News briefs from San Diego area

The Associated Press
Associated Press

SAN DIEGO - The Miramar Marine Corps Air Station is now back in the sights of regional airport officials as a deadline looms to select a site as an alternative to Lindbergh Field.

Councilman Tony Young proposed joint use of bases at Miramar, North Island or Camp Pendleton during the three-hour San Diego County Regional Airport Authority's strategic planning committee meeting Monday.

The military has no interest in a joint-use airport at Miramar, but Young said the authority should consider a stand-alone operation at Miramar. The authority is facing a May target for a site decision.

"Let's find ways in which we can come up with a solution together," Young said. "Let's make a deal."

But Marine and Navy leaders have said the current Miramar/North Island/Camp Pendleton base combination offers an ideal configuration of strength and readiness that can't be duplicated anywhere else in the world.

Young's motion was approved 3-1 and now goes to the full board of directors next week.

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SAN DIEGO (AP) - The ringleader of a telemarketing Ponzi scam was sentenced to nearly five years in prison and six others got terms ranging from 10 months to 3 1/2 years.

Investors were defrauded out of more than $18 million with the promise of easy money through infomercials.

The leader of the scheme was Mark McClafferty, 40, who was sentenced by a federal judge on Friday. Through his Progressive Financial and Commercial Express firms, more than 700 people invested money in 1997 and 1998.

U.S. District Judge Napoleon Jones also ordered McClafferty and several executives to pay $15.5 million in restitution. But prosecutor Steven Peak said it was unlikely investors will get all of their money back.

Investor money supposedly paid for television time and investors were told they would be paid from the sales of products. Infomercials touting products such as a mosquito repellent, a hair band and a device to jump-start cars were produced.

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VISTA, Calif. (AP) - A judge refused to lower the $2 million bail for each of the five men charged with plotting the deaths of three people, including two brothers owed money for offshore sports bets.

Deputy District Attorney Tom Manning told Superior Court Judge Adrienne Orfield on Monday that associates of the defendants, as well as some of the accused, admitted to the alleged murder plot.

Scott Lee Sepulveda, 24, Bryan Speicher, 22, and Brian Edward McConnell, 25, all of Carlsbad, as well as Joseph Micah Shiller, 21, of Encinitas and Carlos Luis Ramirez, 25, a sailor aboard the USS Tarawa, were each charged with three counts of conspiracy to commit murder and one count of conspiracy to kidnap. They all also face gang allegations.

Prosecutors said many of the defendants met while attending La Costa Canyon High School and they were members of the "Shadow Crew," an affluent gang that supposedly modeled itself after "The Sopranos."

The defendants sold drugs and committed robberies, Manning said, and they allegedly plotted the killings during a meeting earlier this year.

"This group got together to kill three people," Manning said. "Mr. Sepulveda owed a sizable gambling debt."

Investigators said one of the gang members told police he was ordered to kill two brothers who were bookies. A March 16 police raid at the homes of defendants turned up about 25 handguns and rifles, ammunition, handcuffs and ski masks, police said.

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OCEANSIDE, Calif. (AP) - Toxic dirt imported to the site of a housing project has shut down construction.

Additionally, officials don't know what happened to at least 1,000 cubic yards of the contaminated soil from a downtown lot where the city and the North County Transit District are building a parking garage.

Construction of three homes on Barnwell Street was halted by the city last week after tests showed high levels of petroleum hydrocarbons, a neurotoxic substance that can affect the eyes, skin and respiratory system.

"It is our opinion that soil that was transported from the transit center to the site is a probable source of elevated petroleum hydrocarbons in fill soil at the site," read a report by the Taylor Group.

The report recommended that the top 3 feet of contaminated soil be excavated and replaced.

A month ago, city transportation director Frank Watanabe assured residents that "all of the soils that were contaminated were sent to Arizona (to be placed in a landfill)."

"It's unbelievable," Councilwoman Shari Mackin said. "With the background we had on that transit center parking lot, now this soil ends up in a residential neighborhood. How?"

Oceanside civil engineer Gary Kellison, who is managing the parking garage project, said Monday that the contaminated soil at the garage site was "identified and segregated."

Kellison said he did not know how contaminated soil reached the Barnwell project, or whether more contaminated soil had been shipped outside of the city for use in other projects.

California home sales fell in February

By Alex Veiga
ASSOCIATED PRESS

3:11 a.m. March 17, 2006

LOS ANGELES – Home sales declined statewide in February and the rate of price increases slowed, a reflection of growing pressure on sellers to dial back prices to lure increasingly tentative buyers.

In all, 37,900 new and resale houses and condominiums were sold last month, a 9.3 percent decline from 41,800 in February 2005 and a drop of 1 percent from January's sales, real estate research firm DataQuick Information Systems reported Thursday.

The state has seen annual home sales decline for five straight months. Last month's sales were the lowest since 32,454 homes were sold in February 2001, the report said.

February is traditionally a slow month, and comparisons to last year could be misleading because it was such a strong year.

“It appears that today's market is probably as close to what we would call normal as we've had in a long time,” said John Karevoll, a DataQuick analyst.

Still, the slowdown in sales also reflects the tussle between buyers and sellers as the housing market continues to level off from a five-year climb.

“What I'm seeing is both buyers and sellers digging their heels in, buyers saying 'I'm not ready to buy' and sellers going 'I'm not going to lower the price,'” said David Kerr, a Realtor with Emeryville-based ZipRealty Inc.

“A lot of sellers are still pricing to the higher-end and their properties are still sitting there, and they're not considering realistic offers,” said Kerr, whose territory includes Oakland and Berkeley.

The median home price in California last month hit $457,000, up 1.1 percent from January and up 12.3 percent from $407,000 in the same period a year ago. It marks the lowest annual increase since 10.7 percent in December 2001, DataQuick said.

Statewide home price increases peaked in June 2004 at 23.2 percent and that rate has gradually declined ever since.

DataQuick released figures Thursday for the nine-county region surrounding San Francisco Bay. Sales in the area were down 16.8 percent in February compared to the same month last year but up 3.4 percent from January, according to DataQuick.

The median price of a home in the region in February was $616,000, up 12.2 percent from $549,000 a year ago and up 1.5 percent compared to January.

In a six-county area of Southern California, the number of homes sold last month also fell, DataQuick said earlier this week.

In all, 19,905 homes were sold during the month, a 7 percent drop from the same period a year ago and down nearly 1 percent from January.

The median home price in the region hit $480,000 last month, up 12.9 percent from February 2005 and up 2.3 percent from January, DataQuick said.

One factor behind the apparent disconnect between buyers and sellers involves the standard practice of using sales of comparable homes to set an asking price.

Such comparisons are typically made with homes sold within a six-month period. But in many cases, the prices that homes fetched a half-year ago don't square with many buyers' perceptions of where the market is headed.

“Sellers do not recognize what's going on in terms of the market transitioning,” Kerr said. “They still think that because the house across the street sold for like $50,000 to $100,000 more than theirs, that theirs should be worth that, plus some. And what's happening is, it's not happening.”

Dale Hansen, a computer technician in Fairfield, listed his four-bedroom, two and a half-bath home for $665,000 in early January but took it off the market last month after only receiving offers well-below his asking price.

As a result, Hansen and his wife fell out of escrow on a condominium they were looking to buy after selling their home.

“We had a lot of traffic, a lot of interest,” said Hansen, 31. “A lot of people are coming in $20,000 to $25,000 right off less than what we're asking for.”

The couple asked their real estate agent to hold firm on the price. They plan to relist the home next month.

“We went into this whole thing knowing it's not the best time of year to sell, but we wanted to go ahead and give it a shot,” Hansen said. “We'll cross our fingers and hope it goes well.”

Despite the market's cooldown in recent months, some buyers say it's still tough to find the right property in their price range.

Mathew Moses, an environmental engineer from Berkeley, has been searching for a home in the $500,000 to $600,000 range since December but hasn't found anything to compel him to make an offer.

“The stuff that I'm looking at is way overpriced,” said Moses, 31.

Still, Moses says as long as interest rates don't rise too high, he can wait for the right deal.

“I think it could be helpful if I don't find anything ideal for me and wait another six months,” he said. “I'm willing to do that.”

Home Sales Plummet

By WILL CARLESS
Voice Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 1, 2006

As the number of existing home sales drops around the nation, San Diego is being hit disproportionately hard. The drop off in the sales rate in America's Finest City was four times the national average in January, a decline experts said was unexpectedly steep.

In a press release issued Tuesday, the National Association of Realtors said the seasonally adjusted existing home sales rate in January 2006 was 5.2 percent lower than in January 2005. The seasonally adjusted rate is a method analysts use to calculate the number of sales taking place, and which takes into account the fact that certain months are always slow for real estate.

While significant, that figure is tame compared to the statistics for San Diego. Seasonally adjusted existing home sales rates in San Diego County were down 20.2 percent in January 2006 compared to 2005, according to the California Association of Realtors.

None of the local experts seem particularly surprised by the drop-off in sales, though.

"The areas with the highest appreciation are likely to be experiencing the slowdown right now in terms of sales. California, and San Diego in particular, will fit into that category," said Alan Gin, professor of economics at the University of San Diego's Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate.

In California as a whole, the sales rate was 24.2 percent lower in January than at the same time last year, according to Robert Kleinhenz, deputy chief economist at the California Association of Realtors. Kleinhenz admitted that's a sharper drop that he had expected.

"We expected a statewide decline in sales compared to a year ago probably more like in the high teens -- a 16 or a 19 percent decline in sales -- but we wound up with a 24 percent decline in sales," Kleinhenz said.

Even so, he added, there are some legitimate reasons for the weaker-than expected sales figures. Interest rates in the last quarter of 2005 were above 6 percent for the first time in a while, which he said probably had an adverse psychological impact on buyers and led to less sales being completed in January. As the year wears on and buyers get used to the higher interest rates, Kleinhenz expects sales to pick back up somewhat.

The drop in California home sales in January 2005 compared to January 2006 is the highest year-on-year decline since December 1990, when sales dropped 25.2 percent.

But that was a completely different market, said to Russ Valone, president and CEO of Marketpointe Realty Advisors. The sharp drop off in sales in the early 1990s was due largely to job losses and economic shocks outside of the housing sector, he explained.

"What you were probably seeing back then was maybe a drop from a normalized market to a true softening market, whereas what you're seeing here is a drop from a peak to a normalized market," Valone said.

Gary London, president of The London Group Realty Advisors in San Diego, agreed with Valone's assessment. He said the sales figures correlate with data showing a slowdown in home price appreciation within the county, and are simply illustrative of a cooling housing market.

But common sense decrees that a 20 percent seasonally adjusted drop in sales activity shows signs of a greatly weakened housing market. The pool of buyers is starting to dry up in San Diego, and in the past that has spelled bad news for home prices. The county's homeowners will certainly be watching the sales figures with consternation, but Valone says they've got nothing to worry about.

"As the market starts to cool, everybody gets afraid that all of a sudden there's going to be a freefall, so the market even cools a little bit more, until people recognize the fact that maybe the volume of activity is slowing down, but prices are still increasing."

And indeed, prices are still increasing.

The same National Association of Realtors press release that admits the sales drops also points out that home prices in the western United States are still up 13 percent from this time last year. Overall, home prices in the United States are up 11.6 percent from January 2005.

Of course, that's only if you can find a buyer.