Monday Morning Quarterback

Monday Morning Quarterback

(Monday, July 21, 2025)

If you look closely at the photo above (and below), you will see a blue VW bus sitting miraculously untouched amidst the devastation from the Malibu/Palisades fire. Preston Martin figured the retro blue Volkswagen van he slept in for years during college was a goner in the fire, given that he parked it in a Malibu neighborhood just before the Palisades fire ripped through, reducing homes and cars to rubble and charred metal. So, the surfboard maker was stunned to find that the vehicle survived. Not only that, but a photo of the vibrant bus also taken by an Associated Press photographer was circulating widely on television and online, giving viewers a measure of joy. “There is magic in that van,” Martin, 24, said last week in an interview with AP. “It makes no sense why this happened. It should have been toasted, but here we are.” Martin purchased the 1977 Volkswagen Type 2 van somewhat on a whim during his junior year studying mechanical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Last summer he sold the van to his girl Megan Weinraub, 29, who designs surf and skateboards under the Vibrant Boards brand. Martin makes carbon fiber surfboards under Starlite. On Jan. 5 the couple drove to go surfing with the van, which Weinraub calls “Azul” (Spanish for “blue”). Afterward Martin parked it on a flat spot up the hill from her apartment by the Getty Villa (as she is still learning to drive the manual transmission). Two days later the Palisades fire erupted, and Weinraub fled (with her dog, Bodi, and some dog food) in her primary car. She felt sad abandoning Azul, but that was minor compared with those who lost homes or loved ones. Last Thursday a neighbor sent her a photo. In the background was her bus, still blue and white and not at all damaged. “I freaked out,” she says. “I was in the bathroom, and I screamed.” She called Martin, who also freaked out. They were even more surprised when the AP photo aired on television and popped up online. “We made the news,” Martin says in a reel on Instagram, and Weinraub contacted the photographer. “It’s so cool that it’s become this, like, a beacon of hope,” Martin says. “Everything around it was toasted, just destroyed. And then here’s this bright blue shiny van, sitting right there, untouched.”

The Saga of Benito Flores. I previously wrote about Benito Flores in my June 16, 2025 Quarterback. Remember? I wrote about his courageous fight to avoid illegal eviction. In March 2020, after 14 years of sleeping in a broken-down van, Flores seized a vacant, publicly owned property in El Sereno. He acted in coordination with a dozen others who also took homes for themselves (called “Reclaimers”). They argued that the true crime was not breaking into empty houses, but rather that the homes (acquired by the California Department of Transportation decades ago for a failed freeway expansion), were left to rot while tens of thousands of people in Los Angeles have no roof over their heads. As time passed, the remaining Reclaimers accepted settlements to leave or departed when Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies came knocking. But not Flores. Flores built an elaborate, 6-foot by 3-foot treehouse, 28 feet high in an ash tree in his backyard, preparing to climb up there when deputies arrived. The risks were clear to him. But he believed the alternative was far worse. “I am 70 years old with uncontrolled diabetes, I have sores on my feet and could lose them,” Flores wrote in a July 4 letter to the L.A. County Superior Court judge who ordered his eviction. “I am a strong candidate to die on the streets alone and forgotten. That is why I choose to die here defending my house.” Last month sheriffs came but left without Flores having to barricade himself in the treehouse. Ever since, Flores has continued to fortify his defenses. He attached ladders to a second backyard tree in an attempt to create a web of treehouses in the sky. Flores’s resolve was greater than his fear. He believed the state had an obligation to house the homeless, elders, disabled and families with children. Attempting to evict him and other Reclaimers, he said, violated that principle. “That,” Flores said, “is why I am fighting.” But last week, Flores apparently fell from his treehouse and died. A neighbor discovered Flores’ body Friday afternoon on the ground, his safety harness broken in the branches high above him. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.

Housing Market is Sending a Stark Warning To Our Economy. Is the housing market about to stall the American economy? One economist seems to think so — and he blames high mortgage rates. With home sales sluggish, and home building and house prices poised to plummet, Mark Zandi (chief economist of Moody’s Analytics) says he’s sending up a “red flare” about the state of the housing market. “Housing will … soon be a full-blown headwind to broader economic growth,” he wrote in a post on X and LinkedIn, “adding to the growing list of reasons to be worried about the economy’s prospects later this year and early next.” Home sales have been depressed over the last few years, as high prices and interest rates have made the market too expensive for many buyers. For the same reason, homeowners with ultralow mortgage rates have also found little incentive to move. Against this backdrop, the entire housing market will continue to suffer unless mortgage rates come down, Zandi argues. “Home sales, homebuilding, and even house prices are set to slump unless mortgage rates decline materially from their current near 7% soon,” Zandi wrote in the social-media post. “That, however, seems unlikely,” he adds. In his call for lower mortgage rates, Zandi joins Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Pulte has been pushing for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, which he says will make housing more affordable. Pulte has criticized the Fed Chair, saying in a post on X that Powell is “doing a great injustice to this Country” by not lowering rates. But Pulte either doesn’t understand (highly unlikely) or chooses to ignore that Mortgage rates, however, don’t follow the direction of the Fed’s benchmark rate. Rather, they tend to move in tandem with the yield on 10-year Treasury notes. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.83% as of Monday afternoon, according to Mortgage News Daily. If a buyer is looking at a $425,000 home and putting down 10% of that price, that translates to roughly $2,900 a month in mortgage payments. Even as supply increases (with more homes being listed for sale), buyers remain uninterested. As a result, home sellers are cutting prices to lure buyers, taking a page out of home builders’ playbook. (Builders are also offering price cuts to sell homes, on top of other sales incentives.)

More Unsheltered Angelenos Are ‘Rough Sleeping’ Without Tents. Bottom of FormA study that counts unsheltered populations in three L.A. neighborhoods (Skid Row, Hollywood and Venice) found a 15% decrease in the population last year overall compared to a year earlier. That’s good news. However, the people who remained on the streets in 2024 were more vulnerable and harder for outreach organizations to serve, according to the report released last week. The LA LEADS study (by the Santa Monica-based RAND Corporation) found there was a 49% reduction in the number of people living unsheltered in Hollywood and a 22% reduction in Venice. The number of unsheltered people in Skid Row did not shrink at all, RAND found. A key reason for the reductions, researchers said, was the city’s ongoing effort to move people into shelters through programs like “Inside Safe “ (Mayor Karen Bass’ signature initiative), which offers motel vouchers to people living in encampments. But the report also notes that many of the remaining unsheltered people living in those areas were “rough sleepers,” meaning they didn’t have any kind of dwelling like a tent or a vehicle. They made up 42% of the unsheltered population in the three neighborhoods — up from 30% in 2021. In 2024, for the first time, there were more rough sleepers than tent dwellers living on the streets in RAND’s survey area. Despite the reductions, RAND researchers noted that they counted significantly more people and dwellings in their study areas than the regional Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (known as “LAHSA”), did in its annual count of the same areas. The percentage of the unsheltered population identified as rough sleepers has increased steadily since 2021 and more than doubled in Hollywood and Venice in 2024 compared to the prior year, according to the study.

Paul Simon’s daughter tears into Richard Gere. I love it when celebrities quarrel over real estate. Take for example Lulu Simon (daughter of Paul Simon) and Richard Gere. Simon’s daughter has torn into Gere for selling her childhood home to a property developer who plans to demolish the historic mansion. Lulu Simon wrote on Instagram: “Hate! Him!” next to a picture of the Pretty Woman actor and a link to a news story about the home being torn down in the face of anger from preservationists. The rancor began in 2022 when Paul Simon and his wife Edie Brickell sold the home (which was designed by architect Harold R Sleeper) to Gere. Paul Simon owned it for 20 years and bought it 20 years ago for $16.5 million. The home was not listed publicly and Gere bought it at a discount, for just $10.8 million in 2022. Originally Gere planned to turn the estate into a farm, according to details shared with local planners in 2023. But those plans changed in late 2024 when Gere relocated to Spain with his wife Alejandra Gere, 42, with whom he has two sons Alexander, five, and James, four. Instead, Gere sold the property to SBP Homes for $10.75 million which recently revealed its development plans. The company is planning to knock down the six-bedroom mansion, which was built in 1938 on a 32-acre plot. In its place will be nine homes, SBP Homes says. In her post, Lulu Simon pictured herself flashing a peace sign and said: “Just in case anyone was wondering if I still hate Richard Gere – I do! He bought my childhood home. Promised he would take care of the land as (a) condition of his purchase. Proceeded to never actually move in and just sold it to a developer as nine separate plots.” Lulu Simon, 30, a pop singer, claims that Gere “promised he would take care of the land” In her now-deleted post Lulu Simon included an image of Gere, 75, surrounded by photos of her late pets. She wrote: “I hope my dead pets buried in that backyard haunt you until you descend into slow and unrelenting madness.”

"How to Get Started As a Real Estate Investor." Our special guest for our August meeting be Justin Colby visiting us from the sunny the of Florida. Justin is an expert in helping people get stated as real estate investor. All the do's and don'ts. If you want to become a real estate investor but didn't know where to start - then this presentation is for you! (And if you're already investing and want some finer points to learn, you should be here as well.) Don’t miss his presentation! Thursday, August 14th, 6:30 to 9:30 pm. Iman Cultural Center, 3376 Motor Avenue (between National and Palms), Culver City CA. FREE Admission. Please RSVP at our website, LARealEstateInvestors.com.

Vendors Expo Returns! Our world-famous "Vendors Expo" returns in 2025, on Thursday night, August 14, 2025. The Vendor Expo opens starting at 6:30 pm. We'll have 30+ of the finest vendors featuring real estate products and services you will want to utilize as a successful investor. Our Vendor Expo will be held at the Iman Cultural Center, 3376 Motor Avenue (between National and Palms), Culver City CA. FREE Admission. Please RSVP at our website, LARealEstateInvestors.com.

This Week. Looking ahead, investors will continue watching for additional information about tariff policies and monitor comments from Fed officials. It will be a week focused on real estate. Existing Home Sales will be released on Wednesday and New Home Sales on Thursday. Durable Orders will come out on Friday. In addition, the next European Central Bank meeting will take place on Thursday.

Weekly Changes:

10-Year Treasuries: Flat 000 bps

Dow Jones average: Rose 100 points

NASDAQ: Rose 300 points

Calendar:

Wednesday (7/23): Existing Home Sales

Thursday (7/24): New Home Sales

Friday (7/25): Durable Goods

For further information, comments, and questions:

Lloyd Segal

President

Los Angeles County Real Estate Investors Association

Lloyd@LARealEstateInvestors.com

310-792-6404