Katrina, Lehman, Lincoln and Today

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Tim Freund

I was thinking back on when Katrina released her wrath on the city of New Orleans and the South.  I distinctly remember thinking, “What?  The whole city of New Orleans is under water?  How can that be?  Bodies are piling up in the Super Dome?  Where is the Government?  How could this happen?”  My reaction was utter disbelief and dismay.  I couldn’t wrap my brain around the images I was seeing on television.

A few years later when Lehman went under and the credit markets froze up, I recall I was in China on a junket with the Thousand Oaks/Westlake Chamber of Commerce.  As news filtered across the Chinese media and the U.S. stock market plummeted, I remember speaking with my fellow travelers and really feeling helpless because I was so far away, and again in complete disbelief thinking, was this “really happening?”  I kept saying to myself, “What? … What the heck is going on?”

As I write this morning, I have the same feeling.  I’m anxious, confused and again, in total disbelief.  I should be dancing in the streets; I have 7 fantastic listings; my market share in my “farm” – the area I market to as the area expert – stands at nearly 50%, and a 2nd farm has two new listings, putting me firmly in the #2 position there.  Yet, I am not dancing.  I’m shaking my head, sleeping poorly because; I like so many in America, am rapidly running out of money. For the past month, month in a half, no one is racing out to buy real estate.

Since the bubble burst in housing, Realtors and mortgage brokers have been dropping like flies.  Once mid-six figure+ earners were now losing their homes and changing their careers.  For guys like me, I found myself in greater demand not just for buying and selling homes, but for advice and information.  While my business wasn’t what it was – how could it be? when a 30% decline in sales price was equal to a 30% drop in commission income – it was still pretty darn good.  We tightened our belt where we could; dipped into savings when we had to, but all in all, I remained in the top tier of Realtors in our community and my business, by and large, remained solid.  However the Russian roulette that Congress played with the debt ceiling this summer, has created an environment and business climate that is in effect, frozen.  Again, I can only shake my head in disbelief.  What were they thinking?

As I worked out this morning to CNBC, I watched Howard Schultz, CEO or Starbucks, come on the air and publicly admonish the government for failure to act with the best interests of America in mind.  Schultz said, “We have a confidence problem”, and he’s right.  While Congress has played tug of war with itself, using the American people as their rope, we here in Everytown USA are snapping, one strand at a time.  Those that have money won’t spend because of uncertainty, fear and doubt; and those that don’t are forced to borrow and those that can’t borrow anymore, well I’m not really sure what they’re doing.  The uncertainty of it all has made business afraid to hire, even if it is doing alright, because it might not be in the future.

I was watching Mad Men season 2 on Netflix the other night.  Burt Cooper, the founding member of the show’s fictional employer, the early 1960’s Ad firm Sterling Cooper, was listening to updates on the Cuban Missile Crisis.  As concern rippled through the small group of ad men, the Cooper character says, “I remember the crash of ’29.  People lost confidence in America then, and they were wrong.”  This is how we feel right now.  We have lost confidence in America and we’re wrong.

When leadership was needed 150 years ago Abraham Lincoln said this: that the “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.  That is the kind of leadership we need right now.

Ray Davies of the quintessential rock and roll band The Kinks once wrote, “Everybody’s got problems honey, I got mine.”  This truth should serve as a reminder that we Americans are not all that different from one another.  We need to get back to living our lives rather than living in fear and while government cannot solve all the Nation’s ills, we are allowed to expect more.  It’s sort of like playing catch in the street, when you miss the ball and shout, “A little help please?” to a passerby, you expect that they will stop whatever they are doing and toss it back to you, ‘cause you would do the same.

So, to our government leaders I say, “a little help please?”, and to everyone else I say hang in there, for this too shall pass.

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Some Things Are Certain In Life

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Tim Freund

As I sit here on a friend’s sun deck in Rancho Palos Verdes overlooking a foggy Pacific Ocean and the outline of Catalina, I realize that despite the chaos on Wall Street, the Euro Zone and the now empty halls of the Capitol, that there are certain truisms that we all live with: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, we all die, and most pay taxes; the Cubs will probably never win a World Series and real estate is the only investment you can live in; and no, I don’t consider buying a vintage Airstream an investment – though some might argue the point.  I guess that’s why it’s called “real estate”, it’s real, as opposed to imaginary and it’s an estate; after all, a home is a man’s castle even if it’s a 500 square foot studio on the lower east side.

There are just so many things to like about real estate.  There’s the fact that you get to live there, which if you’ve followed the adage of location, location, location, you like where you live and it sure beats the heck out of living on the street, right?  There’s the whole architectural beauty of a home: the roof line, the shutters, arched doors, walls of glass… then there’s the materials: plaster, hardwoods, decorative tile, stone; as diverse and varied as the outside world itself.  I’m always impressed when form and function meet; a great floorplan for example can make each day just a little easier, even if it’s a 1970’s cracker box tract home – a great floorplan is a great floorplan.

Yesterday you could lock in a 30 fixed rate mortgage at under 4%.  When you consider that real inflation is running at somewhere near 3.5%, you can argue that essentially borrowing is free.  I know everyone is focused on debt right now, but maybe aside from college and life saving procedures, is there anything better to borrow for than a home?  Borrow to buy a place to live? heck yeah!  …a place to raise a family, a place to build memories.  “But Tim home prices are dropping, why would I buy now and not wait until later?  Why take the risk?”  Let me think… free money, a roof over my head; a place that if I paint it, I know I’m doing it because it’s mine… free money…

It’s a funny thing about real estate; you only lose money if you sell for less than you paid.  If you are not selling, you can’t lose any money.  Perhaps the one thing the government should have done and maybe still can, is to help compel banks to refinance borrowers who are underwater, owing more on their home than it’s currently, (note the word currently), is worth.  Last time I checked, we hadn’t figured out how to create more land… I suppose there are manmade islands, but you get the idea.  Land is finite.  Of course land is not liquid like gold, but last time I checked, gold won’t keep you dry or warm or safe, unless you use it, and then you don’t have it any more.

So with all the gyrations of the past month, I guess my point is, if you have to put your money somewhere, you might as well buy real estate.  It’s more affordable than ever and you get to live in it and that sounds pretty good to me.

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‘Glad That’s Over With, Now Let’s Get Back to Business

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Tim Freund

Wow.  What a couple of weeks.  I like most Americans, was barely able to function as our government acted more like my children that my leaders.  I haven’t blogged in a while in large part because I just couldn’t muster the energy to do anything beyond my most basic human needs.   I ate, slept and breathed this debt crisis.  I watched Meet the Press and Face the Nation.  I actually took the whole weekend off – and did nothing.  In my 21 years of selling real estate I can’t recall every doing that before.  Sure, I’ve taken weekends off, though seldom, but I would usually go somewhere with my wife and family.  Not this weekend; I did nothing – except I paid my bills.  I had to use some ever shrinking savings to do it, but I did it.

Now I am not the kind of guy that feels strongly that our nation should pay its bills and stop borrowing.  I would consider that “switching horses mid stream”, and not a good idea at this time.  However, I do agree that a plan for debt reduction needs to be well thought out, balanced and then implemented.  And I am not climbing on a soap box here and saying, ” I paid my bills and so should you”; not at all.  Rather, I am just relieved this debacle in Washington is over, at least for the time being, so we can get back to the business of living, trading, loving and growing our economy.  Being paralyzed over government ineptitude through inaction, is no way to accomplish any of those things.

A lot of data came out over the past couple weeks.  Conflicting data.  Confusing data.  Case-Shiller reported mixed numbers: Prices up, month over month, but down year over year.  They referred to market conditions as the “bounce-along-the-bottom scenario”.  The US Census Bureau reported home ownership has declined to 1998 levels of approximately 65.9%.  Economists front the Center of Economic Research and Forecasting from Cal Lutheran University here in Thousand Oaks, (formally of UC Santa Barbara), have told me the level we need to get to, to call a bottom was about 65%, thus signaling that we are close to a bottom in housing.

Bottom?  Is it really possible?  Again, let me refer to Case-Shiller: (We need to see) “Sustained increases in home prices over several months and better annual results… before we can confirm (a) real estate market recovery.” Perhaps not great news, but not terrible either.  Further, foreclosure tracking service Realty Trac reports foreclosures are down 29% year over year across the nation while Core Logic reports, “Stabilizing nondistressed home prices, a declining shadow inventory and stronger foreclosure auctions should lead to lower distressed sales and less downward pressure on prices”.

If you’ve been following any of these economic sources you know they have been very sobering in their assessments of the nation’s housing markets.  Yet what I read here is a growing consensus that housing is improving, albeit slowly, and that we may truly be nearing the bottom.  But you probably missed it.  So did pretty much everyone.  The most damaging effect the Debt Ceiling debacle has had, is that it focused all our attention to the nation’s debt service and not on the positive threads in the fabric within our economy.  It froze everything.  It set back a struggling economy by creating an environment of insecurity and uncertainty – neither of which are conducive to hiring or purchasing or investing in much of anything except maybe gold.  This is the cost of our government’s failure to recognize what kind of leadership we as a country and as an economy, require.  By leading us down the debilitating path of uncertainty, Congress has single handily set back our hopes of economic recovery months and may have even pushed us back into recession.  If we are lucky, it will only mean greater pain and suffering for a short while, but if we don’t get back to business quickly, we may look back at July 2011 as the month Congress brought the world’s greatest economy to its knees.

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Buyers Are Like Employers

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Tim Freund

One of my best friends has been out of work for nearly 3 years.  He’s a controller type, book keeper maybe, for the construction industry.  He’s either over qualified because employers think he will seek greener pastures as soon as a better opportunity comes along, so they don’t hire him or he’s under qualified – competing with CPA’s (which he is not) or even CFO’s, and so he doesn’t get those positions for obvious reasons.

People searching for work will tell you that they scour Craigslist, Monster.com and the help wanted ads, searching for work.  They will tell you they treat it like a full time job, spending defined hours daily, filling out applications, sending résumés and contacting would be employers.  They will also tell you that employers are in no hurry to call back or even respond, and certainly in no rush to hire anyone, at least not to the same degree as the out of work fellow is.

Home buyers are very much the same right now.  They are looking, and looking and looking, and few are buying.  Like my friend who’s been steadily job hunting for 3 years, sellers are looking for buyers.  The good sellers- those who listen to their Realtor about painting, carpeting, de-cluttering etc., are finding that even if they are competitively priced and show ready, they still can’t get the buyers to pull the trigger unless they “give the house away”.  The buyers just aren’t in a rush to make a decision.  The LA Times recently had an article about the myths of home buying and the story begins with, “The perfect house doesn’t exist”, and it’s true.  But that doesn’t stop buyers from seeking the Holy Grail of Homes; The Mother of All Properties; the Grand Poo-bah of All Estates.

The fact is that buyer’s, like employers, are uncertain and extremely cautious – and who can blame them?  The government isn’t helping with their own indecision, the economy is sputtering at best and the threat of declining prices remains.  Of course the irony here is that there is real opportunity for a “killer score” exists; but that a great buy, like a great hire, only happens when they take a chance.

There have been a number of reports, surveys and studies done by an array of researchers on the difficulty of getting hired after having been out of work for any length of time.  The evidence is clear that it is much easier to get hired out of a job, than to get hired when you haven’t a job. The same is true for home sellers: it almost doesn’t matter how nice the home, if it’s sat on the market for a while, it is somehow deemed “no longer desirable”.  Sadly, like the serious job lookers who treat their job hunt like a job in itself, great homes remain unsold.  And similarly if an employer could see just how much work it takes to send out résumés every day, they would know that in hiring a person who’s been long unemployed, they would be getting a very a hard worker at likely a discounted rate.  So it is for great homes that haven’t sold right away.  A great home is a great home, and sometimes it isn’t until much later, that that becomes clear.  Buyers, like employers, are failing to recognize an amazing opportunity even when it smacks them in the face and that the opportunity to get the right home, at the right price and interest rate, may never be better than it is right now.  Then again, like employers searching for definitive evidence the economy is on the mend and won’t deteriorate further, buyers are waiting, hoping they might find the perfect home.  But like pretty much everything in life, the obvious isn’t so obvious until viewed through the telescope of time.  So it is that home sellers, like job hunters, will just have to hurry up and wait.

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What We Can Learn From Humphrey Bogart

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Tim Freund

I was watching my favorite actor, Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon the other night and what struck me is how analogous his characters like Sam Spade, The Big Sleep’s Philip Marlowe, Key Largo’s Frank McLoud even The African Queen’s Charlie Allnut are to the very struggle that we are in today.  Like the American homeowner, Bogie’s person is confident yet challenged.  He gets knocked down, usually more than once, but always gets back up, ready to go at it again.  At times his confidence is shaken; he has doubts about his eventual outcome but when the chips are down, there’s no one you’d rather have in your corner.

I bring up Bogie because, like his characters, America’s faith in the American Dream of home ownership and real estate in general, once confident, is now shaken.  Dragged down by debt, declining values and future prospects that are as clouded as a Foggy San Francisco night.  Yet, when the chips are down, where would you rather trust your personal wealth to?  The stock market?  Sub 1% savings rates?  Maybe overseas like China or Europe?  Real estate remains the salt of the earth, heck it is earth!  It’s a roof over our head; it’s a home where our family builds its most enduring memories, a sanctuary; a rest place.  There’s nothing like it; no other investment can offer that which real estate does.  So while we may doubt the future’s prospects from time to time, real estate has always and will always come back in this country.  So when you find yourself in doubt, lift your glass to your home, think of Bogie and repeat after me: “Here’s looking at you kid”.

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It’s About Time! Prices Rise Says Case-Shiller!

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Tim Freund

In 2006 Robert Shiller made a bold statement.  He said prices could drop 20% or more when the housing bubble burst.  At the time I thought he was a blow-hard lunatic.  The market showed no signs of slowing and demand outstripped the supply.  “What would cause that to change?” I lamented at the time.  Crow.  I ate it, I sautéed it; for breakfast lunch and dinner for going on 4 years I’ve been eating crow, but today I feel just a little retribution.  For those of you who’ve been following TheRealEstateConversation.com, you know I called the worst is over last month.  And while I do not anticipate steady or even regular appreciation for housing, I do feel my call was right and today’s Case-Shiller report supports my call.

If you were just reading the headlines, you’d see that  Gloomberg, err, Bloomberg, provided the headline today that home prices dropped 4%.  Classic right?  – There’s great news in the report, but the bold statement is negative.  On LinkedIn and Facebook, I posted the positive news and attached the entire S & P/Case-Shiller statement so people could read it for themselves.  While Gloomberg grabbed the year over year number as the headline, I instead focused on the report itself, which in its opening sentence reads as follows: “New York, June 28, 2011 – Data through April 2011, released today by S&P Indices for its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, show a monthly increase in prices for the 10- and 20-City Composites for the first time in eight months“.  Now I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty dang positive to me.  At a time when good news proclamations seem far and few between and on a day when consumer confidence unexpectedly dipped 3%, I feel it only responsible to report the positive and not just the negative.  I could go on and on, but I’m meeting another seller in less than an hour, who feels like now could be a good time to list and sell, and I couldn’t agree more.

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Lions and Tiger and Bears, Oh My!

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Tim Freund

Fed chairman Bernanke’s assessment yesterday for continued slow growth was not what the doctor ordered.  Clearly the economy is getting better, but at a projected 3% growth, not nearly fast enough to help the millions of un- and under employed.  The impact on housing would seem to be in buyer confidence.  Without confidence in one’s economic standing and security, consumers hold on tightly to their wallets, and hold off making big purchases, like cars and homes.  Unfortunately, this predictably will put more pressure on home prices.  It seems the Bears may dictate the coming months.

The irony is that there continues to be nuggets of positive news in real estate.  Tuesday’s report that sales were down nationally was an example of more bad news-good news.  Yes sales were down, but foreclosures, while up in total numbers, remained stable at 31% of the market place.  In other words, foreclosures are still a big problem, but their market share has stabilized… Bad news-good news.  Regionally, the flat sales in the west pushed against the tide nationally of declining numbers; a little like holding a Tiger by the tail.

Yesterday CoreLogic reported that the “shadow Inventory” – those homes at least 90 days behind in their payments – declined to 1.7 million this year from 1.9 million last year.  Though no one said it, I suspect that’s the first year over year decline in this number since the housing bubble burst.  1.7 million homes however, is still a very large number; approximately a 5 months’ supply of homes not yet on the market.  Bad news-good news… The fear of the unknown and threat of a tsunami of foreclosures truly is the mouth of the Lion for housing.

So in coming back to the general under-performance of the economy, I think it’s the effect upon  our confidence that is the most damaging.  And while things are getting better, they may not get better fast enough.  In the mean time, I hear you can pick up a beautiful home in the Emerald City for a song… and like Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home”.

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Foreclosures Plummet! but…

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Tim Freund

Foreclosures plummeted 33% nationwide from a year ago according to Irvine based RealtyTrac.  In Ventura County that number declined 18%.  Most economists believe this reflects a slower process from the banks rather than an easing of distressed sellers.  I personally find this rather difficult to believe.  Statewide, sales were down .9% from April.  Prices remain soft and sellers should make sure their homes are show ready before putting them on the market.  We’re in a beauty contest and a price war and sellers cannot win the sales battle if they are unprepared or overly optimistic on their price.

On another note, UCLA’s Anderson School forecast yesterday that there is a demographic-wide move in California from inland areas to the coastal ones.  They suggest that while unfortunate for the hardest hit areas of the Inland Empire, this should be a boon for the western portions of Southern California.  They however, do not see a building boom of single family homes in these communities to accommodate these new residential customers but rather see an increase in multifamily home and apartment construction.  While this type of building does not provide the tremendous job growth that suburban subdivisions do, they none the less create jobs and have an overall positive effect on the communities where they are built.  This should also keep the supply constrained on single family homes in these western and coastal towns, and that should help continue to stabilize pricing in those areas as well.  None of this news is great, but as the saying goes, in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king, so we take the positives where we can find them and to take a cue from the 1970’s, we’ll just keep on keepin’ on.

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Looking For and Finding The Silver Lining

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Tim Freund

“I sound like a broken record”, my mother used to complain when I was growing up, and  I am feeling this way myself since I must be the only one reading these economic reports in their entirety and gleaning the positive data.  All you have to do is turn on your television, laptop or flip open a newspaper and the headlines are repeatedly negative.  Take the Data Quick numbers released this morning for example.  The headline is that sales and prices are down year over year.  This is then interpreted as more bad news for real estate and distressed sales, the report goes on, are increasing as a percentage of total sales.  Blah, blah, blah.  Anyone who is paying attention already knows that these numbers are going to be bad as they are being compared to the government “tax credit” subsidized sales of last year.  Naturally we should expect the numbers to be off.

So what then are the positive numbers, if any, in the Data Quick report?

Here goes: First and foremost are the price points that show increased sales numbers.  Say again? You mean there are price points that are actually showing strength?  Yes there are and in fact it comes from two areas specifically.  Sales of Southland homes in the low end, that is under $200,000, is up from 28.8% of the market to 30.6%.  In other words, lower end sales are a greater portion of the overall marketplace.  This is important on several fronts.  The fact that less expensive homes are moving, is good because it means both investors and first time buyers are actively purchasing.  For prices to stabilize, first time buyers need to be actively purchasing; someone has to buy the less expensive homes so that those sellers can move up.  Further, since distressed sales often fall in this category their absorption by investors and eventual removal from the market is also very important to overall inventory stability.

The second group of sales that showed stability was those Southern California homes priced over $800,000.  Sales in this price category were basically flat as compared to last month as well as year over year.  This is tremendously important because if the upper end is dropping, it puts tremendous pressure on the middle.  That is, if I can buy in Malibu or Beverly Hills for the same price that I could buy in the San Fernando Valley, then those Valley areas will have to come down in price, which in turn puts pressure on the outlying areas and so on.  Moreover, Data Quick reports that when using an alternative method of analysis that compares mid to high end sales by zip code, they show that sales are running slightly above their ten year average: 37.4% today vs. 37%.  Contrast that with January 2009 when the more expensive areas represented just 26,2% of all sales.  These numbers cannot be interpreted as anything less than a picture of normalization in the housing market.  Normalization in housing, has a nice ring doesn’t it?

Clearly numbers can be evaluated and conclusions drawn that are not rosy and I am not suggesting that the market is normal yet and that all the news is good.  Obviously the middle, between $300-800,000 needs to strengthen.  And yes, lending is tight and short sales are increasing as an overall percentage, but the silver lining that I see is also not tinted by rose colored glasses either, but rather gleaming as a ray of hope and optimism against a sea of troubled waters.  And as with any silver lining, you just have to look for it.

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Freddie, Fannie, Let My People Go!

Posted on June 5, 2011 by Tim Freund

My friend Paul and I are sitting on a park bench when Paul tells me his story…

“I’m upside down on my mortgage”, he says, meaning his house is worth less than what he owes on his mortgage.  “My current rate is in the 6% range – from when I first bought it.  I want to take advantage of these low rates.  It will save me so much money every month which I can spend on things I want to buy, a new car, my kid’s college and it will help me save for retirement by funding my IRA.  I still have a good paying job and my income qualifies me for the payment now and will do so even more so when it is lowered by the lower interest rate”.

“Sounds good”, I say.

“Yep, I’ve made up my mind”, he says, “I’m going to refinance this week”.  So he meets a local mortgage rep to fill out the application.  He’s so prepared.  “I brought him my tax returns, W-2’s, recent pay stubs, bank statements, showing all my assets and a credit report showing that my credit is stellar.  My mortgage rep can’t believe his luck and tells me how well qualified I am when he finally asks me about my loan amount and home value.  I tell him my loan is $417,000 so I’m a conforming loan candidate, and my home is used to be worth $650,000 when I bought it, but now is only about $400,000.  I can see the blood drain from his face.  He tells me how sorry he is but that if I want to refinance and lower my interest rate by 1.5%, I need to get my loan balance down to 80% of the value; ($400,000 x 80% = $320,000).  So I need to pay the bank $97,000 to be able to get to the 80% loan to value (LTV)?!  But I don’t have that kind of money! and he tells then he can’t help me unless I do this”.

Paul says, “Now I’m really depressed.  I could really use that extra $600 a month savings.  But what troubles me most is that the Federal Government gave tax credits to first time buyers last year and the government owns my loan, but they won’t let me refinance because of my negative equity?  Why?  A smaller payment means I’m less likely to default.  If I had equity, I would refinance anyway, so basically they are holding me captive to a higher interest rate because of my equity position.  That just isn’t right.  My sister is in the same boat except her loan is a jumbo and she can’t refinance either.  My boss can’t refinance either even though his loan is just under the $729,750 – also a Fannie or Freddie loan, because his home’s value is $700,000.  What gives?”

Freddie, Fannie, let my people go!  Why are people like Paul being punished while people who’ve been irresponsible able to get a lower payment or out of their obligations?, Allowing Paul to refinance costs no one a dime: not the bank, the government nor the tax payer  “I just want to refinance and I’m qualified, but my house is not.  I just don’t get it”, he tells me.  “It’s really too bad too because now I’m thinking maybe I should default so my lender will do a loan modification.  It will ruin my credit and prevent me from buying things like a new car which I need, but I really want a current market rate; nothing special”.

I really don’t have a friend named Paul with a sister or boss all trying to refinance, but this parable is true none the less for millions of borrowers across our great nation.  The time is now for the Federal Government to recognize this fact and to help the little guy.  The guy who’s done everything right; isn’t subprime, out of work or over extended.  Just the guy who pursued the American Dream and bought high in a hot market, had a down payment (and lost it) but just wants to take advantage of today’s favorable interest rate environment.  If we want to stop wandering the financial desert for the next 40 years, it’s time for Freddie and Fannie to hear these words: Let my people go and for crying out loud, just let them refinance.

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