Best Realty's Lake Oroville Real Estate Blog

After two consecutive days of “the sky is falling” reporting about the real estate market, I thought you all might appreciate some time meeting with our resident Lake Oroville Real Estate psychiatrist to help deal with this “tragic” news. 
Free Real Estate Market, meet Dr. I Told You So
Dr. I Told You So: What seems to be the problem today, Free Market
Free Market: I’m  just exhausted, Doc.
I Told You So: Really? Tell me why.
Free Market: Well, every time I try to do my job, something, or someone, interferes with me.
I Told You So: Didn’t we have this conversation about 10 years ago?
Free Market: Yes, when a bunch of meddlers forced me to loan money to people who would never have been approved for a loan, had they let me do my job. 
I Told You So:  So, how has it gone since then?
Free Market: Well, I hit my head real hard when I fell of the cliff. Since then they have been trying to put me on disability, thinking that I am no longer capable of doing my job.
I Told You So: Let me get this right, they attempted to disable you, Free Market.
Free Market: Yes.
I Told You So: Didn’t I tell you that there is no way to disable you? That the only way to stop you is to take you over?
Free Market: Yes, but how come nobody else seems to understand this?
I Told You So: Who is nobody?Free Market: Well, Let’s see. Congress, The California Legislature, The National Association of REALTORS, the California Association of REALTORS and many individual REALTORS that I am around.
I Told You So: What did they do to you?
Free Market: There I was trying to recover from my fall, barely starting to feel like my old self again when all of a sudden I was told I wasn’t  working fast enough and then they held me down and injected me with something they called stimulus.
I Told You So: Are you saying what I think you are saying.
Free Market: Yes, they injected me with the leftover Cash from Clunkers serum.
I Told You So: Oh no. No wonder you are exhausted.
Free Market: Yeah, as soon as they injected me I started running around feeling stronger that I have in the past three years. Everybody thought I was finally healing.
I Told You So: Not everybody.
Free Market: Huh?
I Told You So: Didn’t I tell you that if they tried the Cash for Clunkers medicine on you that it would not work. That it would only temporarily interrupt you, Free Market, from doing what you do.
Free Market: Yes.
I Told You So: So how is it going now.
Free Market: I am now going through withdrawals. I have come off my high and now everybody is saying that I am tanking again. And I think I am. Existing home sales are down almost 30% and new home sales are down over 12%.
I Told You So: Don’t panic about this! Sales are down now because of the high they put on you with that market interferce drug called “Tax Credit.” Now that the drug has worn off you have the chance to do the job you were established to do. But you have to carry the temporary burden of being looked down upon for going where you were already going before you were assaulted.
Free Market: Boy, am I glad to hear THAT.
I Told You So: Always remember this, Free Market. You are much like a mail carrier. Neither rain nor sleet, nor government or trade group interference, can keep you from your appointed duties.
Free Market: Thanks Doc.
I Told You So: You’re welcome.  Now get out there and get that Supply and Demand thing going again!!! Oh, and that will be $300.00. You can pay my receptionist on the way out.
Free Market: Gee thanks, I guess the Free Market IS back.
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Having spent a part of my working life, in the Lake Oroville real estate market, as a financial consultant with a major Wall Street brokerage company I was always entertained by, not only the jargon of the industry,  but also by some of the odd, or some might say superstitious, ways that pundits use to predict the next direction that the market or the economy might move.
For example, the Super Bowl Indicator theorizes that the year in which a team from the AFC wins the Super Bowl the stock market will fall, but if an NFC team wins the market will rally. Amazingly, this “predictor” has been right 80% of the time over the years. Another of these anecdotal predictors is the Hem Line Effect. This theory says that as hem lines move up so does the market and when hem lines get longer the market drops.
So, what does this have to do with anything related to the real estate market in Lake Oroville, Paradise and Chico, you say?
As to those theories, nothing. But I think we unintentionally swerved into the first real estate industry anecdotal predictor of the real estate market, in our office. I call it the Redenbacher Effect.
I discovered this theory while Steffan, one of the associates in my office was popping his $1.00 bag of popcorn ( that he bought at the Dollar Store, because that is where REALTORS® shop these days) in our microwave oven. You might imagine the quality level of $1.00 popcorn is not quite the same as the good stuff you get at the movies for about $5.00 a bag.  The fact that Steffan eats at least a bag a day of this stuff has leads me to believe that he is quite the popcorn connoisseur.
I will never forget the profoundness of the words that eminated from his lips as the Redenbacher Effect was born:
 ”I sure will be glad when the market gets good again so I can afford to buy something better than this $1.00 popcorn c*@p.”
With the suddenness of a light bulb being switched on to interrupt the darkness of an empty room, it hit me that we may finally have an accurate way to forecast the pending direction of  not only the Lake Oroville real estate market, but the real estate markets of all 4 corners of the world!
The Redenbacher Effect is defined as this:
When Steffan is eating $1.00 popcorn c*@p the real estate market is c*@p. When he starts buying more expensive popcorn (i.e. Orville Redenbacher Movie popcorn) the market is going to improve.
Now you might be thinking that I have finally lost it, and actually, you may be right.  But just think about how well (or not so well) the so-called experts have predicted the direction of this market. I mean, really, can this be any less accurate than the methods they use. I think not.
There is, however, one thing that can throw this whole theory into a tailspin.  What happens when someone GIVES us a box of premium popcorn. For example, I was telling my friend Jim Moll about my theory yesterday and when I arrived at the office this morning there was a box of Orville Redenbacher popcorn at my backdoor.
It took me a while to consider the consequences of his generosity. What will happen if we eat this premium popcorn while the market is down like it is?  Will the market improve even though Steffan did not pay for it? The respective answers are, NOTHING, and NO.
You see it occurred to me that Jim’s gift was a POPCORN CREDIT. He was simply giving us popcorn in the hopes that it would give the market time to stabilize so that we can buy the better and more expensive popcorn later. So we have had the CASH FOR CLUNKERS credit, the FUNDS FOR FORECLOSURES credit and now we have CORN FOR C*@P credit.
I wonder if this will work better than the previous credits?……I think we all know the answer to that one hmmmmmm.
Stay tuned to this blog post for updates on the Redenbacher Effect. And remember, you first heard about it here.

I recently had cause to discuss an issue with the City of Oroville Housing Department regarding whether or not a particular home located within the city limits of the Lake Oroville real estate market could be approved to be sold to the first time home-buyer that I am representing.
Without getting into the minutia of the issue, the Housing Department originally said that my client would not be able to purchase the home based on the current guidelines that were established within the grant program that is being used to fund the loans for first time home buyers that are purchasing homes within the city limits of the Lake Oroville real estate market.
In my view, the guideline that they were using was one that was very subjective and open to broad interpretation. In discussing this issue with the housing department over a three day period I think I talked to nearly everyone in the department.
I talked to Dawn, Tiffany, Vanessa, and Pat during this time and to be totally honest I thought I was going to get the proverbial government runaround that normally comes in  dealing with “policy.”
Well I was wrong. That’s right….wrong!
Each of these public servants listened to my concerns and my position with an open mind  and in the end understood that the guideline was in fact extremely subjective and worked diligently to do the right thing for my client , as well as for future users of the First Time Home Buyer Loan Program, of which many in the Lake Oroville real estate market have availed themselves.
The postition that these ladies are in cannot always be an enjoyable job. Dealing with REALTORS®, lenders and first time home buyers while trying to keep up with, and communciate, the many changes that occur in the grant programs that make the loan programs possible has got to be quite a challenge.
A big thank you to Pat Clark, the Director of Business Assistance and Housing Development, and the entire staff in the department for their help. It is refreshing to see that common sense and fairness are alive and well in the halls of our city in the Lake Oroville real estate market.

As a reader of this blog you know that the market guidance I give for the Lake Oroville real estate market and Paradise real estate market is intended to provide a forward looking perspective to where the market is going.
Attempting to take into consideration all the factors that affect the market and trying to provide accurate guidance into the future is a balancing act to say the least. The biggest challenge in trying to do this is in separating the hype from reality.
Every day you hear the hype but rarely the reality.
I think the reason this Lake Oroville real estate blog is so popular is that readers have realized that the perspective and advice I give is based solely what I see the realities of the market to be. For example, if you go back to some of my previous blog posts you will see that I was maybe the only REALTOR you heard saying that the tax credits would not help the market in the long term; that the market cannot recover until we find a way to get some of the 8 million or so who have been foreclosed on back into the market; and that government “purchase incentives” will only prolong the pain homeowners and sellers are going through with regards to home values.
My contact with two separate buyers in the Lake Oroville real estate market over the past couple of weeks has led me to believe that we are about to see the very small beginnings of a truly sustainable recovery in home sales and home values.
This belief is based on the fact that each of these buyers were coming to me following their homes being foreclosed upon in late 2007 and early 2008.  With FHA lending standards allowing a borrower to get a loan with a foreclosure of 3 or more years old on their credit report, these buyers are poised to get back into the market and find another home to purchase.
With the first big wave of foreclosures rolling through the real estate market in 2008 it stands to reason that there should be the beginnings of an uptick in real estate transactions sometime in the middle of 2011 as many of those who lost their homes may possibly qualify again for a loan.
And as corny as this may sound, with the much lower prices and the almost free, fixed interest rates, many of these buyers may look back on their foreclosure with fond memories as it enabled them to get out of a house they most likely over paid for and which they financed with an adjustable loan with a top rate that would make a loan shark blush.
Time is a great healer, isn’t it?