Articles from Santa Cruz Real Estate - The Broker's Record

July Market Update
2007-08-13 18:11:21
Another edition of my newsletter, Santa Cruz Market Trends, has been sent out to the folks who subscribe to it by e-mail. How did July shape up? The answer, surprisingly to some, is - not too bad! The median price for single-family homes throughout all of Santa Cruz county rose 3% (0.6% year-over-year). The news isn’t quite so cheery for condos: the median price dropped 8.3%, however, this means the price is still up 7.1% from July a year ago. The bad news for Realtors (and mortgage brokers, escrow people, appraisers, home inspectors, and the like!) is that the amount of sales volume is down from last month - 14.5% for single-family homes, and 3.4% from July a year ago. Condo sales are down dramatically - 19.4% from June of this year, and down 34.1% from a year ago. Technorati Tags: sales data, market data, real estate sales ...

Time for a Mortgage Meltdown
2007-08-10 10:20:30
I was at a pretty stressful signing yesterday. I’m in a deal where the buyers are taking out a pretty large pair of loans (totaling over $1 million). Last week when the mortgage industry kind of melted down, I called up the buyer’s lender to tell him to please proceed with all due haste, that we should get the deal closed ASAP. Everything was fine, he assured me - the buyer’s loans were totally OK, nothing to be worried about, we could close on schedule. Well, it turns out, the loan broker was a bit optimistic - he had the buyers using National City Mortgage to do the second loan. It turns out that National City Mortgage is basically on the verge of collapse. Supposedly, National City would be funding loans where the loan documents are already written up - and in this case, the loan docs had been written up this past Tuesday. In theory, we were safe - except that the loan had to fund, no question, by this coming Monday. If not, the loan papers would have to be ...

Equity Sharing - Credit Crisis key?
2007-08-07 00:06:30
In case you haven’t heard, there’s a crisis in the mortgage market. Probably by now, you’ve heard about the sub-prime lender implosion, but now, it’s no longer sub-prime lending that’s suffering. Now, prime mortgage lenders are also taking a big hit. Money is getting more expensive - even this week’s Economist magazine has a cover story about the credit squeeze. So what’s a prospective home buyer to do? Well, the good news is, if you’ve got some cash for a nice-sized down payment, things aren’t too bad for you at the moment. But what if, like most people, you don’t have 10% of $700,000 lying around? In a situation like this, you may want to look into doing some equity sharing. Equity sharing is where someone other person comes in and provides the down payment, and in exchange, they go on title to the property. There will be a separate contract between the everyone who goes on title as to what the plan will be. For exam ...

The ol’ 1031 Five-Year Switcheroo
2007-08-02 21:49:25
So here I am, working on doing my own person 1031 Exchange. I’ve done plenty of deals where either the buyer or the seller was doing a 1031 exchange, but I had never done one myself personally. I have a property where I’ve enjoyed quite a bit of appreciation since I bought it, but I wasn’t looking forward to paying the big fat capital gains tax. So, I planned on doing what any self-respecting person in my position would: I figured I would buy an investment property here in town, hold onto it for a year or two, and then move into it. The property would then become my primary residence, which I could sell two years after that, and keep all of the gain, tax free! A brilliant idea - one that many people have had in the past. Too many people, as it turns out. I paid a trip to my brand new accountant today, and ran my idea by him. He poured a liberal dose of cold water on my scheme. It turns out that our fearless leaders in the U.S. Guv’mint plugged that litt ...

The La Bahia Project
2007-08-01 21:45:21
The La Bahia project is back in the news: La Bahia dealt setback, hotel overhaul delayed - By SHANNA MCCORD - Sentinel staff writer - July 31, 2007: So it looks like the old La Bahia, an “80 year old Beach Street landmark”, gets a bit of a reprieve. Barry Swenson, the developer, plans to tear it down and put in a gleaming hotel in its place. You can read the article to learn about all the wonderful things the project will do for the economy. Personally, I’m all in favor of that part. I’m not so hot on tearing down the old building. I read in an earlier Sentinel article that the reason they wanted to tear it down was because the present structure is not earthquake-safe, and retrofitting it would cost substantially more than building something new and modern from scratch. However, most folks will admit that there are more ways to measure cost than merely in dollars. I think we need to add on to the cost the loss of history. The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk (j ...

Preserving Historical Properties
2007-07-29 21:36:43
Saw this in the Reister Pajaronian a couple days ago: Castro Adobe to be restored Actually, I have no idea what the Castro Adobe is. Well, I do, now that I have read the article, and I’ll be following up on it, at least to know where it is, so I can go check it out next time I down that way. This is a project that is reminiscent of the Redman House Project - another historical home preservation effort. To me, it’s not so important if a 1950’s tract home gets bulldozed to put up an oversize house on a postage-sized lot somehwere out in Live Oak. Once we get down to a half-dozen or so 1950’s tract homes, we can maybe start worrying about preserving them. But unique properties such as the Castro Adobe or the Redman House deserve to be saved. Properties like this help tell the rich history of Santa Cruz county - a history that is easily forgotten in the fast pace of modern living. ...

Gloomy News: Sales down, Foreclosures Up
2007-07-25 22:21:30
From reading the headlines, it seems there’s some bad news on the national real estate scene. Here’s a sampling of a couple of headlines from CNN Money: Home sales slump, but prices tick up This one is about how home prices have gone up a tiny bit nationwide, but the amount of sales volume is the lowest in four years. Of course, four years ago, the market was going gangbusters, at least in our neck of the woods! Here’s another cheery article about how Countrywide Home Loans, one of the biggest lenders in the country, is seeing a spike in delinquencies and an accompanying big drop in profits. Prime borrowers catching subprime ills What’s alarming about this bit of news is that the problem isn’t with sub-prime borrowers this time - this time it’s with “prime” borrowers. D’oh! And here’s maybe a couple that you didn’t see - these come straight from the California Association of Realtors: C.A.R. reports sales decrease 2 ...

Rents going up in Santa Cruz County
2007-07-19 08:59:26
Here’s a bit of interesting (yet hardly surprising) news: Renters paying more in Santa Cruz County - By Jondi Gumz - Sentinel staff writer - July 19, 2007 Rents in Santa Cruz are on the way up! I was talking to a colleague yesterday and she told me she’s been able to raise rents by about 10% over last year on her rental properties. She mentioned the big factor being that UC Santa Cruz is going to have its largest class ever. If anything, the rental figures cited in the article seemed a bit low. It looks to me as if they’re talking about prices in apartment buildings - old, “Class C” rentals. I always like to figure how much you could get per room. I think a good average figure is around $750 per room, up to $1,000 per room if the property is absolutely fabulous (great location, good parking, well maintained). My colleague was telling me that she has a couple of units up in “Condoland” (the condos right below UC Santa Cruz, off Nobel) tha ...

A Chat with Gary Gangnes
2007-07-18 23:58:28
Today I had the good fortune to talk to Gary Gangnes. If you’re not familiar with Mr. Gangnes, he is the guy who is often quoted by the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper. He keeps lots of Santa Cruz county real estate market statistics, and is often quoted in various Sentinel articles about the state of the market. How is it I came to talk to Mr. Gangnes? It’s kind of a long story - I was given his cell phone number by the seller of a house which I was going to put an offer in on for one of my clients. I called the cell number because I wanted to get ahold of the listing agent to let him know I was sending in an offer. However, Gary Gangnes isn’t the listing agent for the seller’s home - somehow, the seller ended up with Gangnes’ card and told me it was his own Realtor’s phone number. To be fair, his Realtor is also named Gary, but works for a different brokerage. Hmmm! Anyway, I called Gary Gangnes and said I’d be putting in an offer on his ...

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