LA Westside BlogPOINT Archive

Many thanks to the City of Santa Monica for developing this ingenious little website:  http://parkingspacenow.smgov.net that gives real time parking availability updates for it's city-wide parking facilities.  The guide's mission is to get you out of your car and on with your day a little more quickly.

You'll find lots of helpful information about the city's 16 parking lots and structures (including the Santa Monica Pier and beach parking lots along Pacific Coast Highway).  The overview map will give you detailed information about lot locations, hours and rates and most importantly, the number of available parking spaces at any given time!

If you left your PDA at home, you can still navigate to a lot with available spaces by tuning into WQGR AM1680 - Santa Monica's parking and traffic information radio station.  Now if they could only do something about those broken meters . . . . .

Every year, there are thousands of deer-related accidents involving cars in the western U.S.  According to a recent posting by the Brentwood Homeowners Association, there are relatively few within the hillside areas of Brentwood and the Santa Monica Mountains.  Nonetheless, November and December is the peak mating season for the Mule Deer and maintaining an elevated awareness while driving the roads through our beautiful canyons can help keep these tragedies at a minimum.

Deer often roam into unfamiliar areas and panic when they see or hear cars.  This causes them to bound onto the road without warning and/or 'freeze' in the beams of oncoming headlights.  They're often killed by the car's impact or are critically injured.  The collisions can cause considerable damage to a car as well as creating serious injury potential to its occupants.

Here's some safety tips to keep in mind when driving the hillside communities:

1. Be particularly alert at dawn, dusk and very late hours when there is little or no traffic.
2. Use caution when driving on two lane roads.
3. If you see a deer on the side of the road, stop and look for others then proceed slowly.
4. If a deer 'freezes', stop and turn your headlights off and on to give a warning.
5. Deer are naturally skittish and prone to panic, so try to avoid swerving (to avoid contact) and instead stop as quickly as possible, for they tend to follow headlights.

Driving with caution these months while in any of the Santa Monica Mountain communities will help to preserve nearby wildlife and minimize your risk of a collision.

When talking with buyers these days, I find there are three main issues that are on their mind:

• Is there money available to lend for mortgages in these credit-starved times?
• Can I get a loan with less than a 20% down payment?
• Could I qualify for a loan with a credit (FICO) score less than 720?

The answer to all three is a resounding YES!!  Kenneth R. Harney of the Washington Post Writers Group recently wrote a great article that should dispel some of the anxieties currently held by home buyers. 

For example, there's plenty of money to lend right now largely because the mortgage market has been federalized with the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the latter two are operating under federal conservatorship) being the central players.  All three have a direct pipeline to the global capital markets and their credit line is fully backed by the U.S. Treasury.

With the FHA option, you can still put down as little as 3% (3.5% come January 1st) and as little as 5% on certain Fannie and Freddie programs so long as you agree to insure the loans with private mortgage insurance (PMI).  While Fannie and Freddie have increased their lending requirements over the past year, they're still writing business with buyers whose credit scores are in the upper 660s.

I shall close with advice I give all my buyers when discussing their financing strategy:

1. Get Pre-Approved (not Pre-Qualified)
2. Do it now - When you find the home of your dreams, you'll want to be in a position to act on it immediately.  (In just about all cases, a pre-approval letter must accompany a written offer to purchase in addition to proof-of-funds for the down payment.)
3. If you're pre-approved with a direct lender, get approved with a mortgage broker as well.  There are few (if any) funding guarantees out there and you want to have a Plan B in place to back you up in case the loan officer can't deliver at the eleventh hour.  A broker has access to multiple (hundreds of) lending sources that can keep your purchase effort on track.

It's challenging enough just to find the right home.  Having a sound strategy and plan of operation can best ensure that those efforts are not ultimately in vain.

I'm often asked if this is a good time to buy a home. Some clients are concerned that home prices may fall further than they have already. They are assuming that the best course of action is to wait for the bottom in the market and then buy. The problem with this approach is that you don't know where the bottom is until you see it in the rear view mirror, meaning until you've missed it!

Home prices are one factor in determining your cost of ownership, but so are interest rates and financing availability. Even though interest rates have gone up in the last six months, they are still near historic lows. Since your monthly mortgage payment is a combination of paying down your principal and paying the interest owed, if home prices come down a little further but interest rates go up, it could cost you even more to service a mortgage on an identical home!

While a home is a major investment, it is also the center of your personal life. It's important to live in a home that reflects your taste and values, yet is within your financial "comfort zone." To that end, it may be more important to lock in today's relatively low interest rates and low home prices, rather than to hope for a further break in prices in the future.

Please give me a call if I can be of any assistance in determining how much home you can afford in today's market.

The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 was just signed by President Bush with some amazing benefits for first time homebuyers. Call everyone you know who wants to buy their first home (or who hasn't owned one in three years), this is too good to miss - it's a $7,500 tax CREDIT (not deduction but a credit).

If you have not owned a home in three years, you qualify as a first time home buyer. If you buy a home after April 9, 2008 and before July 1, 2009, you qualify for this credit. Call your friends who just bought a home since April 9th and tell them they may take $7,500 off their tax bill if they qualify. It has to be your principal residence, so rentals do not count.

The tax credit is 10% of the cost of the home, up to a maximum of $7,500. This is not an additional deduction that lowers the amount of income to be taxed, it is a tax credit. In other words, you take $7,500 off your tax bill. But there is a catch; the credit you receive now is actually an interest-free loan that must be repaid.

The loan has no interest, and will be paid back over 15 years. You get the credit on your 2008 taxes, but you start paying it back on your 2010 taxes that are due in 2011, so you get at least two years without a payment. You pay back 6.67% of the credit each year, so for a $7,500 credit the payment is $502.50 per year. If you stay put for 15 years, you pay it off with no interest.

What happens if you sell the house? You pay the balance back at the closing. So, you get $7,500 now, and pay the rest of it back if you make money on the sale of your house. What happens if you do not make enough money when you sell your house? They forgive the rest of the debt.

Other restrictions stipulate that you have to buy your first house in three years before July 1, 2009, not have super high income, not use bond financing and buy anywhere in the US.

If you'd like to learn more about this program, please call me!