It's a great year to buy a home in California. 

If you have just returned from Mars or come out of a coma, you may be unaware of what a great time this is to buy a home in the East Bay of California.The downturn in the housing market and the year long shakeout in the mortgage industry have led to a flood of short sales, foreclosures and bank owned properties.

There are literally hundreds of great deals on homes in Danville, San Ramon, Dublin, Pleasanton, Walnut Creek - well, everywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area. In Antioch and Brentwood California their are some real steals.

Houses are begging to be purchased. Some are jumping up and down and crying - buy me, buy me!

The housing affordability index is climbing, indicating an expanding opportunity for first-time buyers.

Families relocating into the East Bay Area are finding the opportunity of a lifetime with housing prices.

Contact Paul to explore the possibilities (925) 963-4246 

On the way home from 24 Hour Fitness in Walnut Creek today, I noticed activity in The Counter.

The Counter – Custom Built Burgers – is located in the new Mercer building at California and Trinity in Walnut Creek, CA. I had the thought as I passed by that maybe I would go down there for a burger later.

As it happened, Jane was at a funeral in Sacramento and went by the Squeezed Inn to check it out. We had seen the Squeezed Inn Featured on Diners, Dives and Drive-Ins with wild man Guy Fieri and had talked about driving up there to sample their “heart attack burger,” a flat grill burger with an abundance of melted cheddar on it.

So Jane brings me a burger from Sacramento, but no fries. What’s a burger without fries. An hour later, off we go to The Counter for some fries.

As it turned out, The Counter was invitation only, the grand opening is on Monday, June 23^rd. Somehow we manged to convince the staff at The  Counter that we were solid Walnut Creek citizens and hamburger addicts – so they let us in.

This was the last night for training the staff before opening. It was hectic and all proceeds were going to charity. So, what am I going to do – order fries and a coke? No, we ordered a hamburger bowl, fries, a diet coke and a glass of wine.

The Food is great! Here you see our hamburger bowl – a bed of romaine lettuce, a 2/3 pound medium, very juicy broiled burger, with blue cheese, sauteed onions and mushrooms with a peppercorn sauce. Very tasty!

The Counter gives you a form with about 128 choices of ingredients to build yourself a custom burger.

Andrew, seen above on the right behind the counter, waited on us. We told him and Rick Betance, Director of Operations, (right) that we were going to do our part to make the world aware of the gourmet burgers available in Walnut Creek by plastering their name all over the Internet – my next stop is Yelp.

My next weekly burger with my buddy Greg Beck of Balloonman fame will be at The Counter. See you there.

Every Friday we update our MLS Trends chart for 5 of the local communities along the I-680 corridor: Danville, Dublin, Pleasanton, San Ramon and Walnut Creek, CA.

I decided to write about the trends chart because Dublin, CA continues to standout from the other four communities this year.

The two lines of most interest in the graphs are the blue (Active Listings) and the green (Pending Sales). The narrower the gap between the two, the less Days on Market. It's one way to look at how active the market is.

Look at Danville. The active listings low point on the Danville graph represents 1/14/08. If you scan the other four communities, you see this coincides with their low points. This is a normal historical trend. The low point is usually in the first two weeks of January after the holidays.

What we see on the chart for Danville is fairly typical for the Bay Area, active listing inventory begins to climb as pending sales also begin to inch up. BUT, hold the phone! What's happening in Dublin?

Dublin, California sees it's active listings pretty much flat-lining or is a slight decline. And look at the pending sales in Dublin since the beginning of the year. They're taking off much more than than the surrounding communities.

San Ramon is the only community coming close to reflecting the trend in Dublin. What's up with this?

How do you spell - New Home Builders in Difficult Times? San Ramon and Dublin especially have more new home construction than the other communities. The greater percentage of new home construction, the more downward price pressure due to builders slashing prices and offering incentives.

Also, the foreclosure rates are probably higher because more new homes and condos were sold in these areas from 2000 to 2005 - adding to the downward price pressure.

It appears that sellers in Dublin are holding on to their homes more than the other communities.

Last year what we would see is active listings bottoming out in the first two weeks of January and then a steep increase. Pending sales rose a bit into April, then flattened and began to fall through the remainder of 2007 - subprime meltdown mess.

So what do these charts tell us if you are a buyer? San Ramon and Dublin have quickest turnover of property in general. Sellers in Danville, Pleasanton, and Walnut Creek haven't seen as much downward price pressure, so sellers in those communities are probably hanging tougher on prices that may still need to come down a bit given that the number of buyers is not increasing at a rate to cause a significant increase in sales activity.

Buyers can find deals in all of these communities, but you may want to check out Dublin first and San Ramon second if price discount is the major factor. This is probably more significant for first time buyers or condo owners that are considering a move up to a detached single family home.

My prediction is that we are going to see more downward pressure in Dublin and San Ramon as home builders attempt to deal with the effects of rising fuel prices.  

Whatever the case, it is Dublin, CA that piques my interest these last few Friday mornings as I begin the process of gathering the MLS data, 

Here are the Months of Inventory as of June 5, 2008 for communities in Contra Costa County.  They are down a fraction from 5.30 months in May to 5.11 months in June.  This may be a sign that the loal real estate markets are stabilizing. 

Many sellers may be holding off on placing their homes on the market until their local real estate market shows more favorable signs of improving.  This could be one of the main reasons we don't see an excess of housing inventory for sale.  A high percentage of the sales are foreclosures and short sales, especially in the east county. 

First time buyers and investors are finding bargains compared to where prices were two years ago.  We will be dealing and hearing about foreclosures in the media for some time to come.  The continued higher lending standards are also having an affect on the market. 

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We wrote a while back about flooding in Walnut Creek, Ca. But in that post we were just showcasing a little digital image manipulation. Now we read about the real deal - Walnut Creek reaching the flood stage due to heavy rains.

Of course that's Walnut Creek in Des Moines, IA where heavy rains in the mid-West continue to plague farmers and residents with problems. Watching MSNBC yesterday while I was on the treadmill at 24 Hour Fitness in Walnut Creek (California), I saw the price of corn and soy beans are going through the roof due to the flooding.

Inflation worries are becoming a concern for an economy that is already in trouble. Thank God Chevron is still raking in record profits. I'd hate to think the whole country was suffering.

BTW when I gave my presentation to Experience Unlimited a few weeks ago, it seemed the largest group of job seekers in the room were those from the real estate and mortgage professions.