Simi Valley Ghost Tour Haunts Strathern Historical Park

 

You can meet the Ghosts of the famous and infamous of Simi Valley as they once lived…and died. The Ghosts will be walking on Friday nights from 7-10pm, Saturday nights from 6-10 pm and Sundays from 6-9 pm. Ghost Tours depart every 10 minutes and are approximately 1 hour.

Dates: October 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26 Location: Strathern Historical Park, 137 Strathern Place, Simi Valley, CA 93065 Tickets are $8.00, reservations recommended for groups of 20 or more. Call (805) 526-6453

For more information about this event See: 

• Simi Valley Ghost Tour at Strathern Park Humorously Haunts Again
  

September 2008 Market Update for Simi Valley Real Estate Home Sales The following information is posted every month on my website www.homebuysblog.com You can look at previous month's reports to see the trending Simi Valley Real Estate Home Sales.

Over all while it seems encouraging that home sales in Simi Valley have averaged close to 110 per month since May of this year, it is still below prior year's averages.

The uncertain problems in Washington DC, Wall Street and our financial markets in general are going to make for very strict lending standards and this will impact home buyers negatively. In my discussions with many local mortgage brokers the bulk of the home loans for purchases is inline with all the activity on my reports. The entry level homes or any home that requires a conforming loan (under $417,00) is the portion of the market with all the activity.

In January the Jumbo conforming limit will go back down to $615,000 from $729,000 and it is uncertain if there will be an extension to keep the $729,000 limit.

Last, is that we will most likely see 95% LTV (Loan To Value) conventional loans disappear as the last of the Mortgage Insurance companies still insuring these loans stop insuring this product. If this happens then FHA will be the only vehicle to get LTVs with greater than 90%.

The buyers drive any business. We have lost approximately 30%-40% of our buyers now that the Lair's Loans of 2000-2006 no longer exists. These Liar's Loan programs will not return so we will be contending will a smaller Buyer pool for years to come.

The above difficult lending issues we are facing will impact the Simi Valley Real Estate Market with a slow recovery. Sometimes the facts do seem to sound all to fun, but the silver lining to all this is that properties that are in good condition and priced properly are selling and many times with multiple offers. There are terrific investment properties out there and many neighborhoods that were overpriced that are now attractive to those who were priced out before.

If you want to stay up to date on the Simi Valley Real Estate Market, then set your RSS reader to take the feed from my blog here and at www.homebuysblog.com.

Activity - Single Family Detached Homes
Active Listings	Simi Valley	Moorpark
Active
# Units	462	152
Average List Price	598,523	886,723
Average Days Listed	94	92
Pending Sales in Escrow
# Units	106	22
Average List Price	491,676	502,541
Average Days on Market	71	75
Total Closed Sales for 2008
# Units	728	163
Average List Price	538,195	608,823
Average Sold Price	518,195	587,536
Average Days Listed	86	100
Average Closed Sales per month	80.89	18.111
Unsold Inventory Index (in months)	5.71	9.00

Activity - Single Family Attached Homes
Active Listings	Simi Valley	Moorpark
Active
# Units	122	44
Average List Price	344,381	374,005
Average Days Listed	109	70
Pending Sales in Escrow
# Units	34	6
Average List Price	302,361	265,117
Average Days on Market	84	83
Total Closed Sales for 2008
# Units	133	43
Average List Price	320,301	318,553
Average Sold Price	308,486	307,912
Average Days Listed	82	89
Average Closed Sales per month	14.77	4.11
Unsold Inventory Index (in months)	9.00	9.02

www.22727ia.com

Yep that is right,  you can use your iPhone in many different ways.  Jim Rohn talks about making your car a mobile classroom.  Apple's iPhone gives me the ability to have my mobile class room where ever I go. 

Only since March of this year, can we download the conference call from the Buffini and Company website; but to get older calls, you can rip the conference call CD with iTunes and add them to your library.

It would be really nice if Brian could make these as a podcast subscription, but then the material would be free to anyone so I think that downloading the new calls and ripping the old calls it how to get the job done for now.

The benefits of having an iPhone:

• One device - no need to carry a separate iPod 
  
• I can carry the calls with me where ever I go
•   I can listen to the calls in the car by using the car stereo AUX jack or a cassett tape adapter. 
  

 

This may be the last day of the Mastermind retreat, but it has been terrific as always this is my fourth trip down to Mastermind and Brian always figures out how to get very special people to show up. Sunday night opened with Paul Potts singing Granada. I have seen all the recent Tenors sing this including Andrea Bocelli and Paul does a wonderful job. Brian interviewed Paul between the three songs. He also sang the pop song Time To Say Goodbye and finished with the aria from the final act of Turandot, Nessun Dorma. Very interesting that Paul was with us all because he flipped a coin as to whether he would submit an application for Brittan's Got Talent. If you have not seen the Paul Potts Story:

If you are here at Mastermind I'd love to hear your thoughts on Sunday evening Also if you are here in SD you can find me on Twitter or Brightkite as RealtorTed

As Popeye says "That's all I can Stands and I can't Stands no more" Another agent call on a property and they have a blocked number or they call from their office and leave a cell phone number on my voice mail.

THIS IS A HUGE PROBLEM and ANTI BUSINESS. If you want me to call you back and call you back quickly, then make it as easy as possible. Especially when you are calling my cell phone I am probably driving around and cannot write down your number. If text your message I can click on the number that shows up in the message and if you TURN OFF call blocking I can hit re-dial.

This is not a huge leap of intelligence to figure out.

I had a goal to finish my entry this weekend and here it is. It looks like the contest is already shaping up to fun with several entries already posted. If you are Real Estate Agent or Mortgage Broker then you qualify to enter. The details for the contest are on this page Video Blogging Contest I hope there are a bunch of entries as I look forward to seeing all the creativity!

Up till today all my video was uploaded to several major sites and I would embed their code to run their flash players on my blogs. This is a good exchange and one I am pretty happy with.

There are times I have video that I do not want to send out the entire internet and Google Video's private video function makes the video too small anf degrades the quality.

Here is a website I was referred to today and it not only transcodes my video to Flash, but provides a non branded player to embed on my blog pages.

After transcoding I can either download the .flv file to my computer or upload it to my site through transcodeit.com

Here is a video I did for 12seconds.tv as a test for transcodeit.com



I will still use Wellcomemat, Zipvo and syndicate through Tubemogul.com, but at times when I have a special video I want to self host, this is an awsome tool.

The LA Times shut down it's Real Estate section this week adding more evidence to what I have been trying to tell home sellers for the last several years.....PRINT MEDIA IS A WASTE OF MONEY, TIME AND EFFORT!!!

I really believe this is a great example to show sellers why a different look at how property needs to be exposed is paramount to any listing presentation.  Web 2.0 is here and has been here for quite a while for the Real Estate community. 

With the plethora of online information sources, RSS readers and the ability to look at homes online 24-7, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that the homes advertised in newspapers can never offer the information that you find online.  Simi Valley Home buyers know this spend their time online researching home values before making a purchase decision.

Glaring fact #1 - You rarely see the addresses in Print ads, but online not only do you get the address, you can look at satellite photos of the neighborhoods, street maps, reports, etc. 

This one simple fact alone shows the power of online research for homes over the old guard - newsprint.  This is just he tip of the iceberg as to why print media is on life support for Real Estate. 

If you are selling your Simi Valley home and your Real Estate Agent's marketing plan involves use of News Print and Magazines like Homes & Land, you are definitely marketing the smallest part of the Simi Valley buyer pool and probably completely under marketing the the largest part of the Simi Valley buyer pool which resides and lives online.

Just putting your home in the Simi Valley Moorpark MLS does give your home SOME online exposure, but to leverage the full weight of your MLS listing, it needs to be syndicated and syndication strategies are more complex then having a Real Estate company's corporate site push it to a few other online venues.

To get the syndication saturation levels needed to assure your home is properly represented for the largest number of online searches, a very meticulous formula must be followed.

For those that need the false positive of a tangible-tactile assurance that their home is really being marketed by it's meager presence in the News Paper; you might as well start stepping out of your comfort zone as the Los Angeles Times has already done that for you.