This morning I was interviewed on Capital Public Radio’s “Insight” program hosted by Jeffrey Callison. This program airs to the Greater Sacramento Region in several counties on multiple stations. I didn’t talk “shop” (real estate), but instead I shared about the Project 680 Hoody Drive for a few minutes. Overall the interview went okay. If you’d like, click HERE to listen to the interview on Cap Radio’s website. I’m at the very end near the 45:30 marker. Now I’m off to finish some deadlines. It’s been one busy week and it’s only Tuesday!!!
Resources
The Galleria mall fire & unemployment in Placer County
Here are the latest unemployment rates for all cities and CDPs in Placer County as of September 2010 per EDD. For reference, the unemployment rate in Placer County in Sepetember2009 was 10.9% (as opposed to 11.5% in September 2010). It’s not a surprise to see an increase in umeployment over the past year since that is happening all over the Sacramento Region.
It’ll be interesting to see if there is an increase in unemployment in the Roseville area next month in light of the Gallteria mall burning last week. This of course assumes companies will not be able to provide work for employees over the next few months as the mall is rehabbed and also that employees live locally in Rosevile and Rocklin. It’s reported, for instance, that Macy’s will relocate their Galleria employees until the work has been completed, but there is nothing definitive yet about what Nordstrom will do. In the mean time too there is a “Keep Shopping in Roseville” page on Facebook.
Do you know anyone that works at the Galleria Mall? How have various employers and employees handled the situation thus far?
When is the deadline to appeal property taxes in Sacramento County?
While delivering a property tax appeal to the Sacramento County Appeals Board today, I took out my Flip camera to say a few words. It’s very important for locals to understand that November 30, 2010 is the deadline to dispute property taxes in Sacramento County (and many surrounding counties). Enjoy a short video.
FYI: The deadlne of November 30, 2010 is for typical “decline in value” reassessments. There are other types of appeals that do not have this deadline.
Let me know if you have any questions. Call me at 916.595.3735, catch me on Facebook or visit my property tax appeal website.
Is price per square foot an accurate way to measure the value of a house?
Home owners ask me sometimes about the average price per square foot for their neighborhood. Honestly, I pay attention to the price per sq ft as one of many real estate metrics, but it’s not the end-all solution to valuation by any means. Let me illustrate my point by presenting a graph of all sales in the Anatolia neighborhood of Rancho Cordova over the past twelve months.
Over the past 90 days Anatolia has had an average price per square foot of $103. If Joe the Home Owner then took this figure and applied it to his home, let’s see what he comes up with. Imagine he has a house at 1000 square feet. In theory, Joe’s house should be worth $103,000 (1000 x $103), but the graph shows homes at 1000 square feet sold between $140 to $150 dollars per square foot actually. Let’s look at 2000 square feet. It looks like $103 works very well for some houses, but other properties at 2000 square feet clearly sold closer to $250,000 (that would be $125 per sq ft). Let’s look at even larger homes. Many 4000 square foot properties sold well under $103 per square foot, and houses around 5,550 square feet sold closer to $81 per square foot ($450,000 / $103).
As you can see, an average price per square foot figure is not constant for all houses in a neighborhood. Simply multiplying your square footage by the average price per square foot for your area, city or zip code may or may not work, and will very likely not give you an accurate number.
Question: When looking at the graph above, what size of home do you think might give you the best return on your dollar?