Friday, April 25, 2008

Laguna Beach Home Price Market Slides Back to Mid 2004



The March home sale prices for Laguna Beach have been put into Zillow's Zindex market gauge. The results? More decline.

If you track the present value back via the horizontal line, then go down to the time scale, you can see that the fair value in Laguna beach has rolled back to June, 2004. Many houses in Laguna are not selling. Why? They are priced much more than June 2004 values. Not good news for homeowners, but either they want to sell or they don't - it is that simple.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

50 Percent Decline In Laguna


Arch Beach Heights is a good family neighborhood in Laguna Beach and has some of the lower end homes that were inflated during the bubble.
Take 947 Acapulco for example. It is a pretty much common 3 bedroom long narrow 2 story ABH home.
Present List Price: $1,049,000
Last Sale Price: $2,100,000 (July 2006).
The math is easy - if the seller (I assume a bank) gets the asking price, the total loss will exceed $1,100,000, including a 5 or 6% real estate agent commission.

This is a HUGE haircut - more than a 50% price reduction. And.....I'm thinking that this house may not even sell for less. $900K? $800K? There may be more value loss coming soon.....

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

New Repo on 926 Van Dyke


Here's a pic of the inside of the a Van Dyke Street home in Laguna that I saw on a foreclosure list. Looks like an old house, but it could be nice. It is a 4 bd and only 1600 sq. ft. The old listing on the MLS only had one picture of the property, so I bet the place is not too pleasing to the eye.

This home was listed last year for $1.699M and was previously bought in 2005 for $1.350M.
The minimum bid required for the auction is over 1.5M, so this one will soon be owned by Washington Mutual, the lien holder. My hunch is that this home comes back on the MLS at $1.1M. I'll try to take a look at it after it comes back on the MLS.