Randy Fox

As posted on my website, www.yucaipaproperties.net on April 6, 2009

As some of you may have noticed, it's bee a couple of weeks since my last post on www.yucaipaproperties.net. I'm working on a new blog platform on an outside website that will be directly linked to this website that should be up and running soon. I'm in the process of re-posting my blogs from this website into the new blog platform. I thank you for your patience as I work on the transition.

In the meantime, here's a new blog regarding how to get your property reassessed to lower your property taxes.

Most of us have experienced a sharp decline in our property values over the last couple of years thanks to the so-called "bust" of the real estate market.

One thing that does not normally happen automatically is the reassessment of your property value by the San Bernardino and Riverside County tax assessors other than when you are buying a property.

While property re-assessment is a given when properties are bought and sold, you have to submit a request to have your property reassessed if you feel your property value has declined.

I submitted such a request to the San Bernardino County Tax Assessor last week through their website. Surprisingly, I received an email from the tax assessor's liason today:

"Hello Mr. Fox,

Your attached Prop 8 - Decline in Market Value Review request has been received. However, your property has been alredy been reassessed.

The Assessor's Office reviewed approximately 235,000 single-family residences and condominiums for the 2009 assessment roll under the Decline in Market Value provisions.

Any home or condominium acquired or newly constructed after January 1, 2001 was automatically reviewed in addition to any property whose owner or authorized agent requested a review regardless of property type, date of acquisition, or when the new construction was completed. All property that was reduced under this provision for the 2008 assessment roll will be reviewed for possible further adjustment for 2009.

Notices of value changes were mailed out starting May 4, 2009. You should receive your notice within the next week.

The notice will have the appraiser's phone number should you have any
questions or further information for them to consider."

Sheila D. Raines
Special Assistant to
Dennis Draeger, Assistant Assessor

After sending Ms. Raines an email thanking her for the information, she then responded with an email back:

"Many homeowners have e-mailed me to let me know they received their notice already. Most are happy with their new assessment. Check your mailbox."

Oh, you can bet on it Sheila.

So you may be receiving a letter from the San Bernardino County Tax Assessor with a new assessed value of your property. If you don't, be sure to contact them for a reassessment.

I would encourage those of you living in Riverside county to contact your tax assessor and see if they are automatically reassessing property values as well. If they aren't, submit a request for them to do so.

One other note: I also received a letter in the mail from a company telling me they can help me ask the county for a reassessment; all for the low, low price of $179.00. Beware, this is a ploy to get your money for something you can do for free through your county's tax assessor office. As stated on the San Bernardino County Tax Assessor's website:

"Various private companies are mailing solicitations to property owners offering their services to file a Decline in Value review request forms with the Assessor's Office for fees ranging from $95 to thousands of dollars. These applications may be filed free of charge directly with the Assessor's Office by the property owner. Property owners may call the San Bernardino County Assessor's Office toll free at (877) 885-7654 or visit our website for more information regarding an online or mail-in Decline in Value application at:

http://www.sbcounty.gov/assessor/Decline.asp "

For more information on free services provided by the San Bernardino County Tax Assessor's Office, click on the link below:

http://www.sbcounty.gov/assessor/FreeServices.asp

You can reach me with any questions at randy.fox@realestate.com or through my website www.yucaipaproperties.net.

Tags: Property Assessment, tax assessor, decline in property value, Riverside county, San Bernardino county, Randy Fox, RealEstate.Com, Realtors, Yucaipa, ,Redlands, Beaumont, Banning, Calimesa, Mentone, Loma Linda, Highland California, Inland Empire, real estate, property, properties, real estate agent, realtor

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.

Yucaipa Home Sales Up 6 Percent in May

Special to the News Mirror by Randy Fo

Monthly home sales information allows you to keep your finger on the pulse of the local real estate market and provides you with a valuable tool should you be thinking of buying or selling a home.

Home sales figures for the month of May 2008 were up 6% compared to sales for April; 36 homes were sold in May as compared to 34 closed sales in April. The average Days on Market were 83 as compared to 84 days for April.

An increase in unit sales and a decrease in Average Days on Market indicate increased market activity; however, the average price for homes sold fell 1% in April. The average selling price for homes sold in May was $287,838 as compared to $291,183 in April.

Street Number	Street Name	Year Built	Sq. Ft.	Bedrooms	Baths	Days on Market	List Price	Selling Price
38450	Shadow Valley	1999	3200	3	4	39	$789,900	$750,000
13609	Mesa Sol	1991	3532	4	3	86	$699,990	$643,000
34875	Maplewood	2002	3614	4	3	133	$519,900	$440,000
33990	Redhawk	2007	2737	4	3	49	$429,000	$399,000
34409	Forest Oaks	2007	3064	5	3	274	$495,900	$386,900
35665	OAK CREEK	2002	2069	3	2	260	$489,000	$384,000
11846	Ashland	2001	3585	5	4	7	$385,000	$375,000
11875	Grayhawk	2004	2991	4	3	254	$427,900	$354,900
35613	Date	1992	1980	4	2	52	$349,900	$348,000
13579	Suncreek	1997	1766	4	3	69	$339,900	$334,900
34209	Pinehurst	2004	1840	3	3	161	$429,000	$330,000
33998	Lily #16		2928	4	4	60	$356,860	$321,464
11648	2nd	1930	2400	5	2	163	$400,000	$320,000
33590	Wildflower	1995	2219	5	3	200	$479,500	$320,000
34635	Yale	2004	2253	3	3	19	$320,000	$315,000
34062	Pinehurst	2004	1928	4	2	98	$335,000	$305,000
11802	Fairway	2000	1458	3	2	72	$297,500	$292,500
33557	Pecan	1997	1560	3	3	161	$318,900	$260,000
12550	10th	1977	1838	3	2	31	$254,900	$254,500
36127	Fair Oak	1973	1285	3	2	21	$235,000	$235,000
35240	Santa Maria	1964	1264	3	2	46	$225,000	$230,000
35240	Santa Rosa	1964	1135	2	2	5	$229,000	$229,000
32911	Avenue E	1950	1042	3	2	10	$235,000	$225,000
31381	Sierra Linda	1958	1038	2	1	77	$245,900	$224,000
13639	Sumac	1988	1429	3	3	51	$234,900	$200,110
35201	Vineyard	1955	1538	4	2	8	$180,500	$200,000
35024	Shasta	1964	1134	3	2	59	$234,900	$199,900
35155	Cedar	1953	1192	3	2	155	$249,000	$199,000
35281	Santa Rosa	1964	1264	3	2	13	$196,900	$198,000
11998	PEACH TREE	1962	1486	2	2	155	$235,000	$190,000
11946	Peach Tree	1962	1326	2	2	38	$185,500	$180,500
32154	Ave. D	1955	1040	2	1	35	$180,000	$180,000
34153	Eureka	1960	1270	2	1	13	$164,900	$166,500
35056	Avenue D	1949	1000	3	2	65	$156,550	$145,000
34954	Acacia	1948	738	2	1	39	$129,000	$129,000
35372	Avenue A	1910	767	3	1	10	$95,900	$115,000

Randy Fox is a residential and commercial real estate agent with Century 21 Best Properties in Yucaipa. He can be reached by phone at (909) 965-2937 or email at randy.fox@century21.com. He also has a website; www.yucaipaproperties.net

As Seen in the May 8, 2008 Edition of the Yucaipa News Mirror

Yucaipa Home Sales for April 2008

Special to the News Mirror by Randy Fox

As my way of keeping you informed with the current trends of the local Yucaipa real estate market, the first of each month I will provide you with a list of home sales figures from the prior month.

This information will allow you to keep your finger on the pulse of the local real estate market and will provide you with a valuable tool should you be thinking of buying or selling your home.

Home sales figures for the month of April 2008 were down 8.8% compared to March; 34 homes were sold in April as compared to 37 closed sales in March. The average selling price for homes sold in April was $291,183; the average Days on Market were 84; just a little shy of 3 months.

Street Number	Street Name	Year Built	Bedrooms	Baths Total	Days on Market	List Price	Selling Price
13740	Pine View	2000	4	4	96	$659,000	$595,000
34846	Maplewood	2003	4	2.5	371	$459,999	$435,000
34610	Yale	2003	4	3	10	$425,000	$435,000
33705	Mckenny	2005	4	4	11	$409,900	$410,000
33731	McKenny	2005	4	4	98	$455,500	$405,000
13509	Margaret	1999	4	3	131	$409,000	$400,000
35487	Birchwood	1980	3	2	18	$399,999	$393,000
34388	Forest Oaks	2007	4	2.5	280	$399,000	$379,000
34422	Forest Oaks	2005	5	3	27	$379,000	$354,900
34315	Forest Oaks	2005	4	3	12	$344,400	$341,000
34220	Pinehurst	2004	3	3	77	$326,900	$317,500
11643	Shadow Hills	2002	3	2	27	$327,000	$317,000
11894	Avenel	2004	4	3	12	$315,000	$315,000
12480	Nicoya	1962	3	2	30	$324,900	$313,000
33455	Wildflower	1995	4	3	4	$300,000	$305,000
34940	Date	1965	3	2	339	$289,000	$289,000
34927	Heatherview	1989	3	2	15	$289,900	$280,000
32631	Avenue E	1977	3	2	34	$285,900	$272,900
33112	Eagle Point	2002	3	3	12	$271,900	$271,900
34808	Shasta	1962	3	2	69	$274,900	$266,000
11839	Avalon	1990	3	2	6	$270,000	$265,000
35344	Ross	1992	3	2	191	$289,900	$260,000
13643	Sumac	1988	3	3	129	$230,000	$230,000
12942	Leith Way	1960	2	2	25	$211,600	$219,500
35639	Rainier Street	1962	2	1	167	$230,000	$217,000
34010	Mariposa	1964	4	2	13	$210,000	$215,000
35434	Yucaipa	1958	3	2	33	$209,876	$205,000
11824	Douglas	1965	2	2	28	$209,900	$190,000
34855	Iris	1960	3	2	143	$190,000	$190,000
35209	Avenue C	1927	3	1	68	$179,800	$179,800
12612	13th	1947	2	1	17	$185,840	$177,500
34688	Avenue E	1959	2	2	56	$199,900	$170,000
35245	Avenue C	1950	2	1	177	$169,900	$160,000
34110	Wildwood Canyon	1958	3	1	121	$159,900	$150,000

Randy Fox is a residential and commercial real estate agent with Century 21 Best Properties in Yucaipa. He can be reached by phone at (909) 965-2937 or email at randy.fox@century21.com. He also has a website; www.yucaipaproperties.net