LALand is defunct

My favorite real estate blog, The L.A. Times' real estate blog, LaLand, is no more. It is moving in with Money & Co., the Times' economic blog. I'm sorry to see it go, but I guess we all should have suspected this would happen -- everybody knows LAT is cutting itself down to the bone.

Peter Viles was the original editor of the blog, then Peter Hong, then Lauren Beale. They all had really good grasps on our local market and its various permutations. Yes, LALand's posters were infuriating more often than not, and I was occasionally a poster target for my perceived pro-real-estate market, anti-bubble posts. But it was stimulating, to say the least.

At least we still have L.A. Curbed.

Two GREAT articles from today's L.A. Times

I know, this blog seems like just a clipping service for the L.A. Times. But today the Sunday business section has two great real estate articles.

The first is from Peter Hong and is titled Don't bank on the home as an ATM. It's full of all sorts of interesting statistics and facts about the housing market over the last several years. Personal story: I know somebody that bought a duplex with partners in 1994 for $200+k. She bought her partners out a couple years later. Two years ago she sold it for $1.1 million. But she had no profit as she had pulled every cent out of it by refinancing and spent it on god-knows-what. Don't be like her.

The second story is A primer for the first-time home buyer. Although it doesn't really pertain much to our home prices here, the advice is excellent.

L.A. Times catches up: "Home sales and prices on the rise"

Sorry for two LAT posts in a row, but this was the headline on the front of today's times: "Home sales and prices on the rise." (The hard copy headline is slightly different from the LALand headline, where I got the link.) I know you won't believe me, but Peter Hong interviewed me for this article. I didn't make the final edit. Bah.

In fairness to the media and how under-reported this story has been, most of the major journalists use financial statisticians and data experts for their sources. As we all know, those folks measure what has occurred, not what's happening this minute.

As far as all that foreclosure inventory, don't hold your breath for it to hit the market. My sources tell me that it will trickle on to the market over the next two years.

LA Times reports a home price surge

As if you don't have enough reading material, here's an article that will be in tomorrow's L.A. Times. Thanks to client Erik for forwarding it to me. The fact that home prices have risen will come as no surprise to anybody who has been out looking for a home lately. As much as I respect Peter Hong's journalism (he's the main blogger at the L.A. Times' real estate blog, LaLand), I question his conclusion that it is the higher-priced homes selling that's raising the median. (Correction 7/16: This is not Hong's conclusion; he is reporting Dataquick's conclusion.) My take would be that all single family homes are selling, and often in multiple offers, which tend to drive prices up. And since there are many buyers chasing few properties (see the Burbank Leader article about dwindling supply, below) well...high demand/low supply tends to make prices rise.

Hong points out an issue that I think we should all be mindful of: "Though lower-priced, repossessed properties have dominated home sales this year, they did not comprise the majority of homes sold in June. Last month, 45% of homes sold had been through foreclosure, the lowest percentage since July 2008. That trend could reverse, [emphasis mine] however, if a large backlog of Southern California homes in the foreclosure process end up being repossessed. A state foreclosure moratorium and voluntary efforts by lenders have slowed the rate of repossessions even as the number of borrowers failing to make mortgage payments is on the rise."

Sunday morning reading

For Sunday morning reading, here's a good article from the NYT by Peter L. Bernstein. It's titled "Three Strikes Against Consumers" and discusses the housing/credit crunch, high oil prices, and high food prices. I'm happy to see a journalist from a major news outlet discussing food prices as the issue seems to have been given short shrift elsewhere.

Today's L.A. Times' Business section has an article about whether or not it's a good time to buy real estate. It's by Peter Hong.

Why am I not including a link to this? Because it's way too statistical. The figures it cites just don't jive with my boots-on-the-ground experience of the markets I serve. Nobody disputes that local housing prices have come down. But the article's blanket assertion that the county has come down 30% is just not true for all -- or even most -- zipcodes, and I think the numbers in the article really need to be better qualified. Or perhaps I should just title this post, "I don't care what John Carroll of Dataquick says."

Yet more reading -- is this beginning to feel like homework yet?

When I did my Sunday reading post (below), I hadn't yet read the NYT article "Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Themselves Deeper in Debt." It's really interesting reading. If you can get a copy of the paper, there's a fascinating full-page graphic showing the difference in consumer borrowing and debt through the last nine decades. Factoid from the graphic: As recently as the 1970's, only 6% of American households had credit card debt!

And today's LAT front page headline article by Peter Hong is about foreclosures. Peter interviewed me on Monday for this, but I guess I didn't make the edit. Anyway, here's an interesting item:

The latest figures contained one surprise: defaults -- the first step toward foreclosure -- rose by just 6.6% in the second quarter, down from a 39%. DataQuick President John Walsh said the reason was not immediately clear. Foreclosures may be "nearing a plateau," he said, but it could also mean that lenders are "swamped and can't handle processing any paperwork." [emphasis mine].

That's what I'm seeing, too. Lenders just don't have the staff to handle work-outs, short sales, foreclosures...