Month: July 2006

Since so many of our buyers come from California, and are selling homes in California, I thought this was interesting. We have at least one buyer who has already purchased in Austin but is waiting to sell a home in california before moving here, and the CA home is not selling as fast as was originally anticipated. Where we use to have California buyers purchase here first and say “Oh, I won’t have any trouble selling my home …” we are now hearing, “I’m going to put my home on the market here (California) first, before writing any offers in Austin”. Story is below.

Median San Diego Home Price Falls
Source: Los Angeles Times, 07/13/06

San Diego, which experienced soaring home prices during the nation’s six-year housing boom, now has the dubious distinction of being the first California real estate market to see its median home price fall below year-earlier levels.

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We are purchasing some acreage lots in Oak Hill, and I just found out that other buyers on my street don’t like the name of the street on which our lots are located and have requested the developer to change the name. The street name is ‘Sisquoc’, which I think is a cool name. Sisquoc is a Chumash Indian (from California) name that loosely means “stopping place”. There is a Sisquoc River in California. The developer told me other buyers thought it was too hard to say and spell. Jeez, give me a break! The street is now in the process of being renamed to “San Lucas”.

Anyway, this started me thinking about street names in Austin, and the fact that plenty of streets have names far more undesireable than Sisquoc. For example, the Shady Hollow subdivision in South Austin has streets with names including ‘Shoot Out’, ‘Six Gun’, ‘Gun Fight’, ‘Ammunition’ and ‘Shotgun’.

I asked Sylvia if she would live on a street named “Shoot Out” or “Gun Fight” and she said “no way!”. I wonder if a bleeding left wing liberal would pass up his dream home if it just happened to be situated on ‘George W. Bush Blvd’? Would a Vegetarian pass up a home on Brisket Ln? Would a staunch Chistian Conservative not purchase a home on Devil’s Cove? And therefore do street names affect the marketability and desireability of homes if the name is one in which a person could take offense? I decided to look deeper.

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Rarely do we have a closing delayed due to incomplete loan work when the buyer’s lender is an experienced local Austin lender. In fact, we often have closing docs a week or two early (Thank you, Helene!!).

The opposite is true with out of town lenders. We are often chasing down these out of state lenders 5 to 7 days before closing trying to get the loan docs to the Title Company with closing instructions. If we don’t stay on top of them, they drag their feet. Many are so incompetent it boggles the mind (the stories I could tell…), but they attract buyers by promising lower closing costs and loan fees (which often don’t turn out to be what the buyer thought they were getting). You get what you pay for.

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