The San Diego Home Blog

I love the graphic which is displayed in this post about plagiarism. Hover your mouse over the picture if you dare.

Actually, I have no problem sharing this work of art. Granted, it took me exactly 2 minutes to draw this timeless masterpiece using the touchpad on my laptop, but I am more than willing to share. Considering the context, however, a photo credit would have been a nice touch.

Too funny.

photo credit: booleansplit
It’s Mother’s Day, and I am looking forward to a day of being regaled and honored by the family unit. This will be followed by an evening of guilt when the realization sets in that haven’t done a darn thing recently to deserve a “day” of my own. Sure, years ago, I considered myself worthy. I did all of those mom things; I cooked and cleaned, and I nurtured and doted. But roles change. Today I just show up.

My role has changed because my clients, the offspring, have changed. Where they were once my wide-eyed needy charges who relied on me for virtually everything, today they are my eyes-rolling needy ones who rely on me only to lob the checkbook and get out of their way. Occasionally, I am still called on to “find something” (their homework, their shoe, their “You aren’t the boss of me!” T-shirt). Mostly, though, they are cruise missiles on an unguided course to the refrigerator, and then the car keys and, next, college.

I have also found that my role as a real estate agent is changing. It seems like only yesterday that our buyer clients were wide-eyed and almost totally dependent. The expectation was that we would take them by the hand and help them find their home. Today, we are no longer needed to fill this role, at least not to the same extent. We do much more as agents, of course, than drive the tour bus and always have, but until now this has been the most visible part of our job. As an industry, we were codependent, and we placed far too much emphasis on this one stereotypical definition of our role, forgetting that our true value runs much deeper.

More and more, our buyer clients do not want our help, at least not in the traditional sense. E-mails we send with new listings are met with, “Thanks, but I already saw that on-line” to, worse, silence. They are wearing their own iconic back-off T-shirt. Don’t call us; we’ll call you — when we need you.

As my child-clients grow up, our relationship is evolving. It is much less one of superior-subordinate or teacher-student, and much more of a cooperative venture. They still need stuff, but now they don’t need me to prepare the entire meal. They simply want me to keep the fridge stocked. It’s a bit of a struggle for independence, really. They want it, and I’m having to get used to the idea.

So adapt we must. Buyers just want a fully-stocked kitchen. They want resources, they want access to homes and information, and then they want to cook up their own home tour. Buyers’ agents are on the verge of becoming empty nesters. Your clients are growing up, and you can fight it, or you can give them what they want. Don’t make them fill in a contact form when all they want is the address. Don’t make them sign a guest book to get permission to go to the search screen or enter the home. They will just rebel.

Buyers are developing at different rates in our tech-enabled world, but developing they are. I think it is a mistake to fight their desire for independence. The MLS is still our car, but we have relinquished the car keys, so let them drive. I hear too many agents suggesting that providing the information buyers want, no strings attached, is self-defeating. If you just give it away, what will they need you for? Well, if you have to ask that question, they won’t need you, because you don’t understand your role.

I received an email from a reader yesterday who wanted to appeal his property taxes. He needed comparable sales data, complete with parcel numbers, closing dates, and all of the other little vitals that go along with a recording. He didn’t ask me to do it for him, but simply asked me where he could find the data. I did it for him. What’s in it for me, you ask? Well, probably nothing. Or maybe something. If nothing else, I might have gained some respect and trust. But what a satisfying feeling it is to know that I provided all of the tools — in this case, the blog post with information on the tax appeal process and the open search feature on the web site — which inspired this gentleman to ask the right questions. Next time, he might need to buy or sell a home, and he might think of me.

As our children and our potential clients leave the nest, our roles change. We can no longer enforce our house rules. We have given them the tools to take control. At some point in their journey, they will still need us, but in a different way. They will eventually need to tap into our intellectual property and life experience; there will come a time when they need our help and support. What started out as a relationship based on dependence is developing into a more mature one of mutual respect and understanding.

I want this to be they place they want to come home to.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Okay, this is way-cool. My favorite geek, Drew Meyers, shared his latest tech toy on the Geek Estate Blog.

It wasn’t immediately obvious to me how I might apply the embeddable spreadsheet feature of Google’s EditGrid, but I have this primal need to try everything at least once. Drew, being the good company man he is, would much rather I share Zillow’s first quarter market report for San Diego. I just may do that soon, but today I will instead share a little project in which we have been knee-deep for the past month.

At a recent Scripps Ranch Community Planning Group meeting, the chair suggested that it would be nice to have a comprehensive list of homeowners associations (HOAs) and management companies for the many neighborhoods comprising Scripps Ranch. His thought was that in the event of future emergencies (think fires), a single go-to resource for contact information would be helpful. So, with the help of our underpaid (as in, “not paid”) high school intern, Jeremy Haywood, we set about compiling the information. The result is the following spreadsheet, presented in two pages. The first indicates whether or not each neighborhood has an HOA and/or Mello Roos assessment, and the second lists the HOA management companies and phone numbers.

We (that would be the “royal we,” think “Jeremy”) are almost finished mapping this information using GoogleMaps. Knowing that you are all now tingly with anticipation, rest assured we will be sharing the visual version of our spreadsheet when it is finished. In the meantime, I am off to think up something else I can put in an embeddable spreadsheet that is not Zillow’s first quarter market report. I just love messin’ with Drew.

You can see the ocean from Scripps Ranch. Well, sort of.

It has been an agonizingly long week trying to get photos taken for one of our new listings. The weather hasn’t been cooperating. The addresses on my latest onslaught of bills and Pottery Barn catalogues tell me I still live in San Diego, but the gray skies would suggest otherwise.

This new offering is a view home. As such, it becomes particularly important that the photos tell the story. You may call them clouds, but we call them a marine layer and, by any name, they wreak havoc on our otherwise good intentions. “It has an ocean view - I promise!” is not the compelling ad campaign we are after.

So, beating the rain (yes, rain!) by one day, we bit the bullet and went forward with the shoot. Had we done so midday, the exterior shots would have been disastrous. By twilight, however, we were able to capture at least some of the glory of a magnificent San Diego sunset. Clouds, in fact, make it better.

  

Cloudy days are also better for interior photography. Absent natural outdoor back lighting, the result is a two-for-one deal of sorts, with warm views of the inside set against of backdrop of glowing outside spaces.

Very pretty-ful! Now I’m ready for some sun.

This morning I’m a little overextended at Inman News.

photo credit: me and the sysop 

I think it might be Monday. A working real estate agent can never be sure. Much of the rest of the world identifies Friday as being the day before a day off. Applying this methodology, my Friday will be the day before I retire. And given that I just received a letter from Exxon informing me that the Option ARM on my most recent tank of gas is about to reset, Friday isn’t coming any time soon.

So, it must be Monday. I am pretty good with identifying Saturdays and Sundays. Those are the days when I see teenagers roaming the house. I think they’re mine; they look a little like me. These teenagers, I have come to understand, don’t have school on weekends. Or, maybe they have already graduated. I’m not entirely sure. I’ve been busy.

No, I’m pretty sure I can still spot a Saturday or Sunday a furlong away. These are the days when, as my Grandmother would say, everyone goes visitin’. It’s not the pie on the window sill that signifies an open invitation, but the sign in the yard. And the flags. And the balloons. And the seventy-eight other signs with flags and balloons at the corner. Each door is marked lest they get passed over. Just Listed! Reduced! I’m Gorgeous Inside!

Open 1 to 4! Yep, it must be a weekend.

We held three open houses in San Diego this weekend, two in Scripps Ranch and one in Mira Mesa. With a formidable power team consisting of two buyers’ agents, Steve, and me, I became the odd man out. Our buyers’ agents, of course, each got the nod. Steve was insistent that he take the last spot. The conversation went (always goes) something like this:

Steve: I’ll do it.
Me: OK.

It’s like a little election process, and each voting day can find me hiding in the coat closet. Once again having successfully dodged the bullet and with all of the big slots are filled, I was relegated to the role of historian, but that’s just back story. The real story is in the little clues that we are able to pick up on Sunday (or was it Saturday?).

You can arguably learn more about market direction from sensing the pulse than by studying the numbers. The pulse continues to be just, plain weird. We had three very different homes open yesterday in very different price ranges, but all within two miles of one another. Each is a newer offering. Historically (I am the historian, after all), lower priced homes have attracted more interest at open houses. This is because the buyer pool is traditionally greater for the more affordable product. However, I sense that affordability has been redefined in our current market. Here are my clues:

Home #1: $149,000, 1BR/1BA, 4 visitors.
Home #2: $485,000, 3BR/2.5BA, 6 visitors.
Home #3: $1,199,000, 5BR/3.5BA, 20 visitors.

You don’t have to know what day it is to see the paradox. In a recent comment here, Price/Rent (if that really is his name) said:

Scarcity effects are what drive bubbles. People want to buy before it’s gone! Oh no! There’s only one condo left in that building! I better buy it, before someone else does!

I believe that is part of it. Our million dollar baby is more unique in this market. There are fewer homes competing in this class than in the entry-level category, the latter having been hammered hardest by the mortgage mess. More lower priced home sales are now being controlled by the banks, and more offerings are available. There is a lesser degree of urgency.

Coming from a different angle, Commenter Sven said:

My personal theory is that higher priced homes are usually owned by wealthier people (duh) and wealthier people tend to be more responsible with their money. (or they wouldn’t be wealthy for long) Because of that, they probably didn’t overextended themselves as much, and are less likely to slip into foreclosure.

The corollary would be that buyers in higher price ranges are less effected by tighter underwriting guidelines and higher interest rates. It’s a different scarcity argument, and what is scarce right now is the loan with little or no down payment, the loan with poor credit, and the loan with undocumented income. These are the loans that drove the lower-end markets over the past several years, which in turn fueled the market for the next price point. And the next.

None of our clients’ homes sold yesterday, and even a historian can’t predict the future. Will the challenges of the lower priced homes trickle up over time to the higher-end markets? There is an adage in real estate that “so go the condos goes the market.” Or, will the higher priced homes continue to be more insulated while we flush the distress sales from our inventory and begin to return to more measured buying and selling and lending times?

Those teenagers just left the house, and they were carrying a whole bunch of books. Either they both got jobs at Barnes & Noble or it’s Monday. I have a lot of little clues. If only I knew what they were telling me.

There have been two topics in particular I have seen repeated across the blogs this weeks. One, of course, relates to the wacky goings-on of that two-headed monster, Case-Shiller. The latest results from the index that never sleeps came in, but more on that in a moment.

The really big news on the blogs seemed to be that Google updated its PageRanks (PR). For those of you unfamiliar with Google PageRanks, let me try to explain.

I have absolutely no idea what it means.

But, I am getting the sense that I should, or I should at least care what mine is. Now, the fact that this whole web site ranking system is foreign to me may come as a big surprise. It certainly does to my husband. While the reality is that I am tenaciously trying to remain straddled atop the bell curve of technology, Steve thinks I am a computer science genius. This is because he has seen me perform some amazing feats such as reboot without unplugging the power cord, resize photos without scissors, and, with a simple series of keystrokes, insert the little ® after Realtor®. And Case-Shiller®. Most recently, he even watched in awe as I Googled “how do I find my Google Page Rank” and with great success.

My PR is 5.

Now, a 5 sounds pretty good because, best I can tell, this is on a scale of one to ten, ten being reserved for Google.com. (It is, after all, their system.) That would make our site half as good as Google’s. Well, not really, because it appears they use some fancy logarithmic grading scale, making my 5 a tremor that no one feels as compared to their death and destruction 10, a 10 marking total global domination.  And it seems that I am in good company. Google appears to dole out 5’s like Costco doles out free potsticker samples. Sure, Realtor.com boasts a 7. So, too, does standardandpoors.com. But then, they have Case® and Shiller®.

The Standard & Poors/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices®®® use a methodology which is almost as decipherable as Google’s. We tried to shed some light on it here.  For our purposes in San Diego, you need only understand that our trend line is still heading south. Without beating the micromarket horse, our metro area as a whole continues to see its index drop in double-digits (down 19.2% for the year). Out of the 20 metro areas surveyed, only Phoenix, Miami and Las Vegas saw bigger drops. Unlike Google PR, however, bigger isn’t better.

Here’s the overall composite trend line:

Did I mention I also know how to stand charts on their heads?  I think I like this one better.

It’s a great time to buy!