Irvine is the place of magic and honey.  Housing is going to rebound soon and make ipoplaya rich well beyond all of our wildest dreams.  Oh damn SON, I called you out

Maybe 2008 will serve to shatter delusions.

Whatever the case may be, I wish you all a safe and happy new year.
——-

I also want to IR and everyone here a safe and happy new year.

IrvineRenter and Company:

I wish to take up your challenge on orientation of Irvine for posters looking from afar and outside. Specifically, I’d like to ask posters who live in Irvine or who are very familiar with Irvine the following question:

Is Irvine an ideal place for retirement living, and why?  Please rate on a scale of 1-10, 10 being highest score possible.

For a golfer retiree who only can afford inexpensive municipal courses, what are there in Irvine and OC to accomadarte?

Finally, with my deepest appreciation, I wish everyone a safe and very happy new year.

George8

Admit it, you live there because it’s so close to Disneyland!

Just go retire in Florida. OC is reserved for the white upper class criminals.

Near term, existing-home sales should continue to hover in a narrow range, just as they have since September, and that’s good news because it’ll be a further sign that the housing market is stabilizing.

My trade group (NAR) also urged the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates by as much as three-quarters of a percentage point in January as a way to embolden home buyers.

Classic: housing predictions from last year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoZV5jt9puc

Sounds great!  We’ll just raise the price of everything else to make home prices seem normal!

Depends on your definition of inexpensive golf.  If you can afford to live in Irvine like Ipop, you should be able to afford to join Shaddy Canyon.

Weekend green fees are north of $120

Best time to play is on weekdays with your senior discount.

Get on the toll road and head over to Riverside where golf is less expensive.

Or just buy there instead and save some more green.

Cheers and Happy New Year!

I forgot another tip, If you have a regular golf group, buy the red dot discount book, that’ll save you even more green.

http://www.reddotgolf.com/

IMO, Irvine is not an ideal place to retire.  Folks with real $$$ may be in Newport or CDM.  The rest go to outlying areas, such as Palm Springs or further east to AZ.

Considering the number of boomers, this only bolsters the thoughts of the folks on this blog: many retirees will seize what opportunity is left to cash out, further increasing inventories in this area.

Disneyland is where OC locals send visiting relatives to get a mini-break.

“head over to Riverside where golf is less expensive”

Can you be more arrogant than that? I think blacks from Inglewood should be bussed in to Irvine an a daily basis to teach you guys a lesson.

Arogant???

I’ve made that drive many times because it’s green fee’s are lower over the hills.

You must not be a golfer.

You mean you pull into Shell and pay 10 cents more for a gallon of gas because your too ingnorant to go to CostCo

OH PLEASE…........

i’d give irvine a 3 out of 10 for retirement.

great weather, but very high cost and poor walkability.  the exception to this, of course, is if one is sitting on old prop 13 status, in which case it is very hard to walk away from such a big discount on what is often a major expense for retirees

there is, however, an entire city-state called ‘laguna woods’ (formerly ‘leisure city’) which is located very close to irvine.

Thanks for posting this one.  It’s a definite classic.  I wonder if all those naysayer ‘experts’ would like to take back their harsh criticism now?

sorry, ‘leisure world’, not ‘leisure city’.

http://www.lagunawoodscity.org/page.cfm?name=history

in any case, it seems like the retirement equivalent to irvine, i.e., a very consciously designed place.

It’s a “further sign that the housing market is stabilizing”?  Actually, it is a sign that the whole market has seized up in anticipation of a flood of REO’s that drive prices back to fundamentals.  Ever heard about the calm before the storm?  Get your umbrella ready!

Wow, how true.  When I had relatives come visit me we had no place to put them.  They were sleeping in the living room, bedroom floors, etc.  A 1,500 square foot $700,000 detached home will do that.

Sending them to Disney, Knotts, Legoland and all the other local theme parks at least got them out of the house so we all didn’t go stir crazy.  I laugh about it now, but the justification for those prices were that you were paying a ‘premium’ for the weather and proximity to so much entertainment.  You didn’t need much room since you’d either be outside or away entertaining yourself.  Uh ok.  Rationalize all you want - I prefer to have adequate room for visitors.

http://lawrenceyunwatch.blogspot.com/

Well… I live in TR, not them newfangled yuppie flatlands…. judging by the number of retirees around me, Irvine must be a big 10 in their list.

Fact is, Irvine is a pretty safe city and retirees seem to like that.  Also, other than the HOA politics, there are few complications with our city.  Mostly, the city doesn’t levy costs for new construction on long time residents… hence the cost of living for someone who’s paid off their house is pretty low actually.

There are quite a few golf courses near by. True, some are costly, but other than that they are very nice and devoid of the riff raff.

We have good health care nearby.  Hoag and Saddelback are very good.  Irvine Medical is OK.  There are several Costco’s near by too.

The weather is very nice.  Mild year round.  The only best weather I can imagine would be in Kailua and Hawaii Kai.  But the golf courses there will kill you.

Happy New Year everyone.

In my wifes culture, we give out little red envelopes with money in them to relatives, but for the readers of this blog, here is my usual New Years present to all the young folks out there:

1. Only buy a place if you have 20% down payment saved.

2. Only buy using a 15 or 30 yr fixed rate loan. Don’t listen to anyone elses mumbo-jumbo math about ARM loans. In California, you can basically fix you housing costs with a fixed rate loan and mostly fixed property taxes. You don’t want to get up every morning and worry about where interest rates are at.

3. Only buy a place if you are ready to keep it for many, many years. Owning real estate is a long term proposition.

4. Normally, timing the real estate market is a bad idea, but we just had the biggest housing bubble in history, so I would wait a while before buying. I scan the San Gabriel Valley every day and most sellers are still asking WTF prices. The good news is that the REOs are starting to come down in price. Perfect example: North Pomona - Newer homes in a specific tract sold for 525k two years ago. A seller there is asking over 500k, but a different home of the same model there, an REO, is now priced at 433K. The banks need to clear their books.

5. Ok, here is some good news for the ipops of the world. During my real estate investment days, there were several times that I bought homes near the top of the market. It does happen. If you do this, then there is hope as long as you had a fixed rate loan and can make the payments, you should be ok. Again, that is where rule #3 comes in. Be prepared to hold your home for a long time.

The other good news for younger folks is that once your fix your housing costs, your wages will continue to rise over the years and eventually, your housing costs will be pocket change. After I bought my first house when I was 18, I could not afford new furniture etc, so I just took hand-me-downs from others. After a few years, my wages went up and my FIXED rate house payment became a minor monthly cost.

You mean Seizure World?

What you are asking for is INFLATION.

No man…. let the market correct itself.  It’s time to protect the dollar!

No, no, stay away.  Florida has enough people already.

Well, if you are retired, you can find a fabulously cheap house in Cape Coral/Ft Meyers.  Don’t plan on any appreciation for the next 15 years at least.

And yes, we do have hurricanes here, but strong houses do withstand them, and you should do what the authorities say anent the storms because they actually do pretty much know what they are talking about.  They err on the conservative side, which is what they should do.

Hazard/homeowners insurance is very expensive here.  Don’t whine about it, since you are forewarned.

Our criminals are from all ages, sexes and minority groups (white is a minority, too), distinguished by the weird stuff they pull along with the “normal” type crime.

I think I need to get some royalties for every mention on a post.  It’s good to see that I’ve seeped into the consciousness of my fellow bloggers.  Makes me feel warm inside on this lovely New Year’s Eve…

I wish you all a safe and happy start to 2008.  My New Year’s wish is simply for another 20% decline over the next six months in my target Irvine home.  It would truly be a great 2008 if I could get into my 30-year home by this summer.  This market can’t crash fast enough for me…

This was great.  Those other guys were so mean to Schiff.  Acted like he was a moron, when they were the morons.

Thanks a lot.  Do any of those guys have blogs or email addresses so we can ask them why they were so wrong?

I’ll see you in Northpark late 2008, ipop.  Happy New Year.

Royalties? No problem! I can Paypal them to you, but you have to promise to only use it as part of your down.

Just kidding with you ipop. Actually, I do agree with most of what you write. That condo a couple of days ago will never come down to the 200k area that others were suggesting. You were right when you said the floor is about 400k. The fed will make sure that there is plenty of liquidity.

This is not like the 70s, when I bought my first place. You know, I was looking at some homes online yeasterday that sold for 150k in the early 70s that are now priced over a 3 million. Not a bad return.

You mean “South Santa Ana”.. or better yet “Santa Ana del Sur”? 

I’m a bigger bear that Ipop or Mr Vincent.  With the credit crunch and mortgage debt implosion, I’m expecting a recession along with $4 gas this summer.

That said, I also agree that 200K was too low said conto but I’ll split the difference and say the floor will be closer to $300K.  If we get a recession is worse than people thought it would be all bets are off.  I don’t think the Fed will have as much power to stop it as Mr. Vincent thinks, you can’t save a bank if it made too many bad bets on real estate.

It certanly will be interesting to see how this plays out and who’s right.

I mean “nobody will ever mistake my house for something the Brady Bunch lived in”.

Yeah… Soon that part of town will look like “The Village of Pancho Villa”. 

You know?  With three families living within each house to make the mortgage payment, the garage turned into a three bedroom apartment and six beat up cars parked outside. 

OK… it could become South Garden Grove too…

If we indeed get some stagflation, as many think could occur, you will probably be spot on Alan.  That of course is a big “if”.

I learned very quickly coming out of school with my little Econ degree that macroeconomic forecasting was not my strong suit.  Frankly there are just way too many variables to consider for me…  Very very few do can do it well.

Outside of at least a 15-20% drop in home prices, based on today’s fundamentals, I have no idea what’s in store for us.  I’ll leave the rest of the future to the future and just keep saving money, raising my kids, and waiting for a good opportunity to get a bigger home for my family.

OH, btw…. when I bought my house ( for $200K) it did look like the Brady Bunch… but that was eons ago when that kind of thing was still somewhat current.

By now, dude, after a complete reconstruction, my humble Chateau looks nothing that Greg and Marcia would have lived in and my RE taxes… he, he, he…  ;-D

Oh.. since I handle the reconstruction, my abode is well built and should last fifty years.  Those homes built in the last five years will be lucky if they last ten years before serious problems show up.

Do any of you think the chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, Lawrence Yun, just posted to our blog?

“If we get a recession is worse than people thought it would be all bets are off.”

I can’t argue with that, but let me make it clear that I really am a housing bear at this time and I expect big price reductions. Its just a matter of how much. Yes, we will find that out soon enough.

Alan:

Thanks for your valuable insights. I look at Laguna Woods website, and found out that the average resident age is 78 there! I’m not sure they would allow me to enter without escort:)

I am in my low 50s. I live in Bergen County New Jersey, just outside NYC. Bergen County I believe is comparable to OC in terms of economics profile.

“Inexpensive golf” here in Bergen County is that we get to play 5 county courses for $20 weekday, $25 weekends. There are many nearby semi-private daily courses with green fees from $30-60.

Of course, since it is part of NYC metro, one can play many area courses with fees way over $100-$200 if that is what you want.

I try not to use the concept of “afford” anymore. I simply want the best value I can get.

George8

tealeaf:

What do you think of Carlsbad/San Marcos/Escondido/Oceanside area as potential retirement spots?

I noticed that $500-$600k can buy a fairly new 3000 sf SFH on golf courses in San Marcos and Escondido. It looks attractive for me. But, since I am from NY/NJ, I need advice or opinion.

George8

In low 50’s, it that your age or your handi (or both)

You can’t qualify for the senior discounts then.

A cup of java and a muffin at an Irvine GC will set you back nearly $20

Carlsbad is very nice but also pretty pricey.  Pretty much anything up the coast from Pacific Beach just south of Oceanside is on the high side.  Of course, with the recent drop in prices you should be able to find something nice.

The traffic on the I5, however, is a different thing.  It’s as bad or worse than anything you’ll find in the LA Basin.  It’s not unusual to take an hour to go from Carlsbad to Sorrento Valley ( just south of where the I5 and I805 split ).

And since most of the shopping is aligned on that narrow north/south corridor you will be stuck on that freeway.

San Marcos and Escondido.. I’m sort of lukewarm on them.  Not a very stable socioeconomic community.  Traffic is also not very good because both are built along SR78 and I15 corridors respectively.

You can get nice homes in San Marcos and Escondido for good prices, but you have to take that with a huge grain of salt because those low prices reflect less desirable locations.  Schools, ethnic make up, socioeconomic factors, yaddah, yaddah.. if you get the drift.

My handi is a teen. One of my lifetime goals is to shoot my age one day:)

Thats easy, don’t play the last 9 holes.

No.

tonye:

>>San Marcos and Escondido.. I’m sort of lukewarm on them

Irvine is a relatively poor place to retire. The biggest component of the high prices here is the job market, so you’d be paying a lot for something nearly useless to you. It’s also a very car-oriented place, which is OK for somebody in their 50’s, but down the line could become a big disadvantage.

Coastal North San Diego is a better choice in that the big driver for the premium there is the coastal/beach community, so you could use what you pay for, and it also has some more walkable areas.  Still very expensive though.

I personally plan to retire in-place because I value my social connections more than my housing situation. Where I live in Orange isn’t ideal for either affordability or elderly-tolerance but it will be acceptable.

Alan:

Good idea. Another option is for you or Jack Nicholson to keep score instead.

George8

I mostly agree with Tonye’s analysis on these spots.  Of these, I actually like Oceanside as a retirement spot.  It has great weather, generally low cost, and has a decent amount of military retirees who return to the area after serving at Pendleton.  That means there is an abundance of senior services ( 6 golf courses, plenty of medical care - Tri-City Hospital is located in Oceanside, lots of senior discounts, etc).

It’s further south, but also consider Encinitas/Cardiff by the Sea.  It is more expensive, but has a more upscale demographic.

Oceanside has a lot of crime.  Somehow it’s the one spot on the coast between Goleta and San Diego that is still low income.  I suppose the base near by has depressed the rents.

Long term I think Oceanside will make an excellent investment for duplexes and fourplexes.  SFHs will take a while and condos you might as well dump into the ocean.

The crime rate, however, is a show stopper as a retirement community.

>>Coastal North San Diego is a better choice ...

Have you thought about South OC instead?  North of La Migra (INS) checkpoint?

I think that San Juan Capistrano and even San Clemente are much nicer and offer a better value than Carlsbad, Solana Beach et al.  Also, freeway access is far better, with PCH, the I5 and the toll road (SR73) near by.  On the toll road you can get from San Juan to Irvine/Newport/South Coast Plaza in fifteen minutes ( watch out for the CHP and radar though)... plus, there must be dozens of golf courses on that run.

Tonye,

True.  Also, note that Oceanside is the 3rd largest city in San Diego with over 170k people.  there are “pockets.”

Crime rate is considered “average,” but it is a decent size city.  The crime rate in Oceanside is lower than San Diego.

Again, for that area, I would go with Encinitas.

tonye:

Not yet, and I will. Thanks.

Check this link out.  I moved to South OC years ago from the Hampton Roads, Va area but I still check out what’s happening over there for I still own a rental property there.  Looks like a time warp from what was happening here 6 mos ago.  What I can’t really understand is how HIGH the pricing seems there too.

Happy New Year!

it’s funny how people talk about inflation and stagflation as if they are future possibilities, instead of an obvious description of the past six years.

lumber
groceries
copper
oil
housing (esp. coastal housing)
precious metals
fine art
tuition
insurance premiums

etc etc etc…

if it is priced in dollars, it has probably doubled, at least, since 2002.  that’s called ‘inflation’ (though ‘devaluation’ is really more accurate.

Click on my name or try this:

http://hamptonroads.com/2007/12/number-unsold-homes-region-highest-decade

I agree with Alan. I regularly play golf in Temecula and Hemet, etc or San Diego. With weekend rates at RSJ $70, and Tustin Ranch, Oak Creek and Strawberry Farms north of $100, why not drive to Riverside or San Diego County for the same or less greens fees to get better courses.

And yes, I get my gas at Costco as well. Happy New Year.

And to IR, nice tribute to Dan Fogelberg.

Now imagine if those prices had doubled AND we had experienced rising unemployment and low, no, or negative GDP growth over the same period. 

That is the definition of “stagflation”.  A period of high inflation with a contracting economy…  It’s a break-down in the efficient functioning of markets and normally requires some type of catalyst to occur.  Crude prices going crazy could do it.  Some kind of large-scale government intervention into the housing recession, maybe. 

We have had a fairly robust job market since the Tech recession and GDP has been solid.  During the last recession, inflation was quite low.  We have not seen real stagflation in the US since the 70’s/80’s.  Rising prices is much easier to stomach when you have a job and your wages are growing.

Oddly enough, the increase in prices as measured by CPI since 2002 has only been 20% or so.  Pretty far cry from 100%...

the cpi is a truly amazing thing.  i suppose if we rented a 1BR apartment in the midwest and our main expenses consisted of cheap manufactured goods, it would actually reflect some kind of approximation of reality. 

here on earth, we still put gas in our car, eat food, pay for tuition and insurance and need housing.  golly, maybe the good folks that publish the CPI have a vested interest in creating the illusion that the dollar hasn’t steadily turned into toilet paper in the past few years?  and maybe the fact that crude has tripled in price might actually drive the prices of a few other goods, services and commodities?

in any case, 3.x% economic growth next to 10% commodity and asset appreciation (not to mention rip-snorting growth in mzm, m1, m2, m3 etc) means ‘stagflation’ - a giant gap between the growth of the economy and the rate of devaluation of the currency. 

anyone who actually works for a living in the past few years really wouldn’t need this lecture.  yet, for some reason, economists, especially the mentally challenged type who work for the fed, have a tough time with it.  much like how the old men of the soviet politiburo had a hard time recognizing that they weren’t necessarily presiding over a worker’s paradise.

I didn’t know there was a bus route from Irvine to Inglewood. Thanks A Szekely!

And how dare anyone point out that goods and services have different prices in different places! I didn’t know that, and I wanted to keep it that way. Thanks for the “lesson.”

You are starting to sound like Paul Volcker Anteater.  Sadly, we’ll have to sit back and watch while Bernanke increases the already over-bloated money supply to stave off what should be a nice natural recession…  Hopefully inflation, not GDP, will continue to be the Fed’s target.  I don’t think they care much about the dollar, but they’ll have to start somewhere down the line.

thanks for the link, Janitor Tom!

Coincidentally, I will be moving in a few months to VA Beach area, for a few years…am keeping my home here because we’ll be back (having bought 6 years ago with a nice low 30 yr fixed rate it’s a no brainer to rent it out)...my spouse and i looked at some home in VA beach this summer and coming from coastal SoCal I was amazed at how much you can get for under a million…but we decided just to rent for now because we think the market there, while lagging the downturn compared to here, will go down substantially.  Any thoughts ?  when i was there i asked the realtor while touring a waterfront home, ‘who buys all these $1 mil+ homes in Norfolk/Virginia ?’ She said, ‘alot of transplants from other areas like the northeast who have equity to roll’.  Well, that train’s left the station…

tonye—I think TR is real nice, actually.  I drive in every morning to Turtle Rock Preschool.  Unfortunately when I tried to look for some housing there, there was a bunch of baby boomers standing guard around a flag that read “Prop 13”, and it did not look like they would like to welcome anyone to the neighborhood who was 6 years old when Prop 13 passed.  I’m guessing you are one of them.

I can tell by your gloating about taxes that you are one of those “I got mine, screw the rest of you” baby boomer types who is more than happy to watch the later generations stuggle with ridiculous taxes. So I’ll just leave it at that, and let you have your fun.  Just do us all a favor and shut your pie hole about the “flatland” neighborhoods in Irvine that are so inferior (in your mind) to Turtle Rock.  Have you ever considered that those areas might be the only neighborhoods in Irvine that two professionals working 60+ hours a week and making north of $175k can afford?

Tsk, Tsk….  I was working two jobs when I bought my home in TR in the mid 80s…. so it has never been cheap.  I think I didn’t see my house in the daytime for the first six months.  We had to borrow from my mother in law for the down payment ( we paid her back… ).  So, I can feel you pain, but it has pretty much always been like that in Irvine.

And I’m actually too young to be a yuppie or baby boomer.  I fall in between, sort of.  Also, a lot of my neighbors are retired… the generation that actually fathered the yuppies.  So, maybe you ran into the crowd from UCI over at TR Preschool?  We used to send my kids there too.

Now, taxes… hmm…. for your information, your RE taxes are a deduction off your Fed and State… and -so long as you can stay away from that AMT- you will pay the Piper in any event.

I think that Prop 13 is actually a very sane anchor to a very bubble prone market.  If it hadn’t been for Prop 13, you would have seen everybody dump their house into that crazy ass dumper of a market.  Hell… I would have moved into NB eons ago if it weren’t for Prop 13 and the schools.

Insofar as the flatlands are involved, with the exception of Woodbridge that dug up for themselves a nice lake and built their roads in crazy loops ( which define a nice neighborhood ) most of Irvine is devoid of geographical interest.  Historically this was reflected in the pricing schema.  Only during the last seven years did the developers throw all common sense into the wind and built crazy ass crowded homes and priced them into the stratosphere. 

The craziest thing is that people bought into that Ponzi schema.

Jeeez…. Oh… Prop 13 might have been a pain in the beginning, but if you stay put why should you have to pay tax on a paper gain?  The argument against it is old and worn out.  It is a good piece of social engineering, possibly one of the very few ever passed.

I didn’t know that Irvine was integrated. Sorry. Thanks for pointing it out. For a moment I was under the impression that OC citizens were still enforcing racial covenants.

I don’t know what you’re talking about “lessons”. I don’t give lessons. When someone tells that OC is “too expensive - go to Riverside” I conclude that he’s brushing you off. Riverside is nothing but a trailer park for the white trash. Meth lab anyone?

sadly, volcker and the steel cajones it took to just suck it up and crank the rates up to 15% are completely and totally absent these days.  i blame the baby boomer mindset, for which any sacrifice, no matter how small, is too great if it causes the party to pause for a second.

manhattan itself, much like san francisco, still seems somewhat bullet-proof, so that dynamic isn’t totally done yet (though both markets are drops in the national ocean, of course)

Step back and look at prop 13—it allows people who couldn’t otherwise afford a given neighborhood to stay put.  No, I’d rather a lower overall tax rate and have it reflect the value.  Blasphemy, I know.

“I think that Prop 13 is actually a very sane anchor to a very bubble’

False, Pop 13 made the bubble worse.  By keeping taxes so low 2% that people didn’t take them into consideration when buying their house, they allowed people to bid higher, increasing prices.

On the Right Coast, prop taxes are advertised along w home prices so they remain part of the equation.

That was great. The guy laughing was an ass.

Happy New Years everyone!

I’m going to take a 10 min drive down on the 55 south to Newport Beach for a nice Italian dinner over the water with my good friends. My plan is to give my love a midnight kiss and enjoy a good cigar, while I dream of a home I’ll love to get into in the next couple of years.

No.

I’m presiding over two frenetic kids.  So much for my intimate little gathering of adults with kids on the side.  Oh well.  Guess there’ll be time for a life after kiddo starts high school.

San Clemente is definitely something to look at, and it seems from my limited experience to be a nice place to retire too (expense aside). Pretty, walkable, safe, with some history and a beach-community feel, but not keyed up like Newport or Huntington. It has train service along with the freeway access. The I-5 can be pretty congested there though.

Cajones = Furniture drawers.  A common mistake by anglos with more semantic chuptaz than experience.

COJONES = What us Spaniards have plenty of.

Please check your spelling.

(1) The point of Prop 13 is that people should not be pushed out of their homes by virtue of paper gains.

(2) How in the world could Prop 13 make the bubble worse?  It is a disincentive for people to buy up.  It removes buyers and homes ( in a one for one ratio ) from the market.

Prop 13 is a shelter for those who do not want to play the RE game.  Grow up and accept the fact that homes are not an investment for everybody.  Many of us look at our homes at a place to live for a looooong time.

Jeez.

That why you should take the toll road (SR73).

Tonye—- You’ve managed to make the case better than I could on why you need to put a cork in your constant ridcule of the Irvine “flatlands”.  You readily acknowledge that you and your retiree buddies up in Turtle Rock are camped out up there with a death grip on your Prop 13 era homes….So where are the rest of supposed to live but the flatlands if we want to be in Irvine?  We can’t move to TR—- none of you are leaving!  To the contrary, I think you should extend a big thank you to those of us who are willing to pay the big bucks to live in places like West Irvine, Northpark, Northwood, et al.  If we all took your words literally and bailed out of the Irvine flatlands for places like Aliso Viejo, then there would be no more buffer to keep “The Village of Pancho Villa” (your words) from sweeping right up to your doorstep.  Think about it.

Happy New Year all ya’alls.

I missed reading the blog, my 1 year-old daughter has pneumonia and my wife and I have been spending 24 hours a day at the hospital. They only let one parent stay the night, I left yesterday at 4am and today I’m back at 1:30am. We celebrated the new year with some smuggled-in screw-top champagne.

Our daughter is looking better, but I wouldn’t turn away any positive thoughts sent our way…

Being half the parenting crew of two little ones, I sympathize. I wish I could have banked up extra sleep in my twenties.

Or if someone redefines a day as 28 hours, or something. Or invents a ‘pause’ button that works on kids. Or gives me a ‘patience’ magic wand.

But I think the one thing I don’t want to happen, is for them to grow up any faster.

Slow. Down.

Stay cute and adorable.

Say those wonderful senseless things that only make sense to a little kid. A giraffe store? OK!

ex-Tangelo, I wish you a happy new year, and a speedy recovery for your daughter.

Long time lurker, first time poster here.

ex-Tangelo: Happy new year and wishes for a quick recovery to your daughter

Happy New Year.  The Veuve Cliquot is gone (NV) and now it’s time to look towards another year of work.

Retired?  I wish.

There was an article in the LA Times on how the housing decline is affecting cities and municipalities across the US. With the decline reducing the income of property taxes to government and how public services are being cut back. It’s is like a roller coaster where government spends when they have it and suffers when it’s gone.

It seems to me that Prop 13 helps buffer this by avoiding most of the ups and downs. True, it does force local government to look for other ways to fund services, but doesn’t that also create more fiscal responsibility?

Oh! And I saw a commercial on TV last night for ITT touting their “Construction Management” degree. Boasting the increase in demand in the construction industry. Talk about great timing! I had to check that I wasn’t watching and old show on Tivo. Of course, maybe they’re gearing up for the next bubble.

I forgot to check with you guys on the status of San Onofre Nuclear Power Station. Is it still in operation? If yes, then how does it impact your view on the nearby towns and cities in terms of real estate value?

Can’t give you a rating but my parents recently retired and relocated and did the most comprehensive research project on retirement locations I’ve ever seen.  They finally settled in the Central Coast of California.  Second on their list was Coastal Oregon—I think Bend or thereabouts.  Interestingly, St. George, Utah was third.  Orange County was a distant, distant fourth, but only because all the grandkids and relatives are there.  I think their results favored college towns away from economic hubs—research hospitals meant better medical care, no high income jobs meant lower home prices.  I think they were also biased towards to west coast, having family there and having grown up there.  Sorry Arizonans, PHX and Scottsdale didn’t make the list.

I am a Realtor in Conway, Arkansas and am getting rather tired of everyone talking about how bad the market is EVERYWHERE.  In our market last year, the average home price rose by just over 5% from the previous year.  However, I am seeing more and more people reluctant to buy and sell not because of financial condition but instead because of constantly hearing from the national media and others how bad the housing markets are.  The misleading information is so overwhelming that buyers and sellers are starting to believe it. 

Also, I think it is news worthy that nationally 1 in 775 homes is in foreclosure; however, only 1 in 2,323 Arkansas homes are in foreclosure.  According to, http://realestate.msn.com/buying/article2.aspx?cp-documentid=4734608 .

As we start the new year, I am already seeing an increase in activity and fully expect in our market to be back on track as far as number of transactions in 2008.

Greg Moss - Crye-Lieke Realtors
1065 Skyline Drive
Conway, Arkansas 72032
(501) 733-9493

www.GregMossRealtor.com
www.MovingToConway.com