One of the most sought after neighborhoods in San Diego county's North Inland is the master planned community of 4s Ranch. At the height of the housing cycle, construction in the area was booming and just so no one forgets their market is moving inventory once again. The market area is in recovery mode and most homes are still moving like the rest of the North inland corridor...

Just in the last month out of 35 listings, 16 are active and available with a range of homes from over 4000 square feet to smaller townhomes that are a little over 1000 square feet. The price ranges are from $1,079,000 to $395,000 and out of that same 35, nineteen listings went into pending within the last 30 days.

Clearly, the housing inventory is getting low again as we move into the last quarter of 2009, as many homeowners have chosen to stay in their homes instead of selling. When we're dealing with such a high demand and highly desired area, buyers are still competing to get their piece of the pie.

4s Ranch is home to some of the most newly constructed schools in the county; they have very involved parents and the high school is groomed with "state-of-the-art facilities including five art labs, two music classrooms, one drama classroom, 11 career-technical education classrooms, a Performing Arts Center and a Fine Arts Village designed to blend traditional mediums of visual arts, drama and music", making them one of the premiere high schools in the county.

Here is a link to more information about the schools in the Poway school district.

It's that time of year again... when the days get darker sooner and our daylight "savings" time ends.

For San Diego, the changing of the clocks will happen next Sunday, November 1st, at 2am - so it will be

nice to get back our "lost" hour we gave up in the spring. There will be more time to do everything we

love to do...

What seems to have come even sooner this year than in years past, are the holiday displays in the

stores and even though most of us will spend less this year, it's never too early to start shopping for

unique gifts, if that is how you celebrate the holidays.

What a great time for the Harvest Festival to come to San Diego County at the Del Mar Fairgrounds

and it's going to be here this weekend!  Hundreds of crafters will be showing off their unique wares...

What a great place to shop for that special gift for a family member or friend! You can even purchase your

tickets online, so the time to walk in and start browsing will be even shorter.

If you're not in the mood to shop, maybe you're an Los Angeles Lakers fan? Well, if you are, you might

want to go to the game at the Sport Arena tomorrow (23rd) night at 7:30pm. Here's another link to get

your tickets. It looks like there might be a few left...

If watching sports isn't your thing, you might want to warm up for all the Halloween events beginning

this weekend. There's a lot of haunting happenings going on. As if that's not all fun enough, there are a

lot of other events from a flower show to a triathlon, open air bazaar to a breast cancer walk...

Just take your pick and enjoy everything San Diego has to offer... it's supposed to be a great weekend : )

Enjoy!

There was a time in my life when I never thought I'd make it to the year 2000. I was a teenager at the time and I told my future husband back then, that I thought turning 30 would be the death of me. I led a fairly wreckless life up until about that time in my life, so I really thought that particular age was "old". 

Well, time went by and I made it to 30 years old (it was probably the worse year of my life, by the way) and these days, I'm well past that age, yet the hubby still teases me sometimes, that I'm still living on borrowed time...

I'm old enough to know now, that all of our time is borrowed. It's limited and it keeps going on and on, like the Energizer Bunny.

I bring up this part of my life, only to illustrate how fast time passes, but even more important, how quickly it passes for our parents as well. The fact that many baby boomers may find themselves, if they haven't already, taking care of their parents as we age ourselves, is astounding.

Recently, while surfing on "Facebook", I stumbled across a website called, "APlaceForMom.com" and since I had hoped that my parents might want to relocate to San Diego from the Bay Area, I was very curious to see what this service could do for us. I was interested to find out what our local area had to offer in the way of senior care services. 

So... I went ahead and signed up online to be contacted and I was pleasantly surprised by the level of service, the timeliness of the follow up and the help I

received.  Within a day, I received a phone consultation regarding what my parents' needs were and within just a few more days I received calls from 3 of the area's best assisted-living residences offering tours.

The nicest part was, that the "APlaceForMom.com" service is free and they also know of other options available besides assisted living. For now, my parents have decided not to relocate anywhere, but it's always good to know they have choices. I was more than impressed with everyone that responded, so I wanted to let others know about them.

I realize it's probably not something most people want to think about, but it's never too early to start planning for the future...  

Over a year ago, I had a conversation with an appraiser regarding the
home values of homes that were NOT in distress.
My question to him was, did he appraise those homes differently than
homes that were short sales and bank owned property?

His answer actually surprised me. He said "No, those sellers will just have to
come down to where the rest of the market is." I was more than disappointed
to hear that, knowing that many distressed homes were not in the same condition
as someone who might just want to sell to move into a larger or smaller home.

Just how does an appraisal affect a home purchase? To put it bluntly, it affects
everything and it changes the market and its home values to an even larger extent.
More importantly, how can a "regular" home sell in a market that's filled with
sales comparables that are made up of short sales and "REO's"?

Sure, a "regular" home seller is free to price their home higher when their home is  
NOT in distress, but they need to understand buyers are comparing their home's value  
to homes that are. Pricing a home higher because it doesn't "have to" sell obviously won't 
make it sell any faster. In fact,  just the opposite might occur... a home could sit
on the market a very long time, when sellers insist on waiting for a higher price.
Even if a home "not in distress" gets into escrow at a higher price, it still doesn't mean it
will appraise for a loan, when the buyer's lender gets their appraisal done.

On May 1, 2009 the Home Valuation Code of Conduct went into affect. This
affects all appraisals on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans, which accounts for
approximately 65 percent of the California mortgage market. One would hope that
appraisals will be more objective, now that an appraiser's report no longer depends
on that appraiser getting more work from a bank, because lenders are using
Appraisal Management Companies, to order appraisals now.
What's been most affected is the time it takes to get an appraisal done because
the AMC's are being used, but homeowners will no longer get inflated appraisals.

Ever since we had to evacuate in our last wildfire, I no longer pay my gas and electric bill by check anymore. I go online and pay it like so many others, because during the fires that was the most efficient method to pay when I had no access to my home. Nothing was going to be "business as usual" in the week of the wildfires, but I was impelled to pay my bills on time...

Anyway, that didn't stop SDGE from sending me a letter recently, regarding their new Smart Electric Reader that will soon be exchanged for the old spinning wheel one outside. The interesting thing about that letter was that it came with a small insert that announced how we could get a "Free Home Energy-Saving Kit". What? Something for "Free"... I'm all over it. I just ordered mine online. You get a low-flow showerhead, a faucet aerator for the kitchen, and two faucet aerators for the bathrooms. Isn't it great to go "Green"?

As if that's not enough, I also saw another flyer advertising the FEDERAL Tax credit of $1500 for "qualified energy efficient" improvements. It's part of the stimulus package, and it's a great opportunity for any "homeowner". I believe the improvements have to be on your primary home, but still - if you've been waiting for an excuse to get central air conditioning installed, or a new water heater, now you get a federal tax credit to boot! So, start improving, because there's a deadline for everything...

Well, the summer is winding down and it's that time of year again. 

School is starting soon if not already, and there is a lot of back to school shopping going on. Most area residents already know what school their student is attending, but just in case you are planning a move to the San Diego inland area, here is a link to an address look up to see which schools are assigned to you, should you be contemplating a home you're looking at online.

Not all homes in San Diego are within the San Diego district though; there is also a link to the Poway school district that includes 2 San Diego zip codes. And here is a street look up list for the Solana Beach school district you can use if you are thinking about living along the central coast.

If you decided to live a tad North, here is the Escondido Union School District link for their boundary maps.

If you want to know general information on the several county school districts, here is the link to the

San Diego County Office of Education's website indexing most of the public school districts.

If you're planning to attend college in San Diego County here is another link that lists our college websites:

How about someone else who keeps your money "hidden"? Every once in awhile, I will find money that I put away in one part of my wallet where I don't usually go and when I find it again it's like a day to celebrate. In the last couple of years, there have been many homeowners applying for property tax reassessments since the value of their homes have declined. That's not what I'm writing about today, but that issue is what led me to the tax assessor's website.

What I found was a section where many people have forgotten where they have money that could belong to them. That is in the form of unclaimed monies that the County of San Diego has and have been unable to find the rightful owners of these funds.

People have moved and relocated a lot in the last few years and some may not even be in the area anymore, but if you know or have contact with anyone that has moved outside of our county, you may want to pass this article onto them.

Here is the link to the webite to check to see if you have "unclaimed monies" left with the county of San Diego.

By the way, the state of California also has such a website. Here is the link to find unclaimed monies from the state.

Incidentally, while I'm on the subject, the IRS also has unclaimed tax refunds that they have not been able to distribute for one reason or another.  

I can remember a time when we lived without cell phones, satellite dishes, cable television, gourmet coffee, and even the internet...  My point is, that we never realize how basic our needs really are, until we have to decide to cut back on our "luxuries."
Many people have lost their jobs in the last year and are struggling to sustain the standard of living they have. I would have to hope, that most are finding some ways to survive that they hadn't thought about before. Even if it means moving in with roommates, family or friends... in the long run, there has been a major shift in the way we all think, act, and respond to everything that we have read, heard, and experienced in the last year.

The media doesn't write about the many more people that are still employed, that make up the majority of the population, remember the ones that still go to work every day? There's not much difference in who we are and what we all think we want - economically speaking. We've all been affected by this recession one way or another. I would have to believe that it's changed our spending habits for the long run, more people are saving now, even the people that weren't directly affected by a loss of job or income are spending less.

With that in mind, it would seem even more important that everyone at some point, should have a plan for retiring some day, somehow. There are lots of ways to retire. Some ways are riskier than others, and most would agree that the amount of risk a person is willing to take in their life, has a direct relation as to how soon they can retire.
Some people might tell you they don't even want to retire, because "being active" keeps them young - but I would hope that eventually senior citizens could stay active, without the obligation of having to go to a job everyday.

So, lets list some ways people have used to retire earlier rather than later:
 
1.  They bought their home early in life. Some might even have bought a second home to relocate and rented out the first home. This would have created a stream of income they could use later...

2.  They used the stock market and learned how to buy and sell options as well as to diversify their savings.

3.  They started businesses (restaurants, gas stations, farms, etc.) and saved for retirement the old-fashioned way. 

4.  They found a need and invented something to make a better "mouse trap" and they collect royalties from those sales.

5.  Some people used multi-level networking selling well known brands, such as Tupperware, Shaklee, Amway, Avon...

6.  Others have always lived below their means and saved something from every paycheck and invested wisely.

7.  Some write books of their experience and sell them. Over time, it's a good source of income, because they only had to write the books once. Nowadays, there are plenty of self-publishing websites.

8.  Still others, plant gardens of vegetables and fruits or bake bread and pastries, and sell their goods at farmer's markets.

9.  They wrote computer programs that they sold online.  This is similar to the many "create and sell" ideas that many have used. Much depends on individual skillsets and talent.

10. Some people compose music and/or create crafts that they sell their products online nowadays as well. The possibilities are endless. Have you ever heard of itunes or etsy?

The point is that even though we are in a recession, there is still some hope that the economy will recover sometime in the future and someday there will be a time when we should retire. There are many ways to attain financial independence. I read recently, that the only limitations in life are the ones we place on ourselves... think about it.

What's holding you back? 

Obviously, if you were thinking of selling, you would want to be at the top of the cycle on the curve and if you were a buyer, you would hope to be at the bottom of the cycle of the curve. Most economists agree we are somewhere near or at the bottom; they are just debating how long it will last. Some say it will take months and others claim it will be years before they see a shortage of inventory, which will eventually cause prices to rise. One thing is for sure, desireability of locations will determine how the spectrum of inventory will be sold.

Truth is, no one really knows where the curves will turn for sure. And hindsight is the only clear vision to cycles. Most economists have agreed that the housing market recovery will be a much more localized result when it does start to happen. Even San Diego's current entry-level buyers that started looking for their first home in San Diego earlier this year, are beginning to realize they need to search outside the boundaries of the city of San Diego into the non-incorporated areas, to purchase a comparable size home in the same price range.

Some properties that first appeared to have reasonable pricing coming onto the market
have been closing escrow at up to 75% over their listed price, since ultimately it is the market that determines value. Several listing agents I have talked to have been receiving multiple offers, but that's what happens when homes are undervalued and underpriced to begin with... that's what I hear that banks are requesting. Whereas it causes a lot of sales activity in good locations, it also allows the industry to find and regain the true value and demand of our local market.

Investors and first time home buyers (hoping to close escrow by the November 30th deadline for their $8000 tax credit) are continuing to drive this market up as well. Needless to say, it has been a very competitive market for most entry level buyers in the last 6 months. Time is running out when considering most short sales and bank owned property take 2-6 months to close escrow. There is also a backlog of homes waiting in contingent status that are in front of what's actively listed.  Fence sitters really need to get off the fence with the understanding that they're already behind...

We're already at unprecedented price levels where rents are higher than house payments on entry-level property. The trap and the facade of renting is that people sometimes end up paying for a lifestyle that they just don't want to give up; it's short-term thinking at best. They will keep renting as long as they can afford the rent, but we all know that doesn't stay the same. I recently read that the difference between how rich people think vs. the rest of the population is their ability to plan their future with long-term thinking... just in case we all forgot, buying a home should be a "long-term" decision.

Are you ready to think like a rich person?