The board of the San Diego Convention Center Corporation is acquiring a key piece of land to expand the facility. The 7+ acre property was held by Fifth Avenue Landing LLC and the board agreed to pay $13.5 million to buy out the lease. The deal calls for a $1 million payment upfront, then $500k per year for the next four years, then a baloon payment of the balance on the fifth anniversary of the sale. The contract does allow the city to back out of the deal at anytime, but they would forfeit any payments already made.  Search all La Jolla homes for sale.

The National Association of Realtors’ board of directors on Monday adopted a change in policy which will let real estate brokers allow search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to index their property listings from their websites under agreements to share data with other brokers. The change was among a handful of changes made to the NAR’s Internet Data Exchange, or IDX, policy as it was wrapping up its annual meeting in SanDiego early this week.

The other day, one of my clients asked me if I knew of any place that sold nice / classy leather furniture in San Diego.  Since I did, I thought maybe there might be others who were interested.  Whenever I have needed to purchase some nice contemporary furniture, I head down to Casa Divani located in Chula Vista.

Anyhow, my clients loved the place and the furniture can not only be purchased on their floor, but also online.  Great service and great furniture at a great price....what more can you ask for?  Generally, I never really promote anything on this blog, but I have always felt this place was great and needed a boost.

Also, if you are looking for San Diego computer repair, I use Tech Pros in San Diego and love them.  They have done everything from simple fixes to data recovery.

 

I just posted an article on my san diego real estate blog on my website.  Looks like home sales in San Diego are on the rise, jumping more than ten percent compared to the same month in 2008.  However, the median price dropped fourteen percent, in the same comparison.  The article is at this location. 

 

After making two rounds of cutbacks in May and last week, the San Diego Union-Tribune in reporting an expected profit of $5 million. Platinum Equity acquired the paper from the Copley family in May, and immediately slashed 192 jobs, laying off 112 more last week. The company says it’s finished making cuts.

The paper’s profit has dropped significantly in the last few years from $68 million in 2006 down to $38 million in 2007, then down to only a million dollars last year. Before Platinum took over, the paper was on a pace to lose $7 million. The newspaper’s revenue has tumbled almost 55% since 2006.

 

La Jolla real estate   ----    Del Mar Real Estate

PICO Suffers Second Quarter Loss Pico Holdings (Nasdaq: PICO), a company based in La Jolla, reported a second quarter loss, in spite of an expanding portfolio. The company is in the business of acquiring, operating, or financing companies with low value to raise the companies’ net worth. Currently, the company has in its control insurance, water, and real estate companies, and they also have some interests in small businesses.

Pico’s reported second quarter losses came to nearly $2.5 million, about 12 cents a share for stockholders, compared with last year’s second quarter gain of just over $28 million, about $1.50 a share for stockholders.

The San Diego treasurer / tax collector reported yesterday that fewer San Diego residents are defaulting on their property taxes. As of July 1st, 3.6 % of property owners were in default, compared with 3.7 % last year, 2.7 % in ‘07, and 1.9 % in ‘06. The office is mailing out just over 47,000 notices of default, compared to over 50,000 a year ago.

Economists say that the trend is encouraging, if it continues, but that a key factor is that when lenders foreclose they must pay delinquent tax-debt before listing the property.

Owners who fail to pay taxes on time are hit with a 10 % surcharge and a 1.5 % monthly penalty. Collectively, San Diego’s delinquent owners owe nearly $290 million, compared with $270 million at the same time last year

The Coronado Bridge, that leads us, living in San Diego, effortlessly to Coronado, turns forty years old today. The Coronado Bridge was opened in 1969 and has been paid in full by San Diego residents and tourists.

The $1.00 toll was collected until 2002, even though it was paid off by 1986. The reason for the extended toll was due to those who had purchased their piece of Coronado real estate and their fear that by discontinuing the toll, traffic to the island would substantially increase. Turns out they were right.  Traffic has increased by approximately twenty percent since 2002.

The cost of the bridge was nearly fifty million dollars in state construction bonds and is able to withstand around thirty thousand cars on a daily basis. However, nowadays there are around eighty thousand cars traveling across the bridge daily.

Happy Birthday Coronado Bridge.

Rockrose Development Corporation has begun offering an interesting incentive to potential buyers. They will buy the property back. Anybody who purchases one of their hundreds of condominiums in New York, can, if values continue to fall, sell the apartment back after five years for 110% of what they paid. Home builders have been forced to come up with innovative ideas to urge people to buy as inventories of unsold homes are at their highest since the early 60s and sales are at their lowest levels in decades.

In addition to money-back clauses, some sellers are offering credits for renovation projects, mortgage protection for buyers who become unemployed and cash incentives for lenders to control interest rates. Although interest rates are near record lows and housing affordability is higher than ever, many potential homebuyers are still hesitant to act with unemployment at its highest since ‘83 and property values expected to drop another 20% by the end of 2010. Rockrose is not the only company with outrageous ideas to draw in buyers. In Estero, Florida, Toll Bros. is offering a $100k incentive to buyers of its homes in Belle Lago Villas. The incentive can be used for customizing options like upgrading kitchens, bathrooms, or flooring, etc. or can be applied to closing costs, reducing principle, or buying down interest rates.

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A Toll Bros. official says the incentive has brought increased interest. The nation’s housing market is experiencing its worst crisis since the Great Depression and the effects have spread throughout the economy as well as the rest of the world. A springtime pickup in the market could help spur a recovery for the world’s largest economy. As part of a broader economic stimulus plan, the government is offering an $8,000 tax credit to first-time buyers who purchase a home before November 30. Many Americans, however, are still hesitant to buy fearing the loss of their job. To help alleviate those fears, Toll Bros. has launch a “Mortgage Protection Plan”, under which the company will pay the mortgage of buyers who lose their jobs. According to the Commerce Dept., sales of new homes rose 4.6% in February after setting a record low level in January. Sales have fallen over 41% from last year and are almost 76% below their peak in July 2005. Reducing interest rates in another method being used to bring buyers into the market. Lennar Corp., for example, is offering to qualified buyers a 30 year fixed rate mortgage with a 3.625%, even as rates average between 4.7% and 4.8%. The rate does come with several stipulations.

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The economy is still in a downturn. However, evidence that the recession is slowing exists in rising demand for products, increased consumer confidence, a slowing of nationwide layoffs, and more companies reporting profits.

The National Association for Business Economics (NABE), based on its latest quarterly survey, says that key indicators such as unemployment, capital spending, profit reports, and industry demand are still in decline, though the rate of decline is abating. The report follows similar statements made by the Federal Reserve last week. The Fed said that five of its 12 regional banks reported a slowing in the economic decline. The NABE survey, however, reported 93% of respondents expect the GDP to decline this year. That is 15 more pessimist outlook responses than in its previous survey in January. In the latest survey, fewer companies reported a decline in demand for its products than those reporting a rise in demand. From those two numbers, the NABE gets the net rising index for industry demand, which improved from -28 to -14 from the Jan. survey to the latest one.

The January figure was the worst in the survey's history going back to 1982. Some industries, finance, real estate, services, and insurance actually reported positive net rising indexes. Others such as information and communications, transportation, and utilizes remained in decline.

Profit margins are also on the rise for many companies. In the latest survey, almost 15% of respondents claimed rising profits and 46% said profits were falling. The remaining respondents reported no change, making the net rising index -31%, up from January's -42%, when 11% of respondents reported a rise in profits and 51 reported declines. A key indicator for business growth, capital spending, improved as well. 16% of respondents reported raising capital spending, while 32% cut back and 52% reported making no change.

Remaining low are employment prospects and wages, which are at their lowest since the survey's inception. The survey had 15% of companies report a rise in employment, unchanged from the Jan. survey, and 40% experiencing a drop in employment, 4% lower than in Jan. Hardest hit was the goods-producing sector, which saw 82% of it's companies reporting job losses and none reporting growth. Meanwhile, the financial, real estate, and investment sectors reported stabilization. The future for jobs looks shaky with many experts expecting job losses to continue. Only 15% of companies expect to create new jobs, which is slightly worse than the 16% planning new hiring in the Jan. survey. The number of companies planning job cuts, however, from 40% to 34%. Search La Jolla Real Estate today.