OLYMPICS: Athletes set to shine at Olympics

Shaun White, Gretchen Bleiler, Rachael Flatt are names to look for

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BY SCOTT BAIR – sbair@nctimes.com | Posted: February 11, 2010 11:54 pm | No Comments Posted | Print

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Nathan Bilow Shaun White of Carlsbad holds up the gold medal he won at the men’s snowboard slopestyle at the Winter X Games 13 last January. (File photo by Nathan Bilow – Associated Press)

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Shaun White, the scrawny redhead from Carlsbad, is undoubtedly the most recognizable winter-sports athlete on the planet. And his popularity should only increase after this year’s Winter Olympics, which start Friday evening in Vancouver, British Columbia.

But White isn’t the only athlete with local ties and a chance to strike gold.

Part-time Carlsbad resident Gretchen Bleiler is the favorite to win the women’s snowboard halfpipe competition, and former Del Mar resident Rachael Flatt enters the women’s figure skating competition riding high after winning the U.S. championships last month.

“It’s going to be fantastic,” Flatt told reporters after her surprise victory. “I’m so excited.”

Bleiler reached favorite status after a solid qualifying run in the U.S. Grand Prix series and an X Games victory over a talented field in late January.

“This is great momentum for me,” Bleiler, a silver medalist at the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy, said in an X Games press conference. “Just knowing I’m capable of this is great confidence. Going to Vancouver with these girls, we’re going to try to sweep that podium.”

Medal sweeps is something White is already familiar with.

He began dominating snowboarding and skateboarding competitions at age 15 and has been a celebrity in action-sports circles ever since. When he won the gold medal in snowboarding at the 2006 Olympics, his celebrity reached the mainstream.

Fast-forward four years, and White’s popularity hasn’t waned. The quick-witted snow carver has remained an action-sports icon and a marketing dream, pushing everything from Burton snowboards to Target stores.

Increased wealth prompted a move from Carlsbad to Rancho Santa Fe, but it didn’t stifle his competitive drive. White continues to challenge himself with dangerous maneuvers on the halfpipe and is once again favored to win gold in the 2010 Olympics.

White has been feverishly working to perfect a new signature move, dubbed the Double McTwist 1260, in which he does two head-over-heels flips while rotating 3 1/2 times.

He has landed it several times, but suffered a frightening crash when he under-rotated the move during an X Games practice run. White landed on his head and emerged with a nasty facial abrasion, but that didn’t deter him. He attempted and successfully executed the maneuver in the competition and won X Games gold.

“I was pumped to get it done, to land the trick, to take first tonight and to actually walk away from that plant and still be going to the Olympics,” White said in a post-competition press conference.

The 17-year-old Flatt and fellow American skater Mirai Nagasu will face stiff competition from Korean Kim Yu-Na, Japan’s Mao Asada and others, but an upset is always a possibility in such a technical, often unforgiving sport.

“We need to embrace the challenge, and I’m sure we’re both up for it,” Flatt said after the U.S. championships. “We’re young and spirited.”

That could also easily define White, whose eccentric personality and media savvy made him a magnet for paparazzi during an extended victory tour after the 2006 Olympics. He was seen at Hollywood parties, had his picture on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and enjoyed a brief flirtation with figure skater Sasha Cohen.

He knows popularity must be validated by performance in the Olympics, which White acknowledges as the biggest competition of his career.

“It’s just a monster event,” White said after the 2006 games. “It’s worldwide, and it was fun to be a part of it. It meant a lot to me now that I’m older to wear U.S. on my chest. It was heavy. It wasn’t like rolling into X Games on my own. I was representing the whole country.”

On that international stage, you could say that White and the others will be representing North County, too.

Posted in Olympics on Thursday, February 11, 2010 11:54 pm Updated: 12:01 am. | Tags: Top, Nct, Sports, Olympics,

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Posted date: 2/8/2010

Market Stabilization Brings Renewed Interest in High-End Homes

REAL ESTATE: Building Plans for Upscale Properties Begin to Gain Momentum

The market for high-end homes costing more than $800,000 has slipped since the end of the housing boom, but builders say there are increasing signs of a turnaround.

“The market in my mind has stabilized,” said longtime San Diego builder Bill Davidson, president of Davidson Communities. “It is not falling like it was last year, and that is very important. No one wants to buy a house when they think the market is falling.”

With prices stabilizing, Davidson has begun to prepare for a real estate rebound.

“We are actively trying to buy more land now because we can price our homes profitably,” he said.

His company has upscale production homes under construction in La Costa and Del Sur in North County. They range in price from the $700,000s to more than $1 million. Tight credit has made it more difficult for upper-end buyers to secure loans, however. Conditions were much different just a few years ago, when loan underwriting standards were looser and customers bought big homes “with all of the gadgets and luxuries that we could pile on,” Davidson said. Since the recession hit, high-end buyers have been seeking smaller, simpler dwellings.

At McCullough-Ames Development Inc., Principal Monty McCullough typically builds custom $1 million, estate-style homes on 1-acre lots. Most of the firm’s recent projects are in North County, near the coast and along the state Route 56 corridor, between the Del Mar area and Poway. Even these buyers are looking for ways to stretch a dollar. McCullough presses his subcontractors for the best prices and passes the savings along to customers.

“Everybody has been hit by the recession,” he said. “… I felt my business starting to tail off by the summer and fall of 2004. Since the spring of 2009 we have built 15 homes, under contract or just finished.”

Scaling Back On Size

Like Davidson, McCullough said his customers are downsizing a bit.

“The average home is right at or under 5,000 square feet,” he said. Not long ago, 6,000-square-foot to 9,000-square-foot homes were common in the custom market.

Custom builder Terry Wardell of Wardell Builders Inc. estimates that the size of the upper-end market had declined by about 50 percent from its peak. Wardell builds most of his homes in La Jolla, Del Mar, Rancho Santa Fe, Point Loma and Mission Hills.

“I think 2010 will be stronger than 2009, but it is still going to stay pretty flat,” he said. “Construction prices probably are 25 percent off their peak.”

Analyst Russ Valone, president and CEO of the MarketPointe Realty Advisors research firm, has been tracking $800,000-plus home sales. In 2005, such homes made up 49 percent of the detached housing market here. In 2006, the percentage was 44 percent. Last year, the share was down to just 20 percent.

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This Long Island village and other privileged enclaves have weathered the real estate crisis better than most small communities

As recently as the 1970s, the little village of Sagaponack in New York’s Long Island was little more than a stretch of dusty potato farms connecting the relatively plutocratic communities of East Hampton and Southampton. In addition to indigenous farmers, it was home to such writers as George Plimpton and Kurt Vonnegut, who were happy to take advantage of its low real estate prices, laid-back charm, and easy access to the Atlantic Ocean.

More from BusinessWeek.com » The 50 Most Expensive Small Towns in America 2010 » Foreclosures in 2009: The Hardest-Hit States » Best Places to Raise Your Kids: 2010

The ocean is still there, even if it’s harder to access. But the days of low real estate prices and laid-back charm are long past. Thanks to wealthy home buyers such as Renco Group Chairman Ira Rennert, who built a controversial 29-bedroom mansion on 63 acres there in 2004, Sagaponack has morphed from a quiet backwater into the most expensive small town in America. The New York Times in 2004 estimated Rennert’s mansion, Fair Field, to be worth more than $170 million.

In 2009 the median home sale price in Sagaponack was $4,421,458, according to real estate site Zillow.com. The median home price in the U.S. last year fell to $174,100, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Sagaponack is not the only rarefied real estate market, no matter how poorly the country’s housing market is doing. Long Island’s two counties, Nassau and Suffolk (where Sagaponack is located) account for more than half of the 50 most expensive small towns in America. Nearby Water Mill (No.6) and Bridgehampton (No. command median sale prices of $2,238,676 and $2,081,717, respectively.

Prices in a Few Top-50 Towns Rose

While Long Island may win honors for hosting the most concentrated cluster of high-priced homes in the U.S., it is not alone in attracting super-rich buyers. Jupiter Island, Fla., home to Fields, Fords, and other old-money families, as well as newer wealth such as golfer Tiger Woods, is the U.S.’s second-most expensive small town, with a median sale price of $3,620,310.

Jupiter Island is also one of a few communities that saw prices rise last year. Zillow.com estimates that prices there climbed 19.4% in 2009, while average sale prices elsewhere were falling by as much as 80%, according to NAR. Some additional top small towns (those with a population of 10,000 or less) saw an increase, with further gainers including Los Altos Hills (No.4) and Woodside (No.7), both in California, and Wainscott, N.Y. (No. 13).

The median decrease in home value across the country’s 50 most expensive towns in November 2009 was -5.4%, compared to -5% nationally. “Home sales volume reached a low point in early 2009 and I think [it] will continue to increase or stay flat,” says Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist.

Wealthy homeowners may be in for good news in 2010: NAR’s monthly data shows that home sales in all price ranges nationwide showed year-on-year increases in November. Sales of homes costing more than $1 million increased in every region but the Midwest. They represented 1.1% of total sales.

2009: “Nerve-Racking for Everyone”

If Wall Street’s bonus season is as generous as many expect, the Hamptons should be primed for a buying surge. Marilyn Clark, an agent for Sotheby’s International Realty, says that in the past four to five months, activity in Sagaponack has rebounded for both homes and land sales, ranging from oceanfront homes and historic homes to new construction and parcels of vacant land. “During the early part of 2009 when everyone was more uncertain about the economy, there were price adjustments, but since the Sagaponack market has proved strong, prices are currently holding,” Clark writes in an e-mail.

In Hunts Point, Wash., the country’s third-most expensive small town, a property’s average time in the market jumped to 149 days, from 83 days before the recession, estimates Randi Brazen, co-owner of Brazen Sotheby’s International Realty in Bellevue, Wash. While home prices in the area have fallen more than 20% in some cases, Brazen says they typically hold their value in the long term because few are available in a region that remains attractive to the rich.

Saying that 2009 was “nerve-racking for everyone,” Brazen expects the real estate market in Hunts Point to rebound as employment opportunities in nearby Seattle improve. “That doesn’t mean prices will snap back up, but it will stop the downward spiral we’ve seen in the past year and a half,” she says.

In Sagaponack, Jupiter Island, and America’s other most expensive small towns, it seems that wealthy homeowners can look forward to even higher prices down the road.

Top 5 Most Expensive Small Towns

1. Sagaponack, N.Y.

2. Jupiter Island, Fla.

3. Hunts Point, Wash.

4. Los Altos Hills, Calif.

5. Fairbanks Ranch, Calif.

Click here to see the full list of the 50 Most Expensive Small Towns in America.

A home in the Allied Gardens neighborhood of San Diego on Jan. 27, 2010 indicates it has a buyer despite the slowdown in the economy. The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index shows housing prices continue to climb across the nation.

A million dollars doesn’t buy you what it once did. In most U.S. neighborhoods, it now gets you a lot more.

During the housing boom, prices rose so high and so fast that even cookie-cutter homes in the paved suburbs of South Florida and California could cost a cool million. In Santa Clara, Calif., a high-tech hot spot, the median price hit $836,780 in 2007.

That was a long way from the days when a million-dollar home evoked images of marble columns and swimming pools with vanishing edges. Subprime loans allowed more people than ever to buy houses that were once above their means. Higher demand fueled ever-higher prices until the spigot of cheap money was turned off and the housing bubble burst. The recession forced many well-heeled buyers into unemployment lines. And sales of homes over $1 million cratered by more than 50 percent from the peak four years ago.

“Everyone has less money than they once had,” said Amy Wright, an agent with The Real Estate Office in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. “That has certainly affected the nouveau riche, and that’s definitely in that $1 million price point.”

For people who do have the money, however, it’s the best time in years to buy luxury real estate.

Rancho Santa Fe is a luxury enclave in San Diego County that has over the years lured the likes of Howard Hughes and Bill Gates. Equestrian trails border golf courses, and the most expensive home on the market is listed for $29.9 million.

A couple of years ago, the idea of getting a house in Rancho Santa Fe for a paltry $1 million was laughable. Now, foreclosures and financially distressed homeowners account for about 15 percent of sales, and home prices are down 30 percent.

In one golf-course community in the town, a 2,200-square-foot home is listed for $800,000. Residents live in a gated community where Spanish style homes surround a 250-acre Rees Jones-designed golf course and an accompanying 35,000-square foot clubhouse.

In the 20 largest U.S. metro areas, about 2,800 homes sold for more than $1 million in July – down by more than half from July 2005, according to MDA DataQuick. Nationwide, overall home sales were down about 27 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors.

In the month of August, sellers with homes priced above $2 million were cutting prices by an average of 14 percent, compared with the national average of 10 percent, according to Trulia.com.

The good news for luxury homebuyers is that they’re getting about 20 percent “more house” than they did two years ago, and the prestige of owning a $1 million home is returning, said John Brian Losh, CEO of luxuryrealestate.com.

That is, if they can afford the payments.

On Friday, the average interest rate for a 30-year “jumbo loan” (defined as a mortgage over $729,750) was 6.18 percent – about a point higher than a conventional fixed-rate mortgage, according to Bankrate.com. That means the mortgage payment for a $1 million home (with a down payment of 20 percent) would run about $4,900 a month, not including property taxes.

A buyer would have to earn at least $200,000 a year to make the payment plus taxes – and only about 4 percent of Americans fall into that tax bracket, 2007 Census data shows.

In Fort Myers, Fla., Pat and Dennis Tyeryar are trying to sell their four-bedroom, 3,795-square-foot house on three acres for $999,700. The property is a rare slice of lush Old Florida, with moss cascading off shade trees and views of a river and lagoon.

The property, valued at $1.4 million four years ago, is unique for the area because it sits on a peninsula: Every room in the house has a water view.

So far, no offers.

In a recession-battered place like Saginaw, Mich., however, a person can scoop up almost 18 houses for $1 million. Or, a buyer can get a 6,360-square-foot, two-story brick palace that sits on a five-acre estate.

The house is priced at $995,000. It has an indoor swimming pool and six bedrooms, but the property has been a hard sell in a market where a 2,300-square-foot home can go for $160,000, real estate agent Bruce Shaw said.

Shaw said the home would have been listed for about $1.3 million during the boom.

“It’s not like I get a lot of calls on it, not unless someone is moving from Southern California,” he said.

In Toledo, Ohio, agent Nancy Kabat has two listings that add up to $1 million – a six-bedroom, $635,000 house in suburban Ottawa Hills, and a three-story, two-bedroom condo on the Maumee River for $360,000.

The house has detailed crown molding and a renovated kitchen with granite countertops. It’s also near good schools. The condo has a view of Toledo’s landmark Anthony Wayne Bridge and is a short ride to an area with upscale restaurants and a vibrant nightlife.

“You could have a house in the suburbs for the winter and have a condo on the river in the summer and use your boat,” Kabat said.

If that approach doesn’t work, a buyer can pursue a three-bedroom, Mediterranean-style home in Toledo for $969,177, according to realtor.com. The 4,800-square-foot property was built in 2007 and has a three-car garage and upscale kitchen appliances like a stainless steel refrigerator and a dual-temperature wine cooler.

“We don’t have that many million dollar houses here, so it seems that they’re holding their value,” said Betty Lazzaro, an agent with Sulfur Springs Realty Inc.