Laguna Niguel Real Estate Blog

Now is your chance to keep your eyes focused on the Laguna Beach Real Estate market. I'm not only talking about at the beach, but ON the beach.

Besides the typical MLS Search, I have now set up a page that just features Ocean Front Real Estate in Laguna Beach. These homes are various prices, but you won't find anything that isn't directly on the beach or somehow on the waterfront.

With John McMonigle's recent listing of another premiere property in Emerald Bay for $36 Million, one has to wonder if there is a way to keep tabs on all of the ocean front properties. I quickly realized that in order to effectively answer questions about these ocean front estates that I needed to keep tabs on the daily changes in this market segment.

I have added myself to an email alert so that anytime something changes with the Ocean Front properties in Laguna, I have a notification on my cell phone.

Besides just high end listings, you'll be able to focus on any price point within Laguna if you simply browse by price.

Labels: Emerald Bay, Laguna Beach, ocean front homes, real estate

Posted by Rory at 9:54 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

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

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