US heading for house price crash, Greenspan tells buyers

Thanks for finally saying what has been obvious for the last year or so. Do you think the folks who are still buying $600,000 condos with interest only loans are listening?

WALL STREET shuddered yesterday after Alan Greenspan, the United States’ central banker, warned American homebuyers that they risk a crash if they continue to drive property prices higher. He said that the US house-price spiral had become an economic imbalance, threatening stability like the country’s trade gap or its budget deficit.

Gated Summerlin community is shocked by armed robbery

Fred Pilot sent this link.

With gated neighborhoods already numerous around the valley, and more going up all the time, recent developments in the posh Siena golf course community in Summerlin might serve as a reality check. A man who stepped out of his Siena house on Cerotto Lane a little before 3 p.m. on Aug. 9 was robbed at gunpoint while walking to his mailbox. The victim and investigators surmised that the robber must have gotten into Siena by following a resident through one of the unguarded mechanical gates.

White House Deed Up for Auction.
Canadian Writer Discovers Original White House Deed Never Signed
From Fred Pilot, who is always on the lookout for a bargain. The deed is now for sale on EBay.

While doing research for his new book Night of the Realtors , Vancouver novelist David Jenneson discovered that the U.S. Government has no deed recording the property ownership for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – perhaps it never existed Jenneson's exhaustive inquiry revealed any valid transfer should have been signed and recorded in the early 1790s when George Washington himself ordered the purchase of the parcel from David Burnes, the farmer whom Washington personally referred to as the “obstinate Mr. Burnes.” A written request to the U.S. National Archives, the repository for records of that time, revealed startling results. After a thorough search, the National Archives could not find the deed for the White House!

Existing Home Sales Decline As Rates Rise
Pop?

WASHINGTON - Sales of previously owned homes fell in July as some house hunters were put off by galloping prices, but the pace of sales was still the third-highest ever, suggesting the red-hot market isn't cooling much. The latest snapshot of activity in the housing market released by the National Association of Realtors on Tuesday showed that July sales of existing homes — including single-family, town homes and condominiums — totaled 7.16 million units at a seasonally adjusted annual rate. That represented a 2.6 percent decline from June's record-high pace of 7.35 million units. Soaring home prices and to a lesser extent rising mortgage rates played a role in July's drop in sales — making it harder for some house hunters to take the leap into home ownership, analysts said.

Castle Holds Monty Python Jamboree
This must be one of the more fun-loving medieval gated communities. Do you smell elderberries?

Coconut shells have been a fixture behind the castle reception desk for a number of years, props for the legions of Monty Python fans who visit Doune, a key location for the film Monty Python And The Holy Grail...Last year, Historic Scotland bowed to the inevitable and staged Doune's first ever Monty Python Day, an event that attracted about 1,500 fans from all over the UK, and some from overseas, including a hen party from New York. The event was so successful that it is being repeated on September 4. Numbers have had to be limited to 500, however, after problems last year shepherding so many fans around such a confined space.

San Francisco Shuns Retired USS Iowa
This has nothing to do with HOAs. I just think it is such a supremely disgraceful action by the San Francisco city supervisors that it deserves to be publicized and condemned. Who do these creeps think they are, to sit in their little leftist enclave and pass a petty, nasty little judgment like this on the United States military? Maybe it's time that professional organizations planning conventions started boycotting San Francisco.

The USS Iowa joined in battles from World War II to Korea to the Persian Gulf. It carried President Franklin Roosevelt home from the Teheran conference of allied leaders, and four decades later, suffered one of the nation's most deadly military accidents. Veterans groups and history buffs had hoped that tourists in San Francisco could walk the same teak decks where sailors dodged Japanese machine-gun fire and fired 16-inch guns that helped win battles across the South Pacific. Instead, it appears that the retired battleship is headed about 80 miles inland, to Stockton, a gritty agricultural port town on the San Joaquin River and home of California's annual asparagus festival. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a former San Francisco mayor, helped secure $3 million to tow the Iowa from Rhode Island to the Bay Area in 2001 in hopes of making touristy Fisherman's Wharf its new home. But city supervisors voted 8-3 last month to oppose taking in the ship, citing local opposition to the Iraq war and the military's stance on gays, among other things.

With SB 137, making changes to HOAs

Marjorie Murray wrote this article on an important piece of legislation pending in Sacramento. It was published in the Sacramento Bee. She asked me to publish this so all you activists out there can keep track of this bill and do what is needed to get it passed.

SB 137 would leash homeowner associations that leap to use foreclosure to collect trivial amounts of late assessments owed homeowner associations (HOAs). The proposed law is long overdue.
Sen. Denise Ducheny's legislation would lay out a set of legal tools that HOAs, collection agencies, management companies and law firms could use to collect the dues assessed the 8 million California homeowners living in common interest developments such as condominiums. The tools would include going to small claims court, securing the debt with a lien or invoking dispute resolution. SB 137 is linked to AB 619, which would let homeowners pay a late bill in installments. Current law lets HOAs - without giving a reason - reject a homeowner's petition to pay arrearages on a monthly schedule. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed AB 2598, last year's attempt to curb HOA foreclosure abuse. But his veto message made plain he thinks this issue needs to be resolved. Ducheny and the California Alliance for Retired Americans, sponsor of SB 137, have been working with the governor's office to do just that.

Rampant mismanagement plagues condo boards, report finds

You can just imagine how shocked I was--shocked, I tell you--to read this. Thanks to Fred Pilot for the link.

Did I mention that I was shocked?

Most of the 4,000 queries received by the state's new condo ombudsman between April 1 and June 30 involved directors of associations, according to a newly released report. Half concerned mismanagement and about a quarter alleged abuse of residents by directors. "The major problem continues to be the incapability and inability of boards' members to properly manage the operation of the association," said Dr. Virgil Rizzo of Fort Lauderdale, who was appointed in December and who released the quarterly report this week. "Many directors lack the knowledge to effectively and successfully operate a corporation of residential units."

From David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy...
...comes this short, pithy, and alarming analysis of the housing bubble in California.

OK, I'll have my light sabre now, if you please
A team of researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has successfully demonstrated, for the first time, that it is possible to control the speed of light – both slowing it down and speeding it up – in an optical fiber, using off-the-shelf instrumentation in normal environmental conditions. Their results, to be published in the August 22 issue of Applied Physics Letters, could have implications that range from optical computing to the fiber-optic telecommunications industry.

Re/Max Site to Show All U.S. Listings
The implications of this are mind-boggling. Buying and selling real estate has always been based on local markets. This is the end of all that. Brave New World time.

The nation's second-largest real estate brokerage is expected to announce today a plan to pool all U.S. residential property listings on its website, a move that would create a formidable national competitor to industry-backed Realtor.com. The move by Re/Max International Inc. also could eventually help reduce consumers' costs of buying and selling homes, as competition with other Web-based brokerages heats up.Online real estate companies and consumer advocates have long complained about the real estate industry's efforts to limit access to property listings on the Internet. They see it as an attempt to thwart competition from Web-based upstarts, which typically charge lower commissions or charge referral fees. The issue has attracted the attention of federal antitrust officials, who have been investigating the online policy of the industry's powerful trade group, the National Assn. of Realtors, which gives its members the right to withhold their listings from online brokerages. But Re/Max, which has supported the trade group's policy, will announce today that it will compete head-on with online companies and create a national database that would include any property listing, whether it is a Re/Max listing or not.

Pasco: Hudson man cited for size of profane sign
This is a Florida story. Nice to see the city government acting like an HOA in this case.
HUDSON - A 43-year-old man was cited Tuesday for painting a sign that reads "Die you miserable bitch" on a house he owns, Pasco County sheriff's deputies said. A neighbor dying of cancer, 73-year-old Carol Hastrich, is believed by her family to be the subject of the message, deputies said. The words were spray-painted in black on the side of the house facing Hastrich's front yard. But it was not the meaning of the message that led to Derick Cooper's citation. Deputies told Hastrich's family the message did not violate any laws, her daughter Dea Albertson said Wednesday. Instead, Cooper was cited for an illegal sign because the wording exceeded the permitted size for a sign in a residential area, Pasco Code Enforcement Officer Patrick Phillips said.

Rockin' the suburbs:
Homeowners associations have the power of government--but what about the accountability?
I didn't write that headline. The newspaper did. This is a story sent on by Marjorie Murray, the legislative advocate on CID housing issues for the California Alliance for Retired Americans. She adds, "Evan -- please post this on your blog. Our two pieces of legislation described in this story -- SB 137 and AB 1098
-- will shortly be sent to the floor for a vote. Don
Chaney's court hearing is August 26th in Auburn, CA
(Placer County.)"

The article describes Don Chaney's lawsuit, which is significant in itself, but then goes on to talk about pending reform legislation, and the larger context of HOAs generally. It's well worth reading.


...two proposed laws making their way to floor votes in the Legislature would do much the same thing. An Assembly bill, sponsored by Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, outlines more clearly what kinds of financial documents homeowners associations would be required to cough up if a member requests them, and also specifies that a homeowner can take an association to small-claims court rather than the more costly Superior Court. A second effort, by Senator Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, seeks to restrict how homeowners associations are able to foreclose on a home. The proposed changes to state law, which would affect some 9 million Californians, were spearheaded by an unlikely group: retirees.

Supreme Court upholds convictions, sentences of Richard Glassel
Fred Pilot sent this link. Richard Glassel received the death sentence in Arizona for killing two people in an HOA-related dispute. His conviction and death sentence have now been affirmed by the Arizona Supreme Court. Some people have tried to argue that his BOD is to blame for driving him nuts, which I don't buy.

Residents facing light woes:Burden of funding light bill falls to parish homeowners

I think this is from Louisiana. Fred Pilot sent it. I have no idea how he finds this stuff.

SLIDELL-Though the street lights are burning bright now, residents moving to new subdivisions in St. Tammany will have to decide whether its worth paying the electric bill to keep them on. That's the problem currently facing Ashton Oaks subdivision, located in the Slidell-area, St. Tammany Parish Councilman Barry Bagert said. With three phases up and a fourth almost finished, developers will soon turn electric payments for street lamps over to a homeowner's association that does not have enough members to cover costs.

Cost for Bahia dredging now tops $16 million
Assessments push price tag higher for homeowners

Fred Pilot sent this tale of woe from Marin County.
Stuck in bureaucratic limbo, residents of the Bahia neighborhood in northwest Novato are watching the price tag of a court-ordered dredging project continue to climb. Homeowners recently learned the cost of the project had more than doubled. Now, the estimated cost has jumped another $1.2 million - to $16.7 million. The new figure comes from a $90,000 assessment for households directly on the lagoon, and $45,000 for property owners off the lagoon.

The Volokh Conspiracy - Ken Karst on John Roberts-
Ken Karst was one of my constitutional law professors way back when dinosaurs ruled the earth. I will always remember him as a brilliant teacher and distinguished scholar (not unusual at UCLA Law School), a very liberal fellow politically (also not unusual there) and one of the kindest folks you will ever meet (highly unusual at UCLA Law School). Here, from the Volokh Conspiracy, is his take on Judge John Roberts. Follow the link and read it all if you have time.

I am one of those liberal law academics whom Justice Scalia sometimes blames for the Supreme Court's straying from the True Path. Even so, I believe the Senate should confirm Judge Roberts's nomination.

All Eyes on Home Market in San Diego - Yahoo! News
Did I hear a "pop" just now?

Once Southern California's hottest real estate market, San Diego is feeling a real estate slowdown. It's a trend also starting to be seen in other regions, such as Las Vegas, Denver, Boston and Washington, D.C. Dramatic rises in home prices, particularly on the West and East coasts, have sparked a nationwide debate about whether the housing market is engulfed in a bubble that is about to burst. San Diego has become a focal point of that discussion. Those who believe the market is about to implode say San Diego's cooling could be among the first signs of a pronounced downturn or even a possible crash in California. But housing industry leaders say the slowing in San Diego reflects the normal damping of a sizzling market that made millionaires out of many homeowners and investors. Because San Diego was the region's hottest market, it's not surprising that it's one of the first to simmer down and return to more normal conditions, they say.

Moose carcass reek disturbs Abbot woman
I just included this story so you would have some context for the one below. Now you know I wasn't fooling.

Developer has resort plan for Brownville - Diana Bowley
That would be Brownville, Maine. Right down the road from Brownville Jct., Maine, pop. 900, where yours truly lived as a little boy. When I saw this headline I thought for a minute that it was some sort of wicked parody. The idea of a California developer being interested in a tiny hamlet in the Great North Woods of Maine is hard for me to grasp. But I'm all for it. A while back I was reading that if the Canadian Pacific Railroad closed the spur that runs through Brownville Jct., the town would disappear. Now maybe it has a new lease on life.

BROWNVILLE - Could it be that Brownville will become home to a 550-room, four-star hotel, 45,000-square-foot convention center, spa facility, 25,000-square-foot conference center, golf course, golf school and clubhouse, three restaurants and 400 time-share units? That's the concept plan that a California developer has for a 3,500-acre parcel near Norton Pond in this Piscataquis County community. Jim Dennehy of Palm Springs, Calif., doing business as WHG Development, envisions building a premier destination resort called The Reserve at Norton Pond. The majority of its patrons would arrive via passenger rail at a proposed train station.