Foothill Ranch Blog

Buffet is buying real estate to demonstrate his belief in real estate value. Are the critics of Buffet on Jonathan Lansner’s blog selling to back up their belief?
I’m a Realtor working in South Orange County. What I am seeing is multiple offers on most of the properties priced under $800k, if there is not a problem with location or condition. I am seeing that banks are not offering to pay closing costs on foreclosures like they did last year. It is pretty common for a foreclosure to sell in less than a week in Irvine. It is hard to find property to show my buyers. There are positive signs in the South OC market compared to this time last year.
On the negative side, my buyers are still finding reasons to wait: Will there be a new wave of foreclosures next year? Why are short sale properties priced so low? And why are short sales on the market so long? Why doesn’t the bank respond to my short sale offer? They lost their down payment money in the stock market. The foreign currency exchange rate moved against them. And last but not least they lost their job.
With all that said I think that South OC real estate is going to be flat to slightly higher for the next few years. The days of making money flipping property are over unless you are willing to take on the pros and compete for risky trustee sales.
See the article on Lansner’s blog:
http://lansner.freedomblogging.com/2009/09/02/warren-buffetts-real-estate-bottom-part-2/35357/#comment-144833

This came as a surprise to me: Mello-Roos assessments change from time to time depending on how the investments for the Community Facilities Districts are performing. CFD 87-4 is the Mello-Roos district for Foothill Ranch. I spoke to Don, an advisor to County Supervisor Pat Bates, today and he said that the increase is still being calculated by the consulting firm David Taussig & Associates, Inc. The increase is expected to be 2-3% over what you are paying now. For my house it is going up about $50.
Mello-Roos came about as a way for the counties to get around the Prop 13 tax reforms. If you would like to see what the maximum Mello-Roos assessment for your property, go to this link: http://cams.ocgov.com/Web_Publisher/mainlist.asp?docid=00000026&docname=Agenda08_04_2009.htm&meetdate=08_04_2009&pagendatypeid=1&pisagenda=1
Fortunately, the Mello-Roos assessments were written with a yearly increase cap, so we should not see a big jump in Mello-Roos.
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Links:
Patricia C. Bates
Board Chair
Supervisor, 5th District
County of Orange
333 W. Santa Ana Blvd.
Santa Ana, CA 92701
Phone 714.834.3550
Fax: 714.834.2670
PatBates@ocgov.com
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David Taussig & Associates, Inc.
http://www.taussig.com/index.html

Whew what a day on the lending topic! In a meeting this morning at RE/MAX our in house lender spoke about the new rules that are making it harder to get a loan. By harder I mean it is now a longer process. We were advised to allow for 45 days to close an escrow. I won’t go into the rules here the list is too long for a quick post. At noon I heard a newscast about Barney Frank’s efforts to ease the lending guidelines for condos. So, in the short term it is tough to get a loan on a condo but the policy makers in Washington are kicking around the idea of relaxing the rules. See the article.
http://www.examiner.com/x-5187-Moving-and-Relocation-Examiner~y2009m6d22-New-Fannie-Mae-mortgage-lending-guidelines-discourage-relocation