While snapping comp photos in a North Highlands neighborhood today, I came across this house. I thought it was very interesting because the addition is absolutely obvious, don’t you think? It’s unfortunately a bit hard to tell from the angle of the photo, but the 2-story unit with brownish stucco exterior is actually attached to the single-story unit with yellowish siding. Which came first?

Curiosity killed the cat, and it also got to me here. When returning to my office, I looked up this property in Tax Records and Metrolist. It’s interesting to see the last purchase in 2008 as a single-story single family residential property, but it has since been converted to a duplex per Tax Records (hence the 2-story attached addition). The interesting notion too is the effective age for this property. How old is it? Well, the single story unit is roughly 50 years old and the new unit is roughly three years old. If you were asked to give one overall age for the duplex, what would you say? 26.5? ((50 + 3) / 2 = 26.5)

What do you think?

If you have any real estate appraisal, valuation consulting, or property tax appeal needs, contact me at 916.595.3735, www.LundquistCompany.com or via Facebook.

It was an honor to have local Realtor David Yaffee interview me the other day about what appraisers look for during an FHA inspection. We also ended up talking about property taxes a bit too. Thanks David. I really appreciate the opportunity. Keep up the great work and the resourceful videos!!

Check out David’s website at www.DavidYafeeTV.com, his post featuring this video, his Facebook page, and his Twitter (@DavidYaffee).

Let me know if you have questions, insight, or any real estate appraisal or property tax consulting needs. If you are a local real estate or loan office in the Sacramento area, I’m happy to come and give my FHA presentation. Contact me at 916.595.3735, on my company website, or on Facebook.

There are about 3,000 Streng homes in the Sacramento area, and I just finished appraising one recently. I have valued quite a few Streng homes through the years since they show up in many local communities.

You may be wondering what in the world a “Streng” home is, so let me break it down in a nutshell. A Streng home is a mid-century modern (MCM) home built by the Streng Brothers and designed by Carter Sparks. Strengs have a modern feel to them, lower pitched roofs, high windows, few windows in front, skylights in many cases, and they often have terrariums too. Strengs were influenced by Bay Area builder Joe Eichler.

Here is a photo of a Streng home in Elk Grove:

An article from “The Beam Guy’s” website helps give insight into Steng homes.

The Streng Brothers seemed to have had an almost intuitive grasp of where the valley was headed, and what was needed. The enclaves are not sprawling, endlessly repeating, cookie-cutter tracts – they’re neighborhoods. Some (River City & Evergreen Commons) even include private parks that foster a safe and family friendly place to create that all-important sense of community. These homes were affordable, and the Streng Brothers fought for and received FHA approval — a legacy that is still profoundly shaping these lovely neighborhoods. Many are still filled with teachers, professors, and a variety of other professionals. Several have neighborhood associations with an online presence — filled with photos, upcoming events, residents’ stories, and even favorite recipes (see the links on the far left).

 Although categorized as mid-century modern (a.k.a. MCM, Postwar Modern, or California Modern), deserving of historic note and preservation, these homes truly were forward looking. They fit today’s “modern” lifestyle seamlessly. The Streng Bros. worked with Carter Sparks to create a home, uniquely suited to the hot Sacramento valley: interior atriums domed with tinted acrylic to block heat, exposed aggregate flooring enhances cooling, open living areas allow free flowing AC, and lots of natural sunlight without the “hotbox” effect.  Moreover, these homes provide a private retreat from the hectic 21st century world, with front exteriors that are setback and substantially closed-off from the road, and back exteriors with lots of windows and sliders that tend to open into beautifully landscaped backyards and patios.

Here are some relevant links in case you’re interested in Streng properties.

Blog cataloging restoration of an Eichler home in Land Park
Eichler Network
Floor Plans for Streng Homes
Modern Valley Blog
Pictures of Streng Houses on Flickr
Sacramento Bee Article
Sacramento Mid-Century Modern Tour
Streng Brothers Homes

If you live in or have lived in a Streng home (or would like to), I’m curious to hear your thoughts about Strengs. What attracts you to the design? What do you like most? Anything you don’t like? Or if you’re in real estate, have you sold many Strengs? In your mind, what is the perception among buyers for Streng homes?

One of the tools in my real estate utility belt is making trend graphs. Why is this important? I find that being able to visually display all sales or listings on a graph is a very convincing resource. For example, when a home owner hires me to do an appraisal for bankruptcy or any other reason, and I include graphs of historic sales over the past three years, sales over the last twelve months, and then other graphs showing sales for 3-bedroom units, and properties similar in size to the owner’s house, it’s easy to begin to get a picture of what is happening in the real estate market. The great thing too is that you can graph so many different facets, whether square footage, age, date, bed-count, days on market, short sales vs. REOs vs typical sales, etc…

You can see some examples of trend graphs here if you wish. For now, I made a brief video tutorial to help local Realtors and real estate professionals in the Sacramento area export and work with data from our local MLS. It’s a huge benfit to be able to share things like this with clients, and once you have a little practice, you can crank out graphs very quickly. And don’t worry, if you don’t have Excel on your computer, simply download Gnumeric for free.

If you have any questions, let me know, particularly if you are a local Realtor. Call me at 916.595.3735 or connect with me on Facebook.

Here is a before and after image of a house in the “Oak Park” area of Sacramento that one of my clients rehabbed recently. It’s a joy to see properties like this get an “extreme makeover” because it’s great for the community and wonderful for one lucky buyer too. The previous stairs were apparently failing, and so someone built a very shoddy walkway on top of them (don’t miss the huge pile of dirt underneath too). The new stairs are quite an improvement, don’t you think? Neighbors just might appreciate the upgrade too.  

Here’s a quick trend graph for you of all sales in the Pocket-Greenhaven area of Sacramento over the past three years. What stands out to you? What do you see?

I swear I don’t have some sort of water tower fetish. I posted a photo of a tower in Galt last week and now this week I’m sharing another image from the field today. While taking comp photos in the Pocket/Greenhaven area of Sacramento a few hours ago, this image stood out to me. No, it’s not the mothership from V. It’s a water tower off of Freeport Blvd.

I’m intrigued by real estate and how a certain view might impact whether a buyer will purchase a particular property or not. This water tower is not literally next to the backyard of the house above as it seems from my photo, but the view from my camera lense is really what it looks like with the naked eye. You’ll get a better sense of distance by viewing a “bird’s eye” image below from Sacramento MLS. Personally, I’m actually fond of this water tower. It has a good look and I love how it says “Sacramento: City of Trees” for passersby on Interstate 5. It probably wouldn’t bother me too much if I lived with such a view. That’s just me though.

Do you think a view of a water tower like this would turn you off? Or would any negativity associated with the water tower be offset by the positive of having no rear neighbors?

Put on your economist hat and let’s take a look at the past decade of unemployment rates in Sacramento County based on the month of June. What do you see? Comments are welcome below.

June 2010     12.6%
June 2009     11.5%
June 2008     6.9%
June 2007     5.4%
June 2006     4.9%
June 2005     5.1%
June 2004     5.9%
June 2003     6.3%
June 2002     5.8%
June 2001     4.5%

I took this photo a few days back as a comp photo for an appraisal I’m doing near the Del Paso Heights area of Sacramento. This image tells an obvious story of a new roof being installed – but not just a newer roof, but a different type of roof. The house is being transformed from flat to hipped in style. The first image is an MLS photo.

The interesting thing to note while driving through this neighborhood is that there was at least one other house having a gable or hipped roof installed. Moreover, though there are still quite a few flat roofs in this neighborhood, many roofs have already been converted to a higher pitch. I’ve seen this same phenomenon in West Sacramento too. Does this say anything about the market?

Which style of roof do you prefer?

A local Realtor called me yesterday asking if I had any resources to help her find the owner occupancy rates for a particular zip code in the Sacramento area. One of her investor clients needed more specific information about a neighborhood he is considering buying in.

Off the top of my head, I suggested the Census Bureau or maybe the Post Office or city websites (for free resources), but through the course of research and conversation with colleagues on the REAA forum, I now have a pretty good list to give to my Realtor contact. I figured this information might be useful to others, so here you go.

United States Census Bureau
Motovo “neighborhood” search (www.movoto.com)
Brainy Zip (www.brainyzip.com)
Neighborhood Scout (www.neighborhoodscout.com)
City Data (www.city-data.com)
Tax Records Search (www.realist.com) – paid service – available through MLS

Do you have any other resources to add? Comment below. Also, what other websites do you think investors or home owners should take a look at before making a purchase?

My Realtor friend Jenifer Miller invited me yesterday to give a 90-minute talk to a group of new real estate agents at Lyon Real Estate in Elk Grove. It was fun and I hope overall helpful too as we discussed how to more effectively communicate with appraisers in an HVCC world as well as a few tidbits on FHA minimum requirements.

Anyway, one of the members of the class brought up a great question. He asked how properties could not be worth at least their replacement cost. The truth is that we see so many properties in the Sacramento area selling far below what they would actually cost to build from scratch (cost of land + all improvements). 

That’s the nature of the market these days. But why is that? There are many factors to consider. Do you remember the real estate bubble? It couldn’t have lasted forever. Property values really climbed too quickly to enormously high levels, didn’t they? When the bubble burst, it changed the real estate market. There ended up being a huge oversupply of distressed properties listed on the open market, and these REOs set the pace for the rest of the market. Keep in mind too everything that was going on in Wall Street, the bailouts, and the economy beginning to sincerely struggle. All of these factors (and more) influenced property values.

Moreover, check out unemployment figures to the right for both Sacramento County & Placer County. These April 2010 stats from the Employment Development Department show an unemployment rate of 12.5% in Sacramento County and 11.5% in Placer County. Let’s contrast this with data from April 2006 that shows the unemployment rate was 4.8% in Sacramento County and 4.3% in Placer County. Things changed, didn’t they? In light of unemployment rates being significantly higher nowadays, do you think buyers could really afford to purchase houses right now at 2006 levels?  

What do you think? I’d love to hear your insight.

Check it out. I started a Facebook page for my business last week. My rationale for taking the plunge is threefold: 1) I like Facebook and I use it all the time; 2) Facebook is a ripe arena for conversation; 3) I want to make sure to be available and able to connect with others in this simple (free) way. Click the image below (or here) to visit the page.

You may wonder, “well, Ryan, you are so into social media, so why did it take you so long to create a Facebook page?” Honestly, I felt conflicted for a while, so I needed time to really think this through. Facebook is so personal, and I just didn’t want to be “that guy” who looked and sounded like he was marketing to his friends. This was really a philosophical hurdle that I needed to sift through over time before rolling out in confidence with a page. It just took a bit of time for me to ultimately feel comfortable enough that starting a page was the best move, and that it’s acceptable and non-spammy to have a page for business (well, non-spammy depending on how you use it of course). And by the way, I am not “that guy”.

Do you have a Facebook page? Why? Why not?