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Archive for June, 2009

C.C. Myers’ ex-golf course community back on market

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

The posh golf-course community that bankrupted C.C. Myers is up for sale again.

A tentative deal to sell Winchester Country Club in the Sierra foothills community of Meadow Vista has fallen through because of a disagreement over price.

An Arizona development firm named Granite Mountain Capital won an auction for the right to buy the project from Wells Fargo & Co. late last fall. But the Arizona firm has backed away because of pricing issues, said Granite Mountain managing director Mark Isakson.

“Their opinion of the price, and the market’s opinion, is probably a little different right now,” he said. He said Granite Mountain hasn’t given up entirely on Winchester.

“We still like the property,” he said.

Myers, the famed Sacramento-area highway contractor, lost Winchester to Wachovia Bank in a foreclosure proceeding last year. Wachovia has since been taken over by Wells Fargo.

Still owing about $45 million, Myers filed for personal bankruptcy under Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy laws several months after the foreclosure. The bankruptcy doesn’t involve his contracting company.

Myers spent nearly 20 years planning and developing the 1,200-acre project, on a former hunting preserve near Interstate 80. He envisioned Winchester as a high-end haven for Bay Area and Los Angeles refugees willing to pay up to $1 million for a home lot.

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C.C. Myers lost the Winchester Country

Club in a foreclosure to Wachovia Bank last year.

Is it time to freak out???

Monday, June 29th, 2009

If you watch the nightly news, listen to the politicians and surf the net on a regular basis, you might as well get it over with and have a complete and utter meltdown. Although I have a desire to be informed, do my research and stay current with the market trends, I’m developing an allergy to the media and the messages from these outlets. And as much as I try to stay positive and focus on my attitude, I found myself recently being surprised with good news.

One of my mentors who knows a contractor who informed me he’d been contacted in the last three weeks about building a couple of really large homes. And I found myself being surprised by that. My friend Hilary and I went out to dinner last week at a cool little Mexican restaurant in Sacramento. When we asked the waiter how was business, we were prepared to provide compassion and empathy for their slowdown. “Business is really good,” he said, “we’re opening up next door to expand our capacity.” I hate to admit it but both of us were surprised.  Why am I surprised? Because I’ve allowed the negative voices to creep in to my thinking and heard too much from the self-serving authors and media pundits who need drama to make money.

Is business booming like 05 and 06? Absolutely not and I hope we never see days like that again where people were taking equity loans at a record pace to spend money they didn’t have, on things they didn’t need to impress people they didn’t know. So yeah, it’s time to freak out. It’s time to get the messages from the freaked out media, the politicians and the pundits out of your head and life. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. I choose the good, I see the best and I believe my best days and yours are still to come. You should too!!

The Smith Team awarded TOP LISTING TEAM

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

top-player-award2

East Sacramento Real Estate Market Update: June 2009

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Foreclosures are drying up in East Sacramento. Year over year, we see a drop of 43% in foreclosure sales along with an increase in non-distressed sales of 35%. This has led to the tables turning from last June when 53% of all sales were distress sales to this June where 66% of all sales are now non-distressed. Overall unit volume is down by 4.7% for the same period.

For all this news however, prices haven’t fared that much better. Average price per square foot is currently $215.40 – a few dollars lower than last month and 6.8% lower year over year from a high of $231.12. Average sales price is $289,099 down 11.8% from last June’s high of $327,834. But the more accurate representation of the market is the average price per square foot since homes that sold this June were also 5.4% smaller. Median sales price is at $310,000.

Inventory in east Sacramento is at 3.7 months no matter how you look at it. Foreclosure inventory is at 0.6 months.

Time to spring back into action.

Monday, June 8th, 2009

If I spent my days reading the news and listening to talk radio I’m not fully convinced my mind wouldn’t turn to jelly. A couple of times this year I’ve found myself doing so and have noticed how it begins to quickly affect me. So I get back on the wagon of putting the good stuff in and letting action rather than reaction define my days.

Now that does not mean I’m walking around with my head in the clouds; I know that we are in the midst of troubling times and this uncertainty can bring a feeling of imbalance and fear. Thing is, I cannot control the outcome…and none of us can. I can’t predict the future and neither can anyone else. So I focus on activities. I go to work on what my needs are for me today.

It is not my job to grind my teeth in frustration or disapproval. Neither is it my job to read comments on the economy from every crank out there with web access. My job is clear and that helps me stay focused.

A recession is a terrible thing to waste. Spring has sprung and there’s work to be done.

The 3rd wave of woe

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Economists call rising delinquencies and foreclosures among prime borrowers the third wave of trouble. The first two waves were housing speculators going bust and subprime borrowers — those with poor credit histories and some version of no-down or low-down adjustable-rate mortgages — getting into trouble.

 

Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com, calls the third wave a “significant threat” to the economy. “It is gathering momentum,” he says. “The problem is now well beyond subprime and deep into prime.”

It will cause at least three problems that could shrivel the “green shoots”:

  • Mounting foreclosures among prime borrowers will destroy their credit ratings, making it tough for them to contribute to growth by spending on credit.

 

  • Rising foreclosures will add to an already high level of housing inventory on the market, pushing down home prices even more. That will make people feel poorer, so they’ll spend less. It also will tempt more people to walk away from mortgages, adding to the problem.

 

  • Foreclosures will mean more loan losses at banks, deepening the problems in the financial system.

 

Do you think this will affect your home prices, tell us what you think.

Coming: A 3rd wave of foreclosures

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

There’s a simple reason you shouldn’t get too excited about the “green shoots” of an economic turnaround.

In the housing market, a lot of prime mortgages are becoming subprime as a new wave of foreclosures begins to hit. Mainstream homeowners — those previously “safe” borrowers with sound credit who have conservative, fixed-rate mortgages — are getting into trouble at an alarming rate.

In the first quarter, the percentage of these borrowers who were behind on their mortgages or in foreclosure had doubled from a year earlier, to nearly 6%. For the first time in the housing crisis, these homeowners accounted for the largest share of new foreclosures.

 

Job losses are a major reason once-safe borrowers are falling into trouble. With unemployment likely to rise, the problem will only get worse. So the core challenge at the heart of our economic crunch — a poor housing market that infects banks and the whole credit system — is not going away soon. That’s bad news for the stock market and the economy in general.

“A couple of months ago, a lot of people had hoped that the housing collapse was about over,” says money manager and forecaster Gary Shilling, a well-known bear who called the housing problems early in the cycle. “But it was more hope than reality.”