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August 15, 2008
View From Lodi, CA Pittsburgh, PA: House For Sale In Lodi, CA—No Reasonable Offer Refused
By Joe Guzzardi
A month after
leaving Lodi and relocating to
Pittsburgh, PA, my move has a new focus.
For the last several weeks, everything relating to
my move has been, for the most part, under my
control: the packing, the cross-country travel, and the
unpacking.
But now the spotlight changes to something that is
frighteningly out of my hands.
Will my Lodi home of more than twenty years sell quickly
at its fairly priced level? Or will it linger on the
market as so many other homes in my neighborhood have?
If it remains unsold, then I may be forced into a coin
flip decision of whether to accept the inevitable
low-ball offer or put the house up for rent. A third
chilling possibility is that I could take the maximum
gamble and carry the house until the market improves, as
it inevitably will.
Contractors have spent the month since I left inside
and outside my house, renovating and upgrading. It goes
on the market this month. By my calculations I have ten
prime weeks left in the selling season, between August
15th and November 1st, to find a
buyer.
The equity that I have built up during two decades of
home ownership protects me from financial devastation.
I bought my house in 1988 so I’m not going to lose
money.
But I do regret that I couldn’t move fast enough two
years ago to cash in on the
real estate bubble that I knew, from
years spent on
Wall Street analyzing inflated markets, was headed
for the tank. An
unexpected illness kept me from selling and, in the
process, cost me at least $100,000
Despite the
mortgage meltdown, my part of town retains its
solidly middle class ambiance, nurtured by my
conscientious neighbors.
Still, I’m caught in the housing crisis buzz saw: as my
Lodi house drops in value, although more slowly than in
previous months, so too does my Pittsburgh home.
As if the reality of owning two houses in a
disastrous market isn’t bad enough, the news from
every print and television report is a non-stop stream
of gloomy predictions.
In July, the Christian Science Monitor wrote that
houses in nearby Victorville, CA have plunged by 43
percent over the last year. [Housing
Crisis Hits Exurbs Hard, By Michael B. Farrell,
Christian Science Monitor, July 25, 2008]
Other reports, and you don’t have to look hard to find
them, predict that this is just the tip of the iceberg
and that prices may continue to fall for two more years.
One particularly ominous expert evaluation earlier this
week described it this way:
Housing Crisis Worse Than Imagined.
As one who always tries to find the glass half full
perspective, I searched the Internet until I finally
came across a U.S. News & World Report article
that, after studying all the data, concluded that
housing prices fell further during the
1930s Great Depression.
Needless to say, I found that cold comfort.[Comparing
Today’s Housing Crisis with the 1930’s, By Alex
Markels, U.S. News & World Report, February 28,
2008]
But amazingly, even though Stockton is the
world’s foreclosure capital, pending sales have
risen in San Joaquin County for five consecutive months,
although at lower median prices. This encouraging tidbit
comes from no less an authority than Linda Bush,
president of the
Lodi Association of Realtors.
[Not All Housing Markets Taking a Downturn, By Linda
Bush, Lodi News-Sentinel, August 1, 2008]
To help me sleep at night, I repeat and repeat in my
mind the words of my ever-optimistic agent Joanie
Selman-Prince that I only need one qualified buyer and
that Lodi is still one of the state’s most desirable
locations.
Attention all buyers! Come forward please. No reasonable
offer will be refused.
Joe Guzzardi
[email
him]
is a California native who recently fled the state
because of over-immigration, over-population and a
rapidly deteriorating quality of life. He has moved to
Pittsburgh, PA where the air is clean and the growth
rate stable.
A long-time instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School,
Guzzardi has been writing a weekly column since 1988. It
currently appears in the
Lodi News-Sentinel.
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