Guy is out of state at the Inman conference, Diane is too depressed to post, and the Lurkers said they enjoyed these more informal posts. So you are stuck with me again for your weekend reading. Feel free to go as far off topic as you care to, since there really isn’t a topic.
2008 Totals – I posted this as a comment earlier, but it bears repeating. . Last year saw 6555 gross NODs, 4169 NOSs, and 2744 Trustee’s Deeds.
Rage I – The stripped house sold after a couple of weeks on the market for $304,000. Renovations are underway.
Rage II – We had a murder outside Bully’s by Kohl’s last night here in the NW. A BCS football altercation escalating into a senseless death. The knife wielder lost his home to foreclosure on 29 December. Coincidence?
Dog Walk – 3 of the 67 properties in my development now have at least NODs. All are or have been listed on the MLS for an average of well over a million (my shack doesn’t compare to these properties). I’m getting ArrowCreek syndrome here. So tomorrow, I get to walk Mr. Goober Eyes around the block and will run into Mr. Newest NOD, who knows I research the public records. Who looks at the ground first?
East Shore – Tahoe Shore Properties LLC got hit with a $4.5 M NOD. Their holdings are 4 acre plus parcels surrounding 451 Lakeshore. It’s really complicated, with parcel maps and new parcel numbers. But when you research the owner, you eventually come to Dayton Development and their two projects down south, as well as a well known Tahoe equipment rental company. Is there a bigger story here?
Pyramid / Calle de la Plata – Retail parcels on the NW and SE corners of this intersection are all going into default and forecloxure.
Smithridge Park – I promise to finish my detailed post on this development someday soon. But for right now, resales are down to 70% off peak pricing.
Montage – No movement , no closings, and a lot of distrust seems to be building among the contract holders. See the montagebuyer blog. Why hasn’t he Montage announced their new pricing publicly? Are the contract holders being gamed?
Solds – Mitch Argon has his new report posted on the properties that actually moved last month. Take a look at the REOs, Shorts, and percentage of asking for the properties here that actually closed escrow.
Enough stuff to pique your interest over the weekend?
NVMojo
All I can say is we are sick of renting in Reno but too cautious to buy. But we want to. How does one keep from getting ripped off in this rental market?
The idiots over in the apartment complex think they are sitting on a gold mine with 3/4s occupancy.
smarten
Some of you are mindful of my January 11, 2009 [at 4:00 P.M.] market bottom call nearly a year ago. Yes it was [at least in part] in jest. However just for giggles…
Remember I stated I might just enter into a contract to purchase something on that date/time just to commemorate the event? Well yesterday [my wife’s birthday] we submitted an offer to purchase a home here in Incline Village. Initially we gave the sellers until January 11, 2009 at 4:00 P.M. [my birthday and the start of Happy Hour at the Lone Eagle Grill] in which to accept our offer [the timing wasn’t coincidental]. However we’ve been informed that the sellers are out of the country and their broker needs additional time in order to present – so now they will have until January 12, 2009 at 4:00 P.M. to accept.
Quite frankly, my wife and I DON’T expect this deal to fly but at least we’re putting our money where our mouths are. Should anything come about, and there be any interest on this board, I’ll keep you advised.
I continue to be of the opinion that we will reach an historical bottom in long term mortgage interest rates within the next 45-60 days [today one can obtain a 30 year Jumbo 5/5 (5 years fixed and then adjustable every 5 years thereafter) for 4.5% w/.375 points (remember, my target continues to be 4.25% – so much for the “myth” of mortgage rates in the 4% range)].
Sully
I noticed a three level condo with nice lake view the other day, I was going to mention it to you but figured you saw it before I did. 🙂 At any rate, good luck on the offer.
promus1
Mike,
I can’t wait for your take on the Smithridge condo’s. I recently bought a bank unit, gutted it, remodeled and just signed up a long term renter. Hopefully you have kind words for brave fools like me trying to provide some college money for their kids 10-15 years down the road. Still looking for future units.
As I said, can’t wait for some free advice from a real live local sage.
Regards,
Reno Ignoramus
The very first piece of real estate I ever bought in my life was a Smithridge condo. I bought it in 1977 for $42,000. At the time, it was the highest price ever paid for a Smithridge condo. I sold it in 1979 for $61,500. Not bad, but a lot of dumb luck for me. This time period was the first real estate frenzied period ever in Reno. In 1978, the then MGM Grand (subsequently Ballys, then the Hilton, now GSR)opened. So did the expansion to the Eldorado, and Charles Mapes Money Tree (now the ugly decaying property on the corner of 2d and Sierra across from the Montage). It was Reno boomtown in 1977-1979. People were buying properties sight unseen. Everybody became a realtor. Then, it all just died.
Smithridge condos died. Between 1980 and 2001, these condos crept along not even keeping pace with inflation. Then the bubble started to inflate in 2001, and these condos got bubbled up just like everything else. Then the bubble burst.
Now, some Smithridge condos are selling for about 30%-40% of their bubbled up “highs”. I note now that some units there are selling in the 80s and 90s. Anybody who comes to this blog and suggests that “in the long run” real estate always beats inflation ought to study the Smithridge condos. Is 30 years long enough to be “in the long run”??
The Smithrige condos, over the last 30 years, have not appreciated within shouting distance of the rate of inflation. If the guy who bought my Smithridge condo in 1979 for $61,500 (and yes he bought as a rental investment and today his daughter still owns the property) had put the money in the Vanguard prime money market fund, he would have been better off. An investment in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund in 1979 would have absolutely crushed the condo investment.
I make no comment, promus1, on the wisdom of your investment. And, I’m not trying to start up the endless debate of realty v. equities, so let’s not go there, ok? I’m just offering a little history.
promus1
Hello RI,
I appreciate your thoughful comments. Does history not repeat itself or what!
I’m sure glad I did not pay too much more than the 1979 price. It’s purely an investment, not looking or expecting any great appreciation, just wanting my 7.0-8.0 CAP.
The other reason bought is to start diversifying a little out of equities. Nowadays, I’m just not that trusting of Wall street and I think the government has either been asleep or making back room deals with these crooks…another rant to start on.
I think we’re in for some pretty stagnant times with equities, real estate,CD rates, and mattress rates, so I’m taking a little gamble and having a little fun doing it.
Anyway, the joke around our household is that at the rate things are going, our little Smithridge condo will make a lovely primary residence for us one day.
Always truly appreciate the wisdom and advice from the old timers.
Reno Ignoramus
Best to you promus1. One thing about the Smithridge condos is the rather remarkable way they have maintained their appearance over the years. I think they were originally built in the very early 70s, and yet they don’t look hardly different today than they did almost 40 years ago.
The only gripe I have with your comment is your reference to me as an “old timer”. I guess I forgot to say that I was only 12 years old when I bought that place…….
Walter
I see that there are 8 Smithridge condos on the MLS between $70K and $79K. And RI tells us that he sold one 30 years ago for $61.5K. Yes, it appears that Smithridge condos are a real life example of how real estate does not keep pace with inflation. If I remember correctly, there were some of these condos sold for over $200K back in 2005. These condos are a testament to the bubble, and perhaps an example of the overcorrection that is about to come to the market at large?
Carney
1. denial
2. anger
3. bargaining
4. depression
5. acceptance
Tell Diane she is at stage 4 of emotional acceptance of the real estate bubble implosion.
SkrapGuy
Diane at stage 1: “There is no bubble. Such an unimaginative metaphor made up by the doomers and gloomers.”
Diane at stage 2: “Don’t tell me my Chase charts and graphs are wrong. People have to live somewhere, and Reno is still a special jewel.”
Diane at stage 3: “Ok, I was wrong about the unimaginative metaphor, but prices are down 15%-20% and isn’t that enough? I took down that part of my website that said houses in Reno go up in value 10% every year, what more do I have to do?”
Diane at stage 4: “Oh man, Mike, can you just take over for a while? I can’t even get out my monthly report because now I have to create a new category for ‘houses sold for less than $150K’ and I just can’t get around to it.”
Diane at stage 5: “I am happy to announce that Bantering Bear has agreed to take over as the sponsor of the blog, and that the blog has been renamed the “I told you that Reno housing prices were absurd blog.” Bantering Bear will monitor the median price as it descends well below $200K.”
BanteringBear
LOL, SkrapGuy. A great way to run this blog into the ground would be for me to host it.
If Diane is indeed depressed, I can understand why. Though I’m going by memory, I think she paid like $750k for a house she can’t sell which will likely bottom in the $300k range. I don’t care how much money she and her husband make, and whether or not they paid cash or had a large down, that’s going to leave a mark.
But Diane will recover. She is quite talented, and was the first Realtor I ever encountered who actually spoke the truth about the current state of housing, instead of repeating the super nauseating David Diarrhea crap. She is a pioneer of sorts. If the NAR is ever serious about revamping their image, they should adopt Diane as their model. She is the reason I continue to post to this blog. I hope that if she leaves to CA, she starts up another blog. I’ll be the first to comment. Here’s hoping Diane is doing alright.
BanteringBear
I see that the Silver Club in Sparks just closed. Jeez, another one bites the dust. I wonder how the Nugget is doing. Reno and Sparks are definitely going to have to work up a long term plan. Of course, that’s not to say other areas of the country aren’t in the same boat. Things are really starting to get ugly.
I’m not much enjoying this economic meltdown. Here’s a piece about the national debt. It’s worth watching, IMO, though certainly not uplifting.
http://www.iousathemovie.com/
ditz
Newby to Reno here. Haven’t been up into the NW for awhile (Somersett) and took a drive into the area yesterday. Taken back with the vacant store fronts in the outlying business areas. Emptyparking lots and closed restaurants. Two houses at the bottom of
Dakota Ridge priced in the high $800’s 12-18 months ago, now struggling and asking mid $500’s. Holy Crap Batman !!
3 Wombats
Having followed Mitch Argon’s site and list of solds for some time now I am surprised and disheartened that this has happened. . .
NNRMLS Bans SOLD Listing Detail from Web!
http://www.freenevadamove.com/blog/mitch/nnrmls-bans-sold-listing-detail-from-web/show/
What gives?
BanteringBear
3 Wombats:
It’s merely a thinly veiled attempt by the NNRMLS to hide the reality of cratering prices. As absurd as it may sound, they actually believe they can control prices by controlling sold information. Unfortunately for them, they have absolutely no bearing on prices. They’ve actually just sunk another nail in their own coffin.
Sully
Not just solds but REO’s as well!
GreenNV
You can contact the Northern Nevada Regional MLS at info@nnrmls.com to let them know how you feel about their decision to restrict the information Mitch and other Realtors can release to the general public.
I can put on my cynic hat and see where they might see an advantage to their members in hiding the REOs for sale to drive buyers to Realtors for the information. They are wrong, but I can at least imagine their thought train. But what possible advantage to their membership or general public can they think is served by restricting information on houses that have sold?
BanteringBear
I wouldn’t even waste a keystroke on the NNRMLS. Trying to talk sense into them, much less change their mind, is like trying to talk a piece of red meat out of a tiger’s mouth. Good luck.
MikeZ
I don’t understand.
How can the NNMLS ban the dissemination of home sale price information? They don’t own the information, do they?
It sounds like they’re banning the unauthorized reproduction of their specific presentation – which is their work product – of the information, as it appears in the NNMLS.
Randyman
What houses sell, and what they sell for is public information available on public websites. The NNMLS does not own that info. But the NNMLS is the easiest place to go to garner that data and now it is going to restrict its members from diseminating that info?
If that’s what the NNMLS is doing, it stinks. But then, this whole so-called “profession” ( apologies to the real professions such as medicine, law, dentistry, etc.) already reeks so bad that this should not surprise anybody. What is it, something like 2,900 realtors trying to make a buck chasing after 250 deals a month? They are desperate, and hungry, and this just shows their true colors.
Sully
I agree. You can download your own list of foreclosures or solds from the County Assessors office. So the MLS must be trying to muzzle their own members for some reason.
smarten
To take the discussion a bit further, the North Lake Tahoe Bonanza newspaper’s weekly Real Estate insert has a place for recently sold properties. Basically the address of a recently sold property together with it’s picture appears, and then there are pictures of the listing and selling agents.
But rather than displaying the sales price, the original listing price appears [which in many cases has little relation to the sales price]. It’s crap like this and what the NNMLS is doing which convinces me that the only thing “professional” about many, many agents and their trade organizations is that they charge fees for their services.
DowntownMakeoverDude
The NNLMS does actually control and have full rights to the listing information. I integrated a local realtor’s web site into the NNMLS database (there actually is no integration, the whole system is very archiac…realtor web sites don’t connect real-time to the NNMLS database, instead it’s downloaded from the NNMLS server and then ‘uploaded’ to the realtor’s web site.)
There are a ton of rules, such as none of the listing information can be modified, changed, or removed in any way, a realtor can’t add their own content to an MLS listing, even their own listing, unless it’s first done on the NNMLS server so the change is propogated to everyone…it must be presented as is, a realtor must display the broker recip logo on each listing, the listings can’t be intermingled with the realtors’ own private NON-MLS listings, etc etc etc. The realtor can have special pages for their own listings (like how Diane often creates a web site for a single listing) but they cannot be intermingled with the MLS listings. If the NNMLS doesn’t own the listing content, they might as well, because they control it like a copyright.
Waldo
The notion that only the NNMLS has access to what houses have sold and what they sold for is hogwash. NOTHING stops me or anybody else from going to the Recorder’s website and making a list of every house that has sold and what it sold for, and posting that info on the web.
What the NNMLS is telling its 6 percenters is that the compilation statistics garnered from the sales reports of all realtors (realtors have to belong to the NNMLS they have no choice)cannot be disclosed. The NNMNLS is the place right now where all the data such as listing address, DOM, pricing history,sales price, whether the property is an REO or a short sale, etc. is most easily available. The NNMLS is saying to its forced members that they can’t make that info available to the public. The thinking is that if enough darkness is cast over the process of selling and buying a house that realtors will again be able to leverage that lack of available info to potential buyers to rachet up prices.
The NNMLS wants to return to the days before the internet when all the MLS data was in a weekly ‘hard copy’ MLS book that NNMLS rules required realtors never gave to buyers. Buyers were literally in the dark then. Buyers could not know ANYTHING their realtor did not chose to tell them. Couldn’t know even what houses were for sale unless they drove the neighborhoods. Couldn’t know how long a house had been on the market, couldn’t know if the asking price had been reduced, couldn’t know if the property was bank owned, couldn’t know if the property was in default, couldn’t know anything except for what their realtor told them. And buyers were at the absolute mercy of their realtor to tell them the truth. Looks like the NNMLS wants to head back to those dark days. What a fine group of “professionals” they are.
BanteringBear
Waldo posted:
“The notion that only the NNMLS has access to what houses have sold and what they sold for is hogwash.”
I don’t think anybody has suggested this, Waldo. As far as the rest of your post, it’s spot on.
smarten
Waldo said, “the NNMLS is saying to its forced members that they can’t [disclose]…data such as listing address, DOM, pricing history, sales price, whether the property is an REO or a short sale, etc.”
I don’t know about “NN,” but here in Incline I know of a number of agents who regularly disseminate this information to the public. Further, they make available the very quarterly and YTD sales info that Sue Lowe capsulizes in her ChaseNation reports.
billddrummer
The position by NNMLS is ridiculous, and points to one of the reasons I hate realtors.
smarten
Did you realize the RGJ has started publishing daily Washoe County sales by zip code INCLUDING trustee’s sales? Go to http://foreclosures.rgj.com – type in a zip code – filter by foreclosures – and watch the properties, by street address, scroll before your eyes!
And then unbelievably, there’s a link to the county web site which will disclose the name and address of the buyer or in the case of a trustee’s sale, [generally] the foreclosing lender, as well as the sales price. Absolutely unbelievable and now, it’s ALL public record!
Ralph
How dare the RGJ make this public information even more public! Why, it is exactly this kind of dissemination of information to the public at large that the NNMLS is intended to prevent. Why, it is exactly this kind of information, once it finds its way into the hands of potential buyers and other interested parties, that makes it difficult for realtors to keep the shroud of darkness over the market. Surely the realtors must threaten to pull their advertising with the RGJ if this continues.
BanteringBear
Great find, Smarten. I just checked it out. Interesting to see how many homes are in foreclosure with amounts of less than $350k owed on them. The point I’ve been driving home ever since I started blogging about the housing bubble is that MOST people CANNOT afford a $300k house. In fact, there are many people who cannot afford a $175k house. That’s why Reno, pre-bubble, had a median price of ~$145k. Sounds about right.
smarten
Coincidentally, I just received an e-mail from Mitch Argon advising that “with a new year, of course, comes some changes: the local Multiple Listing Service recently notified [him] that [he] can no longer post the list of sold homes on [his] web site…[And] like the SOLD data, the MLS has banned [him] from posting…lists of foreclosure homes. Their position is that this violates the privacy of the homeowner (never mind that the home is owned by a banking conglomerate and the prior owners have already had two public – in the newspaper, library, court house… – filings against them by name and property address).”
A stunt like this would be grounds for an unfair business practices complaint in California – wish someone had the moxy here in Nevada to set these people straight!
Reno Ignoramus
Back to the Smithridge condos for a moment. I noticed that today a Smithridge condo hit the MLS for $67,500. And no, it is not a dump. Looks pretty decent from the pictures.
So consider that in 1979 I sold a Smithridge unit just a few doors down from this one for $61,500. Given the rapid deterioration of prices in Smithridge, I suspect that we are now only a few weeks away from seeing these units sell for less than I sold 30 years ago.
I don’t know with certainty where we are with respect to how far back prices have fallen in the market as a whole, but we are about back to 1979 pricing in Smithridge. It would really hurt to have paid over $200K for one of these places in 2005, but I suspect that most of those folks have already been foreclosed out.
doofus
Only about 20 Smithridge properties have hit foreclosure this (last) year out of 660 or so. There is probably double that somewhere in the queue right now.
Why my compassion for Smithridge? This is the place people really could get their first leg up onto the real estate chain. Great location to public transportation and shopping.
BanteringBear
Reno Ignoramus posted:
“I don’t know with certainty where we are with respect to how far back prices have fallen in the market as a whole, but we are about back to 1979 pricing in Smithridge.”
This is perhaps the most sobering statement ever posted to this blog. Anybody who is wondering where prices are headed, need only take a look at Smithridge. Now, I’m not saying all homes in Reno are headed back to 1979 prices, but that Smithridge has reached that point in NOMINAL dollars thus far is absolutely staggering.
Reno Ignoramus
Doofus, I share your compassion for Smithridge. I was one of those people who got my start in real estate there 32 years ago. You are right, it was a great starting place for a lot of people.
Once there get to be 50-60 REOs there, a critical mass is going to be, or maybe already has been achieved. The REOs on the market now and yet to come are going to take prices there back to the 70’s.