Month: January 2009

There was a recent ribbon cutting and celebration for the $29 Million widening of 101 through Santa Maria to 6 lanes. This project always made me scratch my head as I’ve never experienced traffic congestion in that area when it was 4 lanes. The following was the purpose of this project from the California Department of Transportation website…

“This project will reduce congestion and provide additional traffic capacity on U.S. Route 101 from the Santa Maria Way interchange to the State Route 135 (Broadway) interchange and reduce associated traffic congestion on the adjacent arterial streets.”

What was also interesting that Senator Maldonado and Assembly Blakeslee both spoke at this celebration. Shouldn’t these two be in Sacramento working on the budget crisis?? I would be a lot happier if they were meeting with local school district administrators to try to figure out how to keep the level of education we have today with less available money.

I was checking out the Pismo Butterfly Grove website tonite and they have the final count for this year at 26,060. This is up significantly from last year when they counted 17,000 and the highest count in the last 4 years. So…some good news!

See historical counts here

A Realtor in the Bay Area just emailed these photos he took today of a foreclosed home he was asked to do a market evaluation for. The previous owner took a toilet, the kitchen sink, and the oven (which were all old). Yikes! I think I may need to add some of these to the Bucky Buthman Real Estate site.

I added a new foreclosure search to the site. While I already provide details for REO/Bank-owned and Short Sale listings that are on the MLS, this new search displays preforeclosures and auctions. I had an earlier version of this search on the site last year but I got too many requests for details from people that were doing research but didn’t want to pay the $50/month to get access to the details themselves (actually, it was closer to $70 before). Unfortunately, I still have site visitors that think I put all this time and $$$ into my websites as a public service rather than seeing my websites as part of the overall service my team offers.

For those of you that are looking to buy a home and want us to represent you, we’d be happy to send you property details.

http://www.slocountyhomes.com/foreclosure_search.htm

Opening up the Tribune this morning I was immediately drawn to a bold teaser headline about record home price drops. Turning to the business section, the headline for the article was about a record 26% drop in prices but reading the article soon told the story that this was for the San Diego market. The rest of the article talked about San Francisco, Phoenix, and Las Vegas.

If you’ve downloaded my 2008 report you know that this isn’t the case for our area. Yes, there are 3 cities (Arroyo Grande, Atascadero, and Nipomo) with a median home price for 2008 that is 26% lower than its peak but the rest of the cities in SLO County have a lower percentage drop. Three cities (Cambria, Pismo Beach, San Luis Obispo) have fallen less than 10% from their peak.

Whomever at the Tribune that is pulling off AP stories to reprint in the paper should make sure the articles have something to do with the Central Coast. If not, then I wouldn’t put a bold headline about it on the front page. Heck, San Luis Obispo’s median home price only dropped 4% from 2007 to 2008. Isn’t that the local news headline?!

Looking for a home near the ocean over $1 Million? Then take a look at our Listings Photo Showcase.

The Keith Byrd Team is pleased to announce a new service we call Neighborhood Watch.

Our Neighborhood Watch service allows you to define a neighborhood you want to monitor. Anything that happens in that neighborhood that is reported to Central Coast MLS will be automatically sent to you via email. This could be new listings, when listings in the neighborhood go Pending Sale, when listings close escrow (so you know what price they sold for), or when listings are taken off the market (expired or withdrawn).

Unlike “New Listing” notifications from other websites that update their listing data once every morning, our Neighborhood Watch system checks the MLS system throughout the day. You’ll find out neighborhood activity usually within an hour of the event, not the next day.

We’ll Notify You Only What You’re Interested In

Our system is very flexible and powerful in what you can “watch”. You can monitor just a street and even narrow it down to a range of addresses on a particular street (ex. 100-300 First Street).

Utilize how often the MLS system is checked for learning about new listings too within a city or across multiple cities. We’ll set you up with the details to watch for so you will only receive listings in your email that you’re really interested in.

So, if you’re wanting to find about new REO listings quickly, watch the neighborhood near Cal Poly, or just want to get an email when the house sells down the street and at what price, our Neighborhood Watch is what you need!

Click here to define your Neighborhood Watch

I read an article from a real estate news company today saying that some banks have been sitting on REOs and are soon going to be putting them on the market. One of my local expert agents also emailed me saying the same thing about one of the banks that’s waiting to see what Obama does and plans to go to market with them in March.

Something to keep an eye on.

You can keep track of the REOs that come to market using our New Listings report (http://www.slocountyhomes.com/newlistex.php). REOs are easy to see because we color code the city name in blue, short sales are in orange.

There’s a new Mediterranean style restaurant in downtown SLO (Toro and Higuera which is North of Santa Rosa St) called Petra.

Now this is where it gets kinda weird. They opened right next door to Jaffa Cafe, the other Mediterranean restaurant in SLO. Check out the menus below, they look similar.

http://petraslo.com/

http://www.jaffacafe.us/

When Yogurt Creations opened in downtown SLO, it was at least across the street from Bali’s Yogurt. I really don’t get why you’d want to open right next door to someone serving the same things, especially when you’re not in the downtown core.

The Sold reports were updated tonite for our VIP clients. It includes data through today. You’ll also see 2008 sold reports for individual cities as well.

Sold reports

REO Sold reports