I’ve just come back from 2 1/2 weeks doing home inspections for FEMA in New Jersey and New York for homeowners hit with hurricane Irene and hit again with torrential downpours from tropical storm Ike.

But I was pulled from that area and sent to Binghamton, New York, where they had just been hit with a  100 year flood. The Susquehanna river had flooded major parts of the city forcing the relocation of hundreds from a senior complex, sending many of them to a rapidly organized shelter at the Events Center (large basketball arena) at the University of Binghamton (SUNY). Many were housed in the “Med unit” which was a quasi medical unit staffed by medical personnel.

It’s tough to lose a lifetime of memories in a major disaster. Another inspector shared how she inspected a heavily damaged home where the lady of the home had just given birth 8 days before her home was flooded. But FEMA has learned from Katrina – it flooded the area with inspectors and had fast turnaround times for those in need.

For me, it was a big change of pace from the “routine” of real estate! We worked literally from sun-up to sun-down, 7 days a week. I skipped lunch every day, did a lot of walking, and lost weight to boot!

What did I get myself into I thought as I volunteered to be a “pylon dog” at the Camarillo air show?!?

The air show organizers tried to bring a high level of excitement and buzz to the show this year by having another organization bring their race to Camarillo. Seven aerobatic planes would “race” down the field, slaloming between 60′ – 70′ high inflatable pylons – cool!

I envisioned having to stand next to these things while the planes screamed just over my head. I’d been told that in practice (at another field), the planes got as low as 7′ – but I figured, that’s okay – I’m less than 6′ tall, so no problem…

Besides, I was told the FAA had set a minimum floor of 15′ for these guys – lots of room!

But ultimately, there was no racing because of lots of complications between the race organizers and the FAA. – bummer.

But what a beautiful weekend for an air show – lots of sun, noise and smoke as all types of planes flew throughout the weekend.

And we put up the pylons each day to give the crowd an idea of what the race may have looked like  – maybe next year! Read the rest of this article »

The Atlantis space shuttle took off this morning without a hitch – and I missed it. The last of all our space shuttles. I was so bummed I told Leslie I’m not going to work today. Why did I miss it? Frankly, I thought weather was going to scrub the mission today.

I’ve made 3 dedicated trips to Florida just to see a shuttle launch – and been deprived each time. The last trip was last November and after sitting around a week, the shuttle still was “broken”.

Leslie’s been with me the last 3 trips and we’ve done the “touristy” thing in Florida waiting out the shuttle delays, spending a week each time. But this time I was going solo, and at the last minute, just to make sure things looked good.

Wednesday, the weather forecast looked poor for a Friday launch (70% no-go). Yesterday afternoon had severe lightning strikes and heavy rain, and NASA could only launch this weekend or be delayed until the middle of July, so I held off.  I thought if Sunday’s forecast looked okay, I’d leave today for Florida. But this morning I got up early and it appeared I’d made the wrong call – things were looking okay for a launch, and launch they did! I’ve been bummed out all day…

Catching up on reading my day old Wall Street Journal this morning, an article on page 2 caught my eye. It said aspiring homeowners should have the upper hand this spring, but it doesn’t feel like a buyer’s market. Why? The WSJ quoted the CEO of Redfin saying that the mood of buyers was “nasty” because “customers just keep getting outbid on the houses that they want”.

The article mentioned a woman who sold her home in Redondo Beach in a month, but got outbid on four homes at a lower price point in Eagle Rock. Some sold to buyers for all cash. Another buyer, who only has a 3 1/2% down payment with his FHA loan, is at a disadvantage against cash buyers and was quoted as saying “It’s a false buyer’s market. If you think prices are cheap, wait until you start putting offers in”.

Attractive inventory is limited. A lot of it is mundane and pedestrian, requiring imagination and creative juices to meet today’s expectations for style, design and functionality. So when a sharp property comes on the market, multiple offers can come in, and the “highest and best” offer not only will be a higher offer, but will also be one with a big (or all) cash down payment.

Most everyone who uses Facebook and Twitter do so for personal use. But – did you know social media is BIG in the business world?

I recently attended an all day event with 200 other professionals on the USC campus called “Social Media Boot Camp”. We learned great tips and tools for applying social media in our businesses. This was sooo interesting!!

We are always growing and learning with technology and where trends are heading.  I’m very intrigued with integrating these tools into our real estate business.

What do you think?

Leave your comments.

I saw first hand the failure of the loan mod “game” and its consequences played out in bankruptcy court this morning.

Two separate cases. Two separate homeowners pleading their story before the judge. One party has lived in her home 37 years. The other party is retired. Notwithstanding the factors or judgment (good or bad) that got them to this point in the first place (used their home as an ATM machine?), both cases revolved around huge frustrations both parties had trying to pursue a loan mod.

In the first case, the lender’s attorney was trying to get a Relief From Stay motion against the retired couple which would allow the lender to foreclosure on their home. Standing at the podium next to her was the couple. The husband was highly frustrated, trying to explain to the judge a litany of issues they’d encountered in dealing with their lender. The judge was patient and understanding, but ultimately said her experience on the court was that the bank’s left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing.

She then made I thought a great decision. She made the attorney standing there personally responsible for handling this couple’s issues with the bank. The couple was told to send 2 month’s payments by the end of this week to the bank’s attorney, told the attorney to give them her business card, and basically told the couple this attorney was now the official representative of the bank. Great!

The other case was sad. The woman was sobbing at the podium. The judge had the bailiff give her a box of tissues, but ultimately, I believe she will lose her home. But she had the same horrible experience of attempting to get a loan mod. Her frustration was heart wrenching, but there was little the judge could do but explain her time line of how her case would play out in the next couple of months.

These 2 cases underlined for me on a micro scale what’s happening today on the macro scale in Washington as theses issues are being hashed out – first, the meeting between the 5 largest banks (the “servicers”) and the fed plus the 50 states’ attorneys general on the whole foreclosure, loan mod situation; two – the House voting yesterday to repeal the HAMP program because it’s not working; and three – the FDIC ruling that future loans banks sell into the secondary market (without the banks keeping some “skin in the game”) must have 20% or greater down payments.

Not much comfort for the 2 parties I saw this morning in bankruptcy court.

On Monday night, the City Council spent most of the evening considering various housing related issues. Culminating almost 3 years of stakeholder involvement (homeless advocates, landlords, city staff, etc), the Community Development Director presented the City Council its report.

Much of the discussion concerns “bootlegged” dwelling units (converted garages, un-permited room additions, etc), but what concerns a lot of Realtors is a proposal for an official, notarized inspection of all home sales in the City, provided to the City, conducted by a local certified home inspector (the “Local Resale Inspection Report Program”). See page 9 in the report. There would be fees involved for this report to the City.

In my personal opinion, this is completely unwarranted and unjustified. There is no reason the City needs to become so intimately involved in this intrusive manner of “big brother”. There will now be hundreds of dollars of extra cost for a home inspector to go to City hall to review the permit file, then act as an appraiser and measure the square footage of the home, determine number of rooms, etc, then have his report notarized before turning it into the City.

Unbelievable! How can this creeping bureaucracy continue? Have these people lost their common sense? I say – enough already!!

…and it was disappointing. Last night on the news, and this morning in the LA Times, we heard that the Air Force was launching the biggest rocket ever launched (a Delta IV heavy lift) from the West coast, and in a spur of the moment I convinced Leslie to skip work today and run with me up to Vandenberg to watch it blast off.

Having made a special week long trip in November to Florida to see a shuttle launch (no go – Discovery is still on the ground!), I thought maybe this might have the same awesome display of noise, power and deep rumble. Nope.

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I’d often rather spend my time working on real estate deals then having to futz with techno stuff, but this past week I moved our site to “the Cloud”.  We’ve had our own internet server in the office for years, then moved it to an off site server and now to “the Cloud”. Being  a small company (just 3 of us!), of necessity I’ve learned to grow from our first XT computer to today’s powerful software.

But sometimes the learning curve is a chore! In November we upgraded to new computers running Windows 7, upgrading our applications where applicable, and then our just completed move to “the Cloud”. Just what is “the Cloud”?

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OPM means Other People’s Money and it’s a great scam if you can figure out how to do it. You get the glory and someone else pays for it – sweet! Well, a number of developers figured it out. When a developer builds out their homes or condos, they can insert into the covenants and/or deeds a requirement that when the property is sold, a fee must be paid to the  developer’s charitable foundation.

The Lennar complex of condos (between Telephone Rd and Thille, a couple of blocks west of Victoria) has such a deal. Looking at a previous deal we did there, $202.50 went to the Lennar Charitable Housing Foundation. This scam is getting so prevalent that the Residential Purchase Agreement we Realtors use in submitting an offer just added a line item under “Other Costs” called a “private transer fee” for just this sort of thing.

Wanna start your own foundation? Just build some homes!