Laguna Niguel Real Estate Blog

The housing slump has a far reaching arm when it comes to the damage to related industries. People are realizing there are a lot of things they can do without when the dollar is tight and they've opted to forgo such luxuries as new home furnishing and high end kitchen remodels. Places like furniture and furnishing businesses, where the sharp drop in sales is blamed on an abrupt cut in furniture shopping, something that most home owners do not see as a necessity, and home improvement giants such as Lowes, Home Depot and Sears have all felt the effects of a slow housing market.

Home improvement retailers are expected to post weaker results and probably won't see a rebound at least until 2009 as the U.S. housing slump, concerns about recession and tighter credit conditions stall consumer spending.

While falling home sales and construction have been a major hit to results over the past year, these retailers have also been hurt as consumers aware of falling home prices pulled back from big-ticket projects such as kitchen remodeling.

"A large part of renovation is to set it up to improve the value of the property," Doug Kass, head of the bearish hedge fund Seabreeze Partners Management, told the Reuters Housing Summit in New York this week.

"And now, given the erosion in (home) values, it seems it's not all that necessary," he added.

Kass said many people don't realize that buyers who refinanced their homes and took cash out to fund improvements or trade up to higher-end goods no longer have that luxury.

Source: Reuters, ocregister

Labels: home sales, market, real estate

Posted by Cherri Fox at 8:21 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal brings up the question of the importance of good schools when it comes to buying a home. Many parents have difficultly in finding a neighborhood with a good balance of quality education and reasonably-priced homes.

When readers were asked if they agreed that good school districts were one of the most important factors for a home buyer in considering an area’s desirability and housing prices, the replies were almost unanimous in that the school district was either the number one consideration or a top concern when making a home purchase.

You can read more here and be sure to check out the article by Katherine Boehret, Grading Neighborhood Schools, where she provides some great tips and links to web sites that provide free school comparisons.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Labels: home sales, market, neighborhood, school, school district

Posted by Cherri Fox at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

There's an interesting article over at the Orange County Register about the recently published index by the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo Bank that ranks O.C. as the nation's fifth least affordable housing market. But this is actually good news for Orange County home buyers since last year the county ranked in the top three, just behind Los Angeles and Salinas. This means that housing in the county is becoming more affordable. In fact this news follows on the heals of an announcement by the California Association of Realtors report that home affordability in O.C. is the highest it has been in three years.

If you're curious as to where you might find the most affordable market, it's Kokomo, Indiana at 93%. Lets see ... palm trees, breathtaking coastline and ideal year-round weather with sunny days and an average temperature of 70 degrees. At this writing it is 6° F in Kokomo Ind. You decide.

Labels: home sales, industry news, market, market update, South Orange County Real Estate

Posted by Cherri Fox at 6:57 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

David Wessel of The Wall Street Journal Online explains why, when tracking home prices, getting a clear picture of the recent past might be more difficult than you think.

The two best barometers of housing prices are the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's index and the Standard & Poor's Case/Shiller index. Both are based on the same concept that looks at repeat sales of the same houses yet, as Wessel points out, there are significant discrepancies in the resulting numbers and with housing prices so important to the health of the economy, people want to know "why these two carefully constructed measures differ."

Read more at Tracking Housing Prices, why the Numbers Conflict .

Labels: home sales, industry news, market

Posted by Cherri Fox at 7:57 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

An
Article by Kenneth Harney in the Washington Post & L.A. Times speaks of the dip in the Real Estate Market having "run it's course". This is more support for the soft landing philosophy of the market conditions, and this article sent the bubble bloggers straight to their keyboards to fire up their blog posting software, and dump some keywords out into search engines that mention "bubble, crash, doom, mayhem". That ultimately results in the Bubble Back Pedal where the bubble bloggers have to immediately counter any neutral or positive news with graphs, charts, and more banter.

In this market, I have boots on the ground, I'm seeing the deals that are being made everywhere.

Jim Cronin, mentions that "If it bleeds, it leads" basically indicating the decline of the use of the term "Housing Bubble" even when it comes to blogs. He explains how as a concept, the bubble is even being talked about less. As Ken Harney in the Washington Post mentioned, the bubble fear has "run it's course".

Where is the market going, now that the bubblespeak is irrelevant? Easy, it's headed for, hold on, brace yourself normality. To some that may be a withering disappointment, but to others it will most likely be the signal that the P has left the ool, and it is ok to go swimming in the market again.

Of course, this means no flippers, no wheeler-dealers, just good old fashioned buying and selling where the sellers can't make demands that will drive buyers away, and the buyers will not be able to pitch lowballs that end up becoming grounders.

There will still be people moving into Orange County, despite Jon Lasners' analysis that a single moving truck company's logs suggest some sort of exodus, or even his assertion that canceling of the beloved drama "The OC" spells bad news for real estate. Most of the bubble talk is based on fallacy.

Did people quit moving to Hawaii when Magnum P.I. went off the air?

Labels: 2007, flipping real estate, market, real estate, the oc

Posted by Rory at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post