Voak Homes » Economy

Monday Morning Coffee

Scott Voak — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 05:09:13 +0000

Monday Morning Coffee

Anybody Need a Few (thousand) Notepads?

Good morning,

I hope you had a nice weekend – and that those of you here locally enjoyed the week off with your kids (although you are more likely celebrating their return to school). My sister did a great job of making me feel good as she called to let me know that without much training she ran the Golden Gate 1/2 Marathon this weekend and took 4th among females, winning her age group. I’m going to get back up to running 3 miles without stopping again sometime. Really.

One note from last week’s letter. A couple of people told me they thought I was overly negative on the housing market, especially since I sell homes for a living. My goal is not to be negative, but it is also not to pretend things are great when I don’t believe they are. While I would love everyone who gets this to be referring their friends and relatives to me for both the easy sales and the difficult short sales, I want you to be able to trust I will be honest with them and not give them a “sales pitch” to win their business.

Monday Morning Coffee

Scott Voak — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 20:08:42 +0000

Monday Morning Coffee

Stupid Peppers!

Good morning,
I hope you had a great weekend. I had another interesting (and humorous for you) event in the garden. Cori and I were cleaning up some tomato plants that were way past their prime and decided to sample a lone bell pepper from a sickly looking plant. It was ok, so we decided to try a sample of the smaller sweet peppers we are growing. The timing went something like:

• Scott takes a small bite and the taste is neutral.
• Scott pops the small pepper into his mouth, chews 3 times and swallows.
• Cori says, “Hey, didn’t you plant some habaneros back here”
• OMG!!!!
That was painful.

Real estate was not quite as bad, but it is definitely slow. It is too early to look at the October numbers, but I will have them here next week and on the radio show Wednesday (AM 1000 at 7:30am). I expect sales numbers to be down more than 20% from last year. Read more ...

Inflation, Deflation, and Investing in Real Estate

Scott Voak — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 06:45:06 +0000

Real Estate for Cash Flow Rather than Appreciation

It seems like the experts can’t decide if we are going to have inflation or deflation. If you’re a real estate investor, you need to figure which is more likely, and then decide what it means for your investment goals. My belief is that the answer is fairly complicated and that many people need to look at real estate as a good investment, but for a different reason and with different goals than in the immediate past.

It is my opinion that we have been and currently are in a deflationary period. Home prices are down, rents are down, milk and eggs are cheaper. Even if an item itself has not gone down in price, the consumer has shifted to less expensive alternatives (when was the last time you saw a new Hummer on the road?) We are in an unusual period where consumers are deleveraging. Most people I talk to say if you gave them an extra $10k, they would use it to pay off a credit card, not buy more “stuff”. We are all busy paying for the fun toys we bought and trips we took several years ago. At least the fortunate are, there are close to 20% of us that are unemployed or underemployed. So, I think that right now, we are in a deflationary period, but what happens next?

I believe that the current period of deflationary prices and low interest rates will be replaced in several years by higher inflation and higher interest rates. If you agree, you can skip to the end of this post to the real estate analysis, if you are not sure, you can read the next couple sections to see if it makes sense. Read more ...

Monday Morning Coffee – US Resale Home Sales

Scott Voak — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:45:23 +0000

Monday Morning Coffee

US Home Resales Come in Low – But Within Expectations

Good morning,

I hope you had a great weekend. Ours was very quiet – a lot of housecleaning!

Last week, the August resale numbers came out. As expected, it was the lowest August on record, but it was in line with what was expected. The hope is that after a couple of months of “down” demand after the tax credit expiration, that sales will start to get back to normal in the next couple of months.

Looking at current San Diego numbers for September, it does not look like we will apprach last year’s number of around 3,100 homes sold. We are currently sitting around 1,700 with a few days left in the month. If the number gets up to 2,500, then we will be off 20% from last year, which probably would not be too concerning considering July was off by the same amount. Read more ...

Resale Numbers and the Success of HAMP

Scott Voak — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:20:14 +0000

Monday Morning Coffee – Home Sales Data out Tomorrow

Scott Voak — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:14:36 +0000

Monday Morning Coffee

New Listings Plus Home Sales Data out Tomorrow

Good morning,

I hope you had a nice weekend. Mine was interupted by something called the Security Tool virus. A bundle of joy that took 5 hours to fix (of course, I didn’t fix it – luckly, I have a client who is much more familiar with network security who spent a good part of his weekend fixing it. Thanks Marc!) I did find time to work with Cori and make our first ever batch of jam from our tree (golden nectarines). The good news is it tastes good and the jars sealed. The bad news is it didn’t jell, so we have lots of golden nectarine sorta jelly runny stuff. Oh well.

This week, the big real estate news will come on Tuesday when the National Association of Realtors announces the Existing Home Sales for July. Last month was off a bit as the affect of the tax credit started to appear. This month, I expect it to be off a lot. The “experts” are predicting a rate of 4.65M annual sales (June was 5.27M). I think that the number will be closer to 4.0M – in which case the stock market will probably react negatively as a number that low could be seen as a strong indicator of a double dip in housing. Read more ...

Voak Homes » Economy

Monday Morning Coffee

Monday Morning Coffee

Anybody Need a Few (thousand) Notepads?

Monday Morning Coffee

Monday Morning Coffee

Stupid Peppers!

Inflation, Deflation, and Investing in Real Estate

Real Estate for Cash Flow Rather than Appreciation

Monday Morning Coffee – US Resale Home Sales

Monday Morning Coffee

US Home Resales Come in Low – But Within Expectations

Resale Numbers and the Success of HAMP

Monday Morning Coffee – Home Sales Data out Tomorrow

Monday Morning Coffee

New Listings Plus Home Sales Data out Tomorrow

Updated Foreclosure Data

Monday Morning Coffee – Quarterly Mortgage Report

Inside the Numbers

Treasury Department Foreclosure Report