Maybe it’s just that there’s a little more time to enjoy the good stuff, and a whole let less worry about how we’re gonna pay for this life we’ve created?  Maybe it’s none of that, and I’m just introspective about how this economy has changed my family’s lifestyle?  Whatever it may be, it’s changed things for the good in my house.  We roll simple now.  More camping with friends and less flying to here or there.  More time for coaching youth sports.  More time to see people I haven’t seen in 10 years.

Oh yeah…More free pancakes please!

Today’s crisis is hitting us all where it hurts though.  Our 401K’s are now 201K’s. (I didn’t make that up, so kudos to whoever did).  Our home’s are worth a whole lot less than they were.  No doubt, it’s dog-gone tough out there.  I’m an eternal optimist.  I think what goes down, is soon to come up.  This is just a cycle, not the first, not the last.  But a bad one, and one that’s sure to get worse in the near term.  I feel the pain.  My house is for sale.  I don’t know when I’m gonna get paid again.  I sell homes, and as it turns out, homes aren’t easy to sell today.  But here’s the good I see from this:

Homes are way more affordable than than they were 3 or even 5 years ago.  That doesn’t help much if you bought in the middle, and I’m right there with you.  But it does help if you’re a young buyer with hopes and dreams and aspirations.  At least in Truckee, if you weren’t staring down the barrel of a nice inheritance, you weren’t gonna get in as a “first-time” buyer 3 years ago.  That’s changed.  Then, there’s been the little reality check, that maybe our home’s weren’t meant to be an ATM card.  My home equity has kept my family afloat thank God, but it was never meant to be a go to source for ski boats, or luxury vacations or whatever.  Then there’s just the general purpose re-tooling of family.  Financial hardships can be tough on the family, or marriage.  But, they can also draw us closer, forcing us to focus on what’s really important.  That’s what’s happened in my home.  We’re not sure where the Good Lord is gonna take us, but we’re gonna keep on keeping on, knowing that in the end, this is going to work out.

We could lose everything from a material sense, sure.  Can’t take my soul, won’t squash my spirit, can’t keep my dog from thinking that I’m the best friend ever…

We’re gonna get through this!

Today, I got to consult with three different clients who are in various stages of making some real difficult decisions.  (Collective subconscious?)  Maybe.  Big faucet?  Lets hope not!

If you’re a homeowner, it’s pretty certain that you’ve lost some value in the last couple of years.  In some cases, you’ve lost a bundle.  If you’ve only owned for a couple of years, you may owe a heck of a lot more on your little love shack than you could sell it for.  What to do…What to do?

1) Keep making your payments and stick it out.  This assumes that you haven’t lost your job, health, ability to rent it out for a reasonable return or something along those lines.  Plus, when you signed on the bottom line, you meant it.  Don’t hate me, but a signature used to mean more than a handshake, and a handshake meant everything.

2) Modify your loan.  Some lenders are actually paying attention to the current climate.  Turns out they don’t want your house either.  Rather than take it from you, they just might renegotiate your terms.  They’re not just gonna roll over and offer it up, but if you’re willing to work at it, it’s a viable option with some lenders.

3) Short Sell. This is where the bank (or banks if you tapped your equity) agree to let you sell your property for less than you owe.  It’s a sticky process, and typically lengthy, but more and more lenders are seeing this as a better way out for them than foreclosing.  They don’t need another home on their books.

4) Deed In-Lieu of Foreclosure.  Basically, a foreclosure where you voluntarily send the lender your keys.  If you’re unable or unwilling to continue making payments on your loan(s), this is a bit more tidy than foreclosure.

5) Foreclosure.  Formally rare, and now common place.  My understanding, is that the process used to take 4-6 months, and now many deed-holders are delaying that to twice as long.  The deed-holder loses more here, as they generally have to do some repairs, and some other semantical junk prior to listing the property for sale below market rate to get it sold and off their books.

My knowledge is limited here!  This is just a little info if times are tough. If you’re getting ready to make one of these decisions call your accountant and call an attorney.  Make sure you understand all of the ramifications of what you choose.  A big tax bill could be coming, even if you sell short.

Be careful.  When looking out for number one, you’ll want to avoid stepping in number two. This to will pass.  Make sure if you’re contributing to the “Big Faucet”, that you’re doing it for the right reasons. Real estate has always been the best and safest vehicle to creating wealth.  And now with the equities markets being so unstable, even the media is starting to come back around to espousing the virtues of home ownership.  If you like to buy things when they’re on sale, you ought to be out shopping!

After 5 years as Broker/Owner of Pine Ridge Properties, I’m closing the doors.  I’ve been given a great opportunity to go work with some long-time friends at Pacific Crest Properties, here in Truckee.  We get to share some things, and help each other get to the “other side”.  I don’t think it’s a surprise that the last 3 years have been a real challenge for most of us in the real estate field, so a change like this will be good for all of us involved.

Which brings me to the point of this little post.  I’ve been in my current locale for exactly 5 years this month.  As my wife and kids helped me pack up some of my affairs today, it was a little daunting at just how much nonsense I had compiled here over this short time.  When we last moved our home, we had been in that house for exactly 5 years.  Again…the amount of stuff was overwhelming.  Maybe I’m kind of a pack-rat, but I don’t think so.  I come from the “disposable” generation.  I’ve honestly been more of a, “use it until something better comes along, and then throw the old one way type.” Where did all this crap come from?

My folks…they kept everything.  There’s a fiberglass boat on a trailer in my Dad’s yard that hasn’t ran in 25 years.  That’s not me.  I throw stuff away!  So how did I accumulate all this junk I forgot I had?

Now  I’m not super keen on government spending our money to tell us what we can and can’t do.  But here’s an idea.  What if there was a law that made every cell phone use the same battery and the same car charger.  I wouldn’t have had to throw three sets of them away, or look for a place to recycle them.  My industry is very wasteful.  I think it would be a great we didn’t have to generate literal mountains of paperwork for every transaction, just so we could try to mitigate our exposure by disclosing the obvious because somebody sued somebody else for something ridiculous.  If we ever meet in a transaction, I’ll have to make sure that you sign a ten page disclosure in where paragraph 16 advises that if the trees grow, you might lose your view.  Paragraph 18 informs that if you live near a golf course, there is a possibility that golf balls may damage your home, you or your pets.  LOOKOUT RUFUS!

Anyway, there at least ought to be a law the Bret Churchman has to act like he’s moving every two years.  That way I could throw away stuff that I forgot I had, and hopefully be a tad more cognisant about the nonsense I seem to collect.  For me, awareness is the first step.

Thanks for reading.  I’m sorry if you or your pets have been hit by an errant golf ball.  That probably hurt.

So this morning she throws down that she’s tired of, “eating dust for breakfast.”  We try to ride early in the mornings, before the rest of the day gets its chance to steal our opportunity.  She got to lead for a while today, and it was a great thrill for me to teach her about letting her front shock “be her friend”, and how to point her knee in to a turn.  I’m no free-ride guru, but I have logged some miles over the last few years, and I normally manage to keep the rubber pointing down.  She said it helped…but maybe she’s just humoring me the way teenagers like to do with their parents.

If you’re wondering what my point is, it’s this. My little girl was a newborn about two eye blinks ago.  She’s a freshman in high school now!  Soon she’ll be dating a guy named “Axe” who has multiple piercings and who wears his pants half way down his exposed boxer shorts.  (I love that look).  I’m coming to terms with the fact that we don’t get too long with our kids before they’re all grown up.

So again, what’s my point?  Summer is a getting away.  Get up here, and get out and about and enjoy what we all love Tahoe for.  By many accounts, there’s never been a better time to buy.  By my account, there hasn’t been a better time to buy in at least the last eleven years I’ve been doing this.  I’ll even show you a couple of zoomy, easy to ride single tracks.  But because I’ll be guiding…you’ll have to eat dust for breakfast. 

I don’t profess to be a “bright” fellow, but one could assume that T. Boone Pickens is in-fact, a bright fellow, as we’ve already established that he’s a go-bo zillionaire (I think that’s from Forrest Gump). But he’s got a horse in the race. He’s now trying to develop a monstrous wind farm in Texas, after he became a billionaire in the oil business. Nobel? Likely. Worth billions when completed? Also likely. Of course he’s going to say that it’s bad and getting worse.

I think the doomsday mainstream media has a horse in the race too. Whatever side of the political fence you fall on, it has to be painfully obvious to you that Barack Obama is the media’s darling. They love the guy. Both he and his Republican opponent claim that they can “fix it” for us, no matter what “it” is. I submit that as long as the media continues to try and convince us that everything needs fixing, especially the economy, the better chance that their guy Barack has. I happen to subscribe to the theory that government is not likely to fix anything, other than their sights on more of your tax dollars to create more government. I’m not pointing the finger at Democrats here, lest you get uptight, as the Republicans have grown in to bigger spenders than Democrats could have hoped to have been before them. That’s just my take. “We need change, new, fresh” they say. Big government, save me!

So in my effort to talk you down off the ledge, remember that real estate has always been a long-term thing. Until the early part of this decade, real estate promised years and years of modest appreciation, and a sure fire way to accumulate wealth as a long-term strategy. There will be ups and downs, sure, but California real estate, over the long-term has always performed well. It will again, and a heck of a lot sooner if WE pick our selves up by the boot-straps and get on with the rest of our lives. Whoever gets elected (does it really matter anymore) will not save us, nor will they fix anything, nor will the Congress allow them to get anything real done, nor will they do anything that the people actually want or demand.

It’s up to us. Don’t jump…it’s a cycle, and this one too will pass.

In a previous post, I talked about how blessed I was to be writing about the pristine Tahoe summer time weather. I’m still awfully blessed, but that post also talked about the chance of thunder showers. Those thunder clouds sparked the lightning caused fires that have plagued California since. The Yuba-Complex fires as I believe they’re being called are just to the west of the Pacific Crest from us, and each afternoon they have ushered in a thick, smokey haze that has really been stepping on my buzz. Just a couple of hours west of here thousands upon thousands are currently evacuated from their homes in the Town of Paradise. They get to deal with the smoke while sleeping on a cot in a high school gymnasium. So with that, I’ll quit complaining and deal with my little air pollution problem. That’s the thing about our problems, isn’t it? Our problems usually pale in comparison to someone else’s. Such is the case with real estate here. The market is slow. People in some instances are having to “short-sale” their homes, and others have lost them in foreclosure. But generally, our market has held strong. Sure, we’ve lost some of the great gains that we saw over the last 5 years, but compared to some other places, we’re doing okay. If you’re a buyer, and you’ve been waiting for the bottom, a bump in interest rates could erase a further decrease in prices. You may have already missed the bottom. Really. If you’d like to talk about what you could get in Truckee or Tahoe, give me a call or send me an email. I’ll be honest about real estate, and then we can co-miserate about the weather somewhere. Until then, God Bless those who stand in harms way on the fire lines and those who have lost their homes and everything they owned in these fires.

Now…what critical piece of information could I impart on my first post?  After all, the first one’s got to be good doesn’t it?  What seriously comes to mind on a Saturday morning like this is the realization the I am beyond blessed to wake up in Truckee on a day like today.  It’s days like this, that schlumps like me shovel snow all winter for.  Just so you can take my word for it, the forecast is for the upper 70′s as a high, and we began the day in the low 40′s.  Right now there’s neither a cloud in the sky, or a whisper of wind.  A thunder shower this afternoon would be a welcome reprieve from the pine pollen though.  Not to belabour the point, but summer is an amazing time in the high Sierra.  I’m well aware that the majority of the free world waits anxiously for the return of Tahoe’s glorious powder days of mid-winter, but for a lifelong resident like me…Summer is where it’s at.  At risk of being smug…You should be this lucky. 

Now for the Realtor part.  You could be this lucky!  There are a ton of great values on the market in Truckee and North Lake Tahoe right now.  Times are tough and some people really need to sell.  If rates continue to creep up as they’re expected to do, you could already have missed the “bottom” of this downturn in terms of purchasing power.  If you’ve considered getting your own place up here, you should seriously take advantage of the opportunity that this market presents.

Enough of that.  Come to the mountains…soon.  Summer is an amazing time in Tahoe.