Local Landfill Doing the Right Thing

Here's a story about a piece of Simi Valley Real Estate that really makes me happy. One of our local landfills has been certified by the Wildlife Habitat Council for its contribution to wildlife habitat conservation. The Simi Valley Landfill and Recycling Center is 297 acres of varied grasslands, open valleys, and canyons. There are eight owl boxes and five raptor perches. One of the jobs of the owls is to provide rodent control to the landfill without the use of poisons. I'd say that is a very grand idea.

Looking for Answers

While searching for answers to some of yesterday's question, I found this in today's New York Times editorial, "The Bush administration has been far too slow to respond, with some officials apparently worried that helping today’s troubled borrowers might encourage future borrowers to take on too much debt. That misses a critical point: much of this crisis can be traced to lenders’ failure to vet borrowers and the government’s failure to regulate the industry. And it misses an even bigger point: unless something is done quickly, whole communities, not just people who lose their homes, will suffer."

I would like to add that lenders could go a long way in helping solve the problem if they would be more inclined to negotiate short sales before a house goes into foreclosure. There are going to be losses, that goes without saying, the question is can the crisis be directed in a way that does not wreck families and communities?

How Did We Get Here?

I've been in Simi Valley real estate for twenty years. There have been lean years, especially in the early '90s, but there have also been excellent years. Real estate was reliably good until this year. I have to admit 2007 has been the roughest times I've ever experienced. I remember reading an editorial by Paul Krugman a while back, in which he said, "Americans make money from selling houses to each other through money borrowed from the Chinese." That is quite an observation.

My clientele has always been everyday folks who were looking to sell or buy a home. Sure, a home is an investment, but most didn't buy as investments, they bought a home to live in and raise their families. My clientele grew by referral. Family members telling family members. I know there have always been real estate investors, people who gambled in real estate hoping to catch the wave of buying low and selling high. Even TV shows caught the fever, with shows like "Flip this House." But that always seemed like big business, not what I was doing at all. In fact it seemed unrelated. I felt insulated from the big money and big investment aspect from real estate. I sold homes and dreams to families. They sold ideas and income to investors.

Then things changed in a very big way. When did the mortgage industry start to hype and sell low-interest loans to anyone who could sign on a dotted line? When did stated income become the norm? When did the economy get fueled by people cashing in on their "equity" to buy vacations, cars, and toys? But not only when did these things happen, why did they happen?

How did we get here? My livelihood seems to be tangled up in something mishandled and mismanaged by people who thought flipping a house was the new dot com. All the news I read says this could go on for several more years.

Holding On

LIfe as a real estate agent during the mortgage crisis meltdown has me on the phone quite a bit. Don't get me wrong, I'm not really accomplishing anything but I'm learning how to sit still for 45 minutes at a time, phone in hand while one of many banks ponders its losses, and keeps me on hold. They never come to the phone. I even fax them while I'm on hold and ask them to please take my call. I'm one of those blinking lights. Are calls really taken in the order they were received?

On Monday I missed a call on my cell phone. It was a bank with the first mortgage. I've been trying to reach them for a while to talk with their loss mitigation specialist. Her voice mailbox is full. I googled her name, the city she calls from, the financial institution she is associated with-- guess what-- not even google knows who the heck she is.

Behind the scenes, behind all the news and headlines about the numbers, the losses, personal lives, and congressional fixes are people like me on the phone all day long trying to talk with someone about a short sale.

Blogging in My Own Words

Someone very kindly pointed out to me that it is not okay to just copy other people's words off the internet and put them here on my blog. That's what I've been doing when I should have just been using just a few words and then directing you to the original site. It had only been my intention to convey interesting news here that has an impact on real estate. There is so much of it lately, it's hard to keep track of where all of it is coming from. So, I will concentrate on stories and news that's particular to Simi Valley Real Estate and perhaps write more anecdotally from my own daily experiences.