This was the title of a major Wall Street Journal article this week.

The sub-title was “Three essential clues may signal if better times are ahead”.

I was curious – what were the clues? From a twist on the old “location, location, location”, the WSJ asked: What are the three most important things to consider when buying a house? Answer: Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Read the rest of this article »

Many of you know I’m (slowly) building a replica of an old Tiger Moth bi-plane. I’ve got the 4 wings pretty much done, but I was sitting in the hangar one day trying to visualize how I would get the nuts onto the aileron brackets once I had the wing and aileron covered in fabric.

You can see tolerances are pretty tight (for a wood airplane) and there’s no easy way to get a wrench into that space above the spar where the bracket sits. The bolts will go UP through the spar and bracket.

I’m in a hangar with 4 other guys building airplanes and we looked and studied, looked and studied some more, but the ultimate solution was I had to start over and make new brackets. Why? Here’s the reason and pictures of how I built new brackets.

Read the rest of this article »

Yesterday the US Treasury stated Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase were not fulfilling the goals of the Making Home Affordable program (using taxpayer TARP money) and as needing “substantial improvement” in handling the flood of requests for loan modifications. Because of these shortcomings, the US Treasury is withholding financial incentive payments that were designed to encourage the large banks to aggressively tackle underwater loans through loan mods or HAFA short sales.

Well duh – any Realtor working in the trenches can share their horror stories about interminable delays, lost paperwork and multiple submissions of paperwork that has plagued the real estate business because of these issues! Despite all the talk bank leaders tell Congress that they’re “doing everything possible” to handle the tsunami of short sales and loan mods, it’s obvious they’re not doing enough to staff up their resources to handle these issues.

In April the number of Notice of Defaults (NODs) was on par (low 400s) with the number of Notice of Trustee Sales (NTSs) – i.e., properties that are going to sale. For May, there was little change in the number of NODs but the number of NTSs jumped by 127 to the mid 500s. The number of Trustee Deeds (REOs) is creeping up. See the details on this chart.

Data is from Foreclosure List Service with permission.

The percentage of single family homes that were distressed sales in the month of May are:

Ventura – 37%

Oxnard – 67%

Camarillo – 44%

Quarterly graphs for 2nd quarter will be published in early July.

Sold prices – Single family homes in Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo:

• 12 month graph
• Ventura is trending upward to $430k; Oxnard is holding steady in the $290s; Camarillo peaked last Fall and is now on a downward trend in the high $400s to $500k.

Sold prices – Condos in Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo:

• 12 month graph
• Ventura peaked in December and January in the $240s, now in the low $200s; Oxnard peaked last Fall at about $230s, now in the $170s; Camarillo peaked in November and December at $310k, turned downward to March at $240s, and now trending up to $270s.

Numbers sold – Single family homes in Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo:

• 12 month graph
• Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo all hit a low in January. Ventura has recovered with a spike in April; Oxnard has bounced back and holding; Camarillo has recovered with a spike in March. Read the rest of this article »