Yucaipa, California Real Estate Foreclosures, Short Sale and Standard Sales Activity Yucaipa, CA and Calimesa in the 92399 area consists of many communities, like Chapman Heights, Wildwood Canyon Estates, Hidden Meadows, Bodie, North Bench, Whisper Ranch, Whisper Ridge and Yucaipa Valley not to mention other older communities as well. This is a monthly Real Estate report of Foreclosures, Short Sales and Standard Sales Active Listings, Closed Sales and Pending Sales from January 2010 in Yucaipa, California. Active Foreclosure Listings for Yucaipa, CA: Active Short Sale Listings for Yucaipa, CA: Active Standard Sale Listings for Yucaipa, CA:   Closed Foreclosure Sales for Yucaipa, CA: Closed Short Sales for Yucaipa, CA: Closed Standard Sales for Yucaipa, CA:   Pending (in Escrow) Foreclosures for Yucaipa, CA: Pending (in Escrow) Short Sales for Yucaipa, CA: Pending (in Escrow) Standard Sales for Yucaipa, CA:                 18 22     38    18 7 7   27                                   13  14 These numbers can give us a general idea of what type of listings and sales are currently in the Yucaipa, California area from 1/1/10 to 1/31/10. Keep in mind these numbers do not reflect properties currently under the status of Backup Offer, Contingent to Show, Expired, Canceled, Hold Do Not Show or Withdrawn. All data and numbers regarding Foreclosures, Short Sales and Standard Sales per MLS.     These numbers can give us a general idea of what type of listings and sales are currently in the Yucaipa, California area from 1/1/10 to 1/31/10. Keep in mind these numbers do not reflect properties currently under the status of Backup Offer, Contingent to Show, Expired, Canceled, Hold Do Not Show or Withdrawn. All data and numbers regarding Foreclosures, Short Sales and Standard Sales per MLS.   For more information or if you'd like to have listings sent directly to your email FOR FREE call or email us now:

Yucaipa, California Real Estate REO Bank-Owned, Short Sales and Standard Sales Activity

Yucaipa, CA and Calimesa in the 92399 area consists of many communities, like Chapman Heights, Wildwood Canyon Estates, Hidden Meadows, Bodie, North Bench, Whisper Ranch, Whisper Ridge and Yucaipa Valley not to mention other older communities as well. This is a monthly Real Estate report of REO Bank-Owned, Short Sales and Standard Sales Active Listings, Closed Sales and Pending Sales from December 2009 to January 2010 in Yucaipa, California.

Active REO Bank-Owned Listings for Yucaipa, CA: 45

Active Short Sale Listings for Yucaipa, CA: 71

Active Standard Sale Listings for Yucaipa, CA: 94

Closed REO Bank-Owned Sales for Yucaipa, CA: 19

Closed Short Sales for Yucaipa, CA: 10

Closed Standard Sales for Yucaipa, CA: 13

Pending REO Bank-Owned Sales for Yucaipa, CA: 42

Pending Short Sales for Yucaipa, CA: 29

Pending Standard Sales for Yucaipa, CA: 16

These numbers can give us a general idea of what type of listings and sales are currently in the Yucaipa, California area from 12/15/09 to 1/15/10. Keep in mind these numbers do not reflect properties currently under the status of Backup Offer, Contingent to Show, Expired, Canceled, Hold Do Not Show or Withdrawn.

For more information or if you have any questions please feel free to call or email us using our contact info below.

Glenn Alan Montenero was my "baby brother.' He was born between my sophomore and junior year in high school on the sunny afternoon of August 26, 1963. Oh my God! I couldn't believe my parents were actually still having sex. All that embarrassment changed the instant he was born and I got my first glimpse. Here was this cute little person with bright shiny brown eyes. My brother! How I loved him. My parents named him Glenn Alan, but I soon called him "Pookie." I called him that as a baby, as a child and, much to his chagrin, as an adult. He told me as an adult;" You can't call me that now, I have children, " so I gleefully changed it to Pookie Daddy and taught his three girls to call him that. I even put up a website called PookieDaddy.com

Some of my favorite memories of my brother were teaching him how to ride a bike, and how to swim. We spent a lot of time together even after I moved out and was married. I would drive to my parent's home and take him with me while we lived in California.

Our parents divorced when Glenn was a little boy and, unfortunately, he became the "political football" between them. While that hurts and is hard to understand as a child, I believe it played a major role in Glenn's life. It also drew us closer together as brother and sister. He spent summers with me in Illinois. He had a strong love of Country so when he was 18, he enlisted in the Air Force and became a K-9 bomb dog handler. He served our country for 8 years and was honorably discharged. He sought a career in law enforcement and was a corrections officer for the State of California. This job suited him well because on issues of right or wrong there was no black or white for my brother.

Anyone who knew Glenn, knew that he was very intelligent and had he chosen to, could have gone to college, and done anything he wanted to in the material world. But that was not Glenn's stated goal in life. That was not my brother.

Glenn on a number of occasions told me that what really mattered most to him was having the family life he didn't have as a child. It meant having a loving wife who shared his goals and interests and having children who could grow up in a loving home and know the values of Family, God, Country and to follow their dad and learn to become Ham Operators.

Glenn's goals in life were achieved when he found and married his wife Tammy, who shared his values and interests and when he became the proud father of three beautiful girls: Amanda, Megan and Lindsey.

We would talk on the phone weekly, sometimes more. He would always tell me stories about how proud he was of his girls and how well they were doing in school. My 2 oldest nieces, Amanda and Megan were each the youngest children in the United States to get their Ham operator licenses. My brother taught them well. He taught many others, too. He volunteered his time with eight different non-profit organizations in the Southern California area.

The measure of a person's life is not the Number of days one lives but how one lives those days. And, it is not the Quantity but the Quality of ones life that really matters. Glenn lived his life well. I tell myself that as I sit here writing this with tears in my eyes. We always thought there would be more time that we could spend together. For Christmas and Mother's Day each year my husband and I would travel to Kansas to see his 97 year old mother. We believed that each of those days might be her last, and that should be our first priority. There would be more time with Glenn later. There wasn't. Not enough. Not nearly enough. How I wish I could have had the opportunity to say goodbye. I didn't. There was only a devastating phone call from Tammy, my sister-in-law and just like that my life was forever changed.

I read somewhere that when you lose your parents, you lose your past. When you lose a spouse, you lose your present. When you lose a child you lose your future. ...and when you lose a sibling you lose your past, present and future. For the first 6 months after his death I believed that was true. I had trouble getting out of bed in the morning and sleeping at night. The relationship with my brother was the longest relationship in my life with the exception of our parents. I knew him from the day he was born until the day he died. Shortly before his death we had had a long discussion about how it felt like we were orphans because now both our parents were dead. We talked about how important the family ties were. I begged him to come visit us in Texas. I had made the last trip to California when our father was dying in 2006. He said in that last conversation; "It's not going to happen any time soon!"

It has been a hard 10 months for me and I'm afraid. I'm terrified that I will lose someone else close to me, my husband, one of my children, grandchildren or a close friend. You think about death when your parents die, but in many cases it is expected. Your parents are supposed to die before you do. My brother's death was for me the first time I faced my own mortality. I never hang up the phone with my husband or children without telling them; "I love you." One day I will be here, and one day I will be gone. I am going to live my life as best I can. My sister-in-law Tammy is doing well and the girls are blossoming. I try to call them often and we correspond via email and Facebook. When I call, on the fourth ring the answer machine picks up and there is my brother's voice. For a while I couldn't bear to hear it. It hurt too much. Now I smile through the tears because I can remember and I will never forget. He will be here with me always.

Below is a picture of my brother's legacy and future. His beautiful daughters, Lindsey, Megan and Amanda.

Happy Birthday Glenn Alan Montenero. All is well here on Earth. We miss you, bro!!!

Could it be? Could home sales in California actually be rising from the grave? Recent reports indicate there is a lot of activity going on that may indicate a reawakening of the California housing market.

As many of you know, no state has been harder hit by the housing bust than California. Foreclosures in California have piled up since the beginning of the real estate downturn and California has endured some of the worst declines in property value and prices in the nation. According to a report by the California Association of Realtors (CAR), the median price of a single-family home sold in February 2009 was $247,590, down a whopping 41% from February 2008.

But the median price of a single family home isn't the only thing that's dropped; new home construction in California has nearly disappeared. According to the National Association of Homebuilders (NAH), housing permits in December 2008 shrank to about a quarter of what they were during the boom years.

Aside from all of the gloom and doom, there actually may be light at the end of the tunnel. There are signs that the California housing market may be coming out of this tailspin. Sales volume is increasing, investors are returning to investing in real estate, and home inventories are shrinking.

Buyers are Buying

Low prices have brought out buyers by the droves. In February, according to CAR, buyers purchased more than 600,000 homes, more than 80% more than they bought in February 2007. Most of this buying activity is where home prices are off anywhere from 40-60% from peak prices.

In fact, according to CAR, existing home sales have been rising strongly year on year for the past eleven months. Unsold inventory of existing homes, in months of supply, has fallen to just 6.5 months for detached home listings, down from an astronomical 15 months just one year ago. In metro areas like Sacramento and San Diego, unsold home inventories have dropped to 4.0 months at current sales rates!

The biggest gains in sales and largest decrease in inventory appear to be occurring in the lower-priced listings, listings $300,000 and less, which are more attractive and affordable for potential home buyers.

Two major factors for this is foreclosures and distressed sales. In fact, months of inventory for property prices at or below $750,000 have been cut in half from a year ago!

As an example, in the Sun City area of Riverside County, home prices have fallen more than 35% over the past 12 months. Nearly two-thirds of home sales in the Sun City area in February were foreclosed properties owned by banks. According to CAR, the sales rebound is largely centered around areas that have experienced the biggest impact from the subprime crisis.

In more stable communities where fewer homes were saddled with toxic mortgages, prices have not crashed as badly and sales are rebounding more slowly. But foreclosures still play a major part of sales in these areas.

Most analysts foresee continued price declines in California, according to Nicholas Retsinas, director of Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. "But [there'll be] a slowing of that decline, which portends the end of price drops."

There might be signs that this is already happening. In Long Beach, price per square foot increased 5%, to $360, in February.

Investors are Returning

Another positive sign that real estate markets in California don't have much further to fall is that investors are returning to some markets. Some investors are even putting groups of investors together who are planning on buying single family homes in bulk.

As an example, John Dugan, a real estate investor in based in San Francisco, has purchased 3-840 square foot, 2 bedroom/1 bath duplexes in Sacramento for between $35,000 to $80,000 each, down from the $180,000 to $200,000 selling prices these townhomes sold for just a few years ago.

Using a portion of cash from his IRA, John paid cash for the first townhouse. He rents it out for $750 a month, realizing a profit of $550 after dues and common charges. That's an extremely nice $19% ROI (return on investment), without figuring on appreciation.

"This kind of pricing is something you only think of as Midwestern, not Californian," he said.

Supply is Dropping

In a typical, "normal" real estate market, supply should be in the six to seven month range of supply. According to CAR, unsold home inventory in California now compares favorably with the rest of the nation, where there is a 9.7 month supply of homes on the market (source: NAR).

One wildcard, however, is that banks have kept many repossessed homes off the market. Banks are "spoon feeding" foreclosed homes out very slowly so they don't overload the market. If they release a lot of properties during the heavy spring buying season, they "will be eaten right up by buyers."

Could the end be near?

All of these factors add up to a more optimistic forecast for California, which is seen as a harbinger of things to come for the rest of the country.

If home prices should happen to continue to decline for the rest of 2009, the pace of that decline will slow, but we could see home price stabilization by early next year.

To Buy or Not to Buy

Is it a Buyer's Market? Is now the time to buy your home? You be the judge

As most of us have witnessed to one extent or another, 2007 and 2008 were two of the worst years for the real estate market that we've seen in our lifetime. Some have compared the current real estate market slump to the real estate market crash of the 1980s, when the affordability of home ownership dropped drastically due to record-high mortgage interest rates, which peaked at a whopping 18.45 percent in October of 1982.

While prices of real estate may not improve much in 2009, there are indications that we may see some semblance of a recovery this year. This ultimately means we could actually see an improvement in real estate prices that have been tumbling in a downward spiral for the past two years.

One of the main reasons for this glimmer of hope is that many "experts" anticipated the market bottoming-out in 2008. The real estate market is cyclical; recovery can't begin until the market reaches rock bottom. In order to know where we're going, we need to know where we've been; in order to understand the recovery of the real estate market, it's important to first look at the factors that left us with the real estate market we currently find ourselves in.

Factors Attributed to the Current Real Estate Market

One of the most important factors atttributed to the current real estate market is that prices in many areas throughout the U.S. doubled between 2000 and 2005, the so-called Real Estate Boom of the Millennium. In some cases, in states like California, Florida and Nevada, prices of some homes actually tripled. Not surprisingly, these are three of the hardest-hit states for foreclosures in the current real estate market. Coincidence? Hardly.

As prices continued to increase, more and more people found themselves unable to afford the purchase of a home; tops on the list being entry-level home buyers, otherwise known as First Time Home Buyers. As the number of buyers able to purchase real estate started to decline, home sales began to decline. And as in any model of Supply and Demand, as the demand for homes started to level off and then decrease, prices for real estate and home values soon started following the same downward spiral into the proverbial toilet.

Another factor attributed to the current real estate market was the issuance of subprime loans; high risk/low down payment loans issued by lenders and home builders to home buyers who didn't have the monetary capacity and/or creditworthiness to purchase a home in the first place. Armed (pun intended) with ARM's (adjustable rate mortgages), lenders and builders feeling the need for greed lured unsuspecting home buyers into loans they couldn't afford; especially when their ARM's matured within the 12-24 month period of being issued.

When the real estate market came to a screeching halt in the spring of 2007, a large number of home owners who had purchased homes in active markets were suddenly left with ARM loans that had matured, increased monthly payments due to their loan being reset with higher interest rates (monthly payments hundreds and in some cases even thousands of dollars higher than their original loans), plummeting property values and homes worth far less than the balance due on their loan (otherwise known as negative equity).

At this point, the rate of loan defaults and foreclosures began to rise exponentially. Short sales, REO's and bank owned homes became the "new" buzz words in real estate. As more foreclosured homes came on the market, inventory of homes began to skyrocket as values plummeted. As inventories increased, builders stopped building homes and started defaulting on their own loans. Economic growth began coming to a standstill; job layoffs and a record number of people on unemployment have further fueled loan defaults and the subsequent foreclosures that have followed.

While it has taken some time, assistance is now being provided to current as well as prospective homeowners. On February 17^th, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Portions of this bill will allow home owners to negotiate with their lenders to refinance their loans and/or obtain loan modifications on their existing loan, which is anticipated will help stabilize the rate of foreclosures. The bill is also intended to help jumpstart home sales by allowing First Time Home Buyers to take an $8,000 tax credit on a home purchased before December 31^st, 2009.

While it seems like everywhere we look we see and hear reports stating the doom and gloom of the current real estate market, believe it or not, there are actually markets in the U.S. where home values and prices continue to increase.

On average, real estate prices nation-wide are about 5% less than they were last year; that said, many areas are still experiencing price increases, largely due to local economic growth. Examples of buyers who are capable of purchasing homes include real estate investors, First Time Home Buyers and homeowners who are selling their homes to either purchase smaller homes (downsizing) or move into a retirement community. Examples of such markets include Cape Coral, FL; Phoenix, AZ; Bayside Park, MS; Charlotte, NC; Beaumont, TX and Knoxville, TN.

Remember, when all is said and done, real estate is still the single most valuable vehicle for creating financial security and independent wealth. Will the market turn around? History is on it's side that it will.

Randy Fox is a Realtor with RealEstate.Com, Realtors and is based in Yucaipa, CA. He can be reached by email at randy.fox@realestate.com or you can visit his website, Www.YucaipaProperties.Net.