I am working on a market campaign, the pictured is a rough idea, reaching out to homeowners in trouble. The worst thing homeowners facing a money crunch can do is hope the problem goes away and it seems their biggest hurdle is reaching out for help. I realize it is hard to talk about these things, but you HAVE to and the sooner the better.

There is a huge window of opportunity right now to get either a loan modification or a short sale.The government, federal, state and local are all over lenders to do everything they can to help homeowners stay in their homes. Currently it is estimated that up to 60% of the homes banks have already foreclosed on are NOT on the market. The average monthly case load for a full time loss mitigation manager in the state is approximately 150 files a month. Again there is a huge incentive for financial institutions to try to help as they are getting buried.

What the survey showed to my surprise is that approximately 20% of all loan workouts initiate in the state are granted loan modification or forbearance. This is GREAT news. Another 25% close escrow through foreclosure/REO sale or short sale. However, short sale closings are less than 10% of this group. This tells me homeowners have a GREAT chance of getting a loan modification if they initiate the process soon enough and have a real reason for the need.

Lastly, I am here to confidentially help you with your situation. We will work together to try to come to the best solution for you. I am working with a lender that can help with the loan modification process. Feel free to email me or call 760–415–3329.

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Started in 2002, the shade tree program was designed to provide  homeowners with free trees to plant strategically on their property. With proper placement, homeowners could save energy by using shade trees to help keep their homes cool in San Diego’s year round summers. An added benefit of course is that trees help beautify the homes and help our environment. Since the programs inception over 36,000 trees have been distributed.

Prior to 2006, the program had been funded by the California Public Utilities Commission with funds collected for the public purpose program charge. This charge is tied to to our SDGE based on natural gas usage. While the monies will still be collected, it is the shift in oversight of the funds to SDGE that has caused the program to loss its funding. SDGE is looking to use the funds for more immediate energy efficiency benefits.

The program is funded through 2008 and unless new funding is found, it will most likely be terminated then. Here’s your chance to beautify your home, neighborhood, save energy and help the environment all at once.. FOR FREE!!

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See, I am a people person. An extrovert that feels most alive when around other sharing good times. This is why I love the Triathlon Club of San Diego so much. Last night for the first time in many years I attended the Friday night La Jolla Cove swim and absolutely had a BLAST!!! See I stubbornly did not want to deal with the hassle of I-5 south and La Jolla parking on a summer’s Friday evening. What a dope as I have been missing a great time. But that’s not why I have been feeling down.

I have been feeling down because I have not been working with as many clients. And while I would like to say these feelings are not at all from financial perspective, I REALLY miss working with some of the best clients most REALTORs will never be fortunate enough to have. The challenge of the financing. The hunt for the best home. The ups and downs of the negotiations and then finally the celebration of the ‘new home’. That is what I really miss. But yes, I will concede, a dwindling bank account does wreak havoc on one’s feeling of self worth and sense of security.

But this morning I woke up and I feel fortunate. See I have a home, only one, that is mine. I can do with it whatever I please and we gutted the place. The only thing in the home from when it was purchased is the framing, most of the drywall, some flooring and that’s about it. It did not need gutting, but I did. I love working with my hands and now own everything from a drywall scroll, to help install can lighting, to a table saw, for, well, all kinds of cool things. The best part, they are all used. However, despite this influx of both dollars and sweat equity, sometimes blood too, my home has lost about 28% of its value from the peak and I am at about break even on the purchase price.

But today I feel fortunate.

I am a 1099 independent contractor so the loan I used to buy our home was a stated income loan. Today, that loan is gone. It is now an excuse, a cause if you will, for the devastation to the housing market from the over exuberance of the closing Greenspan years. Because I write off everything I LEGALLY can as a businessman, my tax records would not support me if I tried to buy my home today using the resurrected FHA loan. Someone in my position would need roughly $75,000 to $110,000 to purchase in the $300,000 to $475,000 price range. Buying in that same price range for someone able to use FHA would require approximately $12,000 to $16,000, so there is hope for many!!!

The San Diego Union Tribune last Sunday had an article in their home section titled, “Raising the Bar”. It is a well written article about the changes in the mortgage market, but it has a troubling close.

“Tighter lending practices are making loans less likely to fail, but they’re also reducing the ability of the first time buyers to enter the market. That’s not necessarily a bad thing , said Jay Brinkman, an economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association.”– San Diego Union Tribune, 8/24/2008

I worked and am working with first home buyers and I find this statement disconcerting. I like to hear the economist representing the mortgage trace association saying,

“We are looking at ways to protect not only the housing market, but too also provide opportunities to the first time home buyer. We have always considered home ownership a huge part of the American dream and areas where home ownership is high, we see a strong sense of community.”– Brian Long, wishful thinking, 8/30/2008

But I feel fortunate today.

There is a great op-ed piece from the Los Angeles Times that looks at the positive side of the 2004–2007 home purchase and while I bought just prior to that it was a shot of sunshine. To anyone out there considering handing over the keys with the outlook that your home is an investment strategy that no longer ‘makes sense’, I would recommend printing this article and carrying it in your wallet. See you need to accept the fact that YOU ARE going to be buying home. Currently you just have the choice of whether it is yours or the landlords.

“Those of us who purchased nonspeculative property from 2004 to 2007 for the gratuitously self-indulgent purposes of raising a family and investing in our neighborhoods will ultimately have the last laugh.”– Los Anglese Times, 8/17/2008

So I feel fortunate today. (and I sure do hope this affirmation thing works!!!)

If I can help you realize your American dream or if, unfortunately, you need help do to financial hardship, call me at 760–415–3329 or email me.

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San Diego

Ribsy Productions’ of Solana Beach, as reported by the North County Times, is suing Aurora Loan Services of Colorado for breaking a contract and other charges because the lender failed to provide an approval letter for the short sale. Aurora has a $587,000 loan on the Tucson home and the lawsuit states had accepted their $158,000 offer.

Though the lawsuit appears to be the first of its kind, legal experts said Monday that it will not set a precedent nor precipitate a rash of lawsuits against stubborn banks.

“I think it would only be fact-specific to this particular situation. Even if the defendant was found liable for not having acted in a more generous manner, I don’t see that as likely to affect any group of institutions or borrowers in the future,” said Russell Block, a professor of finance at San Diego State University.”– North County Times,8/26/20008

Short sales are very prevelant in todays market and easily make up, when combined with bank owned homes, the majority of homes currently being sold in San Diego’s current real estate market. This makes it almost impossible to avoid these types of transactions. With so many of these short sales coming on the market I now make sure to use a disclosure specific to short sales that states;

A.This agreement is contingent upon seller’s receipt of written consent from all existing secured lenders and lien holders(“Short Sale Lenders”)……

and then later;

C.Buyer and Seller understand that Short-Sale Lenders(i)are not obligated to give consent to a short-sale…. Buyer, Seller and Brokers do not have control over whether Short-Sale Lenders will consent to a short sale, or any act, omission or decision by any Short-Sale Lender in a short sale process.

If you are falling behind with your mortgage payments, you need to meet with someone you trust to provide you accurate information about your options and to guide you through the short sale process. Please feel free to contact me.

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The plant, which will produce about 50 million gallons of freshwater from 200 million gallons, will be the largest desalination in the western hemisphere according to Reuters. The 50 million gallons equats to approximately 10% of the San Diego county region current water usage. 

With the Carlsbad project receiving final approval, this helps clear the way for approval of approximately 20 other desalination project proposed for the California coast.

Earlier this week the first of what will probably be several legal challenges was rejected by the State Water Resources Control Board. The suit filed by the Surfrider Foundation said plans to minimize environmental damage the plant would cause were insufficient.

The Coastal Commission also this month approved a second plant to be built on the Monterey Peninsula to provide water for a development near Cannery Row. This plant is much smaller and will produce about 25,000 a day.

While I believe these projects are necessary and I support the idea, I fear not much good will actually come from them if they are tied to development such as the Monterey project. We need new water sources to help meet our current needs. This is evident by the state’s current drought situation.

“It is easy for Sacramento to put off dealing with the water infrastructure,” Schwarzenegger said. “But as we now see, there is no more time to waste, because nothing is more vital than to protect our economy, to protect our environment, and to protect our quality of life.” -CNN.com, June, 5, 2008

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The home equity line is defined as a method of borrowing in which a homeowner may borrow against home equity as needed using a checkbook or credit card. In there in lies the problem. We homeowners have lost our equity.

As a REALTOR, my income obliviously can fluctuate greatly. With the negative trend in the current economy, I at times have viewed my equity line as a security blanket that I could tap in to in a worst case scenario. About 2 months ago I received notice in the mail that my equity had been frozen which actually makes me one of the fortunate.

There are situations where the money is being spent over time in for a single event such as college tuition for children or remodeling projects. In these situations the homeowner signs a long term agreement makes a payment or two and then are notified that the equity line has been frozen which is completely legal.

“Theoretically, you could have people writing checks and spending money they should not be spending. You can appeal. The No. 1 priority is to make sure that loan doesn’t default.”

Mark Goldman, a real estate finance instructor at San Diego State University, said it makes no sense for banks to notify borrowers before they reduce their line of credit.

“Of course they aren’t going to call you up and say we’re taking a look at your loan,” he said. “The borrower, upon receiving that notice, would likely draw down the remaining available balance on the home-equity line.” – San Diego Union Tribune, 8/21/2008

While I believe in honesty in all situation, if you think you may have to tap into your equity line, I would access all the money at once. To offset some of the interest costs, open a CD with the funds. This way you know you have necessary funds.

While the linked article states to periodically check with your lender to find out what your available credit is, I am not sure that is the best advice. Sometimes getting your information to percolate to the top of the stack can only lead to bad things.

As stated by Mark Goldman, “It makes no sense for the bank to notify borrowers….”, I would follow the financial institution’s  protocol with the reversal of the placement of the words bank and borrowers.

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Well, the article got me thinking about how the areas where many of my clients focus on compare.

While I have clients in many areas of San Diego, many fall into these three areas. Those areas would be Carmel Valley, the area consisting of Clairemont/University City/Linda Vista and lastly the North Park area. 

So I looked at the same time frame of July 2007 versus July 2008 and focused only on detached single family homes. And while these areas did well, they did not have the bounce of some areas in the north county. I believe this is primarily due to pricing and number of foreclosures. See the areas in north county that did the ‘best’ were all under $350,000 and have numerous foreclosures down into the $200,000s.

The one constant I did find was that all the areas showed a decrease in average square foot price. The areas around Clairemont and North Park also showed a decrease in home size. But while Carmel Valley showed a very slight decrease, roughly 2%, in square footage price the home size jumped from a 2833 sqft average to 3138 sqft.

Another figure that separated the Carmel Valley area was that the average price actually went up 7% from $1.036 mil to $1.145 mil. The average price in the North Park area was down approximately 29.4% and the Clairemont area was down 16%. However when you take into account the change in home size these decrease are tempered to 16.7% for North Park and 12%.

Lastly, that bounce in homes sold was greatest in North Park with an increase of 66% while the Clairemont saw the least of the three at 17%. This pattern, high increases in areas of with greater numbers of foreclosures, is consistent with the rest of the county.

If you would like more information about your area, I would be glad to provide you with any information you may need. I can be contacted here.

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Triathlon Club of San Diego

Saturday, the Triathlon Club of San Diego hosted 170 triathletes at Glorietta Bay for our monthly San Diego Running Institute race series. Behind the scenes, the race was experiencing some hiccups as TCSD race director Cory Osth, timing guru John Hill and big time race volunteer, TCSD VP Dave Huff were both absent. This left TCSD member and co Race Director Karam Gill with a pretty large task. The beauty of the tri club is that it only took Karam one email to round up a solid group of volunteers and the race went off perfectly!!!

A couple notables at the race were Triathlete Magazine President Mitch Thrower as well as Brennan Lindner of Generic Events and founder of the Playa Del Run series.

The bay was perfect, no one crashed on the bike and everyone was greeted with a wonderful breakfast buffet, croissant sandwiches, parfaits with Kashi granola and fresh fruit, taken care of by Denise Pitre and her crew. If you are not a member of TCSD, you are missing the VERY BEST part of the San Diego Triathlon scene.

Y-TRI youth triathlon

While the grown ups were doing their thing at Glorietta Bay, tri club member Troy Cundari with ZEAL Optical, was putting on the first annual Y-TRI youth triathlon.

The race featuring approximately 80 kids, took place within the grounds of Mt. Carmel high school and was open to kids ages 8–13. The kids 8–11 did a 75 meter swim, a 1.5 mile bike and a one mile run while the 12–13 year olds did a 175 swim, a 2.5 mile bike and finished off with a one mile run.

Look for another larger edition of this race next year.

Playa Del Run Solana Beach

The ZOOT Playa Del Run series rolled into town for the second time this year. The six race Aquathlon, swim/run, series kicked off in San Diego’s Mission Bay on April 27^th 2008.

Sponsored locally by Solana Beach’s own BnL Bikes, this race features a 1000 meter ocean swim followed by a 5K run. Starting at the newly redesigned Fletcher Cove beach, the weather was perfect with some surf, but not too much. As always Triathlon Club of San Diego volunteers were on hand as swim buddies to help those get through their first ocean swim. Every week TCSD hosts a swim at Fletcher Cove Friday mornings, so there was a lot of local knowledge working to help newer swimmers.

Personally the best thing about this race was seeing ZOOT sales representative and former TCSD beginner coach Sonja Johnson Doherty. Back in April, Sonja was hit by truck on a training ride and shattered her lower leg. Because of the work of great doctors, a great healthy, fit and positive patient and a whole lot of hardware, Sonja was swimming today and has been back on the bike. The run is still in the future, but it was FANTASTIC to see Sonja back competing and wearing that ear to ear grin!!!

AFC Half Marathon

I told you it was a weekend for endurance junkies and the America’s Finest City half marathon closed the weekend.

This 13.1 mile run starts with a nice downhill from Cabrillo National Monument and finishes with a strong uphill into San Diego’s famous Balboa Park. Along the way runners race along the San Diego Bay and briefly visit sites such as the Embarcadero and the Star of India.

Now in it’s 32^nd year, make sure that you do this race at least once.

Well that’s it. Tired?

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City Square’s failure stems from Bank of America’s decision to freeze Barratt’s $125 million credit line, Pattinson(Barratt America CEO) said. He also questioned the bank’s motives, saying it is not interested in exploring workable solutions, such as extending the life of a loan.-North County Times, 8/10/2008

However, while in October of 2007, Barratt was announcing winning awards at one project, they apparently were not paying their sub-contractors. The NC Times article also reported that since November of 2007, 80 civil lawsuits have been filed against Barratt America and most of those have been filed by unpaid sub-contractors.

The luxury community additionally effected is Carlsbad’s Magnolia Estates. While looking through SANDICOR, San Diego’s MLS, for foreclosure activity, it seems as though the whole of Magnolia Estates is facing foreclosure proceedings and have lawsuits attached to them, presumably from the subcontractors looking to get paid.

Hopefully Barratt America, which has reportedly laid off 100 of its 130 employees, will be able to find new financing or work out a solution with Bank of America as neither city benefits from the blight, whether townhomes or luxury homes, decaying uninhabited.

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What makes this event so unique and I mean one of a kind unique, is that the event is that the majority of the race takes place with in the ‘secret wall compund’ that houses the hovercraft. When you travel on hwy 5, you can not help but notice the towering cement walls and wonder just what the heck is going on in there.

The transtion area is set at the base of the landing ramp used by the craft for entering and exiting the ocean. This landing ramp also is the worst hill of the whole course and you climb it twice when leaving transition on the bike and run. So for your first event, know it doesn’t get anymore difficult than that.

The swim is an ocean swim and during the summer you should expect some surf as we see a predominant south swell and this area of San Diego county is usually a couple feet larger than most areas south. This day the surf was 2–3 with an occasional 4 foot set waves. The only real challenge was a large 7–8 foot deep trough and then a sandbar again which is where the surf broke again. This caused some funky current conditions. When the surf was down, there was a bit of a north current, but once the waves came the current turned and pushed north. Another thing you can count on is a perfect 68–70 water temperature.

The bike route is a very easy out and back with no real hills at all. Truly the only ‘hills’ are an overpass to cross hwy 5 and a rise out of a storm wash. Do they slow down your effort? Yes, but they really are not a climb. When you make your turn on to Las Pulgas, it does seem as though it is a constant elevation gain, so do not let your necessary extra effort discourage you as once you make the turn it will be time to drop down a couple gears and let the legs go!!

Coming back in to transition the prevailing thought for me was, “dang, now we have to run up that ramp!!” It really isn’t that bad. Just short quick turnover and get it over with. The run course is contained within the Intruders compound and you run through and around numerous hovercraft as well as the hangars, cranes and other machinery used to maintain the fleet. It really is pretty cool to be there amongst the workings. Additionally, with all the distractions and the winding unmarked course, you never really know where you are, so you don’t know if you are hurting or not. What I mean by this is, if you see a mile a marker, you gauge your effort and how your legs feel towards what is left. Sometimes this a negative mentally when you calculate that if I feel this way now, I am bummed with ‘x’ number of miles left. I guess it could be surmised as ignorance is bliss!!!

Now that the run is winding down, you come around the corner of the last hangar and there is the finish line. What distinguishes it is not so much the balloons and banners, it is the parked hovercraft that you cross thorough with Marines waiting for your bib and chip. That’s another thing about any of the Hard Corp races. Being on the base there are so many ‘voluntold’ Marines out there helping to make all the events GREAT. It makes these events a great opportunity to thank those guys for what they do and they really do appreciate it.

As for results, local Ironman Champion and Carlsbad resident Michelie Jones rode her bike over to make sure she got in her warm up and won the womens field in 1:17:15 only beating me by about 15 minutes ;-). The Triathlon Club of San Diego had a great presence at the race and had two club members, Philippe Krebs and Shane Byusse place 2^nd and third overall. Funny thing, Phillipe beat Shane by three seconds, but was in a later wave. Wonder how both their times would have been if they were on the course together?

I would have to say that this race in my opinion should sell out as fast as the Mud Runs and should certainly sell out before the International. As a sponsor of both of these races my inbox was flooded with requests for entries because the races sold out. make sure you sign up early and if you can not race, call it a donation to the guys who are out there supporting our country everyday. The money from the races goes towards Marine Corps Community Services. It is a small amount of money for what these guys are doing. Especially given the current situationS our military is involved in.

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