ROSY REALTY MARKET FUELING SHOCK TALK.Byline: GREGORY J. WILCOX Listening to jabber An open standard for instant messaging (IM). There are tens of thousands of Jabber servers on the Internet, most of which are privately run within a company or college campus. There are also hundreds of public Jabber servers that any user can register with, Google Talk being the largest. radio last week, it was easy to get the impression that the real-estate sky was falling. Prices are at record levels, so how is it possible anyone can scrape together the money to buy a house, the reporter asked in a tone that suggested impending im·pend intr.v. im·pend·ed, im·pend·ing, im·pends 1. To be about to occur: Her retirement is impending. 2. doom. This report followed others in local newspapers that days earlier noted prices had hit record levels in the San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. and the six counties from Ventura to San Diego San Diego (săn dēā`gō), city (1990 pop. 1,110,549), seat of San Diego co., S Calif., on San Diego Bay; inc. 1850. San Diego includes the unincorporated communities of La Jolla and Spring Valley. Coronado is across the bay. . Guess what. Buyers don't seem to be suffering sticker shock Sticker shock is a United States term for the feeling of surprise experienced by consumers upon finding unexpectedly high prices on the price tags (stickers) of products they are considering purchasing. . ``We would be breaking sales records by huge numbers if there was inventory to sell,'' pointed out Jim Link, executive vice president of the Van Nuys-based Southland Regional Association of Realtors. John Karevoll, an analyst at La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems, chuckled when he learned of the spin given the statewide price and sales numbers generated by his company. ``Everybody is kind of wondering what's fueling all of this. But it looks to me like normal market factors are at play,'' he said. He measures the financial pain for buyers now on a somewhat unscientific unscientific Unproven, see there scale from 1989 to about 1995. The earlier year is the height of the previous boom market featuring record prices, and that is the financial pain high point. The middle part of the past decade is when prices were about at the bottom, the low pain point. Now we're in that record price-setting environment, so where does that put us pain-wise? Not as bad as some think. ``Right now in Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, , we're just a little bit above the midpoint mid·point n. 1. Mathematics The point of a line segment or curvilinear arc that divides it into two parts of the same length. 2. A position midway between two extremes. of the two,'' Karevoll said. It would take a cataclysmic cat·a·clysm n. 1. A violent upheaval that causes great destruction or brings about a fundamental change. 2. A violent and sudden change in the earth's crust. 3. A devastating flood. event, like mortgage rates soaring to above 8 percent, to push the pain to the upper end of his scale, Karevoll said. And that is not in anybody's forecast. --Some readers called about a story last week on rising apartment rents during the first quarter and asked for a breakdown on the market mix. Here it is. An efficiency in Los Angeles County averaged $977 a month; a one-bedroom, one-bath averaged $1,213; a one-bedroom town house averaged $1,195; a two-bedroom, one-bath averaged $1,211; a two-bedroom, two-bath averaged $1,566; a two-bedroom town house averaged $1,587; a three-bedroom, two-bath averaged $1,924; and a three-bedroom town house averaged $2,113. The numbers are from a RealFacts survey of apartment buildings with 100 units or more. --Calabasas-based Countrywide Financial Corp. had a stellar first quarter and some of that corporate wealth will be spread around the professional tennis world. The company has signed on as the presenting sponsor of the Mercedes-Benz Cup, a professional event at the Los Angeles Tennis Center-UCLA in July. The company's commitment is through 2006. The tournament is 78 years old, the longest-running sporting event in Los Angeles. ``The tournament's rich past, vibrant future and deep involvement in the community through its year-round grass-roots tennis programs is what attracted Countrywide Financial to the Mercedes-Benz Cup,'' Countrywide spokesman Andy Bielanski said in a statement. Gregory J. Wilcox, (818) 713-3743 greg.wilcox(at)dailynews.com |
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