Voak Homes » Monday Morning Coffee

Cash Flow Machine – 3 New Properties

Scott Voak — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:44:37 +0000

Monday Morning Coffee – A look at February Numbers

Scott Voak — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 05:28:34 +0000

Monday Morning Coffee

San Diego Real Estate Sales – February, 2011

Good morning,

I hope you enjoyed the great weather this weekend. Zach and I took a walk around the neighborhood and it was nice to see some flowers blooming and hear the birds chirping away. It was also nice to see that last neighbor taking down his Christmas lights – made me feel better about not putting the dishes away.

A quick look at San Diego home sales in February shows a continuing slow down in sales this year when compared to last year. However, last year was bolstered by the First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit. Until June, our numbers are going to be compared to numbers that are artificially high, so don’t put too much emphasis on year over year number. However, just so you know what they are: Read more ...

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 – Now that that’s over, let’s sell some houses!

Scott Voak — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 23:39:22 +0000

Monday Morning Coffee

Time to Get to Work!

Good morning,

I hope you had a nice weekend – if you did, you are probably a Packers fan. As you could probably predict, real estate was slow this weekend as our clever plans to hold Saturday open houses and avoid the game didn’t work out as well as I hoped. Now that the season is over, all of you buyers can step out and buy houses now. Ok? Please?

This will be short this week, Cori and I have Zach’s 3 year IEP (this is the educational development plan that sets his goals and program direction for the next 3 years) tomorrow at 8:30 am and we’re a little bit wiped.

I did see a report that listed San Diego as the best market for appreciation this year and put the forecast at 3.5%. I would be very happy with that as right now we are still seeing a bit of a slide and if we end up with a positive 3.5%, that will be a strong showing.

Monday Morning Coffee – Early Look at January Numbers

Scott Voak — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:22:32 +0000

Monday Morning Coffee

January San Diego Home Sales Look to Dissappoint

Good morning,

I hope you had a nice weekend. Things were quiet for us this weekend as the weather kept us (and potential buyers) indoors. I am still seeing softness in the market as I will cover below. We did close a very good investment 3-plex for a client and will be working with him to get the vacant unit painted and rented, at which point he should be able to earn 8-9% a year on his down payment. I did spend some more time this weekend looking at other possibilities and crossed 3 off the list, but did find a duplex in Spring Valley with potential in the low $300k range.

Monday Morning Coffee – Paying off a 30-Year loan in 15 Years

Scott Voak — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:08:41 +0000

Monday Morning Coffee

Paying off Your Mortage Early

Good morning,

I hope you had a nice weekend. Last week I showed off my parenting skills. I had Zach already for the school bus (breakfast, potty, changed, etc) and we went in to say “goodbye” to Mommy and Cori asked, “What’s that all over his shirt”.

“Um, breakfast?” Turns out he caught a mild case of pneumonia and was out of school all week. Fortunately, the Dr. cleared him for the zoo on Saturday because Aunt Sussi came to town. After spending 5 hours looking at all the big animals, snakes, etc. his favorite? The bees. Could have done that at the park across the street.

I had a question for a buyer last week about taking a 30 year vs a 15 year loan. They mistakenly thought that paying a 30 year loan off in 1/2 the time meant doubling the payment. It definitely does not. If you are thinking of taking a 15 year loan instead of a 30 year loan, I am actually in favor of taking the longer loan to give yourself flexibility. There is a lot of interest now in paying off debt early, and the slightly lower interest rate on the shorter loan can be appealing. However, given that the economy is going to be a bit rocky for a few years, I am more in favor of the flexibility of a lower payment so that if there is a job loss or a cut in pay, the money you have set aside will cover your mortgage a bit longer and give you a chance to recover. If you do take a longer loan, you still have the flexibility to pay it off more quickly, but you can actually structure the payments to your needs. Let me give you 2 examples to show the difference. For each example, let’s assume a $400,000 at 5% interest amortized over 30 years which gives a monthly payment of $2,147.29.

Monday Morning Coffee

Scott Voak — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 13:56:51 +0000

Monday Morning Coffee

Busy News Week

Good morning,

I hope you had a nice weekend. Seems like we finally gave into all the colds swirling around us and were down for most of the weekend here. So, not a lot of fun stories to tell (lucky you!) We are seeing a fair amount of activity, which is opposite from most everyone else I talk to. However, ours is isolated to a couple of unique properties on the sell side and some investors who are taking advantage of the 10% return deals we are finding to make some purchases.

On the investment front, I did find 2 this week. One is in National City and has been re-habbed. It is a duplex and probably can go for low $300k and will return about 10% if you manage it yourself. The other is in Spring Valley and is 7 units that will pull about 12% return but need about $750k to purchase. Let me know if you want more information, they are up on the investment site.

Monday Morning Coffee – More Investment Opportunities

Scott Voak — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 21:42:27 +0000

Monday Morning Coffee

Cash Flow Investments

Good morning,

I hope you had a nice weekend and are getting 2011 off to a good start. It’s pretty quiet around here, but we are gearing up for a busy 2011.

Not much new market wise, as the year is just getting underway, but I am hearing about more problems starting to rear up in the commerical real estate area where the rents are supposedly stabilizing, but the vacancies are high and there are a very large number of delinquencies. Let’s home the stock market keeps going up and people start spending a more and more.

We are finding some great opportunities for investors. This weekend I drove about 8 of them and spoke with tenants in 2 of those. Of the 8, only 3 (maybe 4) look worth pursuing, but if you have access to the investment site, they are posted there now with the financials. If you don’t, they are all in the City Heights area (there was one in Vista, but it needs a LOT of work, so I skipped it). The nice thing is that 2 of the properties can be picked up for under $300k (1 under $200k) and the cash on cash return is over 10%. There are also 2 larger properties where sellers would like to combine adjacant investments and sell as one. One of these is around $700k and the other close to $1M – again, returning about 10%. Let me know if you do not have access to the financial blog and want more information.

Monday Morning Coffee – Happy New Year

Scott Voak — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:34:02 +0000

Monday Morning Coffee

Happy New Year & Happy Cash Flow

Good morning,

I hope you had a great New Year and that the entire holiday season was great for everyone. New Years was quite a change for us, as just a few years ago (BZ – Before Zach), Cori and I would be the typical “Party Animals” on New Year’s Eve, This year, we spent it with Zach and all the animals at the zoo – and were wiped out and in bed by 9pm. At least it was nice to start the new year without a headache!

A quick look at the December numbers for San Diego home sales is dissappointing. Not so much because sales look to be down about 25% from last year, as that was somewhat expected. The aspect that worries me a little more is that the number of homes in escrow (those that can close in the next 45 days) is down about 20%, which means 2011 is going to get off to a slower start than we had hoped.

Monday Morning Coffee – Dec. 19th

Scott Voak — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 18:53:16 +0000

Monday Morning Coffee

Christmas Shopping isn’t Done Yet

Good morning,

I hope your shopping is finished (or at least more finished than mine is!) I guess we can’t complain too much about one week a year of bad weather, but wouldn’t you know it would be the week we all are running in and out of malls – take your vitamin C and Chicken Soup.

We are continuing to make changes to our systems at year end to provide better service next year. Of course, we wanted to be done December 1, but are now hoping to beat January 1. One of the biggest changes is in staffing. My assistant, Tanya, has left to take a job with the Department of the Navy. It is a great job and they are paying for her to get an MBA – I wish her the best of luck, she was a great asset and this new position offers her great opportunities. We are very fortunate to have found a replacement for her quickly. Elidie joined our team on Wednesday and is quickly getting up to speed. She comes from a strong real estate background and has been an office manager (those of you who know me know that I need someone to manage me). I am looking forward to continuing our growth path with Elidie on the team. Read more ...