Finding gas under $4 a gallon in L.A. Land

Notable Tuesday morning links from here and there. Feel free to submit or nominate your favorites, by clicking here to e-mail me.

From the New York Times: The CEO of Freddie Mac ignored warning signs about questionable loans.

Tanta, the formidable contrarian at Calculated Risk, takes issue with the New York Times' "hit job" on Freddie Mac.

From RealEstalker: Actress and former bikini model Molly Sims has listed her Hollywood home for $2.99 million.

Update from Kate in the Valley: Kate watches the asking price of a Studio City house drop from $799K to  $589K in two months.

From the L.A. Times: Gas prices, a springtime obsession on this blog, are now 38 cents a gallon below the June peak.

More gas: LosAngelesGasPrices.com finds 12 gas stations selling regular for under $4 a gallon.

--Peter Viles
Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com

Comments

[sky]

Here's a GREAT link http://autos.msn.com/everyday/gasstations.aspx?zip=
&src=Netx

put in your zipcode and it'll list all the prices and names of gas stations!

[Scott McIntosh]

Its great to see the gas prices start coming down. I know we were all nervous to see pump prices escalate and feared the 5,6,7 dollar a gallon theories out there.

[sfvrealestate]

Re the Kate story about the house with the major price reduction: it's incorrect to interpret this as a story about how quickly prices are dropping. Rather, this is a story about sellers living in a dream world about prices, and who majorly overpriced their home from the get-go. And those sellers are finally getting religion. That house was never, ever worth even in the $600's in the condition it's in. Kate's assertion that the house is worth about $500k is correct.

[TakeFive]

So the price of gas has dropped. That means more of your money is available for the state. From today's LA Times:

"If both the MTA and the Schwarzenegger proposals were to be implemented, the sales tax in Los Angeles County would jump to 9.75%. "

This is just going to kill small businesses, especially the resturants, with the extra 15% for the tip. I'm sure seeing a lot more retail vacancies around town these days.

[TakeFive]

Sales Tax rant cont.:

“In San Francisco, for example, sales taxes would increase from 8.5 percent to 9.5 percent.
Jonathan Owens, 28, of Berkeley said paying more in sales tax would be better than laying off state workers or cutting their pay to minimum wage, which the governor ordered last week.

"I'm definitely down with a penny (on a dollar). I probably wouldn't even notice," he said.”

See, this is why I don’t bash the schools for not teaching Johnny to read. Johnny’s an idiot. And he’s allowed to vote.

Here’s the basic math. You pay $100 for something you like. Then you get to reach into your man-purse and fish out another $9.50 for the incompetents that can’t managed the state finances. Will Johnny notice that?

Nah, he probably still thinks the food in mom & dad's fridge is "free".

[LA-renter]

Oil and commodities are just speculative bubbles too.

The business news explanations for "market" oil prices are absurd. Instability in oil price is a boon for "investment" gamblers --collecting fees and bonuses for short-lived "gains"-- but it's just a tax on the rest of us.

I'm beginning to believe those who say that the financial "industry" is just a parasite on productive, real industry.

[LA Land Fan]

A little off topic to this story, but I know people have been talking about fraud helping fuel the bubble. I found this sold listing poking around RedFin:

5237 W 21st St Los Angeles, CA 90016
Sold For: $1,575,000 (03/06/2008)
Beds: 2
Baths: 1
Sqft: 1,349
Style: Residential
Year Built: 1925

Sales History
Date Apr 10, 2007
Price $412,034
--
Date Mar 06, 2008
Price $1,575,000
Appreciation 339.1%/yr

What's up with this? Am I missing something?

[Cal]

People can complain all they want about the kate/studio city listing.. but that seller still found an agent stupid enough to list it at that "dream" price.

Once they got into short sale territory they were much more motivated to cut price. Why not, its the banks money (assuming they refinanced correctly).

[Laker]

sfvrealestate wrote: "...Kate's assertion that the house is worth about $500k is correct..."

sfvrealestate,
Wrong. Kate is wrong. That place in its "original" condition with no pictures of the kitchen and bath is a major fixer that had a value of $300,000 tops. I'm embarrassed to say land value for the shoe box 6500 sf lot.

LA Land Fan,
The Apr 10, 2007 $412,034 was a foreclosure sale where the house (2 bed 1 bath 1,349 sf shack) went back to the bank.
The $1.5 Million is a typo. There is no F. way that any bank will lend so much money for so little value. Even if you threaten to blow the bank up, they will not give you this loan for that crap box.
I would guess that the actual sales price is $157,500
(which probably was the value back in 2001.
Look at this comp:

2129 S Burnside Ave
Sold on Jul 28, 2008 0.24 miles $247,000
2 bd / 1 ba 1,164 Sq. Ft.

[LA]

Many commenters on this blog expected gas prices to fall before the election. So it begins. Give it a little time and you'll see the Bush Administration taking credit for it. And candidate McCain will claim, no doubt, that his energy proposals have instilled stability in the market and hope in the American consumers.

[sfvrealestate]

Laker, I'm assuming by the term "shoe box" that you think 6500 square feet for a lot is small? Actually, a 6500-6750 square foot lot is standard for most areas here.

[Laker]

sfvrealestate,
I know that the area tract homes of 1940-1950 sit on 6500 lots. I personally think these are small, unless you build 3 story house on them with a footprint of 700 sf.
If you want a back yard, you need to give up the pool, or if you have a pool, there is no back yard.
I think a nice sized lot is 15000 sf and larger.

[E]

Laker...

Do you think those "typos" when entering sales data are on accidental or on purpose?

I'm seeing more of that lately.

It helps to boost the "sold" $/psf on Redfin.

I also see that apartment complexes that are sold are also listed as "sold" on Redfin although they are never listed fort sale on the site.

Redfin is also missing quite a few listings that I see on the CaliforniaMoves.com site.

[Laker]

E,
The typos might be accidental or not, in this i think it is accidental. I find it impossible to believe that any legitimate buyer would buy a house on that street and have his Realtor use this sale as a comp to justify him paying something close to $1.7 Million... If such "ubber" supper duper dumb buyer exist, let him buy it for $1.7Million. But you still need to find equally stupid bank that will trust that comp in the appraisal process.
I could see if they recoded that sale for $100,000-200,000 more than the actual number to it could be easily hidden, but this number is 10 fold the value....
Many sales that are recoded but never were listed is either of these scenarios:
1) Intra family transfer
2) Foreclosure sale (property revert to the bank at court steps)
3)Refinance
4)Fraudulent sell to a straw buyer. (buyer snaps a house even without it being listed or on 1st day of listing...)

You can easily find which is the case by checking with property shark.
Also on apartment complexes, you might not know, but since PROP13 is protecting long time ownership from reassess of taxes, what happens is the apartment buildings belong to a corporation, and when the owner wants to sell it, it simply adds/removed corporation officers/share holders. This the new owner simply owners the same old corporation but is in fact new owner. His property taxes are still the old one, and California tax payers are screwed. You can find many buildings that have new ownership in the last 5-10 years that pay peanuts for property taxes. (Basically a building worth $5 million would pay $4000 total in taxes as it is based on its 1970s values...(plus ridiculously low 2% annual increases)
Hope it helps.

[sfvrealestate]

Laker, in most localities here, you can build a house that's about 1/3 the size of the lot. So you can go over 2000 ft. on one story on a typical 6500 square foot lot. (Most Americans born in the 40's, 50's and 60's were raised in houses MUCH smaller than that, and families were typically bigger then, too. And they seemed to manage just fine.) And that leaves lots and lots of room for both a pool AND a yard. Unless you're elitist landed gentry like yourself with a sense of entitlement and need a place for your stable of polo ponies, your golf course, and your coronation balls.