WSJ House of the Week

Every week the Wall Street Journal website picks a "house of the week." As you can imagine, they don't pick houses in lower price points (like under a couple of million). The houses are always interesting, but the house this week got me to thinking. The sellers are the parents of 4 competitive snowboarders. They are selling to better accommodate their kid's training schedules. The asking price? $8.495 million. Check it out. It's not exactly decorated like a teenager's hangout. Who the heck lived there?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124205330348006895.html

Sci Fi vs Art

As many of you know, I am a bit of a Star Trek fan. Not a die-hard Trekkie, but I love my Trek. Now, in case you haven't guessed, this is not a real estate related post. Sometimes I have to think of other things. : ) Therefore, I was watching Star Trek: Next Generation tonight on Tivo and I started to think about the impact of Star Trek.

First of all, I LOVED the new Star Trek movie. Really fun. Star Trek is always fun! But there is a bigger reason (more than fun) for Star Trek to have been a constant in my life since I was a small child. I think it's creativity. I am the product of a "creative" education. I went to film school. Not just anywhere. I went to USC, the best film school in the country. (Maybe the world, but students in Prague would argue that.) Schools today put so much effort into teaching science and math, and I think that's great, but they also need to develop the creative side of the brain. "Creative" progams in schools are being slashed or eliminated and I think that's a tragedy. Ask any die-hard Star Trek science geek what inspires him or her and he/she will say the "creative science side." The transporter beam, Vulcans, warp drive, the food replicator... All products of a creative mind. Our own President, as the story goes, looked at his wife's jewel encrusted belt and called the jewels dilithium crystals.

I am not stating anything profound here. Just remembering that it often takes someone thinking REALLY, REALLY far outside of the box to find something truly interesting and challenging that encourages us to meet those challenges. If we don't encourage creative thinking then how can we expect the science to catch up? Creative thinkers set goals for science. These thinkers don't care about boundaries, sometimes to their detriment and we need them. The creative, pie-in-the-sky ideas makes us aim higher.

Now I need to apply my creative thinking to real estate...

The Reality of Foreclosures

It seems like every real estate company you drive by these days has a sign out in front saying "Foreclosure List Available." One office in Gig Harbor put one of those signs out last month and had over 100 walk-ins asking for the list. There are foreclosure tours (be wary), articles about grabbing a great foreclosure deal and just all kinds of talk about foreclosure opportunities these days. Recently my office put together a list of pre-forclosure homes because it's such a hot market. This information is all public record because the home's auction date must be registered with the county and made public. I was scanning through the list yesterday (all 70 pages) and, while many agents see opportunity, I have to say I just felt a bit depressed. Looking at all of the names and homes made it much more real and personal. I recognized a few names of people I didn't even know were in such trouble. The truly sad part is that the majority of people on the list are only about $15,000 behind in payments and fees. I don't know everyone's situation and why they are losing their home, but that seems like a small amount to lose a home over. Hopefully some of these folks will be able to sell their homes or work out a new payment schedule with the banks before the auction dates.

So, where are all of these soon to be foreclosed properties? Primarily in East Tacoma, Spanaway and Puyallup. Not so much in North Tacoma, UP or Fircrest and practically none in Gig Harbor.

Why a 14.5% drop in home prices isn't so bad

The headline in today's News Tribune is PIERCE COUNTY HOME PRICES TUMBLE 14.5%. Very true. They have fallen significantly over the last year. Now my question is... how quickly and how high did they first climb? In January 2004 the median home price in Pierce County was $188,000. Prices peaked in July 2007 at $294,000. That is an increase of 36.1% in 3 1/2 years. Whoa! That's insane! In 2004 prices increased 13% from January to December. In 2005 it was another 14% increase, followed by a 6.5% increase in 2006. Our market spun way out of control (for many, many reasons) and what we are experiencing now is a necessary market correction. Is that a bad thing?

Unfortunately, if you bought in 2005-2007 your home is probably not worth what you paid for it. If that's the case, I feel your pain. I bought in Sept 06. I could cry in my beer (or, in my case, white wine), but the thing is, unless you absolutely have to sell right now, just wait it out and the value will go up again. It won't go up as quickly because that perfect storm of market conditions/lending/appraising, etc doesn't exist anymore. I am looking forward to the day, which is coming, when our real estate market is stable and boring again.

FYI- The stats and numbers were sourced through the NWMLS and Trendgraphix.

I love dogs, but...

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been address canvassing for the 2010 Census for the last few weeks. I am not supposed to say where, but let's just say that we canvass near our homes and you can kinda figure out what town I live in from this blog. Anyway, as a Realtor I have always been careful about looking for loose dogs when I am out previewing properties. You never know when a neighbor's unleashed dog will get a little territorial. Well, the Census work has given me a whole new view on the serious nature of this problem. The area I have been canvassing is both rural and suburban and I am astonished at the number of dogs just running around. (And every SINGLE one has barked at me.) It was cute for about 2 days and now it's just plain frightening. I have been growled at, snipped at and plain old threatened by a large number of dogs. My theory is that the book bag and hand held computer I carry must somehow look threatening. A golden retriever even growled at me.

The real (and serious) reason I am writing this is after being growled at and followed in a threatening manner by a pit bull today I realized how little county law enforcement is doing to protect people. After the pit bull threatened me, I happened across a neighbor and mentioned the dog. The neighbor told me that the dog is always loose and a danger to children. It bit someone and they called law enforcement (I am assuming either animal control or the sheriff) and they were told that there were too many loose running dogs for them to handle so they wouldn't do anything about it. Does a child have to be mauled to death before someone gets the message? I love dogs. But, dogs need need to be fenced in or leashed. Invisible fences are a great invention. I would love to hear what people think about this. Am I over-reacting? I don't think so.

By the way, I have a whole new respect for the mailman I had growing up. He didn't have the luxury of delivering mail from his Jeep. He had to walk it, dogs and all!

Heck yeah, houses are selling

Yesterday I thought I'd take a look and see how many homes are currently pending in Pierce County. The number might surprise you. There are 6214 active homes for sale (no offers on them) and, drum roll please... 1835 houses pending (under contract)! That's a lot of homes for this "down" market. Now, the reality is that a VERY large percentage of the pending homes are either bank owned or short sales and short sales, especially, spend a long time in escrow, sometimes as much as 3-5 months. I thought I would break down the pending homes in several parts of Pierce County. By the way, I have included condos in these numbers.

Tacoma 1921 active & 527 pending
Gig Harbor/Fox Island 786 active & 137 pending
Lakewood 321 active & 94 pending
University Place/Fircrest 218 active & 52 pending
Spanaway 325 active & 173 pending
Puyallup 818 active & 303 pending

As you can see, Spanaway is no longer a buyer's market, it's even. This is due to a couple of factors: affordable inventory for the average buyer and quite a few bank owned properties in the area driving prices down. As opposed to Gig Harbor where homes tend to be more expensive (fewer available buyers) and there are not nearly as many bank owned and short sales.

Stay tuned, the traditional strong housing season is just getting started...

Website of the Week

This is a very cool website if you are wanting to redecorate your home and are struggling for ideas. It's called getdecorating.com and it has thousands of photos of professionally decorated rooms and exteriors. You have to be a member to view all the photos, but it's only about $16 for one month. They have photo galleries for every type of room, plus window coverings, doors, etc. One of these days when I get a few bucks in the bank...

http://www.getdecorating.com/