Zillow Blog recently had a post covering “Some of 2010’s Top Real Estate Sales.”  Yet not one of them was in the Bay Area, let alone the Real Bay Area.  The ten featured home sales were mostly in Southern California, with one at Pebble Beach, one in Manhattan, and three in Florida.

Something has got to be wrong with those statistics.  The most expensive home in the article was a Bel Air beast, and another Bel Air battlement checked in at #5.  There were also two from Malibu, the aforementioned Pebble Beach, plus Santa Barbara.  Florida had disasters in Delray Beach, Naples, and Highland Beach.  (No wonder Florida real estate is hurting even more than California, at least we know how to spell del Rey over here.)

I was able to find several properties that sold in 2010 over $10 million in the Real Bay Area, and we’ll talk about those places another time.  Instead, there’s something more of interest about this Zillow piece:  How bad were the haircuts on each of these houses?  When the seller thought they could get $20 million, how much did they actually get?  Are we talking five percent?  Ten?  Fifteen?  Zillow didn’t feel this information was all that important, but we at Burbed know that watching the sellers chase the market down is the biggest part of the fun.

#1. Le Belvedere – Bel Air, CA

Original Price: $85 Million (February 2009)

Reduced Price: $72 Million (November 2009)

Sale Price: $50 Million (June 2010)

Haircut: -43%

This house leads to all kind of speculation since nobody is sure exactly who owns it.  It has since been sold to 2 limited liability corporations.  The 11 BR/14 BA 48,000 sf home (yes, 48,000 square feet) requires a staff of 15 and is on a 2.2 acre lot.  You can pick up this Bel Air listing for $53 million (9 BR/21 BA) if looking at this picture is making you think, “You know what?  I really want an insanely large and expensive home in Southern California.”

Redfin had this listing for a 7 BA/15 BA 35,000 sf house on 2+ acres, which Zillow says is the same one, but key details differ.  A 10/15 did sell for $18 million last January, but it was less than half the size of La Belvedere.

#2. Carbon Beach Gem – Malibu, CA

Original Price: $57 Million (March 2010)

Reduced Price: $47 Million (June 2010)

Sale Price: $36,969,000 (October 2010)

Haircut: -35%

This 8 BR/12 BA is 12,785 sf and has a mere 3/4 acre lot.  However, that lot includes 180 feet of Malibu beachfront.  Plenty of instant equity, this place has a Zestimate of $39,733,000!  While the first house write-up above freely speculated over who the owner is, not a peep as to who bought or sold a home on “Billionaire’s Beach,” where “you could run into celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston and David Geffen.” Or in this case, older ladies who go to lots of fundraisers.  Property Shark didn’t indicate who the new owner was.

#3. Malibu Colony Beach House – Malibu, CA

Original Price: $23,950,000 (April 2010)

Sale Price: $21,475,000 (September 2010)

Haircut: -10.3%

Zillow points out that this house is only 5,000 sf, so we’re talking $4,295 a foot.  A half acre lot but only 60 feet of beachfront, and that’s 60 more feet than any house in Silicon Valley will have until the Pacific and the Bay rise a couple dozen feet.  The property has not one but two guest suites and a gym, separate from the main building.  Given that exterior has all the charm of a Santa Cruz 8-plex motel, that’s an improvement.  Plus, you might run into Tom Hanks, Bill Murray, and other celebrities even older than I am.

Property Shark doesn’t have the most recent sale record, but the seller lived in Tiburon.

#4. Pebble Beach Jewel – Pebble Beach, CA

Original Price: $25 Million (March 2010)

Sale Price: $18.75 Million (May 2010)

Haircut: -25%

Almost twice as large as the last beach house, this 6 BR/4.5 bath on 1.3 acres has all the charm of a Presidential library, minus the historical documents or the gravitas.  Unlike Malibu Beach, here you have “Out one set of windows is the surf crashing along Pebble Beach’s craggy coast where harbor seals come to visit.”  Evidently out the back windows is some golf club or something.  Guess any celebrities worth running into would be out there clubbing the seals.

Seriously, does Zillow think nothing in the RBA has sold for more than $10 million last year?  Or just that they weren’t trying very hard?  I found this place in San Francisco that went for $15.5 million, and this one in Woodside.  Someday we’ll talk about those…

#5. Bel Air Mediterranean – Bel Air, CA

Original Price: $24,500,000 (February 2009)

Reduced Price: $19,750,000 (July 2009), $18,950,000 (February 2010)

Sale Price: $16,250,000 (May 2010)

Haircut: -34%

Want it?  It’s for sale again, showing that flipping houses hasn’t gone out of style in some places.  Listed for $19.5M this October, only 5 months after it sold for $16.25M, the price was cut a whopping 3.8% to $18.75M a month later.  This is a 13,000 sf 7 BR/11 BA behemoth on 0.85 acre, plus the listing agent is married to a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills.  I swear I am not making this up.

Given that the listing doesn’t mention a speck of improvement that the new owner put in, anyone want to predict their exit price point?

Bonus feature: The property was foreclosed on during bubblicious 2004 for $700,000, before the current structure was put in.

#6. Dramatic Delray – Delray Beach, FL

Original Price: $24,900,000 (July 2008)

Reduced Prices: $21,900,000 (November 2008), $18,950,000 (June 2009), $21,500,000 (July 2009), $18,950,000 (September 2009), $18,975,000 (February 2010)

Sale Price: $12,650,000 (April 2010)

Haircut: -49%

Nothing says dramatic real estate crash like Florida real estate, and here’s a spectacular example.  Best of all, it’s up for sale again at $19.5M with the exact same agent, showing some people are very slow learners.  At least they have over 14,500 sf of house to learn slowly in, with 6 bedrooms and a WTF 7.3 bathrooms on 2.13 acres.  Florida real estate is definitely different than anywhere in the US.  Where else would a 16 foot elevation be described as “commanding”?  Features 160 feet of “frontage” but onto what isn’t clear.  Perhaps the 16 foot towering precipice above the Atlantic.

#7. Upper East Side – New York, NY

Original Price: $17,000,000 (September 2009)

Reduced Price: $15,900,000 (January 2010)

Sale Price: $13,150,000 (September 2010)

Haircut: -23%

Gordon Gekko might have said that “Greed is good,” but in New York City, stock market traders have another slogan about making money: “Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered.”  And this “grand 20-foot wide mansion” sold for $10.5M in March, 2008.  Yes, you too can pay eight digits for a five story house that literally has the breadth of a double garage, and it doesn’t even come with one!  Boasting 6 bedrooms, 6 baths, 8000 square feet and a lot size of (get ready) 2000 sf (0.05 acres), and around the corner from an actual Park Avenue address.

The current owner is now a floplord, looking for a tenant for 109 E 69th St.  The rent?  $48,000 a month.  Hope they don’t expect three months’ security up front.

In case you’re interested, that makes this property have a rent ratio of 22.8.  Typical rent ratio for Manhattan is well over 30, which suggests some pig is about to get slaughtered again.

#8. Santa Barbara Villa – Santa Barbara, CA

Original Price: $19.5 million (August 2008)

Reduced Price: $16 million (March 2009)

Sale Price: $13 million (September 2010)

Haircut: -33%

Whew!  That was too long outside of California.  Between the old people of Florida and the New York cabbies who enjoy speeding up to love-tap pedestrians in crosswalks, that was a definite dollop of cognitive dissonance.  Face it, high prices should stay in California where they belong.  Why would anyone pay lots of money to live in a city where 16 inches of snow shuts the whole place down?

No doubt the Zillow blogger who put this piece together was so relieved to cover a California property that s/he neglected to notice the original (and much higher) list price for this house.  Maybe this one item was farmed out to Tech Gal, the Peninsula real estate agent notorious for her sales to listing price ratios based on reduced asking prices.

Speaking of the house… This 8592 sf home thinks of itself as a Tuscan villa, but it’s got a modern tax bill to greet you.  A 5 BR/6.5 BA main house plus a 1 BR/1 BA guest home on the 3.4 acre grounds guarantee you’ll keep a gardening staff busy all year.

#9 Gulf Coast Grace – Naples, FL

Original Price: $16.5 million (May 2009)

Reduced Price: $15.9 million (July 2009)

Sale Price: $13 million (January 2010)

Haircut: -21%

This over 9000 sf house on Naples Bay is situated on 3/4 of an acre but is still in the sinkhole of Florida real estate.  Even Zillow looks at last year�
��s sales figure and comes up with a Zestimate of $11,013,000, suggesting that this palatial estate lost another 15% of its value merely by spending all of 2010 in Florida.  Once more, the Zillow blogger missed the original price, misunderestimating the amount a Florida property can plummet.

#10. Living the High Life – Highland Beach, FL

Original Price: $18,900,000 (May 2009)

Reduced Price: $15,950,000 (July 2009)

Sale Price: $12,650,000 (January 2010)

Haircut: -33%

If a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience, then buying a 12,000 sf house on 0.95 acres of Florida real estate for 67% of the original asking price is the knifecatcher’s exhilaration.  This brain-damaged fool has put the place back on the market for $14,950,000, just six months after taking delivery.  Given that Zillow has depreciated the previous property by 15%, I would calculate that this Adventure in Real Estate is going to lead to another 28% trip down Equity Burn Esplanade.

It’s 2011, and Burbed is still here.  Not every real estate site can say the same thing.

Simply checking the blogroll links at right shows that a number of bubblicious blogs have either shut down entirely or exist in suspended animation, with the most recent post made months or even years ago.

This article from the old bubble days links to us right at the head of the California blog section.  It’s a 2007 list of 750 real estate blogs from every state in the Union, from a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania property blog.  How many of these 750 are still updated regularly?  How many are shut down completely?

Say goodbye, or at least maybe later, to these California sites on the list:

• Grow-a-Brain (Riverside), which called itself “The original real estate blog,” abandoned January, 2010.  Blogged every day for 7 years, now blogging about his new baby.
• Making a Killing in Real Estate – Killed.
• Riverside Realtor Blog – Abandoned December 2007.
• Sunny Spot Realty – Moved to new site, but only the newest post is accessible.
• Laguna Niguel Real Estate Blog – 404
• The Real Estate Blog (Los Angeles) – Essentially abandoned in April, 2010
• San Francisco Real Estate – Abandoned this year by February with last post in August.  They had an interesting piece in May on how Google affects SF rental stock.
• Southern California Real Estate Blog – Changed name to Long Beach Real Estate Insights and slowly dying; 5 real estate-related posts between March and September.
• Desert Homes Today – Deserted
• Eco-Almanac for the Landed Poor (San Diego) – Better known as Professor Piggington’s this highly-respected bubble site is now only updated once every two weeks with links from Voices of San Diego.
• Southern California Real Estate Bubble Crash – Moved and now only updated every few weeks.  The owner “Chuck Ponzi” explains it’s because he bought a house (yes, it was a foreclosure) plus arrival of third child.  He says they were renters for six years because he sold their house in 2004 for being “overvalued.”  This was a thoughtful site whose only weakness was failure to link to us.  I like this graphic.
• SF Home Blog – Evicted
• The Oakland Real Estate Blog – Probably arson, because nothing left standing
• San Diego Real Estate Blog / Peter Toner – Appears to be more current than it is by clever decision to leave dates off home page.  Articles appear in bursts when new writer is brought in.  One post for December 2010.
• LA Real Estate – Lots of green.  So green.  So very, very, very green.
• Rey Estate – The King is Dead.
• VF Consulting’s Real Estate Blog (Los Angeles) – Last post, August 2010.
• In the Trenches (Kevin Boer) – Buried
• Sacramento Land(ing) – Last real (rather than automatic) post was October 2009.
• Square Feet Blog (Silicon Valley/Mercury News) – Last post October 27th, killed by SJ Mercury News rather than by blogger Sue McAllister. 
• Cameron Novak’s Real Estate Blog (Corona) – Last entry, January 2010.  Another ironic final post.
• Beach City Blog (Long Beach) – Last entry, March 2007.  Only 2 entries, wonder why it made the list in the first place.
• Orange County Real Estate News (Daniel Realty) – Last entry May, 2010, last regular series of posts, July 2009. In yet another whistle in the dark, this realtard not only calls bottom a year and a half ago, but makes his eight-grade English teacher cry.
• America’s Most Opinionated Mortgage Broker – Appears to have gotten into a more profitable business: selling Japanese women’s clothing
• Sacramento Real Estate News – Now a RE/MAX site called come2sacramento.com.  News no longer welcome or wanted.
• HomesMax Bay Area Real Estate (Alameda & Contra Costa) – Last entry, June 2007: Open House Bandits Captured.  Goes real well with this entry about home sellers who accused the blogger or his clients of stealing a watch from their house.
• Condocontessa San Francisco Real Estate (South Beach SF) – Last entry, July 2008.  St. Paul, MN native reinvented herself as contessa of real estate while posting in bursts and then ignoring site for months at a time.
• Burbank life, filmmaking, and real estate – Two out of three ain’t bad
• El Dorado and Amador County Real Estate – Now called Placerville Real Estate, last entry, July 2008.  This agent kept a Sacramento real estate blog going, though.
• Maury Properties – It’s kind of blank.
• Berkeley Homes – Last entry, January 2010.  The blog is about Berkeley rather than real estate (despite being the creation of a couple of agents), and has a lot of broken image links.  Other links on the page will take you to their real estate content.  This is also the only real estate site I’ve ever seen with what appears to be, but isn’t, a David Lance Goines-designed logo.
• Lending Clarity – Clearly taken over a week ago by someone who has nothing to do with California real estate.  Can anyone figure out what the new blog is about?  There are six articles on it: raw dog food, nandina plants, article submission and SEO, syncing files among several devices, HVAC valves and moving services in New Jersey.
• OC Prudent Bear (Huntington Beach) – Last entry, November 2009.  Blogger bought a house in Huntington Beach in September, 2009, so that might have something to do with the
  death of this housing bear site.
• Starboard TCN (Bay Area Commercial RE) – While there are current posts, site is updated are more by the month than the week.  Plenty of posts in 2005.
• Your Real Estate Voice – has been gagged
• Jackie’s SF Real Estate Blog – Last entry, October 2010.  In fact, this is the only entry.  Where did her blog go?  No sign of it, except this fawning puff piece from NAR about why you should be just like Jackie and create a real estate blog.  It seems, like our vanquished rival Luba,(and her abandoned blog that she shamelessly hustled attempting to win a Zillow award) Jackie has moved to Facebook.
• Real Estate Blog for Palo Alto, Mountain View, California and Surrounding Communities – That’s a mouthful, and the latest post is from October.  The second latest is from May. This was no high-volume blog, where 6 posts a month was a record.
• Relocation A to Z (Carlsbad) – Another Realtown blog (as the awkwardly named mouthful above is), with six posts this month and very few earlier this year.  The agent running it used to post almost daily back in the glory bubble days.  In April 2008, his personal bubble popped and updates went to weekly or less.
• Rancho Santa Margarita Homes and Lifestyles – Last entry, December 2008.  Another agent who would post tremendous amounts and then not show up for months.
• Remodeling Blog by Elegant Kitchen Cabinets (San Carlos) – Whoops, all the cabinets ripped out.  Nothing new since 2008, anyway.  Who would have predicted kitchen porn would suffer from a housing downturn?
• PopCasa – Mi casa es no casa
• LA Land – Defunct LA Times blog that now links to its business section (and not even the real estate page).

How many of the California blogs are still in business (updates at least once a week): 19.  Out of 63.

Among the still posting most days sites, don’t be in the least bit surprised that one is called The Mortgage Fraud Blog.  Also, I have to call out Sacramento Real Estate Voice for one of the most honest assessments of how 2010 went for anyone still in the real estate industry.

And of the 750 blogs in that list,I took a quick spot check by counting up six states (AL, CT, ID, KS, NV, WI).  How many of their blogs are still going?

• Still publishing: 7, plus 2 that moved from originally listed sites
• Dying on the IP with less than a new post a month: 7
• Abandoned (last post more than a year ago, most untouched since ‘08): 13
• Dead: 6
• Private access only: 1

Actually you absolutely must check out this abandoned Las Vegas blog that I found in doing the spot-check.  The last entry is perfect.

In addition, here are a few more sites Burbed recommended that have departed us, alas:

• Bubbletrack (San Diego County)
• East Bay Housing Bubble
• Housing Bubble Casualty
• Jim Kunstler  — moved HERE (see below)
• Patrick – still there, just a bad link (see below)
• View From Silicon Valley – Sigh, this nicely done blog covering renting and buying woes just went pfft… The blogger used to comment here to mention new pieces were up, but never stuck around to chat.

Here’s a couple more sites I remember that have left us as well.

• Central Coast Bubble
• The Original LA Land

And some sites that stopped updating or tapering off, not already covered above (no links if already in the blogroll):

• Another F@cked Borrower – Last entry, March 2009.  Straight-talk about how bad it was, written by a mortgage “insider”
• Bakersfield Bubble – Blogger has enough in January 2009 and posted a May ‘09 local “expert” calling bottom
• Bay Area Housing Bubble – Last entry, August 2010.  Written by Doug in Alamo, with almost all the latest posts obsessed with… gold.  The blog ran from January ‘06 until last year.
• Bubble Markets Inventory Tracking – The San Diego bubble site that named names and hid from angry agents ended up going to invited guests only.  The only real estate site with an anti-SLAPP warning on the front page.  Alas, the last past was in October 2009.
• examiner.com Real Estate San Francisco – Mr. Front Steps writes a blog, abandons it in July 2009
• Home Girl – East Bay real estate – tapering off since blogger decided instead of writing about real estate she’d sell it.
• Housing Panic – Attitudinal bubble site stopped updating in November, 2008, with an update 2 weeks ago that says, I kid you not, THE TIME TO BUY IS NOW.  Blogger went on to a new site, Soot and Ashes, only to abandon it in April, 2010.  Last few posts were getting pretty fried at Tea Party members.
• Knifecatchers (Alameda) – A recent entry just 3 weeks ago, but posting is sporadic.  Definitely snarky, and they’re reading us.
• Marin Real Estate Bubble – Last entry, December 2009. 
• Marin POS Blog – Last entry, August 2009 but it was done by the end of 2006.  Now this was a snarky blog for the Land of Mellow, and I’m sorry the writer lost interest.  Yes, POS stands for exactly what you think it stands for.  This is the site that called an Eichler what it needs to be called: Ickler. 
• Mr, Mortgage – ML Implode – Why you’re screwed.  Last post, January 2009.  Says he was moving the site.  He already had moved once, from here in 2008.  Mark Hanson seems to like moving his blog, as he posted here for a few months, and then here… abandoning that one too.  Maybe he just can’t get along with anybody.
• Property Lines (SF) – Not updated much last 2 years. 
• Rancid Truth – Orange County Real Estate Blog – Last entry, July 2010.  The title says it all: definitely a dollop of acid in those home descriptions.
• Sacramento Landing – Mentioned above, it’s dying.
• Santa Barbara Housing Bubble Blog – Last entry, June 2008.
• San Mateo Home Sellers in Trouble – Specific breakdown of financial ruin on San Mateo county properties, with last update in September, 2009.  The blogger’s main site, The Baglady, still updates occasionally, but not much specific about real estate.
• Silicon Valley Real Estate Blog – This is the site that won Zillow’s best real estate blog in San Jose.  Obviously they won it because our fans only nominated us for one region (yeah, we won too).  At least this site posts something once a month or so, unlike a certain agent in San Francisco.  What is it with the other entrants in this contest?  The San Jose runner up isn’t updating much either.
• Sonoma Housing Bubble – Last entry, October 2008.  Noticing a pattern?

Let’s leave you with some good news.  Not only is Burbed still here, these sites are still here too, and if you haven’t given them a look, please wander on over.  Bonus: some of them aren’t in the blogroll yet!

These blogs are generalist real estate sites, follow a market outside the Real Bay Area or don’t follow places within commuting distance of it.  But that’s okay.  Reading them reminds us why It’s Special Here!

• Bubble Info – Jim Klinge (Jim the Realtor) – North San Diego real estate.  Useful information without sugar-coating from an actual real estate agent.
• Bubble Meter – National housing bubble blog.   Among other recent news items, price stagnation until 2014.  Oh boy!
• Charles Hugh Smith – Of Two Minds – Economics and Markets affect YOU
• Dr. Housing Bubble – Southern California implosion site, including recurring feature “Real Homes of Genius.”
• Housing Bubble Blog – Nationwide – Everyone thinks its’ Special there.  Unfortunately most days are just comment collectors.  This site used to have bubble news from all over every day.  No easy archive links, either.
• Housing Bubble Hall of Shame – Last entry was a month ago. Features homes with vanishing equity, strategic mortgage walkers, plus people with too much educational deb.  Not a blog you’d use the word “kind” to describe.  They link to us. ‘Nuff said.
• Housing Doom – Still there, still sharing bad news.
• Housing Kaboom – Inland Empire bubble site – Owner took a brief break but is hopefully back to keeping us updated.  High snark factor, little respect for real estate professionals.  What a shame.
• Housing Opportunity Index from NAHB, new reports released when they want.
• Irvine Housing Blog – Mouth gapes open in sheer amazement as borrower after borrower maxed out their home equity and property values dropped 40%.  If you only read one bubble site, read this one.
• Jim Kunstler – This is the guy who called the whole housing crash.  Everyone at the time said he was nuts.
• Long Beach Housing Blog – Real Estate in the LBC –  Snark meets rude in a Long Beach bubble site that never met an editor calling for a 500 word limit.  This site is one of the few real estate blogs funnier than Burbed.
• Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter – Bad News Every Day!  Former home of Mr. Mortgage.
• Portland Housing Blog – Oregon – In-depth coverage of Portland and national real estate trends.  A good place to get sense of how out-of-whack our prices and economy are with almost everywhere else on the planet.
• Santa Monica Distress Monitor – The post-bubble site that says “This place is Special, don’t expect any bargains!”  Sound familiar?
• Seattle Bubble – Includes monthly “Actual Listing Photos” feature sent in by readers.  At Burbed you only get to enjoy crappy real estate photography one house at a time!

And let’s finish up this post with the local sites still going into 2011!

• Altos Research Blog – Analysis that only a graph geek could love, and so much of it!  A national site right in our back yard.
• Cupertino Housing Blog – It hasn’t listed a house for sale since July, but it’s still being updated with various news clips related to housing, the economy, and the occasional Cupertino Schools piece.  Then again, it missed a huge CUSD item: Eisenhower and Stocklmeir elementary schools are now holding lotteries for admission… for the people who live in their attendance zones.  (And as to why I don’t list the blog who caught that item?  If they can’t be bothered to date their entries, that means they’re trying to hide how few they have.  11 for all of last year… color us not impressed.)
• Flippers in Trouble – Sacramento – If you crave watching red ink spill, you’ll love this site. 
• Healdsburg Housing Bubble (Sonoma County) – Looks like I’m late to the party.  This excellent site is winding down as of this week.  Blogger ran it for a year because he couldn’t stand all the misinformation put out by the real estate industry.  Clearly influenced by some of our favorite sites, and enough useful information that the major econ blogs linked to it.
• On the Block – The San Francisco Chronicle still has a real estate blog, unlike the Merc or the LA Times.
• Patrick.net – The site for bubble news.  Unrelenting negativity will convince you now is the time to burn your house down for the insurance money and go live in a refrigerator box.  Or at least now is the time to sell.  Warning: owner is running a pledge drive.
• Redfin SF – Bay Area Sweet Digs, this is Redfin’s local updates and stats, stats, stats!
• San Francisco Real Estate Blog – Bill Quick’s take on the market.  Appropriately snarky yet informed.
• SF Curbed – A little more on the gossip than the SF Real Estate Blog, nice pictures, plenty of useful info in the comments, too. 
• SocketSite – The third of the trio of informative San Francisco blogs and probably the most informative.  Quite frankly one of these three should have won best real estate blog in SF and we should have gotten the nod for San Jose.
• The Front Steps – Another SF site, and why no updates in three weeks? When you blog in your mom’s basement, you don’t get a whole month off!

And that site crowing over 750 real estate blogs?  Their last entry was Valentine’s Day, 2009, expressing relief that Pittsburgh wasn’t named one of Forbes’ Ten Most Miserable Cities.

Here’s an article sent in by a Burbed reader who doesn’t necessarily agree with the author’s conclusions or the site it’s on, but thought the piece interesting and thought-provoking.  Given that the Central Valley is a fairly easy drive from the Real Bay Area, what is it that makes it so different from here?

Two Californias

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, National Review
DECEMBER 15, 2010

Abandoned farms, Third World living conditions, pervasive public assistance — welcome to the once-thriving Central Valley.

The last three weeks I have traveled about, taking the pulse of the more forgotten areas of central California. I wanted to witness, even if superficially, what is happening to a state that has the highest sales and income taxes, the most lavish entitlements, the near-worst public schools (based on federal test scores), and the largest number of illegal aliens in the nation, along with an overregulated private sector, a stagnant and shrinking manufacturing base, and an elite environmental ethos that restricts commerce and productivity without curbing consumption.

During this unscientific experiment, three times a week I rode a bike on a 20-mile trip over various rural roads in southwestern Fresno County. I also drove my car over to the coast to work, on various routes through towns like San Joaquin, Mendota, and Firebaugh. And near my home I have been driving, shopping, and touring by intent the rather segregated and impoverished areas of Caruthers, Fowler, Laton, Orange Cove, Parlier, and Selma. My own farmhouse is now in an area of abject poverty and almost no ethnic diversity; the closest elementary school (my alma mater, two miles away) is 94 percent Hispanic and 1 percent white, and well below federal testing norms in math and English.

Here are some general observations about what I saw (other than that the rural roads of California are fast turning into rubble, poorly maintained and reverting to what I remember seeing long ago in the rural South). First, remember that these areas are the ground zero, so to speak, of 20 years of illegal immigration. There has been a general depression in farming — to such an extent that the 20- to-100-acre tree and vine farmer, the erstwhile backbone of the old rural California, for all practical purposes has ceased to exist.

Who here visits small towns in the Central Valley regularly?  Are things as bleak as Hansen describes them, “rural trailer-house compounds…no different from what I have seen in the Third World”? (Photo, at left, shows unemployed men in downtown Mendota.)

Has the Central Valley become a bifurcated version of “white flight,” either to the more affluent coastal areas or out of the state entirely?  And how hard was it to guess that a conservative magazine/website would observe high unemployment, loss of small-family farms to corporate agribusiness, and shuttered farm machinery plants that have moved to lower-wage countries… and conclude this is all somehow due to illegal immigrants?

One thesis of Hansen’s to chew on:

It is almost as if the more California regulates, the more it does not regulate. Its public employees prefer to go after misdemeanors in the upscale areas to justify our expensive oversight industry, while ignoring the felonies in the downtrodden areas, which are becoming feral and beyond the ability of any inspector to do anything but feel irrelevant. But in the regulators’ defense, where would one get the money to redo an ad hoc trailer park with a spider web of illegal bare wires?

Think about that the next time you deal with getting a permit for something.

Last week we covered the sad tale of Nick Martin, who lost ten million dollars on real estate and high-style living.  This story is very different.

San Diego House Is Burned Down, for Safety’s Sake

Published: December 9, 2010, New York Times

The authorities in San Diego County burned down a house filled with explosives on Thursday after determining that removal of the volatile clutter of chemicals, detonators and grenades would be too dangerous.

Officials discovered the hazardous house in Escondido last month after a gardener stepped on a homemade bomb in the yard. When county sheriffs and F.B.I. agents tried to enter, they found so many explosive materials lying about, in containers and loose piles, that they abandoned their search.

Later, a bomb squad collected samples including PETN, which was used in 2001 when a man on an airplane tried to ignite a bomb in his shoe, and HMBT, which can explode when stepped on.

The house was rented by George D. Jakubec, 54, an unemployed software consultant. He has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of making explosives and robbing three banks with firearms. Prosecutors have declined to say why they think Mr. Jakubec assembled the jumbled arsenal, saying on Thursday that “the investigation is ongoing.”

Photos by Sandy Huffaker

But the most important quote above wasn’t in the early part of the story.  It was the caption under the photo at left:

Officials did not plan to compensate the owner of the house for the loss.

That’s amazing, isn’t it?  You save up your money to buy an investment property, you rent it out to some unemployed software consultant who turns the place into a terrorist bomb factory, then the Feds decide it’s too dangerous to clean the explosives out so the local Sheriff sets fire to the place.

This article goes into all the ways Jakubec’s landlady is seriously screwed.  While governments have to compensate owners when their property is seized via eminent domain, police action is a different issue.  And forget about homeowner insurance (unemployed software consultant bomb factory riders notwithstanding); governmental action isn’t covered.

The county’s declaration gives officials authority to destroy private property in the interest of public health and safety —- without compensating the owner, [county spokesman Michael] Workman said.

Did you remember to buy unemployed software consultant bomb factory insurance on your rental property?  I suggest you take care of that because there are a lot of unemployed software consultants in the Real Bay Area.  Some of them might have lost their own homes. While most will rob a few banks to get even, a few may not feel too kindly towards blood-sucking landlords and will blow up the gardener as proof of concept.

Here’s the house.  It was bought five and a half years ago for $479K, with a $383,200 first mortgage and a $85,800 second mortgage, both variable.  98% financing, sounds about right for Southern California.  The following year the house was refinanced for a $436,000 fixed first and a $54,500 fixed second, which means another $20,000 borrowed.

Now the owner is going to find out that a zero down purchase means infinite loss.

The owner also has the house as her address of record for property taxes, despite currently residing in Oakland.  And she isn’t talking to the press.  The Los Angeles Times reports that Jakubec has lived at the house for three years.  This is great, not only will she lose the house while still owing on two mortgages, she’s going to lose her $7,000 homeowners exemption.

Zillow seems to have some trouble with their home estimate algorithm; look at the wild swings between three and five hundred thousand over the last two years.  If we can believe that the house’s value is up again, it’s not worth much more ($496,000) than the owner “paid” for it in 2005.  However, nearby recent sales show values in the $300,000 range; exurban San Diego prices were hit hard when the real estate bubble collapsed.  Looks like this underwater property will be done in by fire.

Now, the value is all in the 3/4 acre of land.  And while Jakubec wants to apologize to all the neighbors for the difficulties, there’s no word what he has to say to the person who owned the house.  Since he is under arrest in lieu of $5 million bail, and currently charged with 28 felonies, including possession and manufacturing of destructive devices as well as bank robbery, it may be a while before he has to disclose this incident to a future landlord.

Today’s feature is a guest post by Burbed reader SEA.  Wow, Southern California just has a thing for squatting in a foreclosed house you no longer own.  Thanks very much, and I’m sure all the people who hate the Most Expensive ZIP Codes series thank you even more.

—–

What happens when amateurs compete with professionals?

“Since the day that we were married, we have been working hard, and saving our money for the day we purchase our dream home. With the depression of the housing market, we believed the time has finally come for us to find our house.”
…
“The owners of the house had just foreclosed on, and were awaiting eviction. Already were several buyers lined up to purchase up this home as soon as the previous owners were removed (contingent offers had already been placed.) Since the house was at already pushing the limit of our budget, we could not afford to raise our bid and have a chance to outbid the others.”
…
“Today is October 28th, the day we should take possession of the home. What we found out early this morning is that the pervious owners have no intention of leaving. In fact, they filed for bankruptcy — this automatically puts a stay on the eviction process.Even though the house is not theirs, even though they agreed to move out, the eviction is instantly frozen.”

The Full Story is at Evict Struiksma.

Let’s see… No professional would buy this place with the former owner inside, but this guy thought it’d be a good idea. I’m not a bankruptcy attorney, but deals in the past can get undone by a bankruptcy court–preferential payments for example. Ever had a bankruptcy court ask for cash from you? It’s not a fun experience to have to pay back the cash you were owed.

Also bankruptcy filings have spiked, so courts and judges are experiencing heavy loads, and, it’s been my personal experience that judges are a bit more sympathetic to these foreclosures–the end result might be the same, but additional time might pass.

What’s even more comical is there is a Short Term Occupancy Agreement that provides for certain fees and expenses to be paid by the “occupant,” such as attorney fees. I have no idea what David Potts, or the attorney for that matter, was thinking about how to collect from someone who has gone through foreclosure. Isn’t bankruptcy likely?

I’m sure this house will be left in pristine condition, if David Potts can survive financially…

Oh, and now that it’s in bankruptcy, I doubt that David Potts could legally just go pay the guy to leave. Rather than expect magic for free, I’d have paid the occupant to leave before the bankruptcy was filed, but when you spend every last dime on the purchase, well, uh, what kind of contingency planning is that?

I know; I know. This could never happen in the RBA.

Why, there are dishonest people with real estate licenses in California! 

Many suspected, convicted of fraud still have real estate licenses

By Robert Lewis, Sacramento Bee

Published: Friday, Nov. 12, 2010 – 12:00 am | Page 1A
Last Modified: Sunday, Nov. 14, 2010 – 1:03 pm

In February 2009, Sacramento-area mortgage broker Christopher Jared Warren [photo, right] was caught trying to cross from Canada into the United States with 4 ounces of platinum and $70,000 hidden in his shoes.

The arrest made nationwide news, and Warren became yet another face of greed and alleged criminality in the mortgage finance business.

You’d never know that, however, if you were to check with the California Department of Real Estate. Warren, whose fraud trial is ongoing, is still a licensed broker and has no disciplinary action on his record with the department, which promotes its online licensing database as a tool for consumers to make sure they’re dealing with reputable professionals.

This is not an isolated case. The Bee found dozens of real estate professionals – people who have been charged with real estate-related crimes or sued by the state for fraud- related misdeeds, or who have pleaded guilty to such wrongdoing – who are still licensed and have no notations, flags or disciplinary sanctions listed on their records with the Department of Real Estate. This means they are authorized to sell homes and originate mortgage loans.

We already know from reading copy on many listings that there are dumb real estate agents out there.  Now the Sacramento Bee found out there are criminals, too.  Let’s hope they’re all dumb criminals.  Like imagine one presenting you with closing documents and the top page said I GIV MY AJINT PERMISHUN TO FIL OUT ALL THEEZ FORMZ FOUR ME.  AND SHUT UP TYTUL COMPANNY ITS’ MY RITE TO DO IT THIS WAY.  JUST SHUT UP.

Where do I sign?  Hey thanks for filling out all that paperwork for me!  You’re definitely earning your 6% commission, dude.

Welcome to Part 5 of the least popular series ever on burbed, ever.  You’re welcome.  Forbes thanks you too, since we’re making fun of their mistakes when they wrote an article on the 500 most expensive zips, and hired Altos Research to do their data crunching.

Here are the first four parts for you masochists who can’t get enough numbers, maps, and boring fascinating statistics.

• The 25 Most Expensive Zip Codes in the US – Atherton is #2!
• The Next 25 Zips that didn’t quite make it  — Portola Valley at top of this one because it didn’t make the real list.
• The Bottom 50 of the 100 Most Expensive Zips  — Helloooooo Los Altos!
• Loservilles: Zips 101-150 on the Most Expensive List  — And not a single one near Facebook HQ.

Today we’re going to cover the zips ranked 151-200.  But to reduce the complaining just a tiny bit, we’ll leave out anywhere that isn’t within reasonable commuting distance to the Googleplex.  Actually if I left out everywhere more than 10 miles from Google we’d only have four cities today, which might not be such a bad thing.

#151 – 94306 Palo Alto

At least this time we’re going to start much closer to where the jobs are.  This is a very important zip code.  If you remember this article, 94306 is the only zip code that’s left in the Real Bay Area (RBA) anymore, if you define RBA as the place where prices don’t go down.  So despite being the #2 zip in Palo Alto (94301 came in at #73 on the list), it’s #1 in the RBA.  It’s also last in the RBA, because none of the other zips qualified at all.

The real reason 94306 went up while prices everywhere else collapsed is because it’s the cheap section of Palo Alto.  This area, formerly the city of Mayfield, featured small homes on small lots which people now tear down and put in oversized mini-mansions that loom over the remaining bungalows.  Unfortunately, real estate statistics are oblivious to such trends, such as someone paying money to remodel or replace a house.  Instead you see crazy price increases and think the neighborhood is red-hot rather than full of sawdust and paint fumes.  If the sale price stats subtracted out the money paid for construction, there’s a good chance 94306 would have dropped as much or even more than the other zips around it.

#160 – 94549 Lafayette

Median Home Price: $1,225,110

Median Price Change: -4%

Average Days On Market: 88

Inventory: 126 properties

Median Household Income: $101,555

Ignored Because: In the East Bay

#170 – 94941 Mill Valley

Median Home Price: $1,185,211

Median Price Change: NA

Average Days On Market: 106

Inventory: 197 properties

Median Household Income: $91,283

Ignored Because:  Model for Hill Valley in Back to the Future

#171 – 94563 Orinda

Median Home Price: $1,184,089

Median Price Change: -5%

Average Days On Market: 101

Inventory: 101 properties

Median Household Income: $119,832

Ignored Because: In East Bay, even closer to Oakland than Lafayette

#173 – 94303 Palo Alto

Median Home Price: $1,175,241

Median Price Change: -5%

Average Days On Market: 59

Inventory: 34 properties

Median Household Income: $64,256

It’s a pretty safe bet that the median home price hasn’t been contaminated by East Palo Alto (which shares this zip code), but take a look at that median household income.  It’s about $20,000 less than 94306, which has a fairly similar set of residents (in the Palo Alto part of the zip, anyway).

While the zip shares with the Oaklandesque East Palo Alto (hey, at least it brought you IKEA), it also has some nice areas in midtown as well as the West Marine on San Antonio Road.  (Remember, yachties spend like drunken sailors because they are drunken sailors.)

Since 94303 has just everything in the whole city that hugs US 101, that isn’t helping matters.  Some of the lower-cost Eichlers in South Palo Alto that get torn down and replaced by monster houses are in 94303, too.  Hope they put in triple-pane windows like they did at Gables End.

#175 – 94965 Sausalito

Median Home Price: $1,173,479

Median Price Change: -11%

Average Days On Market: 149

Inventory: 84 properties

Median Household Income: $76,808

Ignored Because: Has stupid song written about it

#179 – 94705 Berkeley

Median Home Price: $1,152,174

Median Price Change: -1%

Average Days On Market: 70

Inventory: 30 properties

Median Household Income: $68,112

Ignored Because: Shares zip code with Oakland, lousy state-funded college

#184 – 94025 Menlo Park

Median Home Price: $1,134,946

Median Price Change: -9%

Average Days On Market: 88

Inventory: 179 properties

Median Household Income: $89,572

When you realize that this zip stretches from the foothills near I-280 all the way to the slums of Belle Haven, that median home price is rather impressive.  Not every city the size of Menlo Park has to make due with a single zip code.  Palo Alto has four distinct zips, and Redwood City has five.

And while a ranking of 184th most expensive zip code in the country is clearly not good enough for the RBA, perhaps Menlo Park could petition the
postal service to split the city into East and West postal zones, in hope of the western half aspiring to the RBA.

Nah, prices down 9%.  Forget it.

#185 – 94062 Redwood City

Median Home Price: $1,133,462

Median Price Change: -5%

Average Days On Market: 97

Inventory: 111 properties

Median Household Income: $96,677

Ha ha!  What was I just talking about above?  Redwood City is nowhere as high on the snootiness index as Menlo Park, and yet by having several zip codes, they managed to get one of them to qualify for the Forbes list.  And this is the one zip that shares with Woodside, which is quite a bit higher in the rankings (#41). 

Oh, speaking of Woodside, you’ll never guess what Forbes says their median household income is.  That’s right. $96,677.  Nice going, Forbes.  That means the Woodside median should be higher and the Redwood city number lower, but you managed to miss yet another muck-up.

This part of Redwood City includes the Emerald Lake Hills area, which is a delightful mix of new construction and bizarre old places featuring old cars in the front yard.  You know how some places in Atherton look like Greenwich, Connecticut?  Well, Emerald Lake Hills looks like Appalachia where half the residents won the lottery.

#193 – 94515 Calistoga

Median Home Price: $1,102,625

Median Price Change: -17%

Average Days On Market: 140

Inventory: 67 properties

Median Household Income: $44,320

Why Ignored: Can’t take place named after bubble water seriously

#194 – 94610 Piedmont

Median Home Price: $1,094,846

Median Price Change: -51%

Average Days On Market: 64

Inventory: 7 properties

Median Household Income: $49,066

Why Ignored: Not only down 51%, but completely surrounded by Oakland.  Completely.  Rival zip 94611 is #74 on list.  I also call BS on Forbes for that median household income.  It’s probably mixed up with the part of OAKLAND this zip shares with.  Oakland, it’s full of Oakland.

#199 – 95032 Los Gatos

Median Home Price: $1,079,587

Median Price Change: -1%

Average Days On Market: 111

Inventory: 183 properties

Median Household Income: $93,118

It’s the home of Netflix!  Woo-hoo!

The second-best zip in Los Gatos (95030 came in at #38), this zip features delightful estates in the foothills and higher, as well as ho-hum tract houses in the flats near freeways.

Now, take a look at that median home price, above.  It’s barely over a million smackeroos, and we’ve almost hit the 200 mark.  That means the next installment (if there is one) will feature houses in “expensive zip codes” that are under a million dollars dollars for a median price.

Think about that for a moment.  Where we live is so Special that we think of houses under a million dollars as not particularly worth commenting on.  At least most of the zips we’ve shown so far are above the average price for a house in this area.  But as we work our way down that list of 500 zips, we’re going to start to see some very ordinary places that are still more expensive than 44,000 other zip codes in the entire country.

Coming Soon: burbed guest editor forcibly retired for not stopping worst series ever, assailed by mob with pitchforks and torches.  Plus, Part 716 of Bing Maps Galore!

We can thank Forbes Magazine’s The Most Expensive Zip Codes for selecting the prestige postal zones and then managing to mess them up.  So far we’ve caught them describing one town while showing houses from another, forgetting the difference between a zip code and a town boundary, mixing up their data sets, and showing a zip code 10 miles and $2 million away from what they labeled.

Since we don’t concern ourselves with other parts of the country where prices go down, homes need maintenance, streets get busy, and airports allow planes to land while children are sleeping, we’ve been looking at the Bay Area zips only.  In case you want to refer to the previous articles, you can click over to:

• The 25 most expensive zip codes in the entire country, featuring Atherton, Belvedere, Los Altos Hills and Hillsborough!
• The next 25 zip codes, not quite as Special.  Portola Valley, Los Gatos, Woodside, and other places too far away from Google to matter make their appearances.
• The 50 after that, at cut-rate prices compared to the first 50.  These entries in the Corridor of Not Quite include Los Altos, Saratoga, Monte Sereno, and Palo Alto.

Again, data crunched by Altos Research, info prepared (not always perfectly) by Forbes, criticisms (I’m starting early today) entirely home-grown at burbed.  The very first entry on Forbes’ Page 2 list is one of our own!  We may not be in the Real Bay Area (RBA) anymore, but remember, these zip codes are still more expensive than at least 44,000 others!

#101 – 94507 Alamo

Median Home Price: $1,513,739

Median Price Change: -11%

Average Days On Market: 139

Inventory: 113 properties

Median Household Income: $139,997

I just said we weren’t in the RBA anymore.  It’s never a good sign when the very first listing is in the East Bay.  That 11% drop isn’t surprising anybody.

Besides, pretty soon the home price medians are going to drop below a million and a half, and then where would we be?

Right.  In the East Bay.

#106 – 94946 Nicasio

Median Home Price: $1,484,615

Median Price Change: 5%

Average Days On Market: 176

Inventory: 13 properties

Median Household Income: $76,194

You should have heard of this town before.  It was featured in burbed because of this listing.  Jerry Garcia’s house has been holding up this zip’s entire market.

Clearly Alamo and Nicasio are for two different demographics.  Alamo is for people earning good money now.  Nicasio is for people who already earned good money and want to get away from the people in Alamo still earning.  Then they can chillax and just enjoy it.  The money, I mean.  I’m still getting my head around trying to fill the closet in Jerry’s master bedroom.

Unfortunately, by not keeping enough cash coming into town, the residents of Nicasio let down the team.  Yes, the median home price is under one and a half million now.  Who knows what kind of vagrants and transients are living in those houses?  It’s not surprising one of them joined a rock band.

#120 – 93921 Carmel

Median Home Price: $1,412,704

Median Price Change: -9%

Average Days On Market: 153

Inventory: 84 properties

Median Household Income: $53,750

The income is down even more here at the other end of the Bay Area.  The Monterey Bay Area.

Carmel is a touristy little town that is expensive to live in, doesn’t sell anything useful to residents, and has a beach nobody can use since parking is between impossible and utterly impossible.  You shouldn’t have taken your time reading this.  They just ticketed your car.

Does that little bit right outside the zip environs, lower right corner, really say Trailer Park?

#120 – 93921 Carmel-By-The-Sea

Median Home Price: $1,412,704

Median Price Change: -9%

Average Days On Market: 153

Inventory: 84 properties

Median Household Income: $53,750

This is only a test to see if you’re paying better attention than Forbes did when they put this article together.

Yes, it is entirely possible that two cities can share a common zip code.  We’ve had many examples of it in the first hundred entries.

But what are the odds of the same zip code, the same ranking, the same data, and the same map just sitting there for two cities with practically the same name, and nobody noticed a damned thing?

#121 – 92603 Irvine

Median Home Price: $1,406,399

Median Price Change: -9%

Average Days On Market: 120

Inventory: 227 properties

Median Household Income: NA

Irvine has entered the building!

No, I have not taken leave of my senses.  I know that Irvine is not in the Bay Area, Real or otherwise.

But Irvine’s real estate issues have been so instructive, and the seminal Irvine Housing Blog so important to anyone trying to make sense of what happens when bubble
s pop.

And as much as there have been problems with the real estate market up here, one of our zip codes doesn’t have 227 properties in inventory, and so far we’ve avoided Mello-Roos taxes, too.  There’s a good reason we’ve avoided Irvine’s problems.  It’s because they’re not making any more land up here.  And that’s because they’re making it all down there, complete with Mello-Roos!

We now return you to our regular Bay Area real estate presentation, already in progress.

#125 – 93923 Carmel

Median Home Price: $1,384,643

Median Price Change: -7%

Average Days On Market: 191

Inventory: 298 properties

Median Household Income: $67,315

Now if i am reading this map correctly, this zip code includes Carmel and Carmel Highlands, but not Carmel-by-the-Sea or Carmel Valley.  Or the other part of Carmel that is covered by a simple street map and includes all the high-priced art galleries and jewelry stores.

This zip also has a bigger inventory than Irvine’s.  Thanks for making us look bad, Carmel, when everyone at IHB clicked over to read this.  You’re making all of us look really pathetic to those Southern Californians.  We might have to ask you to move over there, permanently.  You and your 298 unsold properties.  Maybe when you get they’re you’ll be placed in a Mello-Roos district, too.

(I thought those 298 listings had to be a mistake on Forbes’ part, but it isn’t.  Entering this zip into Redfin yields 270 listings.  And just because the zip covers around 200 square miles isn’t going to get it off the hook.)

#131 – 94104 San Francisco

Median Home Price: $1,365,346

Median Price Change: 3%

Average Days On Market: 162

Inventory: 11 properties

Median Household Income: $14,609

Finally!  A zip that makes you really sit up and take notice.

A zip that not only includes a bunch of ginormous skyscrapers (well, ginormous as long as we don’t go comparing them with anything in Los Angeles, or Chicago, or Manhattan), but has the brass rivets to say LOOK AT ME.  The median home price here is $1.36 million and the median income is $14,609.  That’s right!  It would take the average resident here a hundred years to buy the average residence.

Only a zip code with serious chutzpah could issue a message like that, a message that says, “Want to buy here?  Sorry.  You’ve been Priced Out Forever.”

#132 – 94965 Muir Beach

Median Home Price: $1,364,462

Median Price Change: 7%

Average Days On Market: 34

Inventory: 3 properties

Median Household Income: $76,808

This tiny town is located right where California Route 1 cuts overland to the Pacific and heads north up the coast (that line mislabeled 1 is actually US 101.  I’m watching you Forbes.  Always watching.) This tiny town has about six streets.  Muir Beach shares a zip with Sausalito, which ought to be showing up at some point.

Muir Beach.  Like Bolinas, only closer and more expensive.  Water meters not included.

#134 – 94574 Saint Helena

Median Home Price: $1,354,277

Median Price Change: -5%

Average Days On Market: 186

Inventory: 102 properties

Median Household Income: $60,964

Looks like it takes half a year to sell a typical property in Saint Helena.  That means they named the place well.

Saint Helena was the second and final place that Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to, and he died five and a half years later.  And there isn’t anywhere nearby called Elba, because that would mean you could escape.  Although you can at least drink heavily.

Able I was ere I bought in St. Helena.

#147 – 95452 Kenwood

Median Home Price: $1,294,385

Median Price Change: 46%

Average Days On Market: 152

Inventory: 19 properties

Median Household Income: $58,421

Honey, I shrank the zip code.

I had to.  When it took up about 20% of the page, the only thing I could find was State Highway 12 and Mt Hood Regional Park.  I figured Kenwood was somewhere between Santa Rosa and Fairfield but wasn’t quite sure which was closer.

And St. Helena is in convenient exile distance.  I suppose I should find something nice to say about the place because the prices are up 46%, but seriously, unless you’re cultivating 200 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon or really want the Smothers Brothers as neighbors, you should be looking a little closer to Facebook HQ.

#150 – 94705 Oakland

Median Home Price: $1,283,731

Median Price Change: 28%

Average Days On Market: 217

Inventory: 3 properties

Median Household Income: $68,112

Somebody is playing a joke, but I can’t figure out who the joke is on.

We started today’s batch of runner-ups to the runner-ups in the East Bay.  Not only are we going t
o finish there, we’re going to finish in one of the least RBA-like cities in the East Bay.

Then again, the zip includes a bunch of UC property in Berkeley, so that’s kind of cheating.  Plus the Claremont Hotel.  I bet the Claremont Hotel would sell for more than $1,283,731.

And the zip is up… twenty eight percent.  With the same kind of unobtanium inventory we saw in Muir Beach.  That’s it.  I’m out of here.  I know when I’m licked.

Next installment: The Most Expensive Zip Codes in the Richmond Flats between Cutting Boulevard and Solano Avenue.

Thanks to a burbed reader for sending this in.  I know it looks like another TL;DR, but trust me, this one’s worth it.

Family reclaims foreclosed house, Simi clan moves in after home sold

By Stephanie Hoops, Ventura County Star
Posted October 12, 2010 at 2 p.m., updated October 13, 2010 at 6:58 a.m.
Photos by Karen Quincy Loberg, VC Star Staff

An 11-member Simi Valley family who claimed they were wrongfully evicted after a foreclosure forced their way back into the house over the weekend in a move meant to block the new buyer from moving in.

Jim and Danielle Earl and their nine children used a locksmith to help retake possession Saturday, despite an investor who spent $697,000 to purchase the house at a foreclosure sale in January and remodeled and sold it to people ready to move in Tuesday. The two-story house in the 5800 block of Mustang Drive has nearly 4,000 square feet, six bedrooms and 4.5 baths.

Police officers were on hand when the Earls changed the locks Saturday but did not intervene. The Earls’ lawyer, Michael Pines of Encinitas, held a news conference to announce the family was taking back the home and reportedly filed a complaint against the real estate broker and investor when police arrived at the scene.

Pines said the Earls are not concerned about the possibility of being charged with trespassing.

The Wall Street Journal covered this story too, and they said we may be seeing more of this.  Now it’s not enough for a bank to go through through all the steps of foreclosure and eviction on determined deadbeats.  You never know when they’ll turn around, hire a lawyer and a locksmith, and move right back into the house you sold out from under them in good faith! Your team of robo-signers worked hard forging a pile of documents and backdated every single one of them, and all for naught.

Actually this story gets more and more complicated depending on which version you read.  But the basic facts are, the Earl family bought the house in 2001 for $539,999.  Being Southern Californians, they considered mortgage equity withdrawal a religious rite rather than a guaranteed method of ruining their credit and their future, and owed $880,000 on the first mortgage, when they were finally shown the door of their former residence.  Total debt and unpaid costs on the property was over a million dollars, according to foreclosure documents.

The house was bought by investors for $697,000, who put $40,000 of improvements into it (including the mandatory granite countertops) and flipped it for $800,000.  With the new owners scheduled to take possession within a few days, the Earls (both parents and 9 children) broke in and moved their stuff back.

A number of items are in dispute, which is where the fraud claims come in.  This may be a question of which party are the bigger slimebuckets, as absolutely nobody comes out looking good in this story.

The Earls had some financial difficulties, and in trying to set their mortgage right, say that a catch-up payment of $12,500 they made to GRP Services was never credited to their loan.  Danielle Earl says she then stopped making payments because the loan had been repeatedly reassigned to different lenders, she believed, fraudulently.  “They clearly didn’t want us to catch up,” she explained.  Their lawyer elaborated:

The Earls’ fraud claims are twofold, [Michael] Pines said: The loan was originated and serviced with improper documents, and the foreclosure and eviction were created with new and phony documents. He said there were multiple instances of people signing the foreclosure documents who were not authorized to do so.

Foreclosure documents says GRP Financial Services owns the loan.  The Earls’ mortgage was from WaMu, which was acquired by JPMorgan Chase, and went to B of A the same day the Notice of Default was sent.  The Earls claim Chase never properly acquired their loan and therefore had no right to sell it.  Not surprisingly, the group acquiring the house doesn’t see it that way.

“They broke in and are proceeding to squat in there,” listing agent Chris Garvin of Troop Real Estate, told HousingWatch. […]

Garvin was not only the listing agent but also the acquisition and sales partner for his client, Conejo Capital Partners, the investors. He says that he purchased the home in good faith for $697,000 in January on behalf of his client, at an auction on the courthouse steps.

In June, a judge refused to seat a jury for trial, claiming it was another delaying tactic by the Earls.  Conejo had been trying to get them out of the house since February.

In 1994, the Earls have filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and they began two serial and voluntary Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceedings after their house was sold at auction  The judge claimed the bankruptcies were yet another delaying tactic.  Their liabilities exceed one million dollars, with creditors including both the IRS and the state tax board.

At the close of the trial, however, [Conejo attorney Stanley] Yates said of the whole matter: “I will say this, that the (Earls) are an indefatigable source of stalling and red herrings.”

The Earls are asking for damages of over one million dollars on the fraud allegations, and claim this means they own the house free and clear plus additional money owed them.

Good luck with that.

Any zip that isn’t in the Top 50 shouldn’t qualify for Real Bay Area (RBA) status, right?  Here are the Bay Area zips in Forbes Magazine’s Most Expensive Zip Codes #51 through 100.  Since these aren’t good enough to have made the cut, we can assume any city featured here is no longer fit to inhabit the RBA.  So enjoy reading about these loservilles, that are still more expensive than most anywhere else in the country.

In case you missed the previous entries in this series, the Top 25 appear here, and #26-50 can be found here.  I encourage you to check them out, as obviously they are better places to live than what you’ll find in this article.

#53 – 94920 Tiburon

Median Home Price: $2,046,939

Median Price Change: -22%

Average Days On Market: 126

Inventory: 116 properties

Median Household Income:$106,492

Yeesh, down 22%.  No RBA for you, Tiburon.  Wait, we already saw this zip.  It’s also #8.  So, um, they split Belvedere from Tiburon?

Well, well, well, there are 39 properties for sale in Belvedere (median home price, $3.28 million), and 116 here.  And yet both places have (what a surprise) the exact same median household income.

You blew it again, Forbes.  Am I going to have to rewrite that entire article for you?

#59 – 94588 Danville

Median Home Price: $1,922,523

Median Price Change: NA

Average Days On Market: 276

Inventory: 4 properties

Median Household Income: $92,644

Be sure to check out this East Bay interloper: the idiots at Forbes got the wrong map.  They can’t tell Danville from Dublin. And with only 4 properties on the market, they have no idea if it’s up or down.

Maybe those East Coast provincials ought to be told they’ve managed the equivalent of confusing Westhampton Beach with Levittown.

#62 – 94904 Kentfield

Median Home Price: $1,911,822

Median Price Change: 6%

Average Days On Market: 99

Inventory: 40 properties

Median Household Income: $82,528

This Marin County city is right next to Ross and may even manage to get more precipitation.  Why people would want to live here when they could buy a palace in San Jose is beyond me.  Plus San Jose only gets 11 inches of rain a year.

And San Jose is so much closer to Google!  Priorities, people!

#69 – 94970 Stinson Beach

Median Home Price: $1,790,196

Median Price Change: -7%

Average Days On Market: 232

Inventory: 27 properties

Median Household Income: $88,184

Stinson Beach can’t be in the RBA, it’s down 7%, and next to Bolinas, home of the high-priced water meter.

First one to make a joke about this zip code’s ranking and “Sex on the Beach” is going to be asked to leave the room.

No, I do not want to hear about what that peninsula with Seadrift Road looks like.  You all have filthy minds.  Yes, especially you.

#71 – 94024 Los Altos

Median Home Price: $1,746,928

Median Price Change: -6%

Average Days On Market: 91

Inventory: 67 properties

Median Household Income: NA

Down 6%, and another zip-splitter.

Seriously, is there anything funny to say about Los Altos?  Other than the featured listing that’s running tomorrow, that is?

Well, that and the dude with the cellular antenna farm.

And the fact that this same zip in Los Altos Hills is ranked so much higher at #18.  And that Forbes couldn’t tell the difference between the two and showed houses from Los Altos when featuring The Hills Hills.  And yet, 67 properties here, 15 properties there. Household income, not available here, not available there. Oh, oh. They match.

#73 – 94301 Palo Alto

Median Home Price: $1,730,889

Median Price Change: -6%

Average Days On Market: 128

Inventory: 58 properties

Median Household Income: $97,758

We already knew this zip code wasn’t in the RBA anymore.  Its low ranking merely proves it.  As does this listing which hasn’t sold in more than 2 years.

Didn’t we all agree not to talk about Palo Alto anymore?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Oh yeah, Steve Jobs lives here!

#74 – 94611 Piedmont

Median Home Price: $1,709,577

Median Price Change: -3%

Average Days On Market: 96

Inventory: 23 properties

Median Household Income: $68,853

Down 3%, and suspiciously Bradburylike.  Oakland, I tell you, it’s surrounded by Oakland!

And a freeway runs through it!  Just like Oakland!

And this place hasn’t sold yet. And neither has this one.  This city is FAIL: 100% of its listings on burbed unsold!

#83 – 95070 Saratoga

Median Home Price: $1,652,013

Median Price Change: -1%

Average Days On Market: 124

Inventory: 177 properties

Median Household Income: $138,206

Down 1%.  That’s borderline for remaining in the RBA, but coming in at #83 just cannot be allowed.

Can anyone remember why Saratoga used to be in the RBA?  What exactly did it do to get there in the first place?  Why should a city with seven different school districts thinks it’s real anything?

I say no, not until they manage to sell this house.

#84 – 95030 Monte Sereno

Median Home Price: $1,647,239

Median Price Change: -34%

Average Days On Market: 142

Inventory: 84 properties

Median Household Income: $117,564

Stop me if you’ve seen this zip code before.

Down 34%. Wait, it’s right next to Saratoga.  Plus borrowing Los Gatos’ zip code.  84 properties?  WTF?  In a town of 3,483?  And only 53 properties listed in Los Gatos (#38), population 28,592?  That’s a real knee-slapper!  Now can you tell me the one about the Santa Claran, the San Joseite, and the Saratoger?

#92 – 94123 San Francisco

Median Home Price: $1,609,753

Median Price Change: 9%

Average Days On Market: 58

Inventory: 63 properties

Median Household Income: $84,710

burbed, voted best real estate blog in San Francisco, would like to welcome 94123 to the list of Most Expensive Zip Codes!  This is the first zip in San Francisco to make the cut.  And that is really awful, because several New York City and Los Angeles zips have already shown up.  Congrats, you losers.

Up 9%.  This is the Marina District and includes some of Billionaire’s Row.  Yes, including the place selling for $45 million.

#93 – 94506 Blackhawk

Median Home Price: $1,604,976

Median Price Change: 19%

Average Days On Market: 143

Inventory: 51 properties

Median Household Income: $142,459

Up 19%.  Wait, this is the East Bay.  Prices don’t go up in the East Bay.  The proper expression is “Blackhawk down.”

Seriously, this is a developer-designed golf-course community that didn’t even exist before 1980.  Having this zip appear right after one full of history, architecture, design, and taste is just wrong.

#94 – 94022 Los Altos

Median Home Price: $1,600,139

Median Price Change: -28%

Average Days On Market: 87

Inventory: 53 properties

Median Household Income: NA

Wait, is today Groundhog Day?  Didn’t I just say something about Los Altos Hills, and that we already saw this zip, and that… someone must have hit me over the head, because I’m seeing double.  Los Altos Hills in this same zip is #15 on this list, with a median home price of $3.04 million.  And (what a coincidence), 58 properties.  Sloppy work, Forbes, very sloppy.

This place doesn’t even have the cell phone antenna farm!

And that’s it for the Also Rans of the Most Expensive Zip Codes in the Whole Fracking Country.  Except… the list goes to 500 zips.  If you don’t want to see anymore of these Bing Maps, commence whining.

Next installment in this thrilling series: The Most Expensive Zip Codes, Volume 714,