Californian enjoy a certain environmental awareness I see most other states seem to neglect. Most of us recycle and are more or less aware of our environment. After all, it’s hard not to be when it rarely rains.
This webpage on 
Public Radio was an interesting eye opener. It basically shows how many earths it would take to sustain our way of living. It basically shows your foot print on earth. Fascinating…
With a sub-title like: “Playing “Find the Buyer”, But Finding Few; Sellers Become More Realistic on Pricing”, it speaks for itself.
Noting unexpected, traffic down meaningfully in August, more homes on the market. My informal survey of our local Long Beach market was from Lakewood and Long Beach out of a total of 2682 homes on the market in September, only 120 have sold. Now that’s 1.8% of homes that sell in this market. I’ll write more about it tomorrow.
Bank of America’s traffic index fell to 18.6 in August from 21.8 in July. The downward price pressure continues as their price index fell to 21.2 in August, down from 24.7 in July. Below 50 means falling prices. They reported agents believe sellers need to lower asking prices given the competing inventory of homes for sale. Nothing earth shattering there. We all knew that.
BofA expects the price to continue to drop based on the excess inventory of homes for sale on the market. Prices fell to 12.2 in August from 16.0 in July.
Interestingly, in markets with significant new construction, some agents noted that appraisals on existing homes are now often being based on new home prices (which have been cut more than existing home prices) and is intensifying the troubles.
Source BofA.
Yes, it’s tomorrow but if you are not doing anything, this is great to find out more about Long Beach history.
Living History Tours return and it’s free!
Touring the adobe and grounds with living history characters is a unique and entertaining way to explore the Rancho’s many layers of history. On Sunday, September 30, “visitors from the past” will step forward in time to share their stories. Meet builder Don Juan Temple and his wife, who operated a cattle ranch here in the 1840s. Margaret Bixby and her sister Susan will talk about family and daily life on a sheep ranch in the 1870s, and Fanny Bixby Spencer and Llewellyn Bixby Sr. will share developments in Long Beach and discuss how the crumbling adobe was transformed into a modern home in 1930. Learn about ranch work through the eyes of Charlie Emerson, the blacksmith, or visit with Bixby cousins from out of town. These “living” history characters will take you to the realms somewhere between 1840 – 1940. Which era will you visit?
The free, guided tours by our talented Friends of Rancho Los Cerritos volunteers will be offered every half hour throughout the afternoon, with the last tour leaving at 4:00 p.m.
One recurring local story I hear from everyone is that of last minute escrow falling out.
It used to be only a certain percentage of people would have last minute loan problems. What is troubling is that many lending companies are dropping out of business left and right or cannot secure their funds at the last minute.
Even niche Realtors have told me that this is the biggest problem they are facing. Everything is well, the inspections and termite works have been done, three days or less before closing and the originating lender cannot be reached. You call the lender, speak to the under-writer, they cannot get in touch with their lender. No one knows and escrow falls through. Thousands of dollars have been spent and you are right back to square one.
Unfortunately, there isn’t anything much that can be done about preventing this. The only thing is to be surrounded with trusted professionals who are on top of things and return calls quickly. The rest, we can only hope the mortgage players scenario becomes healthy quickly again. Though I normally like independent lenders, I feel direct lenders might be a better bet these next few months until the dust settles. That is just a personal opinion and not a professional one. As usual, find a trusted lender professional with a proven track record to help out.
As much as I am a fan of 
Most of you, like me who have been waiting for a slick PDA with a decent screen rejoiced at the introduction of the 
iPod Touch. Oooh, I want it but on second look, I wonder if I want a dumbed down version of this tool I would use for work.
Apple has given itself yet another chance to penetrate the enterprise with a great device, the iPod Touch. I think Apple is getting too bearish and starting to defend its market shares a la Microsoft by disabling functions we need in the iPod. For one thing, I’ve come to depend on my PDAs for data entry, not just watching movie and getting on the Internet to sustain Apple iTunes by buying music and movies. I was excited about the iPod Touch because it finally seemed like the right professional PDA I could use that would integrate with iCal (Apple’s calendar), would carry a mirror image of my email last time synced, and why not, hopefully even use Mail to email through hot spots. However, these functions were turned off by Apple. Why? If available, they would come too close to being a cheaper alternative to the iPhone. This practice is against what Apple has accustomed us to in the past, and I believe it is self defeating. Apple always put its customer first. But that was a smaller Apple then. The latest market shares are showing a growing Apple.
What will happen is hackers will post for free work-arounds and even ways of unlocking these features. Ultimately, it will make faithful users like me trust Apple less and less if it fights for its market first and neglects me. I am Apple’s market in many ways.
Apple is in a tough situation by having to answer to contracts (iPhone locked down with AT&T), stock holders and the growing market shares. These are going to be trying times for the company these next few months. But I think locking down the iPod Touch was not in their best interest, certainly, not something they have accustomed us to.
Nothing new here or unexpected as prices fell a little more in July for homes on the market, according to Standard & Poor’s with its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices.
I normally wouldn’t have written about it had it not mean that the rate of decline is becoming larger each month as the year goes by. This is a serious warning sellers need to really pay attention to the current market state and price their homes correctly, that is those who need to sell their homes.
Los Angeles as of the July 2007 index was at 260.84, the July/June in percentage was -0.5% and the June/May was -0.4%. The 1-Year change in percentage is -4.8%. Source: 
PRNewWire.
Thanks 
For those of you interested in numbers and charts, 
The reason why I bring this up is that our very own 
Rugby team in Belmont Shores is a great team that makes to the US championship every year.
Right now you can go see the World Championship 
Someone told me one day, soccer is a gentleman’s game played by hoodlums, Rugby is a a hoodlum’s game played by gentleman, and that gentle people is truly what I believe. Go and check it out and hopefully get turned on. Discovering this sport will give you something else to watch than what we are being forced down our throats with local channels and papers. Plus, we have our local champion team to cheer in our backyard!
A week back or so, Jim Wiandt wrote a post entitled, “Without a Widespread Economic Crash, a Housing Crash Is Unlikely.” The title speaks for itself and though I glanced at it quickly, it was the same thing all over. “Expert” predicts everything will be alright. It wasn’t backed up with anything concrete. So I never mentioned it. A dime a dozen, as far as I am concerned.
However, 
“According to the National Association of Realtors [NAR], 28 percent of all homes purchased in the U.S. in 2005 were “investments,” along with 22 percent in 2006. With prices soaring, I think you could fairly call these speculations. Regardless, however, these buyers have disappeared, and I think the impact of these buyers leaving the market will be significant.”
In a market where one quarter of homes were bought as investment on short term, what happens when homes don’t sell as fast and for how much they were anticipated? They sit on the market. We already have 9 months straight of surplus homes to sell in a market where… it doesn’t sell quickly enough and for the anticipated price. The rest doesn’t take a rocket science engineer to figure out.
“Since 1971, the NAR has been publishing a “Home Price Affordability” Index, which measures the ability of a median-income family to purchase the median-priced home. The index … assumes a family can plop down a 20% down payment and get the best possible mortgage rate. We know that’s not always the case…
According to a report from HUD, the index originally came to market with a reading of 150 in 1971. It fell as we approached the 1982 real estate bust, and then recovered, and has hovered in the 130-to-140 range since 1993.
But since 2005, it’s cratered. In July, the NAR affordability index hit 103.6 nationwide … one of its lowest readers ever. In the Northeast region, it hit 90.4 … which means the median family cannot afford the median home, even under the most optimistic of circumstances. In the West, the index reads 69.2. 69.2.”
So if inflation doesn’t match home prices and less and less people can afford to buy homes, what happens? Two things, either money grows on trees and we can go on another frenzy or prices have to reflect one important reality in real estate, what and how much buyer can and will afford. It is a science, not dictated by emotional returns on investments.
Finally some god real estate related news. At last!
The Neighborhood Resource Center invites people with qualified historic homes to join them at the Long Beach Navy Memorial Heritage Association 2007-2008 grants award. The meeting will be held tomorrow, Thursday the 27th from 6 to 7:30 p.m., located on 425 Atlantic Ave.
The grants range from $5,000 to $50,000 and application are available 
here.
To reserve your space, please contact 562-570-1010 or email Sharon, Sharon_Hinkey@longbeach.gov
Finally, good news worthy of reporting but Fannie, Freddie portfolio caps could be raised by next year.
This means, more people could have accessed to Freddie and Fannie backed mortgages, currently limited to $417,000. The problem with that number is that where it might buy you a lot in the country, it won’t do you any good here in California where the median price of a home exceeds that number.
This would be a boost for real estate but how will this effect the economy remains to be seen.