The (un)official L.A. Land reading list

Work with me on this one: A couple of readers, and a couple of colleagues at The Times, have asked me the same question: what other real estate and economic blogs do you read or recommend?

I'm going to list a bunch and then ask you to do the same in the comments section. I'll try to add your suggested blogs from the comments section into the body of the post.  If I have forgotten you or your favorite blog, it's not deliberate -- it is because I am about as organized as Oscar Madison.

The list:

Ben Jones' Housing Bubble Blog
Bubble Markets Inventory Tracking
Calculated Risk
Curbed LA
Dr. Housing Bubble
Exurban Nation (Ventura)
ForeclosureRadar's Foreclosure Truth
Housing Tracker
Irvine Housing Blog
Kate in the Valley's May 5 & Everything After
LA Biz Observed
Lansner on Real Estate (OC Register)
Manhattan Beach Confidential
The Milla Times Journal
Mortgage Insider (OC Register)
The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter
Move Trends
Patrick.net
Professor Piggington's Eco-Almanac
Realty Check with (CNBC's) Diana Olick
Redfin's LA Sweet Digs
The RealEstalker
Santa Monica Distress Monitor
South OC Tracker
Tom Petruno's Money & Co.
Westside Bubble
Westside RE Meltdown
Zillow blog

-- Peter Viles

I know you know more good ones. Add them in the comment section, please.

You too can be a real estate mogul

If you thought buying or selling a house was fun, you might be ready for a dizzying new update of the classic Monopoly game that promises to teach you how to navigate through complex commercial real estate transactions. The promotional website for Mogul shows Mom, Dad and the kids around the dining room table playing a board game. They appear to be having a delightful time tackling such "real world scenarios" as cap rates, tenant leases, operating expenses, liability insurance, closing costs and much more. It sounds like the game would cause the kind of intellectual stress real commercial brokers refer to as "brain damage," but it does have a ring of truth. Perhaps an advanced version of Mogul will nurture dark real estate skills such as bad-rapping the competition, renegotiating a deal at the last minute and fighting over sales commissions. It better, if it really wants to be "the most realistic real estate trading game ever created."

Roger Vincent

Changes at L.A. Land

I hope you will indulge me in a personal note: I'm going to be leaving the L.A. Times, and leaving L.A. Land, at the end of this week. Please hold your applause, Shockg. And no, this is not a sign that the housing market has reached a bottom in Los Angeles.

Seriously, it's hard to leave. I like doing this. I've enjoyed writing this blog, hearing from so many of you and helping to build a kind of community together. It has been one of the best assignments I've had in 21 years as a journalist. Thanks for reading, commenting and helping to shape the blog.

But I have a chance to do a different kind of work, in the corporate world, and, after 21 years, the time feels right to turn the page and begin a new career. As much as I love newsrooms and newspapers, life is short, and change is good.

Good news: The higher-ups here have been big fans of L.A. Land, and they intend to continue it. One high-ranking editor once told me the comments are the best reading on the blog. After I got over my initial hurt (journalists are thin-skinned), I agreed. The comments rock, and I hope you will continue to support the blog.

Look for me in the comment section -- I'll be the guy asking Cal what he thinks and telling Uncle Billy to cheer up.

MyLessThanPrimeBeef, I'm counting on you for comic relief in the comment section below. And Shockg, no hard feelings -- it's been great having you around.

-- Peter Viles

Thoughts? Wishes for the new version of the blog? E-mail tips and unprintable comments to Peter Viles.

Photo: Los Angeles Times

Housing slump surprising even L.A. Land's (bearish) readers

I've been told again and again that the readers of L.A. Land are out of touch because they are so negative, so pessimistic, so gloomy and doomy, so bearish on housing.  Their end-of-the-world predictions, I've been told many times, are way out of line with reality.

So here's a news flash: It appears many readers of this blog are too bullish, and have been caught off guard by the severity of the current housing slump. In other words, most of you are not pessimistic enough.

Let me explain. Back in February, when median listing prices in Los Angeles were in the $470,000 range, I polled readers for their predictions of where listing prices would stand at the end of the year. Just over 1,600 people voted, and here are the results:

Slightly higher ($470,000-$500,000) 2.3%

Slightly lower ($440,000-$470,000) 7.1%

Lower still ($410,000-$440,000) 23.3%

Sharply lower ($380,000-$410,000) 32.6%

Way lower (below $380,000) 34.7%

Listing prices have already fallen $70,000 in seven months, to $399,999, a decline of $10,000 per month. If prices were to fall another $20,000 over the next 3 1/2 months -- which would mean price declines would decelerate but continue -- we'll end the year under $380,000. That would mean that only 34.7% of L.A. Land readers expected the market to be this distressed; It would mean that 65.3% of you are simply too bullish on housing.

Take that, most of you are too bullish.

--Peter Viles

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to Peter Viles

Big discount on weird Burbank house

Good morning, Manny, welcome to Los Angeles. For the rest of you, quick links to housing and real estate stories that caught my eye, sometimes with your help:

From Redfin via Curbed LA: A weird Burbank house with a cave has been listed for $999,000, a reduction of $326,000 from its asking price in April.

From Calculated Risk via Manhattan Beach Confidential: There are 1.75 million excess housing units in the U.S.

From Las Vegas Now via patrick.net: Vegas banks are overwhelmed by the foreclosure crisis.

From the Daily Breeze: U.S. Rep. Laura Richardson can get her foreclosed Sacramento house back.

The blogger speaks: Click here, and on the first hour of the July 30 program, to hear Peter Viles discuss the housing rescue bill on KPCC's Patt Morrison program on Wednesday.

The blogger continues to speak: Click here to listen to Viles discuss the California housing market on NPR's "On Point" Thursday.

--Peter Viles
Your thoughts? Comments? Tell me about stories and links you'd like to see here, and blogs and websites you'd like to see featured here.

Changes at L.A. Land

A few changes at L.A. Land, worthy of a short note.

First, as some of you noticed over the weekend, the blog has some new contributors -- reporters and editors who cover real estate and related issues for the Los Angeles Times. This is good news. It will lead to a more diverse, more interesting and more informative blog. As always, you'll still get the full dose of my grumpy take on real estate and the housing bubble. But now, for no extra charge, you'll get additional news, information and analysis from the experts in the Times newsroom.

Second, more good news: Beginning this Sunday, a "greatest hits" version of the blog will appear weekly in the print edition of  The Times, in the  Business section (you Web-only cheapskates had better subscribe, ASAP). The paper will "reverse-publish" the best posts from that week for those of you who missed it, or for those print readers who might not have ever come to this blog.

Third, a bit of controversy for you to chew on: The latimes.com website is in the process of tweaking its blog comment policy ever so slightly, in hopes of encouraging more thoughtful, sincere, well-reasoned discussion and debate. You can still be silly, or mean and ornery; just be silly, or mean and ornery, while making a relevant point.

My hope is that these changes will make this blog more interesting and more valuable to its readers.  You have my thanks, as always, for participating in the blog. As one of the higher-ups here told me (he meant it as a compliment, but I didn't hear it that way): "Pete, the best thing about your blog is the comments."

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com
Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

Ranking the real estate search websites

No, the paper didn't actually rank them, I'm asking you to do that. What the paper did is test-drive some of the most popular websites for real estate searches. You can read that article here, or view each of the websites in screen-grab form here. I'll list the sites below, for your convenience, but the real purpose of this is to ask you: Which ones do you like, and why? Feel free to suggest sites that are not on the list below.

Real estate search websites:

Coldwellbanker.com
Homescape@latimes.com
Homegain.com
RealEstate.aol.com
RealEstate.msn.com
RealEstate.Yahoo.com
Realtor.com
Redfin.com
Remax.com
Trulia.com
Zillow.com
ZipRealty.com

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com
Photo credit: Los Angeles Times screen grab of www.trulia.com

Update: Indymac now No. 265 on Implode-O-Meter site

The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter website has been all over the Indymac story today, with numerous updates about the company's new plan to exit the mortgage lending business and slash 53% of its jobs. Here's a headline you won't see in tomorrow's papers: under the Implode-O-Meter's criteria, Indymac has now officially imploded. It is now No. 265 on the blog's list of imploding mortgage companies, which you can view here alphabetically. Other notables on the list:

1. Merit Financial (May 6, 2006)
35. New Century Financial (March 8, 2007)
190. Option One/H&R Block (December 4, 2007)
213. Countrywide Financial (Jan. 11, 2008)

Update: I stand corrected. You will see coverage of the Implode-O-Meter in tomorrow's papers, if you read The New York Times. The Times tonight files a spot profile of the website, the ultimate hat tip from old media to new. Highlights: "With its tongue-in-cheek tone and running lists of the 'imploded' and the merely 'ailing,' the Implode-O-Meter has become a sort of Gawker of the subprime world. At a recent Mortgage Bankers Association conference, a speaker addressed what has become a hot topic among lenders: how to keep your company’s name off the site."

More: "The Implode-O-Meter is the brainchild of Aaron Krowne, a former researcher at Emory University in Atlanta. A computer scientist and mathematician, Mr. Krowne, 28, started the site in 2007, believing that the troubles in the housing market, and by extension the mortgage industry, would worsen. He was right — and the Implode-O-Meter took off."

Well-deserved recognition. Good on you, Aaron.
Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com.

A lull at L.A. Land

A quick note: I'm taking a short vacation, no blogging until Monday. No, I will not be staying at the house pictured above. That's Lenny "Nails" Dykstra's Lake Sherwood home, which the former baseball star has listed for $24.9 million.

Photo Credit: Sheila Cooper

Your call: Does this look like the bottom?

From the reliable and reliably entertaining Westside Bubble blog: The Case-Shiller home price index for Los Angeles, including this morning's latest numbers. When you look at it this way, it's hard to make a case that we're close to the bottom.

What do all those lines and numbers mean? From Westside Bubble: "Los Angeles (black line, includes Orange County) is now down 24.4% from its peak in September 2006.... The national (orange line, their original 10-city Composite) index is down 17.8% from its peak in June 2006.

More: "Besides the original city index they have each city broken into Low, Middle, and High tiers (Under $417,721, $417,721 to $627,381, and Over $627,381). Los Angeles' Low Tier rose the most and has fallen back the most so far from its November 2006 peak, 30.8%. The High Tier rose the least and plateaued for a while before falling more steeply, now down 18.5% from June 2006."

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