Archive for June, 2007
Water Water Everywhere and not a drop to Drink ?
June 30th, 2007 categories: Buying San Diego Real Estate, San Diego Real Estate, San Diego Real Estate News, Selling San Diego Real Estate
California imports the majority of its water from a blend waters of the Colorado River and State Water Projects. In its raw imported state, it is full of contaminants. The contaminants of water from the State Water Project come mostly from pesticide and herbicides that are from agricultural runoff, wildlife and wastewater.
The Colorado River supplies are the most vulnerable to contamination from recreation and urban runoff, storm water and from the urbanization of the watershed. Several forces impact the Colorado River as it runs through the towns of farmland, mining sites and industrial use land.
Municipalities, which use various sources of blends of this water must be ever diligent to be able to treat the blend that is occurring at any particular point in time. The contaminants from inorganic and organic chemicals,microbials (viruses and bacteria),radioactive particles from radioactive contaminants,industrial wastewater, including petroleum byproducts and human wastewater all require different and specialized formulations for treatment.
The California Department of Health Services prescribes regulation,which limits the amount of certain contaminants that can remain in the water through some of the though some of the contaminants are known carcinogens. They must be reduced to levels that are not harmful.
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Real Estate Symposium in San Diego was a Real Hit !
June 29th, 2007 categories: Investing in San Diego Real Estate, San Diego Real Estate, San Diego Real Estate News
I spent 8 hours yesterday attending a fantastic Symposium in San Diego presented by Stewart Title. The day was loaded with wonderful speakers and presentations about Short Sales, Marketing,Smart Exchange for the investor client, New marketing tools, Web2, and a Lively featured speaker for Joe Stump’s By Referral Only organization on upcoming 3 day Training the Main Event Burbank CA. in September.
I believe there was in excess of 100 San Diego Realtors in attendance with breakfast and a lunch provided. It was an exciting morning with great presentations. I haven’t attended one of these Symposiums before but I can tell you without reservation that the information presented was awesome.
Speaker after speaker ,the information presented was excellent and the one next one up was going to be discussing Web 2. Reese Harris of ListingCard.net the presenter for Web 2.0 then asked the question if anyone knew what the difference is between the new Web 2.0 vrs Web 1.0. No one said anything and I sure wasn’t going to say anything, I am sitting in the front row and just wanted to see what was to come next.
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Internet Tax Moratorium Expires this year!
June 27th, 2007 categories: San Diego Real Estate, San Diego Real Estate News
Unless the U.S. Congress takes action, the moratorium on the taxing the Internet will expire in November 2007.
It seems that many senators may want to permit the future taxation of the Internet with a bill currently being drafted in the Us Senate. They are counter proposing only a temporary moratorium on the Internet instead of a permanent tax moratorium.
Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander and Delaware Senator Thomas Carper wrote the bill before Congress for a Temporary Moratorium. Twice before in 2001 and again in 2004, similar bills have been passed with expiration dates, instead of a permanent Moratorium.
Senators Wyden of of Oregon and McCain of Arizona on the Senate side of Congress with Eshoo and Goodlatte on the House side have already introduced legislation to make the moratorium permanent. Their Bill is titled the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act of 2007. This bill would ensure that the first step has been taken to ensure that Internet access is not subject to discriminatory taxes, limiting the choices of consumers, crippling innovation and undermining this countries global competitiveness,
The Federal Communications Commission indicates that 60 % of all new high-speed lines for Internet access are from wireless, which demonstrated amazing growth of that particular technological development in connectivity. In the high speed rankings, globally, the US is ranked 15th out of the 30 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developing nations.
The wireless consumers want to protect against even more taxes. Currently the wireless consumers are paying 14% of their monthly bills in taxes,fees and surcharges. A recent survey by the consumer advocacy group, MyWirless.org indicated that 71 % of the consuming public support laws that would prohibit, Federal,State or local taxing authorities from taxing the Internet.
Congress should be acting NOW to protect wireless and Internet access for all consumers against discriminatory taxes. Congress should be taking action NOW to assure all Americans that the Internet should always be tax free .
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Loan Terms and Cost are Baffling Borrowers !
June 25th, 2007 categories: Buying San Diego Real Estate, San Diego Real Estate, San Diego Real Estate News
Kenneth Harvey, a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post wrote a great article on this conundrum of current borrowers with mortgage delinquencies and looming foreclosures. Kenneth’s article deserves a closer examination. He uses in his research a study recently completed by federal researchers. They examined the 819 recent prime and sub prime mortgage customers and came up with some surprising findings. The FTC found that using the current “Truth-in-Lending” and “Good Faith Estimate” disclosures that are required by RESPA ( Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act):
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Record Numbers Of Relocation Employees Have Serious Reservations
June 25th, 2007 categories: Buying San Diego Real Estate, San Diego Real Estate, San Diego Relocation, Selling San Diego Real Estate
Employees that are candidates for Relocating to other locations for employment are balking in greater numbers. Why, because the cost of living in the some of the major cities has been sky rocketing over the years, especially housing. Even with the declines in the market of housing prices, they are still out of reach for many of the transferees. Another reason is the hesitation to uproot the family and leave their comfort zone, their families and friends.
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Overpricing Your Home Will Cost You the Sale and Lost Value
June 25th, 2007 categories: San Diego Real Estate, Selling San Diego Real Estate
One of the serious consequences of over pricing your home is that it will sit unsold on the market. It becomes shop worn and then it simply languishes on the market until it expires.
When you re-list the property, the market conditions have usually changed and not only is a serious price adjustment going to become evident, when it does finally sell it will be for so much less that it might have been when it was first introduced to the market
How did it get to market so overpriced in the first place?. If the agent takes the over priced listing with the hope that in time the seller will become more realistic over time, both the seller and the agent are going to have wasted a lot of time and some valuable resources.
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The Structured Sale ( Con’t )
June 22nd, 2007 categories: Investing in San Diego Real Estate, San Diego Real Estate, Selling San Diego Real Estate
One of the best ways to understand the Structured Sales is to think of it as an Installment sale with enhancements.
Understanding the flow is easily done with the following flow chart. Permission was granted for me to use this chart from Capstone Bay as they are assisting one of my clients currently working on a Structured Sale.
Flow Chart courtesy of Capstone Bay
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The Basics of a structured Sale
June 22nd, 2007 categories: Investing in San Diego Real Estate, San Diego Real Estate, Selling San Diego Real Estate
The Structured Sale is a vehicle to defer a big tax bite into more bite size portions. A seller who owns appreciated real estate holdings that they acquired through the a 1031 Exchange and would prefer to Cash Out, the structured sale may be just the idea whose time has come.
The way it works is similar to the installment sale. A Structured Sale combines all of the tax-referral benefits associated with a traditional Installment Sale, while providing guaranteed interest-bearing income payments and lump-sum distributions over a period of time in the form of an annuity.
I put a flow chart in to the previous post for reference. It shows the way the basic structured sales works and the the parties involved. This Structured Sale vehicle is particularly beneficial to those individuals who are ready to “cash out” of the appreciated asset, such as real property.
In preparation for converting that asset into income for retirement and/or estate planning purposes, the structured sale might be the preferred way to proceed. Because its a guaranteed income, it may fit their need for a consistent, stable, and predictable income. This idea is especially useful as it might apply to circumstances such as transitioning a parent or themselves into retirement-oriented or even “assisted” living situations.
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What a homeowner should know about appraisals
June 22nd, 2007 categories: Selling San Diego Real Estate
The author of this definition of appraiser is unknown to me. One thing is certain, as clever as I am, I could never have written this insightful definition.
“An appraiser is one who compiles and analyzes voluminous data of problematical accuracy from sources of dubious veracity and derives therefrom a numerical quantification of unquestionable necessity, analogous to a nebulous and euphemistic concept representational of value commensurate with ambient configurations of the open market and promulgates thereby a precise written declamation which delineates his observation, deliberations and conclusions all done while he feigns absolute ignorance of the avaricious machinations of Buyers, Sellers, Brokers and Lenders, compensated only by that penurious stipend known as the professional fee.”
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San Diego and The Housing Market Staging a Comeback!
June 19th, 2007 categories: San Diego Real Estate
The San Diego Real Estate market gets it share of negative publicity but lately it seems that the press have backed off a bit and things really are normalizing. The market as they say is just the market. We needed a cooling off period to allow some to adjust from one of the hottest real estate temperatures any where in the country. Yes, that s right we needed a cooling down period to get to a more normal market of supply and demand.
The feeding frenzy slowed down and people ( both Buyers and Sellers )are better able to take stock of their prior and upcoming buying decisions. Sellers who made a bundle over the last number of years have had to adjust and now must provide a quality well priced product to be competitive.
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