dining opportunities of downtown and La Jolla are within 15 minutes of your new home.
If you are in the market for a detached home under $400,000 in a neighborhood of million dollar homes, call me at 760.415.3329 for your private showing.
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What happens when a bank wants THEIR loan modified?
April 11th, 2009 Categories: Real Estate News, San Diego county Real Estate News
SAN DIEGO– When banks took TARP they were prodded to offer loan modifications prior to foreclosing on a home. Unfortunately, in most situations those loans modifications do not help the homeowner and in many situations the payment actually increases.
On April 3, 2009 the Huffington Post wrote about a Controller of Currency report that showed less than 
half of all loans modified resulted in payment reductions of less than 10%. It also reported that 1 in 4 loans modified actually had an increase in their monthly payment. The primary cause of this is banks adding fees and/or past due interest.
In today’s San Diego Union the headline read;”Banks finding bailout burdensome”. It seems as though the Chairman of some banks are taking issue with executive pay limits and other restriction such as a restriction on the number of foreign citizens they can employ that come with the TARP money. To avoid this “government interference” some banks, feeling healthy now, would like to repay their bailout loans early and get back to business as normal. The catch, they want to modify the terms of their loans.
Large and small banks have pressed the Obama administration to make it less costly for them to exit the bailout program by waiving the right to exercise the stock warrants the banks had to grant the government in exchange for the loans.
Douglas Leech, the founder and chief executive of Centra Bank, a small West Virginia bank that briefly participated in the capital assistance program but returned the money after the government imposed new conditions, said he complained strongly about the Treasury’s decision to demand repayment of the warrants. That effectively raised the interest rate he paid on a $15 million loan to an annual rate of about 60 percent, he said.
“What they did is wrong and fundamentally un-American,” he said. “Even though the government told us to take this money to increase our lending, the extra charge meant we had less money to lend. It was the equivalent of a penalty for early withdrawal.”
Now these are terms they agreed to. They were not changed or left to be defined later at the whim of the government.
Do you know what I consider wrong and fundamentally American? Arbitrarily raising a client’s credit card interest rate who is in good standing on their account!!! And they are doing it all the time.
A fellow agent I work with came in this week very distraught. When I asked her what was wrong she said that CITI raised her credit card rate from 9.9% to almost 17%. She had not missed any payments, was not over her credit limit and was not participating in a “special rate”. She called customer service and was told that her only solution was to pay off the balance. Unfortunately, she is not able to do this as she had consolidated her consumer credit on to this card since it had the lowest rate.
What kind of penalty does Douglas Leech consider this?
The government, realizing this is an unfair and unethical business practice, 
have passed legislation limiting when and what credit card companies can do but that legislation does not take effect until July of 2010.
The Federal Reserve Board passed new rules in December but they don’t take effect until July 2010. Those rules will:
•Prohibit credit card companies from raising interest rates on money already borrowed.
•Protect new card holders by prohibiting interest rate increases in the first year of an account.
•Implement a new rule that zero interest means zero. No more so-called deferred interest.-TBO.com
Hopefully the FED stand strong and enforce the agreements made with these institutions.
sidenote: with the closing of many newspapers, I do subscribe to the San Diego Union and to the North County Times.
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Wells Fargo: Stock tip and real estate update
April 9th, 2009 Categories: Real Estate News, San Diego county Real Estate News, Triathlon Club of San Diego Race Reports
SAN DIEGO– I remember back in the boom days of the real estate market, the mention of Wells Fargo as a buyer’s lender brought sighs of trouble 
ahead. They were one of the few banks that was still being very thorough about their lending practices and this made for a long approval process. The flip side was probably WAMU where they could not get you the approval fast enough. Remember the WAMU ads mocking “traditional bankers”? Well it looks as though those traditional bankers have won the war.
Today in the blog Seekingalpha.com, there was a piece entitled, “Wells Fargo: Housing a strength again”. It seems being one of the last banks standing is paying off handsomely for “Wells”. By close of trading today, Wells Fargo stock shot up over 31% on news that they were forecasting earnings of $0.55 a share. This is double the consensus estimates and it’s the good news is that it is real estate driving those numbers.
Mortgage application rose 41%, and dollar value of those applications were up 64%. The month of March saw a record number of application for Wells Fargo. No doubt the mortgage business is getting a major boost by low interest rate, which benefits from the government’s huge asset purchases of mortgage backed securities. Furthermore, many of the smaller competitors in the mortgage origination field have fallen off, which has allowed Wells Fargo to pick up the slack and gain market share.
Wells Fargo, which is up more than 25% in morning trading, is spurring a rally in the financial sector and the market as a whole. Clearly, these results are much better than anyone expected, and the mortgage business is again looking like a strength rather than a weakness.-seekingalpha.com,4/9/2009
I am often asked how business is going and quite honestly this has been a great first quarter for me also. Just this week, I have closed two escrows while opening another and I have two more scheduled to close in the next couple weeks. Additionally, I have two short sale offers out that should hopefully be decided soon and 5 active buyers with several other watching the market.
I can not believe that market conditions can get too much better for buyers. The average 30 year fixed rate for the week ending today 4/9 as reported by the California Association of Realtors was 4.87 percent. Additionally you have the Federal first time buyers program offering a tax credit of up to $8,000 AND if you purchase new home, the state is offering a tax credit of up to $10,000.
Call me at 760.415.3329 if I can help you in anyway.
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La Jolla foreclosure up to 40% off
April 3rd, 2009 Categories: Real Estate News, San Diego County Fixer of the Week, San Diego county Real Estate News
SAN DIEGO– Here’s your opportunity for the foreclosure market in La Jolla. This 3300+ square foot home boost 4 bedrooms, 4 baths on an approximately 13,000 square foot lot. This home, now listed at 1.2 million was listed at one time for over 1.9 million. Click here for all the details.
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Yeah…. this is a problem!!!!
April 1st, 2009 Categories: Real Estate News, San Diego County Fixer of the Week
SAN DIEGO– This is the first of two homes I went into yesterday with two separate clients that had mold issues and this is about as bad as it gets. This house is in the Shadowridge area of Vista while the other was in the Tanglewood community of Carlsbad.
In this situation it looked like the bathroom had flooded and this is the bedroom attached. In the other, it looked as though an exterior sprinkler had been hitting the wall and water percolated through to the interior wall. You could literally see the imprint of the studs from mold growing around them.
Welcome to the world of foreclosures!!
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