halfnote19 - 08 April 2009 04:12 PM

Yes some of the problems may be with the Hispanics, but some of the problems are also with other races.

Generally, poor neighborhoods of any race in any country have more hoodlums, gangs, and taggers.  New immigrants are usually somewhat impoverished, but there are plenty of white hoodlums in Hesperia, Glasgow, and London.  Every subway in Rome is plastered with graffiti.  Arab ghettos in France are the same.

In OC, we do not see poor asian and white neighborhoods much anymore; those neighborhoods have been re-populated with poor Hispanic immigrants.  IIRC, even Compton, Watts, and South LA are all over 75% Hispanic now, all due to poor new Hispanic immigrants.

I did say poor immigrants and noted that here our poor immigrants are largely Hispanic and in France largely Arab (North African). Italy has the Alabanians and lots of North Africans. It is an issue of poverty, not race. Each of these are different races, but they are all poor immigrants. I’m perfectly aware of the graffiti in Rome and other large cities. Where I don’t expect to see it is on ancient structures in rural Provence!

Median home prices in OC are going up, up, up.

2009-04-06 - $440,000
2009-03-30 - $435,000
2009-03-23 - $434,000
2009-03-16 - $430,000
2009-03-09 - $432,000

Isn’t that because the higher end has finally starting coming down along with jumbo rates so you have more movement in the above $500K range? I’m seeing more and more $700-$800K properties going contingent over here.

stepping_up - 08 April 2009 06:38 PM

I did say poor immigrants and noted that here our poor immigrants are largely Hispanic and in France largely Arab (North African). Italy has the Alabanians and lots of North Africans. It is an issue of poverty, not race. Each of these are different races, but they are all poor immigrants. I’m perfectly aware of the graffiti in Rome and other large cities. Where I don’t expect to see it is on ancient structures in rural Provence!

Then why didn’t you just leave it at “poor immigrants”? Why do you have to call out their race?

You’re right… one of the golden rules of writing is to keep it simple. I didn’t need to state the obvious, especially at the risk of offending the uber PC crowd.

stepping_up - 08 April 2009 07:59 PM

You’re right… one of the golden rules of writing is to keep it simple. I didn’t need to state the obvious, especially at the risk of offending the uber PC crowd.

I am not being uber PC. I think you just got side tracked with putting an image to the “issue” instead of talking about the issue itself.

stepping_up - 08 April 2009 06:38 PM

I did say poor immigrants and noted that here our poor immigrants are largely Hispanic and in France largely Arab (North African). Italy has the Alabanians and lots of North Africans. It is an issue of poverty, not race. Each of these are different races, but they are all poor immigrants. I’m perfectly aware of the graffiti in Rome and other large cities. Where I don’t expect to see it is on ancient structures in rural Provence!

Why?  You can go to Joshua tree and see it scrawled on the rocks.  You can go to Eureka and see it carved and sprayed on the Redwoods.

graphrix - 08 April 2009 08:28 AM

Green pin = NOD = preforeclosure.

Blue pin = NTS = scheduled for the foreclosure auction, but will most likely get postponed. The backlog is horrendous, but that is another topic.

Red pin = REO= bank owned.

Thank you for the key to the graph, Graph.

stepping_up - 08 April 2009 02:38 PM

What’s up with this house? There is no way in the world that the appraisal will come in anywhere near this price

919 Darrell

Looks like they or one of the previous owners did a nice job with the remodel, but yeah, seems pretty high given the location.  Not too often do you see a price on a house being substantially higher than even the highest of the 9 estimate prices that Redfin displays.

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I don’t think the subprime is over here on the West side. There is a house on Surf that was foreclosed last July and the people still live there. Across the street from them is the sex house, which was scheduled to go to auction. Over on Beach there is the short sale that disappeared, which I think means it’s being foreclosed. You have another short sale attempt on Beach and then another long time listing on Arnold that again has disappeared, which I suspect means it’s foreclosed. A few houses down you have a large Hispanic family who bought in Nov ‘07 for $500K and have quite paying their mortgage and I hear the house next door, which is on the corner of Meyer and Seal has joined them.

Then of course you’ve have those short sale attempts on W Bay and Knowlwood. If you add all these up, that will be far more than were on the market in ‘08 and this is just a several block radius. I think ‘09 will have even more foreclosures than ‘08 over here. Over in this little enclave I tallied it up and approximately 1 out of 7 homes have gone or will go to foreclosure.

This next little wave that I’ve mentioned should be the end over here as almost everyone else is an equity owner. Interestingly, most of the REO’s over here have become owner occupied by what seem to be nice neighbors. While all the foreclosures over here were owner occupied, they were almost all people who could not afford the home and made the payments by packing in way too many people and still didn’t have anything left over at the end of the month to properly maintain the property.

so you think that there will be another wave hitting the market in the late summer/fall?  the current inventory of sub $400k houses has shrunk to almost nothing.

just looking at sales, the west-side went from almost half of the market to 10% in the past six months.

With 11% unemployment and a pending Federal bailot or lack thereof…  I think the direction is self evident.

The west side is more interesting though.  Sub-400 homes are problematic.  If interest rates stay low, PITI is below $2400… not including any income tax savings.  Literally, one of the homes that sold has a PITI of $1600.

Even for the $250k houses (and there are starting to be a few, so far dogs, but soon decent), you still have to have jobs.

If nominal UE is “only” 11%, you know that U-6 is 20% or more.  And for the undocumented community, I would bet that ‘underemployment’ is even higher.  Fewer hours per week of landscaping, construction, fast food, janitorial, etc

$8/hr x 20h/wk x 4 workers = $2500/month gross.  Not enough to buy, or even rent those $250k houses.

I only see downward pressure for several years for the west-side, along with SA, Anaheim, GG, El Modena, parts of Orange, HB, Tustin…all the way down to SJC

freedomCM - 24 May 2009 08:42 PM

so you think that there will be another wave hitting the market in the late summer/fall?  the current inventory of sub $400k houses has shrunk to almost nothing.

just looking at sales, the west-side went from almost half of the market to 10% in the past six months.

I’m not sure when they will hit the market, but I do know that they are out there. I have no idea what the deal with 640 Surf is, but the $566K sale in July of ‘08 had to be the bank taking it back, yet it’s never come on the market. Redfin is now showing 1952 Arnold as sold May 4th for $325K. I suspect that was the bank taking it back. The two on Beach are no longer showing as active, nor as sold. One more on Surf that will be REO soon and one more on Ross. In the last 13 months there were 6 sales, all of which were distressed here in this little enclave. There should be at least 7 in the next 6 months if the banks put them on the market.

The following properties will likely be problematic based on their sales price. 1965 Arnold, 653 Ross (I think this one is already scheduled for Auction) and 648, 665 and 645 Beach (one of which is listed as a short sale) and 641 Seal. Everyone else should be an equity owner unless they did the HELOC thing. Assuming no more HELOC losers, that would make a total of around 20 distressed sales out of approximately 85 houses throughout the cycle and only 9 of them have flushed through so far.

652 Cove was delisted early last week and I supect that was because they had multiple offers, so I’m counting that as one of the 9 that have flushed. It was a mad house last weekend and it was one of the nicest REO’s I’ve seen in the SW.

Lots of properties in the Canyon area are scheduled for auction, so if the banks take them back and sell them like they are supposed to, then there should a good amount of new inventory.

My neighbor told me that these guys had stopped paying their mortgage as well. The purchase price was $191K in ‘99, but the 2008 taxable value is $346K. It has been added on to, but the property tax is showing the land being assessed at $300K and the additions at $46K. I suppose they could have taken out a second, heloc or done a refi to pay for the addition and now can’t pay?

1993 Meyer

I just took a stroll down Surf and see that 640 is still indeed occupied. It doesn’t look like they have any intentions of moving as they have recently acquired some new outdoor furniture. 1952 Arnold looks like people are in there doing some work, so the $325K may have been the short sale going through. 664 Beach is now empty and by the looks of the lawn, it has been for 3-4 weeks, but Redfin doesn’t show a sale yet. The fascia on part of the front has brand new bare wood on it, which makes me think termite work, so perhaps they achieved their short sale as well.

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For the most part the CM market has been BORING. One of the few interesting things is the vast number of short sales that are closing escrow. I had expected many of these to go REO, but quite a few have closed. I still don’t know where the inventory is over here in the SW, but quite a bit of the for sales here are short sale listings.

People seem to be buying in the nice parts, but I still want to know who these people are. My hubby and I earn over 2 x times, maybe 2 1/2 time the median income for CM and had we not bought the two houses we did buy, would have DP of approximately $120K, yet even with that there still hasn’t been anything really nice that we could have afforded.

That being said, I’m not sure CM’s median income really says all that much about the city. I went to Shirley’s Bagel’s on Sat for the first time in many years and was astounded at the crowd. I felt like I was back in CDM by all the over manicured/pampered moms and their kids and super hip young people that were in there. The patrons seemed way more monied than CM.

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I’m pretty confident.  That cat will eventually stink.

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It appears that sometimes Redfin misses a sale, which helped explain the mystery of 640 Surf. I thought someone saw another sale after the July 2008 foreclosure. I never saw it on the MLS. Whoever bought it has put some money into it and just listed it today. It must have been rented when I would see people living there. Investor decided they didn’t want to be a landlord? I haven’t walked over there in a while. Ever since BK’s post about the house on surf, the street creeps me out.

640 Surf

It’s priced about 10% over what an REO would list for and I expect it will go contingent within a few days. Prett much anything under $400K sells fast here in the ghetto Freedom refers to as the “bad” part of CM.

yes, what I’m looking for is when the pace slows this fall.  will the banks lower prices then to move the inventory, or will it just sit there?  or will the cash buyers really step up?

stepping_up - 20 August 2009 02:24 PM

640 Surf

$400/SF on a 6650 SF lot in that part of CM ?  Seems a bit high; lets see what the market says.