Market Signals...Bidding Wars Again?

Recently we are noticing an interesting shadow of the 2005 bubble that we saw here in Lake Shastina. Those four years ago had bidding wars over asking-priced properties and buyers were lined up with offers, some all cash and with no or few contingencies.

Well, the same is happening again but the price scale is reversed. Homes in the $100,000 to $150,000 price range are in the bulls-eye now. The asking prices are tens of thousands less than five years ago and buyers are bidding against each other to grab the deals (or steals if you want to be pickey).

Actually, it's more like a silent auction because the buyer and his or her agent do not know what the other bids (offers) are, the sellers agent is not supposed to reveal that. Instead you hear things like "have your buyer make the highest and best offer he or she can". That's a clue that there may be other offers on the table and that they might be strong ones.

So if you represent a buyer as we did in a recent deal you try to explain that this is not the typical slash and burn purchase procedure of making a low ball offer because many of these homes are now owned by banks and not only do banks not like to bargain, they have other buyers pounding on the table. In short, they don't NEED to bargain.

Quite the opposite, the seller is now the boss and not the panicky private seller who is facing a possible forclosure. This is where it's so reminiscent of 2005 when private sellers could command full asking price and even more. But REO's as bank-owned homes are called are in no danger of being foreclosed upon as some private sellers are today, in a sense they already have been. So the pressure on the seller is gone. The bank lists the home for what is owed on the loan or even less and lets buyers compete for the sweet deal that results.

But back to our buyer: all cash, 30 day escrow, no loan or any other contingencies. And what do we get back as a counter offer? Actually, better than we expected ..... the bank tried to shorten the inspection period to five days from the standard 17. That's it. And that's another signal. We had the best hand on the table. Once we agreed to those terms (actually, we countered 10 days just because LSPOA might not be able to get the homeowner packet out in 5, but the bank accepted that) the deal was struck. Once the bank signs our offer and their own counter we open escrow and the ten and 30 day clocks start.

It took some doing for our buyer to find a lender who could put together an FHA loan in 30 days though. Wait a minute you're saying, this was an all-cash deal, what loan? Well, it is a cash deal, the buyers family will step in and cash out the escrow and be repaid by the loan soon after. The buyer will then enter a private loan deal with the family on very favorable terms.

So there you have it. A nearly new 3b 2ba 1400 square foot home for under $130,000. A scary thing for pre-owned and even new specs but until this REO inventory comes down to the 6 month level here (it's 22+ months right now), this is how the market is working here.

Mt. Shasta Baritone Timothy Blevins Coming to Yreka Oct. 18th

There will be an afternoon of songs and duets when Baritone Timothy Robert Blevins comes to the Yreka Community Theater on Sunday, October 18th at 3:00 PM. The Red Scarf Society for the Performing Arts is sponsoring the program that will feature songs from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and other popular opera selections. The former Mt. Shasta resident is a a graduate of The Julliard School and has appeared at some of the most prestigious opera houses in the world, including the prestigious Grand Théâtre de Genève, where he created ‘Miguel' in the world premiere of Tania Leon's new opera The Scourge of Hyacinths. His New York City Opera debut was as Crown in Porgy and Bess.

His ability to cross from one musical genre to another, has aided Blevins to work across the board in many aspects of the entertainment world. In 2004, Walt Disney released its newest animated film, “Home on the Range”, which featured Mr. Blevins as a singer in the soundtrack. In 2006, he sang for the soundtrack of yet another Walt Disney film called, “Enchanted” where he sings the step out role of the steel drum player.

The Lyric Opera of Chicago presented Timothy Blevins in the world premiere of Anthony Davis' new opera Amistad, singing the title role.

Additional operatic credits include his debut in the title role in Mozart's masterpiece Le Nozze di Figaro at Toledo Opera, and repeated for Virginia Opera; Escamillo in Carmen at Connecticut Opera, he joined Opera Ontario for their annual POPERA! (Popular operatic arias and ensembles in concert), and he recreated Crown for both Virginia Opera and Opera IllinoisMichigan Opera Theatre, Giovanni Paisiello's comic chamber opera The Maestro, a U.S. premiere at the Loyola Marymount University, Il barbiere di Siviglia with the Polish National Symphony Orchestra at Fort de France (Martinique), Porgy and Bess at the Pablo Casal's Festival in Puerto Rico, and as Ford in Verdi's Falstaff with ‘Luciano Pavarotti and Friends' at the Opera Company of Philadelphia.

On the concert stage he has appeared with the New York Ragtime Ensemble; with The Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra, the Berkshire Choral Institute (MA), the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra; he has presented solo recitals in New York at both the Weill Recital Hall (Carnegie Hall), and the 92nd Street Y; and has toured extensively as a soloist with the Boys' Choir of Harlem.

Timothy Blevins made his Broadway debut in 1993 as Sgt. John in Miss Saigon, a role he repeated in the long-running Stuttgart Production. Additional Off-Broadway and Broadway productions include Showboat, both Sweet Adeline and One Touch of Venus for the New York City Center's Encore Series, the new Disney production of King David for the re-opening of the New Amsterdam Theatre, and at Lincoln Center's Miller Theater he appeared as Husky Miller in the Goodspeed Opera House production of Carmen Jones. He has also made a guest appearance on “As the World Turns”.

Suzanne Vinnik will be joining Mr. Blevins on stage. Her musicality is unmistakable! By the time she was ten she earned the nickname ‘Las Vegas’ Littlest Diva’ where she performed at nearly every resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

During the 2009-2010 season Vinnik will premiere the role of Giselda in the first fully staged performance in North America of Montemezzi’s L’incantesimo at Pittsburgh Opera Theatre under the direction of Jonathan Eaton. She will also sing her first Musetta from Puccini’s La Boheme with Nevada Opera Theatre, and make her highly anticipated Carnegie Hall Debut in a solo recital in Weill Recital Hall featuring specially arranged music by Ricky Ian Gordon and world premieres of several Thomas Pasatieri works.

Carol Houston will be the accompanist.

Tickets are $20 for adults and $5 for students. They are available at Nature's Kitchen, Yreka Chamber of Commerce, Surroundings, Village Books in Mt. Shasta, Scott Valley Drug and Ashland Drug.

For further information call 842-4656.

"Paca Puckey"

We are trying “lasagna” gardening which is currently popular in gardening circles (see earlier article on the book) and since we own a Mantis cultivator we use horse manure mixed with sawdust and grass clippings to make each new bed. After some calling around I found a couple of sources of horse manure close to Lake Shastina: Lindy Foster on Solus Dr. (938-3330) and Lesa Mandts (459-1142 or see their website, www.paints.com).

Both are horse breeders and have copious amounts and Lindy said hers is composted because they keep it mounded up all the time so it’s crumbly and free of the infamous “horse apples” that otherwise have to be chopped up with a tiller. Both also do not charge for the product and even offer free loading into your truck.

Another fertilizer source is EBA Oaks Alpacas, the reason for the story's title. Alpacas are bred for their wool and the closest one is owned by Aase & Duane Frederick, called EBA Oaks Alpacas. They are holding an open house this weekend called National Alpaca Farm Days and are located off Schulmeyer Gulch Road just south of Yreka; 842-3504 at 6010 Little Creek Rd., Yreka.

They too offer free fertilizer and loading although the poop is different than horse manure. Aase explained that is in pellet form, similar in size to deer poop. She also said it is not as hot and can be spread on top of plants without danger of burning them. They provide most if not all of the fertilizer used in the Yreka Community Garden for these reasons.

So whether you garden the traditional way and rototill each season or you layer ingredients and let them rest year after year most ingredients are free locally and good soil amendment material. For more information contact the Master Gardener at OSU in Ashland 541-776-7371 or jcmga.sorec@oregonstate.edu.

What is Real Estate "Inventory"?

Some of us are hearing a few signs of economic recovery in the real estate market: pending and closed home sales are up, inventory of unsold homes on the decline, leading a few folks in our industry to predict higher home sales volume and home prices stabilizing over coming months.

But there also are some doubts: are some buyers (and some banks) waiting to put their properties on the market until things get better? Also, that alarming UNDER-employment report showing almost 20% of us are either out of work, had hours cut, or are working at parttime jobs because we can't find fulltime ones.

Inventory for a balanced market seems to be six months ___ all homes should expect to sell in six months. Our broker Charnna Gilmore explains how this is computed: take the closed sales for the past 12 months and divide it by 12 to see how many sold per month on average then divide that answer into the number that are for sale right now.

For example, there were 41 homes sold in Lake Shastina in the last 12 months which is an average of 3.42 per month. There are 75 homes for sale right now so when you divide you will see our inventory would last almost 22 months at this rate.

Put another way, to reach the ideal "balanced market" at the 3.42 rate there should be only 18 homes out there for sale. Or, from the other end of it, with 75 homes for sale, to reach a "balanced" state we'd have to be selling homes at the rate of 13 per month (75 divided by 6 months), roughly four times faster than they are selling now.

In 2005 when it was practically the reverse, a seller's market, there were 74 closed sales with around 50 homes for sale at any given time. 74 divided by 12 = 6.16 which when divided into the 50 homes for sale equals 8.3 months, a whopping difference.

Judy Darner from BofA mortgage services in Yreka who has been in the business a long, long time told Sally the other day that Shastina was the hardest hit community in the county, with more foreclosures and REO's (bank-owned, where the owner just gave the home back to the lender) than any other. Most everyone in the business agrees that this is because of over-speculation . . . many builders during the boom years put spec homes up and got caught when the economy collapsed last summer. Some had multiple loans due on vacant, unsold homes and many had to walk away from them.

A sad by-product of too many vacant homes is they sometimes get stripped or gutted by angry owners or even burglars. I showed one this week like that; carpet gone, kitchen cabinets, lighting fixtures, all appliances, and even the toilets ripped out. This one was also missing one entire side of the backyard cyclone fence, you could see where they had pulled out the posts, cement and all.

All of this of course has a depressing effect on the rental market as well. More homes are going into rental from owners worried about making the mortgage payments which in turn depresses the going rental rates because of the competition.

Lose, lose. Let's hope the small signs of improvement we see here and there continue and that next spring will bring steady recovery.

Trader Joe's Grocery Now in Redding

Some of you know about this grocery chain from other cities and it is now within driving range. Founded by Joe Coulombe in 1958 according to Wikipedia, Joe called his first one in Los Angeles "Pronto Market", a small convenience store but he soon realized that the 7-Eleven competition was too strong and morphed his concept into specialty foods and emphasized fresh goods, even at one point serving fresh deli sandwiches and freshly squeezed orange juice.

He reportedly thought up the idea after a Carribbean vacation and the first Trader Joe's with the South Seas motif opened in Pasadena in 1979. The chain has since grown to 528 branches in 24 states and Consumer Reports ranks it as the second best grocery store in America behind Wegman's. From 1990 to 2001 it increased the number of branches fivefold and profits tenfold. Pretty good performance for an industry with traditionally marginal profits.

Theo Albrecht, a German billionaire who owns the German supermarket chain Aldi, bought the company in 1979 and Joe retired in 1989.

So ! You can now get stuff like Two Buck Chuck's wine, the really decent California wine varieties for $1.99 a bottle. My friend Ted says when Charles Shaw divorced his wife she won all the profits from their vineyard so that's why he sells all his wines at cost.

And besides great choice one thing I noticed was each pricing as opposed to by the pound on much of their produce . . . bananas for example were 19 cents each, artichokes 49 cents, and so forth. Lots of organic and imported goods, too.

The Redding store is north of Sears off Hilltop before it crosses eye 5, next to the new Kohl's.

Lasagna Gardening & The Master Gardener

Some of you may watch the weather on channel 12 in Medford and will remember the segments the weather people do with Oregon State's Master Gardener. I called the number (541-776-7371) and since it was after their telephone hours of 10am-2pm, was given this email address: jcmga.sorec@oregonstate.edu. I did not get a name when they responded but the point is you can get really, really professional gardening advice and it's all free.

So while their instructors validated my sawdust, grass clippings, and horse manure amendments their soil and compost mentor advised against rototilling. And another person from a worm farm referred me to the book shown above which advocates layering materials rather than mixing them.

I just got the book (from Village Books in Mt. Shasta for $17.95) so I do not have content to report yet but from the introduction the author seems to have a great number of ideas apart from the layering concept . . . bordering a planted area with certain plants to ward off pests and other natural approaches to enhance the garden.

So having just bought a Mantis rototiller I'm of course a little reluctant to go this layering route fulltime. And in fact a little of each might be the answer, like mixing all the goods up in fall and layering over with grass clippings all winter to seep.

Anyway, more later when I finish the book.

The Almost-Too-Good-To-Be-True Bread Making Machine

I almost titled this "Real Estate and Baked Bread" because we are taught when showing a home that certain aromas trigger happy memories from childhood making buyers relax and more comfortable which is the state of mind a seller would like them to be in. There are many aromas that can be introduced when showing but the one at the head of the list is freshly-baked bread.

So when a good friend told us that she had baked her own bread with the help of a new device that did it all hands-off, we got motivated. She bought hers, a Panasonic model SD-YD250, after researching the different brands and ratings extensively online. Having never heard of these machines we were mildly surprised there were so many brands and models to choose from but we followed her advice and got one from Amazon.com for $129.99 with no sales tax and no shipping fee.

It's about the size of a countertop microwave oven and looks like this:



Anyway the big idea is that it does all the functions that you used to have to do by hand (which took so long that there wasn't any fun left)____ mixes the ingredients, kneads, bakes, and keeps warm. You can make different loaf sizes and lots of different kinds of bread, even pizza crust. By adding various things like walnuts or cranberries you can create different flavors, too.

But again, it truly is hands-free. Plop the ingredients inside, put the yeast in the small hopper on top and start. It took about five hours for Sally's first loaf of whole wheat honey bread but you can't imagine how wonderful the aromas were that floated around the house that day. And then of course what a thick, warm slice slathered in butter tasted like.

There are health benefits too, of course. Whole grains, no preservatives or artificial additives, and Sally estimated the ingredients cost less than 50 cents. If you are paying the typical $3 loaf price at the super this means you'd pay off this device's $130 cost with 52 loaves of far superior bread than the store-bought kind.

For a final clincher, one of our tenant-clients is a route sales manager for a major bread company and (you can see this coming, right?). Yes, he has one and loves it.

So attention sellers; if you're thinking of listing your home give this one a thought. And beyond the powerful effect it will have on buyers imagine programming the machine so you wake up to a freshly-baked loaf to enjoy with your morning coffee . . .

Cell Phone Tricks

From a shared email:

5 Things You Never Knew Your Cell Phone Could Do :

For all the folks with cell phones. (This should be printed and kept in your car, purse, and wallet. Good information to have with you.) There are a few things that can be done in emergencies.

FIRST :

The Emergency number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you and interestingly, this number can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. Try it!


SECOND : Locked your keys in the car?

Does your car have remote keyless entry? If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button on your key remote, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other key remote for your car you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).


THIRD : Hidden Battery Power

Ifyour cell battery is very low you can activate a hidden battery reserve by pressing *3370#. Your cell phone will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery power. This reserve will get recharged when you charge your cell phone the next time.


FOURTH : How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone

To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: *#06#. A 15-digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. If your phone gets stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.


And Finally....


FIFTH : Free Directory Service for Cell Phones

Cell phone companies are charging $1.00 to $1.75 or more for 411 information calls so when you need to use the 411 information option, simply dial (800)FREE411, (800-373-3411) without incurring any charge at all. Program this into your cell phone.

Dual Agency

In real estate an agent can work for a buyer, a seller, or both, and the issue of what "agency" means sometimes confuses people. For example some home buyers believe they have to call the listing agent to make an offer but the fact is that any agent whose office belongs to the local Multiple Listing Service ("MLS") can make that offer for them.

The reason buyers seek listing agents seems to be that they believe that only the listing office can make purchase offers. But that is not factual. In truth, most offers are made by agents who do NOT represent the seller. In plain terms any agent can help a buyer make an offer on any home listed for sale on the local MLS. If the buyer thinks the listing agent may know more about the property than other agents and chooses that person for that reason then dual agency comes into play.

An agent who represents the seller (the listing agent) gets a call to make an offer from a buyer and dual agency clicks in. The agent must represent both buyer and seller to their mutual advantage. While this may seem contradictory it is both legal and ethical. A dual agent cannot disclose confidential information to either buyer or seller, despite being the agent for each. That agent in fact has a fiduciary duty (you have to be honest to the N'th degree) to both parties. It's actually much harder than being a single agent.

All this said, if you as a buyer feel the selling agent may know more about the home that's an opinion thing. Agents for buyers go a loooong way to make sure their buyers know all there is to know about their purchase. Think about it. A buyer's agent does not get paid until the escrow closes. It is in their clear interest to get everything out on the table for the escrow to close successfully. The client has to benefit for this to work.