General

While Steve holds down the business fort in San Diego, my daughter and I are on the final day of our death march in New Orleans. We call it the death march, because if we had simply spent the week walking in a straight line, we would be back in San Diego by now.

I have been accused of writing a real estate blog here (on occasion, anyway), but today I am thinking about real estate in a different way. Having spent  four days in this great city, my first trip, I am beginning to see the plight of New Orleans like that of a grieving widow. The initial tragedy brings much attention, with the attendant throng of supportive visitors bearing food, prayers and well-wishes. As time passes, though, the crowds return home to their own lives and routines, and the widow is left alone to pick up the pieces, with her personal pain all but forgotten by those who attended the initial memorial services.

The tourist destinations are intact; if one had missed the Katrina memo, nothing would seem out of place with the exception (I am told) that Bourbon Street was a lot more crowded two years ago. I have no basis for comparison. What is not okay are the neighborhoods, the places where the people running the hotels and the tour buses and the frozen Daiquiri machines lived, where the musicians playing the jazz clubs returned home each early morning. It has been nearly two years, and with so much to accomplish, normalcy is a very distant point on the horizon.

How long have the residents been displaced? This long:

This is the sign on a gas station which, over two years later, remains closed in St. Bernard Parish. Or in the 9th Ward. I’m really not sure, because the devastation looks about the same from one neighborhood to the next. Their former hospital is now a MASH unit. The sewer systems are still being pumped manually, and the buildings which formerly housed the services, like the homes, remain abandoned testaments to the devastation. The water marks are still visible on the homes, some just one or two feet above the ground, others above the doors on the first and even the second stories. How high the water rose, and sat, we learned really doesn’t matter. The water sat at these levels for three to five weeks, and a mere six-inch prolonged salt water bath in this climate is enough to render an entire structure uninhabitable. It puts our San Diego mold inspections in perspective.

Here is a home near one of the levee breaches, and you can see the refrigerator still on the roof. By the way, the owners didn’t put it there.

 

In a “Let them eat cake” moment, one man on our tour asked the driver, whose home is tagged for demolition tomorrow, “Why would you want to come back?” Because it is home. Floods wreak havoc on bricks and mortar, but it takes much more than standing brackish water to break the human spirit.

We learned about the oil spills. This same tour guide opened her safe deposit box to find it full of the black gold and everything inside unsalvageable. Today I am embarrassed that I didn’t grasp the full depth of the loss. You really can’t unless you live it.

As my daughter and I sat reflecting on what we had seen last night, on all of the people we had met who remained without homes but were still finding a way to carry on, the magnitude began to sink in. “I bet this put the real estate community out of business,” she said. And a lot of other people, sadly. Many of the hotels have skeleton crews — a combination of fewer tourists and fewer residents to man the front desks. Too many victims of the “x’s” on the front stoops.

 

The top of the “x” is the date of reentry, and reentry of the homes we saw generally occurred a month or more after Katrina. Katrina hit New Orleans on August 26, 2005, and the date on this home reads September 30th. The left side of the “x” refers to the National Guard group responsible for this particular neighborhood, with the number on the right referring to how many people were found when they finally came through.

Housing bubbles, a mortgage crisis, contingency periods, and even gas prices start to seem trivial after a week in the Big Easy. They aren’t of course, but all things are relative. Eighty-percent of this city was under water, and it was the eighty-percent where the people lived. The one theme repeated this week was the sincere gratitude expressed by the residents and business owners in New Orleans for our simply being here. They reminded us that the return of tourism is critical to the recovery effort.

Drew Carey may have sent us here on our first trip, but we will be back. We found a wonderful, vibrant city with a deep and rich culture. And, I really do like gumbo!

Photo credit: Kris Berg (aka Mother of the Year) from her cell phone.

This is the week Drew Carey is sending my daughter and me to the Big Easy. As we were chilling in the San Diego Airport Terminal 1 yesterday, I was reminded that Terminal 1 is not nearly as new or nice as Terminal 2. It is, however, the only terminal which serves breakfast burritos. And after enjoying one of these, I can tell you that the burrito distinction is in fact another vote in favor of Terminal 2. I was also reminded of a another thing. You get what you pay for.

The “Free” Public WiFi is indeed properly priced. Three airports later, I had yet to cash in on the bargain that is cost-free Internet connectivity. Other happy travelers were by all appearances doing important on-line things, while I was left frantically and repeatedly pushing the refresh key to be greeted by a not so happy 404 Error message. Even my broadband wireless has mostly failed me so far.

While I have every intention of posting from afar (I always do), the reality is that I will probably be mostly absent this week and by Friday in need of emergency Gumbo detox. In the meantime, we will be enjoying a few reruns here. My hope is that two year’s worth of posts have left me with at least a couple of timeless articles worthy of revisiting. Or not.

For now, I am enjoying the deep south. My keyboard is literally sweating at 7:00 am, and I look like I am wearing a Brillo Pad on my head.  Maybe there is something to that dry heat after all.

I will leave you with this view from our hotel room. Eat your heart out, and thanks, Drew Carey!

 

I was looking at a summary of median housing price trends for San Diego that came through my inbox yesterday and was again reminded how stupid statistics can be. Actually, they can be downright dangerous if you don’t know what you are really looking at.

Of course, I honed in on the I-15 corridor communities, our core area, and specifically on Scripps Ranch, where we make our home. Based on annual median prices alone, one would conclude that everything is coming up roses. In fact, median sale prices were shown as increasing slightly in 2007 as compared to 2005. It’s a great time to buy!

Speaking as one whose feet are literally on the ground in this market, I assure you that 2007 prices did not outperform those of 2005, our peak year. That is, not if you are comparing “like” fruits. Using the data available through our Sandicor Multiple Listing Service, here is what I found:

The MLS data tells us that home prices haven’t changed a bit in the past two years in Scripps Ranch. Woo-hoo! Then, why all the whining about some housing market correction? Well, the median prices per square foot have changed. The median home purchased in 2007 was bigger; buyers are getting more for their money. And, of course, there are far fewer buyers.

This supports what I have been saying all along. Would-be buyers do exist, but they will commit when they perceive value. They are generally spending the same amount on a home, but they expect that home to be a better value than it was in 2005.

As a cautionary note, there are a couple of other things which are messing with even my statistics. First, in 2005 we had new homes flying off the shelf in Scripps, but those were rarely listed in the MLS. The builders didn’t need to do anything but put a few flags and balloons outside the models, and they certainly didn’t need to cooperate with the buyer’s agent. Today, the remaining unsold new home product is among our largest and pricier product, and list them in the MLS they must. Second, the statistics don’t reflect what I know to be true from my daily experiences. Even like-sized homes are not created equal. The homes which are selling at the higher price points today are generally in superior condition to their 2005 counterparts. Buyers expect granite counter tops now; they expect highly-upgraded and absolute turnkey for less than they would have paid for mediocrity two years ago.

Statistics can be enlightening, but just we careful that you know what they are really telling you.

The gracious (misguided?) folks at Inman invited me back. The next installment of the semi-annual Real Estate Connect conference will be held July 23rd through 25th in San Francisco, and I will have the honor of moderating the opening act at the Bloggers Connect workshop.

This will be my third Real Estate Connect and, if you are in any way involved in the real estate industry and aren’t planning on attending, let me know. We will administer the saliva test immediately.

Steve “lets me” fly solo to these. He is under the impression that it is one big vacation, some much needed “me” time, and has visions of a bunch of laptop-toting, lampshade-wearing agents making html jokes and generally getting crazy. “Who messed with my Favorites folder?” “Is that your Facebook page or did you just forget to let the dog out?” Let the hilarity ensue.

Networking is a big part of it, no doubt, and I will admit even to the IRS audit agent that I do have fun at these events. But it is mostly work. The program is packed with information, breaks are few, and if past experience is any indication, I will arrive at the airport security checkpoint Friday on all fours, utterly exhausted and muttering incoherently about bulls and bears aggregating their listing feeds and the role of video in monetizing Craig Newmark.

The session I am moderating is titled, “Creating Content that Hooks Readers” and, if my last post on drywood termites is any indication, they picked the right girl — to not speak. Oh sure, the day before I wrote the engaging piece about how someone posted my stick figure drawing without permission (on their own post about plagiarism), and on Mother’s Day I wrote an article about… I’m not really sure what that one was about. Generally, though, I am a disjointed train wreck when it comes to content, at least in the conventional wisdom sense.

Maybe that’s why I’m moderating. It might be an Inman intervention of sorts. I’m ready for them. In my case, them is:

Mike Simonsen, Co Founder & CEO, Altos Research
Ben Martin, Director of Communications & New Media, VARblog
Jeff Corbett, Author, The XBroker Blog
Benn Rosales, Founder, Agent Genius

Aside from the “let Kris have a microphone” mishap, the program is a veritable who’s who of blogging and industry insiders. The program will make your head spin. Be there or stay here and hang out with Steve. How’s that for compelling?

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.

It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.  Anne Frank

The idea of sponsoring a food drive came from the most unlikely of places. It was born from the social network that has been a byproduct, not the goal, of our blogging in particular and our online presence in general.

Through our activities here, we have become a part of a deep and diverse community, like it or not. We have become acquaintances with many and true friends with many more of the people we have met in the virtual space. They are agents, certainly, but they are also vendors, and they are simply buyers and sellers just passing through. When you take the time to look closely, to really break it down, none of us is unlike the other. We are all trying to do the very best we can in an uncertain and dynamic environment.

We all have job-thingies, and we have family obligations, and we have time constraints. Yet, I am reminded daily, through this wider Web that we are weaving, that at the end of the day (I know, Steve, this goes in the Bad Word Bucket), we are more similar than dissimilar, and that we all long for the same things: Security, shelter, friends, happiness, and community. It was during one conversation with someone whose philosophy I admire greatly that I was introduced to another who had participated in a similar event, an event which was loosely related but mostly unrelated to the daily business of our real estate business.

And thus came our Scripps Ranch Food Drive. I admit that I have often watched the telethon with celebrity spokesmen urging us to give, all the while thinking that they could just give (they have wealth I could never imagine, after all) and call it a day. But, it is really about using a platform to inspire others to respond in kind. Call it the power of the collective wherein a million little droplets can become a deluge.

We are not wealthy in the conventional sense, and I am certain that most everyone reading this will say the same about themselves, but if we were to be honest, we are blessed beyond words. So many others, sadly, are not. Steve and I are not in the position to save the world, or even save a village, but as residents of our San Diego village, we saw an opportunity to make a small difference.

We distributed food bags to approximately 4,000 homes (all on recycled paper, of course). We advertised the event locally for two consecutive months in the Scripps Ranch Newsletter (with a circulation of approximately 14,000), on our web site, on our blog, and in our own mailer to these same homes. Through the generosity of local residents and the Rotary-sponsored Scripps Ranch High School Interact Club, not to mention our own unpaid offspring (and we will surely pay in the end), we went on a scavenger hunt of sorts this past weekend to collect donations.

Now for the tally board. Scripps Ranch residents were magnificent in their generosity, and we can not begin to thank them enough for their donations and their support. We collected more than three-quarters of a ton of food for Second Harvest Food Bank for San Diego. We aren’t finished, because we are still getting calls today from neighbors who forgot the date but want to contribute. The morning after, still reeling from our food drive hangover, we found bags stacked at our front door. The front seat of my zippy-red VW Bug is full of canned goods as I write, and I am blown away by the outpouring we saw from our community.

A final thanks to all that gave of their weekend to help us with this effort. From the residents who called us asking if they could help, to John Lowe from our office, to the Scripps Ranch Interact Club brigade who rallied yet again for a worthy cause, we owe you a debt of gratitude. And, to Andrew Loeber from the Interact Club who provided so many awesome pictures, here is your special photo credit! You rock!