La Canada Real Estate

Before and After

This is an incredible example of making a silk purse out of a sows ear! My friends bought this home in La Canada last year and have done a top-to-bottom renovation and expansion. The before was a 1300 square foot 1940's box. The awkward entry led directly into the living room.

Here it is, a mere seven months later, completely reinvented. Amazing what a lot of talent, skill and money can do to a house! This lovely home is now on the market. Come and be inspired on Sunday, April 6 from 2:00-5:00.

La Canada market activity this week

The last 7 days have hardly proved to be brisk sales days in the La Canada real estate market. We've had 6 new listings:

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The most notable is Doug Drummond's listing at 5024 Hill Street. This sold last year and was then at best a rabbit warren of rooms and a floor plan that made no sense. The current seller has done a complete "before and after" that would make HGTV proud. Definitely worth checking out if you had the opportunity to see it last year.

We had one sale in La Canada this past week:

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This house had come on over $1 million about 7 months ago and then reduced. The original listing expired and the Seller re-listed with a new agent at $879,000. This time around it sold very quickly. I was at a seminar yesterday and the speaker said, "The main thing that sells houses is the price." Alminar is one case that proves his point.

2 houses closed this week. El Camino Corto is just north of Foothill. Not my favorite location but for $484 per square foot, it was a very good buy. La Forest is a terrific mid-century. Originally listed for $1,160,000 almost 3 months ago, it was reduced $50,000 and sold for $1,090,000.

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In a follow-up to last week's posting, I did call the City of La Canada regarding the street construction. The street light, sidewalk and crosswalk improvement is set to begin again by April 1. The work on the Chevy Chase sidewalk is already underway.

This Week in La Canada Real Estate

We have some new listings this week:

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Alta Canyada is a price reduction. It expired and came back on as new. We have 92 listings in La Canada, including condos and all of Sagebrush. The average time on market has been 3 months, with many at 4-6 months. In a nutshell, the bulk of the La Canada listings are held by sellers who don't have to sell but are holding out for their price. For the same reason, we have not been inundated with new listings this spring. We are fortunate to live in an area that is not only blessed with a great geographic location and excellent schools, but very few homeowners in La Canada will have to sell. Therefore, La Canada real estate inventory will stay low and keep our home values from free-falling.

We had no closings this week but 2 homes went into escrow:

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Los Amigos sold within 2 weeks. Berkshire was on the market late last year for 2 months and was pulled doff prior to the holidays. It sold within a month of re-listing in '08.

In a past I blogged about the construction schedule on Foothill.  As much as I am enjoying cruising up the Boulevard, I realize that my Source at the City of La Canada was decidedly off-schedule when he/she told me that the crosswalk/sidewalk improvement would begin as soon as the utility work was completed. I will check back with my source and get back to you...

A Look at This Week's Sales

OK! Things have picked up a bit in La Canada since last week. I know it is to be expected given the time of year, but it almost comes as a relief given the current real estate market. Here's the low-down on the new listings:

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Fernside is small but cute. Alminar and Tondolea were on at the end of '07 and are now listed with new agents at lower prices. Commonwealth keeps popping up as new but has actually been off and on the market for over a year. It was originally a 3 bedroom, but walls were added and now it is a 5 bedroom...more marketable in that price range. Saint Katherine is a (yikes!) short sale.

We did have 3 homes go into escrow this past week:

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4358 Beulah, hands down the best deal on the market, sold for less than the asking price of $2,199,000. I think it was the combination of the declining market coupled with putting it on the market in December. In the past few years, December has been a great month for sales, but this year things really changed. I know I may be biased (my husband built the house), but I think that for many reasons the Buyer got an incredible deal. The home on Haskell sold right away, and like Castle Knoll last week was in what perhaps is the sweet spot of the market ($1.2-$1.4). The little house on Oakwood, down a private drive (okay, a flag lot!) had been reduced to $699 and sold quickly. A year ago, who would have thought anything on upper Oakwood would have sold in that price range?

We had 2 closings this week:

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La Porte, in the shadow of the new Town Center, sold for $431 per foot. Hampton, originally listed for $1,199,000, was reduced to $1,099,750 before it sold. As we head further into spring, activity will pick up and (hopefully) we will see a leveling of prices.

If anyone is looking for big properties, Nancy Marderosian has a phenomenal listing coming on in Flintridge...6000 square feet on about 1/2 an acre in a prime location. Doug Drummond has an 80,000 square foot lot with a ranch house on Berkshire. Call one of us for more information! Tune in next Friday morning for next week's update.

La Canada - the good and the bad

Let's start with the positive. Actually, this is all positive depending on how you look at it. I belong to a Parent Ed group at LCPC. (http://www.lacanadapc.org/Ministries_Parent_Ed/parent.html ) Admittedly, since I am not a member of the church I initially approached Parent Ed with a bit of caution. I started 4 years ago when my son was a baby and continued with my daughter. What I have found in these groups are incredible friends who can relate to everything from diaper explosions to the first time your child says "I hate you." I also find the spiritual aspect of the program comforting and increasingly important. But I digress...

I was discussing real estate with another mom who was explaining her plan to eventually move to La Canada. Shortly after, the class topic moved to the recent Educational Foundation Gala's successful live auction. To be precise, we talked about the Hannah Montana walk-on roles that (both) went for $27,000. My friend who had just mentioned moving to La Canada turned to me and said, "Maybe we won't move to La Canada." Don't get me wrong. I applaud the success of the Foundation and the generosity of the donors and the winning bidders. But one does have to wonder what message a gift like that sends to a young person. I mean, how do you top that? It certainly raises the bar for your first car, your high school graduation present, the cost of college. And what about all of the other kids in La Canada (or anywhere for that matter) whose parents can't afford that? Are they less than? Are their parents less successful, less generous?

They say that the next generation of workers will be the first in American history who can expect to earn less than their parents. Perhaps for that generation, a day at the beach or a barbecue with family and friends will illicit the same joy in their children that at day with Miley Cyrus did for them.

This Week's Listings and Sales

Closings in La Canada picked up a bit this week, which means that even with tighter standards, banks are lending!

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4 houses sold this week:

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Castle Knoll sold in less than a week, indicating that there are Buyers out there just waiting for the right house to come along.

We had 10 new listings come on the market, bringing our inventory up to 85. Actually, 9 new listings and one that was relisted after expiring: 4358 Beulah, my personal favorite. I understand they are getting a lot of activity since the recent price reduction.

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Back to our inventory. With 85 active listings, if they sell at the current pace, it will take 8 1/2 months to unload all of the properties on the market in La Canada. In 2006, it would have taken 1 month. On a positive note, I think sales will pick up for the next few months and fewer people than expected are listing their homes. Those two factors will bode well for our local market, and since preception seems to be everything these days, things are really looking up!

What Happened to Our Sound Walls?

We took a family trip to the desert over the holiday weekend. The glorious new 210 took us all the way to the 10, thus avoiding much of the traffic typical of a 3-day weekend. One thing that struck me about the 210 as we zoomed through Rialto was the new sound walls. I started to wonder why all of these newer communities dotted with foreclosures  have these mammoth, expensive sound walls and we don't. So I emailed planning and happened to bump into our State Assemblyman Anthony Portantino at Memorial Park (another great feature of living in La Canada...if you have questions, chances are you will bump into someone who has answers at the local market or the park). Between Mr. Portantino and Ann Wilson at the City of La Canada Flintridge, here is what I found out:

Basically, when the contracts were signed 30 years ago allowing the 210 to come through our town, we were not a city. We didn't have anyone at the helm negotiating on our behalf, so while sound walls were promised, nothing was put in writing.  In legalese, I think that means we are screwed.

Three decades later, the city has hired a consultant and completed a sound wall study (the cost of the study was in excess of $500,000). Last year, the study was submitted to and approved by Caltrans. With the study, we are "project ready" and have an estimate of $30 million to complete the project. Based on the latest State budget, I think it is safe to say that we won't be getting help from Sacramento in the very near future. We also now have a federal lobbyist who this month will submit a request for Appropriations. Since we have been told that it is not possible to obtain funding for the whole project, we are applying for funding to potentially fund up to 2 sections (out of 27 sections) of the sound wall project. The amount of the request is 2.5 million.

According to Ann Wilson, "The City is using every available resource to obtain sound walls, and we hope, along with the residents, that we can resolve this important issue." Ann can be reached at awilson@lcf.ca.gov.