The New Waiting Game

A large number of aspiring home buyers spent 2008 on the sidelines, waiting for a declining market to bottom. Hoping to avoid the sort of boomerang or upswept tail that often marks the end of commodities corrections.

Perhaps unexpectedly, the wait for the pricing nadir has been displaced by a new resolve--the wait for the rate nadir. Despite gobs of government spending and potentially inflationary outlays, rates continue to languish delectably in the low fives, stoked by the Fed's anti-hoarding, er anti-savings tactics. Might a limited time 4.5% purchase rate be in the offing as rumored? The possibility has even pusillanimous purchasers coiled like a ravenous panther.

Me, I'll probably play along, and exchange paper for a hard asset. You know, something with an inglenook, or a sleeping porch, or a whole lot of rosettes.

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays 2008

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays 2008

This is my 400th submission, beginning March 31, 2006.

Thanks for reading Recentering El Pueblo. See you in 2009.

Adam Janeiro

Communities Under Siege

From Windsor Village to Rancho Higuera, neighborhoods are challenging the developer friendly hegemony. Frequently at the center of the rancor, the latest planning fad or mandate: density along transit corridors. Familiar sounding mantra, sometimes paired with transit village, density appropriate, and smart growth.

Of course, transit corridors often ring neighborhoods with detached single family housing. Many, even well-to-do addresses like Windsor Square, are being encircled by scale disrespectin', shadow casting boxominiums and the like.

But wait, haven't we gone this route before? All those ugly dingbats built to the freeway's edge in neighborhoods like the West Adams Avenues and Sugar Hill. Density near transit, that was the idea then too. Only it contributed to the destabilization of those neighborhoods; non conforming "improvements" at the expense of established home owners; encroachment not rapprochement.

Relief Panels Tangent

In our last Relief Panels installment (9/25/08), I'd become captivated by that decorative element centered between the two windows (top image), beneath the Anthemion scroll. (Anthos is Greek for flower.) Familiar it was, but where had I seen it and how to describe?

For starters, it's geometric and composed of straight line segments.

All of its angles, both interior and exterior, are right angles, and as such it's a parallelogram. (If only I could do geometry over, I'd ace it!)

A similarly shallow--or low--relief panel--or the effect thereof (image second from the top), conjured by the application of a small bead, in a manner that abstractly suggests a frame. Close but no cigar.

I was reminded of the returns in Greek Fret work, geometric patterns formed of short fillets, bands, or reglets, variously intersecting in rectangular containments.

This band embellishes a cottage in Pico-Union, for many years a dentist's office. A classic example of a Greek Fret, or the Greek Key design.

Perhaps I'd seen the pattern in furniture? I consulted Joseph Aronson's The Encyclopedia of Furniture. The illustration provided a momentary balm.

The Girl Next Door. A near match (see bottom image) occurs in chummy Kinney Heights, on a block I regularly walk. How could the connection have eluded me so, and might I have also seen the pattern elsewhere?

That Naughty Beverly Center

I'll not revisit my billboard rants, complaints about the scenery scarring effects, the new, intrusive light boxes, L.A.'s pitiful regulation. But I will tiptoe outside my usual bounds.

Is anything in society exempt from sexual interjection, is anything sacrosanct? Hunky Santa and the Candy Cane Girls, what a pathetic marketing pitch--and cynical! Whatever happened to quality merchandise, attentive service, and price savings?

Admittedly, I've once or twice been distracted by beautiful women, but I'd rather my hosiery purchase not be accompanied by erotic dance.

Of course, I think the whole Santa's lap thing is a little weird. We lecture our kids about the possible perils of strangers, then clamor for a photo op with some fatso in red skivvies.

New Market Touchstones Part 4

While I spent lots of time fielding questions about architecture and details of the Carey/McDonald house during last weekend's West Adams holiday house tour, a few wanted to discuss the local-local real estate market.

"Transaction volume is up, considerably," I reported, "even as prices ease lower".
"But I thought people couldn't get loans," responded a bewildered few.
"Not only are people getting loans," I gushed, "they're getting the best loans I've ever seen, interest rates are in the low fives!"
Clearly flummoxed by Paulson's persuasions, a couple tour takers blinked, nodded dismissively and moved away. Another looked to his feet before adding, "you know, Paulson is a kind of poker chip." Turns out, one of the big poker chip manufacturers is named Paulson.

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According to an escrow source, in 2008 nearly one residential purchase escrow in five failed. A marked increase over previous campaigns. The reasons? Financing for starters, which is why some bank owned properties accept only pre-approval lenders from designated brokers.

Plenty of properties get tripped up at the inspection stage too. Sellers are often less inclined to make repairs or grant credits, even of a reasonable amount, after accepting a lower than anticipated asking price. Simultaneously, despite supreme discounts, some buyers still feel entitled to a rash of repairs.

So contentious have these negotiations become, I even urged one buyer to conduct investigations outside of escrow. We then made an AS-IS offer, that was accepted despite its deep discounting, by a seller who preferred the AS-IS conceit.

Fraternal Twin Dormers?

I'm a lover of asymmetry, but uneven side-by-side dormers? Pretty novel and pretty rare. Conjoined gable dormers, with identical pitch and mass, are fairly common, but a staggered sawtooth? The refrain: pretty novel and pretty rare.


Gable dormers have a gabled roof, with two sloping planes that meet at a central ridge. Sometimes, they're called doghouse dormers.



The photographic angle distorts slightly, but what an ensemble: an uneven pitch (like the images above), with a "walkout"/porch, and the icing on the cake--over-lapping bargeboards (see criss-cross, ad nauseam).

More Signs on Trees

Our celebrated sign-maker is back with more religious ramble (see Signs on Trees 2/23/2007 and Signs on Trees Part 2 3/19/2008).

I spotted another of his lengthy transcriptions whilst cycling (on Jefferson near Central), but it was gone by which time I returned.


An editorial near Virgil Village:
Congress
Calculate
Regulate
Make
Mortgages
Affordable
Do
Your
Job!!!

What a great stencil. Who could resist?

Field of Folly (Part 1)

L.A. Live, a 5.6 million square foot mixed-use development on 27 acres, North of the Staples Center, continues to rise, heedless of the prevailing scale, as if magically relocated from some 21st century wunderberg, like Shenzhen or Abu Dhabi. Imposing, like a drunken sumu at a Viennese Waltz ball.

Where Do the Commissions Go? Remember that topic line, dominated by housegoods and Japanese pull saws? Of late, the commissions have been CD bound, determined am I to grab a pequeno piece of Pico Union real estate, poised to absorb the value of downtown's swell. Turn of the century munificence amidst, well, the recentering, the urban rapture. Jogging distance to that ultimate destination: L.A. Live.

Then without warning last week, I began to reconsider the colossus, "will this be the height of folly?"
At least one of my planning wonks harbored similar concerns, "there's no retail, it's billed as an entertainment campus, and the mix may prove lacking."
"The next Grove," I asked, "or a tourist tourniquet, like Hollywood and Highland?"
"Pack the tower with millionaires and they'll be fine," came the response and a wink.

Still, I teeter. Certainly the reflected heat of the Staples Center, North America's most active arena, could be better captured. Yet, other downtown entertainment options like the ImaginAsian Center have failed to catch fire.

Will parking make the difference? I once offered in an interview, "the popularity of downtowns Culver City and Santa Monica have everything to do with parking. Cheap, plentiful, access easy, parking." Downtown Burbank offers the same. Parking planning in downtown L.A. on the other hand, despite the sort of off-street requirements many urban purists deride, exists as an exercise in premium pricing and little else.