Coaching Businesses and Life, a view from Long Beach

More Home Depots Or Less In Long Beach?

Do we need another Home Depot on the East side?  Are the Evironmental reports correct?  What about traffic?

I'd like to hear from you. What do you think.  We already have two Home Depots conveniently located in the middle of Long Beach.  Do we need one in Studebaker?

SoCal Housing Sales Slow, Long Beach

San Diego County's home prices dropped again in July and was flat for the first time in a decade, according to DataQuick.

According to the LA Times,  Los Angeles County home prices rose at their slowest pace in six years in July with sales plunging 25%.  Still, the median price for Los Angeles houses and condos that closed escrow in July was $520,000, up 6.6% from a year ago.  There is still appreciation but rising at a more even pace.

You can read more here at Calculated Risk.

Calculated Risk Graphs On SoCal Housing.

Hallelujah, Verizon Drops New DSL Fee, Long Beach

Finally, Verizon can hear us now!  As incredible as it seems Verizon is listening.  After drawing fire from the FCC and very mad customers, they are dropping the ridiculous fee.  No word yet on if and when the base service fee will go up.

Bob Ingalls, chief marketing officer of Verizon came out with a blend press release on how purely coincidental the surcharge being added right as the USF fee is now removed.

Click here for BetaNews.

FCC 'Very Upset' at New Verizon Fee, Long Beach

From the good folks who brought the regrouping of Verizon after its dismantlement thirty years ago, they are now very upset with Verizon passing on the buck to consumers.  It's nice to hear the FCC is there to voice concern.  Now if they could only act on it instead of letting these monopolies be...

Following the insidious Verizon fee that replaces the ousted tax, BellSouth says it will drop the same fee.  For Verizon, the word is mum.

The FCC is preparing to launch a formal inquiry to look into Verizon and BellSouth continuing charging DSL customers for a Universal Service Fund fee the U.S. government is no longer requiring and masking it as a fee to help them better fight against other companies.  Yes, I know, what other companies?

Kevin Martin, the FCC Chairman was "very upset" by the companies' plans to keep the money.  We do hope his being upset solves the situation.

Verizon has used many different stories ranging from vague need of help competing with other carriers, helping pay for new technologies, etc but never actually explaining anything in details.  The greedy monopoly keeps on getting greedier and as long as no one raises a stink, why not?  In pure marketing strategy, the company did not explain why it wouldn't raise the base price of its service instead.

The FCC also intends to ask why the companies are imposing the surcharge both to customers subscribing to just DSL, as well as those who additionally pay for phone service.

What would we do without the FCC.  No wait!  Aren't they the ones who allowed Verizon in the first place by saying it would help the industry.  I must be sitting on the wrong side of the fence somehow.

Click here for the BetaNews brief.

More California Foreclosure Activity Report, Long Beach

The second quarter California foreclosure activity rose to the fastest over the past 14 years.

Lenders sent 10.5 percent more default notices to homeowners statewide during the April-through-June period according to DataQuick.  Yet, despite the bump in the second quarter, they remained below normal levels.

This is an interesting trend to watch.  Does it mean the increase was because the number of defaults had been so low before?  People have a harder time to back their mortgage and can be forced to sell their homes to pay off the lender.

The high amount of equity owners have in their homes, the different types of mortgages and how long the mortgage has been held all influence greatly the foreclosure market.

Interestingly enough, foreclosure activity was low during the third quarter of 2004 when that year California home prices rose at 20 percent.  And today's foreclosures are about one-third of the peak level in the first quarter of 1996.  It isn't as bad as the media makes it out to be.

Most numbers were taken from Calculated Risk.

Student Airport Threat in Long beach

I usually don't like writing about stories like these but this one brings to mind two things.  First how terrorism is winning an insidious war and second, you can do the stupidest things when you are young.

A South Florida college student was arrested after authorities said he called in a bomb threat at the airport.  The reason was, he arrived late for his flight, was prevented from boarding, and got upset so he resorted to terror in a nutshell.  He eventually admitted there was no bomb and to being upset because he could not board the plane.  Short of this being a sad case of not taking responsibilities for your acts, it also raises another question, what kind of person loses himself to threatening others?  More to the point, is what type of education was he lacking?  What can be done to prevent what seems to happen more and more, lack of responsibility and lashing out on to others for your own shortcomings?  This is also a reflection of our society where people do not scratch the surface very often, preferring looking cool than actually being cool.  Remember, it is not the monk's robe that makes the monk.  It's who she-he is inside.  The amount of work he-she has done on her-himself.

The other point I mentioned before is that terrorism is exactly that, creating and instilling terror in the heart and mind of a society.  And at that, the so-called terrorists are winning.  We cannot take an airplane without liquids, laptops, finger nail clippers, etc.  What is the point of flying anymore?  Thank goodness we have teleconferencing.  The media is not helping either.  All the headlines seem to have to do more with sensationalism than reporting the correct truth.

I lived in Paris in the eighties when bombs were blowing off virtually everywhere, supermarkets, trains, city squares.  It was scary but no one gave in to panic.  Here is an even better example, Israel.  We could learn a big lesson from a country that gets hit very often, rebuilds and comes back to the same place that got hit and look like life goes on.  Much like Lebanon did for the last twenty years, it humbly rebuild itself and continued as if life did indeed go on.  Instead over here we are caught in a whirlwind of what-ifs and maybes and false-positives.  I just think we should not lose our cool and prove the point that no matter what terrorists think, we will not deter.  We will continue living and continue being what makes us great, thrive and being aware of our neighbors.

Scam-Proof Your Life, Almost, Long Beach

A book called "Scam-Proof Your Life: 377 Smart Ways to Protect You & Your Family from Ripoffs, Bogus Deals & Other Consumer Headaches" caught my attention.  It did for two reasons, because the title was catchy of course but also because what kind of society do we have to have books like that?

It doesn't just talks about scams, but also when to buy cheap airline tickets. Well, it turns out it's Wednesday from midnight to 1a.m. in the time zone of the airline's "home base.".  That's when most airline's computer systems flush the reserved but unbooked lower fare reservations.  Get your tickets after 1 AM I guess.

Thornberg Point Of View on California Housing, Long Beach

I don't like predicting and I rarely pay much attention to experts.  However, I find it interesting to hear what these people have to say.  You just never know.  One might actually hit it right.  Ultimately, who pays the prices for homes?  The buyers.  The buyers decide the prices, not the experts or the media.

UCLA Professor Christopher Thornberg thinks that the existence of the bubble has now been replaced by a debate over how hard a landing it will be, whether home prices will drop, and what it means for the rest of the economy.  He believes we have not come close to the bottom of the market, and it promises to be painful.

Everybody talks about bubbles but no one really defines it.  His definition of it is when the market price of an asset is misaligned with its fundamental value.  Those mis-valuations are driven by speculators who believe in exceeding normal appreciation.  What a housing bubble is not, is a period of time when asset prices fall sharply according to Thornberg.  If the market slows down. housing prices fall slowly as a result. This can mean that prices stay overvalued for years.

The California employment markets rates remain fairly low, at 5%.  However there is a slowdown in job creation since the beginning of the year.  Here the pace of job creation in the latter part of 2005 has halted.  That is something we rarely hear on the news and is as important as a theoretical bubble burst.

You can read Calculated Risk's post here.

Profit Soars at Exxon Mobil As Gas Increase At The Pump, Long Beach

It's hard to fall for these oil companies PR pitches that they are doing their best to lower prices when they rake in billions in profit.  Exxon Mobil Corp., unashamedly said their second-quarter profit rose 32 percent.  The reason was Asia and North America used more crude oil and gasoline.  Wish my business could post profits like that.  No word on price at the pump rising influencing this outcome.

The company had revenues climbing last quarter to 25 percent, to $88.57 billion is not shabby.  With a doubling of oil prices since 2003, the company will even surpass Wal-Mart Stores Inc..  I am happy to see a company do well, what I'd like to see is having that company use my hard earned money to finding cheaper and more environment friendly energy systems.  And please, not in 30 years.

With profit from worldwide oil and natural gas exploration and production operations increasing to 28 percent, production decreased by 4.3 percent.  Hum, interesting point.

And still, Congress will pass $2.6 billion in subsidies in the energy bill.  Well, what about my subsidies?  The subsidies were part of an oil industry "wish list," according to David Hamilton of the Sierra Club's energy programs director, designed to encourage domestic oil and gas production.  OK, where can I send my "wish list" which I assume will be pretty close to many, many people's wish lists?

Exxon wasn't the only jovial party at Wall Street, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the third-largest publicly traded oil company, said their profit rose 34 percent and BP PLC, the second-largest,  said profit rose 29 percent.  In the US, ConocoPhillips, the third-largest, said profit rose 51 percent and Chevron Corp..

I think I'm in the wrong business.  Oh, no wait!  I am in the business of helping.

Here is the more indepth Washington Post article.

Apple Battery Recall and Real Estate, Long Beach

I'm an Apple fan, that's no news but when Apple does a good business sense thing, I even more happier being a client.

We have heard from months now about how many Dell batteries have gone up in flame and how Dell turned a deaf ear on it.  Finally after 4.8 million Dell is swallowing the pill and recalling.  If you listen to the news, the same thing happened to Apple.  But that is typical sensationalism on the part of the media.  What actually happened is after 9 people called in to complained, Apple decided to recall 1.8 million laptop batteries.  One of which being mine (no I didn't call to complain).  The nice thing bout this story is my laptop is two and a half year old. Would I have had a regular PC, I would have had to argue to get it replaced.  That's the treatment you get when you buy quality at an affordable price.

How does this relate to real estate?  Well, For Sale By Owners, according to statistics do well in a red hot market but rarely do well in a market like ours.  Why is that?  Simply because when the market is hot and everyone is over bidding, sellers can risk the chance of selling and keeping some of th proceedings they would have normally to have a professional spend on marketing.  However, in a tougher market where buyers are pickier than ever, For Sale By Owners are ill-equipped to defend themselves against picky buyers.  That's when real estate professionals come in at a premium.