Back In The Saddle
April 19th, 2009 Categories: Weekly Real Estate Activity In Ventura County
Mother Nature and I have had some disagreements over the last several months and things have sorted themselves out. Now Mother Nature tells me (as she did before)what to do and now I do it. Strange how that works out.
Surprisingly dispite the down time nothing has changed. Things may have gotten worse.
Caps. I loved hearing about this while sick. Cap CEO pay. That’s great except it did not go far enough. I would add to the cap list:
All federal government workers should be capped at $ 75,000 annual salary; State workers should be capped at $ 70,000 per year; and Local government employees caps should be at $ 65,000. All members of Congress and the President should be capped at $ 80,000 per year including the justices throughout the Federal and State Judiciary. If I missed any one they should be capped at $ 60,000.
All union executives and private company executives should be capped at $ 100,000 per year. If we do not like who is in charge they should be immediately replaced.
(Sideline: My dad was a local union President for many years. He lived union. While he felt the need for unions he also noted that the rank and file were hurt more by union leadership and their political gyrations and hostile attitudes towards employers. It was a war. “This is what we want or we shut you down”. He also noted that when the rank and file had a strike they never, ever were ahead. Each strike made them poorer. End of story.)
Continuing with who should be capped. All movie stars, television host and newscasters and baseball/football/basketball players should be capped at $ 100,000 annual salary. Anybody working in the financial arena including Wall Street should be capped at $ 100,000.
Fisherman should not be capped (I like fishing).
All other workers should be capped at $ 150,000 per year except real estate brokers and agents…..they should make as much as they can…..no cap. That’s fair and that is my contribution to the cap situation!
Immigration. While sick I was listening to the many discussions about resolving the illegal immigration problem and a solution was devised to penalize employers monetarily and maybe sentenced them to jail.
I agree with this position but again those in power did not go far enough. I would add to the list the fining and possibly jailing of activists who push illegals to break the law. I would also include in the mix the politicians who intercede on behalf of their constituents and force Border and other agencies from doing their job. These folks too should face a penalty, jail time if required and removal from office.
I recall in the 1960’s and 1970’s when those responsible to protect our borders would be retired, demoted or re-assigned because politicians did not want these people to do their job in the area they represented. Nothing has changed much.
Why people from South America think they can ignore immigration laws is beyond me. The Europeans followed the rules to get into this Country.
But we have to give a pass to the folks from the South….Why? And those from South American countries who are now standing in line waiting to get in the right way, well it appears that you are doing a stupid thing. Why go through the hassle. Break the law.
Come in and in 10 years you will get your citizenship. That is what has happened over last 20 or more years. 10-15 years from now we will have the same situation and our politicians will find it necessary to legalize ’illegals” once again.
It’s a revolving door. Maybe we should have an open border from the North Pole/Canada to the very tip of South America. All of the people in the Americas can move as they want from one area (location) to another and would automatically be a citizen in the area they lived or settled. We would be called citizens of the Americas. That would solve the problem.
I think shortly there will be a meeting of the minds and people are going to see that there has been good from the past and this good can be used effectively in the future. People are going to do it and it will take time but it will be people solving the problem, not politicians.
Oh. One more thing that was big news and that had to do with taxes. Heck the cure for this is simple. Have a flat tax.
Everyone pays and the federal rate should not exceed 10% of one’s gross wages (including companies gross sales). States should be limited to 5% of either gross wages or sales. There should be NO deductions of any kind. At no time can the Federal/State tax rate exceed 20% combined. All other taxes for gasoline, sales taxes, and any other tax, fee or whatever it is called is to be eliminated. OK, that takes care of the tax issue. If anyone disagrees with this replace them.
Real estate on the National scale is holding its own especially in the Mid-States.
Unemployment appears to be going up along both coast lines faster than the Mid-States but job creation is down Nationally.
This will temper the upward movement for real estate for a period however the truth of the matter is that in another year real estate will be stronger and move higher and then watch out. Politicians will once again interfere with the free market because there will be a division between who has a home and there will be many without.
Ventura County.
The unemployment rate is near 10% in Ventura County. Job creation is nil. But the real estate market is putting is a solid base for its pending thrust upward which should start around September/October, 2009.
This basing will be significant for the BIG thrust that one can expect to see starting in 2010. The high prices witnessed in 2004-2006 will pale to what they will be in 2013-2027. I suspect that the upper limits of the new up trend will be about 50% or more higher than 2004-2006.
There has been a change to the weekly table. Eliminated was ”days on the market”, replaced with ”estimated inventory and designation specific areas as being either a buyers/sellers market”.
The formla used to calculate inventory was simply to take current listings and divide this by the number of sales over the last 3 months. This result was then multiplied by three to get the number of months inventory for a specific area.
True I could have used 6 months or 12 months sales but using three was closer to current market conditions. I am sure many will correct me but that is OK, I look forward to the coments.
Happily real estate is starting to get some good press. As one can see from the table above a number of areas have had significant sales since the beginning of the year.
Oxnard and Santa Paula have had 100% sales increase. But these sales were due to deep discounts of property values. So it should not be surprising to see Santa Paula, Fillmore, Oxnard and parts of Ventura showing up as seller markets.
Santa Rosa Valley, the Beaches (Ventura and Oxnard) and Ojai/Oak View continue to have large inventories BUT these have lessen substantially over the last several months and it is expected that these areas will turn the corner and show up as seller markets.
Your comments are welcomed.
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