I am running behind schedule today because we have had the last four days from hell.

On Wednesday, I came home to hear a gushing sound which I thought were the sprinklers next door. It turned out to be a water pipe from under our kitchen sink had burst and was flooding our place.  Unfortunately, it also massively flooded the place below.  The damages are so extensive our neighbors downstairs are forced to move out since the landlord will not take appropriate measures to provide us with a safe environment.

We are all very close neighbors here and help out one another.  Seeing them go was a shock but what happen next was even more so.

We are given a 30 days notice to vacate the premises in order to not inconvenience us with the work they will have to do.  Well, there is an empty apartment in the back and we are not being relocated there, so the inconvenience reasoning is dubious at best

Never the less, we do not feel 3325 East 2nd Street provides us with with a safe and sound environment.  Seeing the cracks in the walls below, the buckling floors in both apartments and their missing kitchen ceiling, is frightening to say the least.  The building has never been properly maintained and has been patched here and there.

I will have more answers to our burning questions today, such as, can they kick us out because of repairs?  What do they need to do?  How come the plumber only repaired my pipe and made no inspections of anything else in the apartments?  Giving a 30 days notice and evicting us (without using that term) for our convenience, is it legal? And the list goes on.

It just looks like a case of greed versus providing in return of rent paid on time a sound environment.

The Press telegram believes the market is returning to buyer’s advantage as statewide sales fell in June by 26.3 percent from a year ago, according to CAR.  Existing single-family homes sales in California were down.  This is the first time since late 2001 that the sales pace fell below 500,000 for two consecutive months.  Even the median number of days it takes to sell a single-family home was more, 46 days in June compared to 28 days a year ago.

Still the median price of an existing home in California rises, in our case 6.2 percent in June to $575,800 from May’s revised $564,440 and Long Beach’s median rose 10 percent from last year to $491,500.  Unfortunately, mortgage interest rates climbed in June with the 30-year fixed rate averaging 6.68 percent, up from 5.58 percent in June 2005, according to Freddie Mac.

One of the biggest culprit was the nation’s housing inventory which rose 3.8 percent at the end of June to 3.73 million existing homes available for sale, according to the national report.

Click here to read the Press Telegram.