Only in Hollywood...uh, I mean Burbank - CELEBRITY GOSSIP!

Got a call yesterday from my client, the seller of a middle-Burbank home. "It has finally happened," he said. "My iPod has been stolen." I read the lockbox (now I know what these fancy electronic gadgets are for) and determined that only one Realtor, and her clients, and their kids, had been in the house that day. Called the Realtor. Warned her about her clients. She said she'd check it out on her end.

As an aside: thefts happen very infrequently during listing periods. It's usually done by some opportunistic teenager. And it's why I nag and nag my clients to hide small valuables.

The other Realtor called back. She and her buyer clients confronted one of the buyers' kids and obtained a confession. They planned to come back to my seller's home, return the iPod and apologize. Turns out the bandit was not a teenager, but a little girl! Not only a little girl, but a little girl tv star, as my seller discovered when he opened the door.

Anyway, there was a wonderfully touching note of apology, tears and plenty of contrition from the child and the parents, too. And, of course, the iPod was returned. And of course my seller forgave her. Now, if I had only somehow made the house's sale to the buyers a condition of the forgiveness...

Burbank House in LACurbed!

For those of you who are fans of LA.Curbed.com, the hot local L.A. blog, one of our Burbank homes -- the "Lava" house -- is featured in it this week! Check it out for pictures and snarky comments.

Great article from today's (6/17/07) L.A Times Real Estate Section

This is very reflective of what we've been seeing:
It's the new normal
Sellers try for the right price off the bat, while buyers take their time deciding.
By Diane Wedner, Times Staff WriterJune 17, 2007
ON a recent Sunday, Bob and Jane Baker practically tiptoed across the hardwood floor of a newly refurbished Sherman Oaks home, looking a bit sheepish about bringing their Italian greyhound to the open house. They needn't have worried about Digby being an unwelcome visitor, however. Just about anything goes today, as agents vie to get potential buyers into homes for sale."A couple years ago, a house situated next to an alley, with 16 additions, could sell without an open house," said Keith J. Fisher, associate manager of Prudential California Realty in Sherman Oaks. "Now, it's sitting there for half a year. Open houses can make a difference, especially for new listings."Open houses, staging, upgrades and seller concessions — they all help speed home sales. Still, the No. 1 selling tool is setting the right price, agents say. The three figures people look at are the comparables, which agents give clients to show what prices their neighbors got; the county appraiser's price; and the price buyers are willing to pay, said Tracy Malone, a ZipRealty Inc. district director for San Bernardino and Riverside counties. "The last one is the only one that counts."More and more, sellers are getting it.The Bakers and a dozen other potential buyers checked out every corner of the pristine 4,471-square-foot, five-bedroom Sherman Oaks house with a modern kitchen, built-ins and a pool. It's located in a red-hot part of the San Fernando Valley and well-priced at $1.69 million. Coldwell Banker listing agent Shea Crofoot said she's already negotiating an offer in that ballpark.Overall, prices in the Southland rose 4.7% in May from a year ago to a median of $505,000, which reflects gains in L.A. County but masks declines in Riverside, San Diego and Ventura counties. In Los Angeles County, the median price — the point at which half the homes sold for more and half sold for less — rose 6.8% to $550,000 in May from the same month the previous year, according to DataQuick Information Systems. Orange County's median was $635,000, virtually unchanged from a year ago.The number of homes sold across Southern California was down by about one-third, benefiting buyers, who can choose from a vastly larger inventory of properties for sale. They also are enjoying the ability to look at a house, walk away, compare it with others and return a week later to make an offer. By a widely used measure of inventory, there has been an average 8.3-month supply of homes on the market in Los Angeles County over the last 19 years, according to the California Assn. of Realtors. That's how long it would take for the supply of homes to be exhausted at the prevailing sales pace. In April, that supply was 12.1 months in L.A. County and 22 months in Orange County. The San Fernando Valley, for example, had 5,680 single-family homes, condos and town houses — a 5.2-month supply — listed for sale at the end of March, compared with 1,492, or a one-month supply, for the same period in 2004, according to the Southland Regional Assn. of Realtors. John Gillette, a Dyson & Dyson agent in La Quinta, said properties in the high desert are sitting on the market for an average of 200 days.James Joseph, owner of Century 21 Ambassador in Whittier, said his office checks comps frequently for neighborhoods in which it has listings, and urges clients to adjust prices accordingly. "People need to look at their homes like they do Motorola stock. You throw it on the market, and the market will give it the thumbs up or down," Joseph said. "You get what the market will bear."To gain an edge, some sellers are offering concessions to buyers: paying loan points, helping with closing costs, paying the first year's homeowners association fees and extending one-year warranties. Even with that help, some first-time buyers are having to get creative, as median prices are still stratospheric and banks have tightened lending standards in the sub-prime market.Alexis Desanti, a 57-year-old legal secretary and West Hollywood renter, began searching for a Long Beach condo in the $250,000 range in March. The first-time buyer, who was nervous about her meager down payment, looked at about 30 units before buying a 700-square-foot, one-bedroom condo within walking distance of the beach, for $258,000. To qualify financially, Desanti got a $15,000 down-payment grant from a first-time-buyers program sponsored by the Pacific West Assn. of Realtors. Opening Doors participants must purchase a home priced at less than $564,264 in Los Angeles County, their incomes must not exceed $97,320 and they must contribute 1% of the sales price toward the down payment. As long as Desanti lives in the home for the first three years, the grant will be forgiven.Desanti also qualified for a 40-year loan at 5.75%. She pays interest only for the first 10 years. "I thought I never had enough money or the right job or the right location to buy," Desanti said. "I finally realized the market was right now. Or I would never get in."

Listings are slow; interest rates are up

It's now mid-June. Inventory of resale homes in the areas I serve seems to be shortening. This is good news for sellers, although that doesn't mean sellers don't have competition. The bad news for everybody is that interest rates are up. "Jumbo" rates (for loan amounts over $400k) are almost at 7% -- gulp. All in all, tho, the market seems to have much more buoyancy than I thought it would at this point.

A 1.4% slip? Big deal

Today's L.A. Times reports that home prices in Los Angeles are down 1.4% in a year-over-year comparison. This is good news to me as it's such a minor decline and certainly not even the 5% to 7% slip that the experts predicted! Median home price in So. Cal. now is $505,000.

No July 4 celebration

The City of Burbank has announced that it will not have its annual July 4 fireworks show this year due to the high fire danger on the hillsides. Good idea. Fires have broken out after the Starlight Bowl show even in wet years.

Increased activity

Good news for sellers of Burbank real estate: homes for sale inventory in the Burbank, Toluca Lake, Studio City and Hollywood Hills areas seems to be thinning out and properties are selling faster. And even going in multiple offers. Of course, the properties selling quickly are the ones that are in great shape, updated and priced right to begin with. Will this stop or slow down again? Prediction: yes, after July, as it usually does. As always, if a property needs work, is non-conforming, priced too high, etc., it's staying on the market for a long time.

Today's caravan

There were 28 new properties on the Burbank Realtor caravan today. Two years ago today, there were eight. However, here's the good news for sellers: many properties are once again selling in days, rather than weeks. Most of the quick-to-sell properties are in the middle range, of course.

Burbank Planning Board

My appeal of the project on Harvard Ave. was denied by the Burbank Planning Board last night. No surprise there. It seems that the Board is going to pretty much rubber-stamp anything that meets the current codes. I won't be appealing to the City Council. However, I'm debating going to the CC to ask them to consider down-zoning in the area. Any thoughts?

Planning Board appearance

I'll be at Burbank's planning board tonight (May 14) at 6:00 pm. A 20-unit apartment complex is planned for Harvard Road, right behind my house, and I have filed an appeal against it. How many more people can we shoehorn into this neighborhood?! I know this is not politically correct for a Realtor to be opposing a developer, and I'll probably lose, but I want to have my say. I think this will be televised on Charter channel 6.

60 Minutes

Oh, boy. The 60 minutes piece that aired on May 13 is controversial among Realtors, to say the least. What 60 minutes doesn't say is what Redfin actually does for sellers, or how they handle multiple offers for their buyers, how many of their listings expire due to lack of exposure, etc. Of course, I'm a full service Realtor and of course I'm going to resent discounters -- they make this all look so easy. It's not.
I'm also wondering: the commission arrangement is between the seller and listing agent. Shouldn't sellers have some say in rebates going to buyers? After all, it's their money...

Movoto.com?

Today's L.A. Times has an article about a new buyer/seller search site called Movoto.com. I checked it out and it looks pretty complete. Has anybody had any experience with it? It will "refer" an agent to you when you ask about a specific house.

Other blogs

I've found some other blogs that might be interesting for home sellers and buyers. They are: real-estate-blog.com and good ol' Trulia.com (it's called Trulia voices). If there are others out there that might be worthwhile, please let me know.

A Whole Lot of Nothing

Okay, now it's mid-May. How's the market? Properties are staying on longer. We are noticing more price reductions. But they're small price reductions. And, once again, buyers now have the luxury of time within which to make a decision on a house. So, the local market is okay -- actually maybe even a little better than it was last summer! Thoughts?

Contradictory data on the market?

Confused by the contradictory data on the market? Here's an L.A. Times article for you. It reflects what we're seeing: prices are not currently going up, but if you've owned your home for more than two years, you'll likely make a profit when you sell.
It's all how you look at it
Contradictory housing reports got you puzzled? Maybe it's because no two gauges are alike.
By Kenneth R. Harney, Washington Post Writers GroupMarch 11, 2007
WASHINGTON — With all the conflicting reports on housing prices and the direction of the market, you might ask: What's really going on out there? If, as the National Assn. of Realtors reported last month, the median price of an existing home nationwide fell by 3.1% in 2006, does that mean your house lost value as well? Or do you focus instead on the more upbeat numbers released March 1 by the federal agency that tracks value shifts in the country's largest database of existing dwellings? The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight reported that home values rose by an average 5.9% last year, although the rate slowed to just 1.1% in the final three months of 2006. It also found some quarterly deflation in prices in California, parts of Florida, the Midwest and New England. How could two highly respected gauges of real estate prices and values come up with such contradictory conclusions? How can the government report nearly 6% average appreciation on existing homes at the same time that the most comprehensive private-sector study of actual selling prices says they're down by more than 3%? Could they both be right? The surprising answer is yes — but mainly because they are measuring different things. The monthly median resale price surveys from the Realtors' group have an important limitation. The median price — the midpoint among all houses sold in a given period — is influenced by changes in the geographic composition of where houses are selling. If high-cost markets are experiencing record sales — as occurred in California and the Middle Atlantic states during the boom years — while low-cost markets are relatively quiet, the median will be pushed upward. But if sales are down sharply in high-cost markets — California sales are down by about 30% for the year — while sales in populous, lower-price areas such as Texas are booming, that will increase the proportion of lower-cost sales in the mix, and drag the median price down. So, a reported 3.1% decline may not be exactly what it appears to be. Now take the federal housing survey, the sunnier side of the street in the latest polls. Its database, large and impressive as it is, omits much of the country's highest-cost housing — dwellings with jumbo loans higher than the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac limit, which is currently $417,000 but had been much lower in previous years. That's an important omission because higher-priced homes tend to experience more volatile swings in values. The federal numbers also omit condominiums — a key segment in South Florida and the western part of the state. Leaving out condos in areas where overbuilding and investor panic have depressed values significantly, documented by local realty statistics, inevitably produces rosier conclusions than reality. So the federal housing report that Miami area home prices were up by a stunning 15.3% last year should be taken with a giant grain of salt. Despite these limitations, you can look at both surveys and come away with some useful conclusions: • If you own or are buying property in any of the dozens of metropolitan areas that boomed during 2002-05, you can be fairly certain that property values are either giving back some of those fat gains or are flat for the time being. The good news for most of the former high-flying areas is that the "give back" is relatively small. If your area saw an average doubling in values during the five most effervescent years of the boom, is it a big deal that prices are down by 1% to 4% from the peak? • If you live or are buying in an area where employment growth is strong and you never experienced the hyperinflation of the boom years, you probably are seeing excellent growth in home values. The truly sobering pictures are in the industrial Midwest and portions of New England, where job and population growth has been flat or negative. Prices there aren't likely to get out of minus territory until employment turns around and people start moving in.

Will Whole Foods Rise Again?

As you probably know, the Burbank City Council has voted against allowing Whole Foods Market to open at Main and Alameda. However, perhaps, all is not lost. Whole Foods apparently has downscaled its plans and is returning to the city with a request to open a 40,000 foot store. Will this turn the tide? Stay tuned!

For your listening pleasure

My website has a new feature -- an iMix. Yes, like many others, I'm an iTunes fanatic. I created a real-estate related mix of songs that I hope home buyers and sellers will find enjoyable. It's been published on iTunes and is called House Hunters/Real Estate mix.Please let me know what you think -- I had so much fun doing this that I'm sure I'll put together another one and I'd welcome your suggestions.