It’s an outrage! Actually it’s not as bad as it was a few years ago, but being the old fart that I am I remember my Dad complaining about having to pay over 30 cents a gallon when I was a kid. We used to drive a long way to get gas at the cheap, 25 cents a gallon station. My Dad wouldn’t be taken advantage of dontcha know. Anyway, it’s 2010 and this weeks question is simply…where is this place? If you’re first to answer correctly you’ll win a $30.00 gift card to Waterfront Pizza at Edgewater Place. Nice new website for those guys too. All the rules of the road are available to view on the left hand margin as well as on the bar above. The winner along with all other correct answers will not be published until Monday morning. All silly jokes, snappy quips and all wrong answers will be published immediately if not sooner. Thanks for playing, have a great weekend!

Ummm…what’s for sale here?       

I guess it was a tad too much work to move those boxes?

Nice shot!…of the screen!

Maybe if it was in focus?

See, the idea is to make the room look as large as you can…

What’s with all these TV’s being on? Hey, is that ESPN?

Any chance we could take last night’s dinner off the counter during the photo shoot?

Maybe there’s no bedding available?

Now really, can any of you imagine exposing your home to the marketplace like this? It’s hilarious…

If any of you have had the unique experience of being part of a short sale you undoubtedly have discovered that, within that experience, logic has gone pretty much completely out the window. When discussing short sales it’s really a multiple choice illogical experience, so for the purpose of brevity I thought I would just discuss the process of actually seeing one today.

Just in case you haven’t been initiated…a short sale happens when a seller owes more on their home than it’s worth. They then put it on the market, hope to get an offer and if they do they try and negotiate with their lender (or lenders as the case may be) to take less money and let them go. Since lenders are not too crazy about the idea of losing money the seller usually has stopped making their mortgage payments while they try to sell their home short as a way to, hopefully, motivate the lender to work with them. A short sale usually is a little less toxic and damaging to an individuals credit than simply letting the house go to foreclosure. (At least that’s the hope…there’s plenty of negatives about short sales and if you’re contemplating one please discuss your options with an accountant or maybe even an attorney before doing it).

Oh yeah, it’s worth mentioning that a buyer who makes an offer on a short sale can literally wait 6 months or more for a response from the sellers bank. Buying a short sale is an exercise in patience to say the least. You make an offer…and you wait. An agent in my office who has a short sale listing was told upon receipt of an offer that it had to be faxed, and faxed only, to one specific fax machine within that bank. It was constantly busy. When I say that I mean it was busy constantly…for weeks. It was busy when he tried it at 2:00AM. When he called the bank they told him there was no exceptions…they only accepted faxed offers to that one particular machine. Keep trying, he was told. After weeks of this it finally went through…and he had the proof from our machine’s receipt. A week later the bank told him they were missing a couple of pages…send it all again! It took another 3 weeks to get it faxed successfully again.

But I digress…

Back to viewing a short sale. Seems sort of elementary, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it seem logical that an individual who wants to sell their place short may want people to see their place for the purpose of helping them out? No such luck. Here’s some snippets from some actual listings I’ve tried to show in the last few weeks:

*Showing on weekend only: saturdays (2-5pm) and sundays (12-4) call listing agent before showing.

*Dogs on premises. Call listing agent to arrange showing appointment.

*Do Not Disturb Occupants, Restricted Hours, 24-Hour Notice Required, Appointment Only, Call Listing Agent

I think at least half of the short sales I try to show are like this. I’m really not sure I understand why either. Maybe if you’re not making the payment anyway you’ve accepted that foreclosure is inevitable and you just want to live in the house rent free until eviction occurs? Honestly, I really don’t know why it’s like this. Sometimes I see all of these barriers and still see verbage like this:

Buyer just walked, seller needs offer ASAP. Go figure! Yikes!

Nice detail this week folks! I like the inclusion of the indoor pool with the answer of the PJCC from Friday’s contest! Congratulations to Lakshmi Suresh who narrowly edged Nicole Fabris and won the $30.00 gift card to Subway. Great job Lakshmi! Also arriving with the correct answer was Suresh, Nancy, Joseph Chandy (on facebook), Alex O, Yee, Kirk, Tina W, Liz Velichko, Michael, Erika Jahnke, Bill, Lilian, Guru, Anita Reimann, Joseph, Debbie Seligman, Carol, Molly Swan and Ruth Sparkman (also on facebook) and Shrikant. Great job folks!! Thanks for playing! See you again this Friday!

Not bad….

In the last few weeks it sure was nice to have a roof over our heads, huh? This weeks question is simply, whats under this roof pictured above? What is this place? This weeks winner will receive a $30.00 gift card to Subway at Edgewater Place. All the rules of the road are available to view on the left hand margin as well as on the bar above. The winner along with all other correct answers will not be published until Monday morning. Any and all silly jokes, snappy quips and all wrong answers will be published immediately if not sooner. Have a great, hopefully dry and warm, weekend! Good luck!

So, I’ve had this very interesting experience so far this year. I had a couple of listings in Foster City that sort of experienced a feeding frenzy and then followed those up with a listing in Daly City at a project called Pointe Pacific. The interesting part is the fact that although Foster City is only 19.5 miles from Daly City…it really is worlds apart when it comes to real estate values and sales.

Believe me, I’m in no way bashing Daly City. My listing at Pointe Pacific is adorable, the project is immaculately kept and many of the properties there have some of the best views I’ve ever seen. It’s just that there’s a dramatic difference in the market activity from there to here. Particularly when it comes to condos and townhouses.

On Tuesday I wrote that post about overbid activity around here and the fact is that since January 1 26 condos/townhouses have sold in Foster City in prices ranging from a high of $788,000 to a low of $396,000. Only 2 of those are short sales. There’s 33 active listings in Foster City right now too. During the same period of time in Daly City there have been 23 sales, but 16 of them have been short sales or foreclosures. The highest priced unit to sell was $415,000. 21 of them are actually under $400,000. 16 units are actually priced under $300,000.

If my Point Pacific listing was in Foster City at $399,000, (that’s our price in DC) we would have gotten 7 or 8 offers on it easily and it would have sold in the first week. In Daly City, we have the most upgrades of the 6 units for sale in this project and we also have the lowest price…and nothing in 30 days. Strangely, we’re at the upper end of the market at Pointe Pacific. Can you imagine the upper end of the Foster City market at $400,000? Can you also imagine 2/3 of the pending sales in Foster City being short sales of foreclosures? (For those of you that can imagine this…read Tuesday’s post!)

I guess what it all means is that real estate is an incredibly local business. Drive a few miles and the whole thing can very easily change.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve had multiple clients inform me that they’ve read that the market is slow. They’ve been informed that the January sales numbers were bad both in the Bay Area as well as Nationally. I’ve also heard that a variety of  websites have proclaimed that the local market is struggling to reach the 2004 level in it’s home values. I’ve heard that continued price erosion is inevitable and that 2010 is supposed to be as bad as 2009 was. Of course (and ironically) those same clients have, and are currently, participating in making offers on homes being overbid.

Here’s the funny thing…it doesn’t square with my own personal experience. I could look at numbers and statistics all day long and still be confused.  Having said that, the only really meaningful barometer about the health of this market to me is 1) is my phone ringing and 2) what’s my personal experience representing clients right now.

The answer to the first one is YES, it’s ringing. On fact, I’m probably as busy personally as I’ve ever been. I have as many active buyers that I’m currently showing homes to as I did at the peak in 2005-06. Here’s the thing…I don’t really think I’m all THAT special. If my phone is ringing, there’s lots of other agents who’s phone is ringing too. I KNOW the market is WAY, WAY better in 2010 than it was last year from that fact alone.

How about the day to day experience? Unfortunately, My clients and I are not simply waltzing in and ratifying on home after home. In fact, almost every offer I’ve written this year has been as a part of a multiple offer scenario. Here’s a few of some sales that have involved multiples so far this year:

572 Nottingham Foster City

1121 Catamaran Foster City

18 Dory Lane Foster City

606 Pavo Lane Foster City

733 Celestial Lane Foster City

9 E Court Lane Foster City

17 E Court Lane Foster City

813 Tamarack San Carlos

124 Northam San Carlos

3404 Fernwood San Mateo

3382 Marisma San Mateo

650 Celestial Foster City

1002 Gull Foster City

1599 Beach Park Foster City

105 Wilshire San Carlos

1822 Bayview Belmont

These last three didn’t have pics, sorry.

I’m sure there’s lots more listings that have experienced, or are right now experiencing multiple offers in 2010. It’s just that the above listings are the ones that I personally have been involved with. Too bad we didn’t get them all!! I have absolutely no doubt that there’s plenty of others that have gone multiple too, don’t you? These two facts are the only real barometer as far as I’m concerned. I don’t care what statistics are published. If my clients can write an offer on a property, come in $30,000 to $50,000 under asking with no competition and get the place I’ll write about it here all day long. Unfortunately that wouldn’t be true…the market is pretty darn hot as far as I’m concerned.

I was actually a little surprised at how many incorrect answers there were on Friday. The answer, of course, was the Edgewater Shopping Center along with multiple choices of businesses there. Congratulations to Sheetal Shetty who arrived first and won the $30.00 gift card to Cold  Stone Creamery. Great job Sheetal…who was consistently close in the past and finally got there first!! Coming closely behind were Debbie Yeung and Linda Atkins (who answered on facebook) and just missed by 2 minutes. Also answering correctly were Harish, Suresh, Sandy Hughes, Leslie Shirasu, Shrikant, Jeff Deeney, Bill Hastings, Steve, Edna, Deepa, Lilian, Erika, Jen, Chris Hsiung, Debbie Seligman, Nancy and Joe. Great job folks! Thanks for playing, see you again this Friday!

OK, I know…you’ve probably seen this. After all, it’s got almost 70 million views on YouTube. It doesn’t matter…it’s still great and inspiring. Let’s see it again.