But this tidbit about mortgage payments, below, which got cut out of my story today for lack of space, seemed like a good sign for our over-stretched, debt-burdened society. It’s somehow heartening to hear that typical mortgage payments have fallen — even when I know that the reasons for that may be mostly statistical. That is, more expensive homes were selling last year, using jumbo loans; while this year the houses selling are cheaper, the loans smaller. The tidbit:

- The typical mortgage payment agreed to by those who bought homes in Santa Clara
County in June was $2,880 per month. That’s down from the June 2007 figure of $3,384, and about flat from the payment in May 2008. Adjusted for inflation, that typical monthly payment taken on by the June 2008 buyers was 2.6 percent less than a typical payment in spring 1989, the peak of the prior real estate cycle.

And another fact that hit the editing room floor: The percentage of homes sold in June in Santa Clara County that had previously been foreclosed upon rose to 17.9 percent in June, up from 16.8 percent in May. In June 2007, only 1.7 percent of sales were previous foreclosures.

On another note, I noticed recently that the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors has a spot on its web site reserved for Positive News. I don’t have anything particularly good or bad to say about that. It’s just kind of … interesting, like having a daily “affirmation” on one’s web site, perhaps. (”I can find new leads today because I’m good enough and smart enough and doggone it, people like me!” Thank you, Al Franken…)

But I found an article this week that some of you (at SCCAOR and elsewhere) who are scouring the real estate horizon for signs of a market bottom might find worth a read. It’s the cover story for Barron’s, and its titled “Bottom’s Up: This Real-Estate Rout May Be Short-Lived.” Enjoy.

The notices of default are the first step in foreclosure proceedings; lenders usually send them out when borrowers have fallen a few months behind in their payments.

Sean O’Toole, founder of ForeclosureRadar, points out in the company’s press that June was the fourth consecutive month that defaults have remained relatively flat. That probably can be viewed as good news for the California real estate market and economy. The not so good part is that it’s much less likely now that homeowners in default will be able to avoid foreclosure than it was a year ago, O’Toole said. Default filings statewide have increased 89 percent, but foreclosures have increased 248 percent. Last year, homeowners in default stood a better chance of selling to pay off their loan, refinancing into a new loan, or getting current with their payments.

Santa Clara County ranked 40th among the state’s counties in terms of June foreclosures per total population (the county had 3,122 people per foreclosure in June). San Mateo fared better at 44th place. Santa Cruz was in 36th place.

The worst off? Take a moment to collect your guesses …

San Joaquin, Merced and Stanislaus counties. The full press release should be posted here shortly.

In March and April of this year, the builders trade group said the year-over-year drop-off in sales had flattened just a bit, and they hoped that meant that stability was returning to the new-home market. But in May, said CBIA research director Jonathan Dienhart, “what appeared to be a slow trend of stabilization in new-home sales activity seems to have fallen apart…. With sales continuing to slump, it’s going to make the rest of 2008 a rocky ride for homebuilders.”

As for the San Jose metro area, which includes Santa Clara and San Benito counties, 205 new homes of one type or another sold in May, down just about 5 percent from 215 sales a year earlier. The median price of the single-family homes sold was $897,000, up 2 percent from $877,990 in May 2007.

There were only 44 of those detached houses sold, so it would be interesting to look at which developments were selling now vs. last May, to see whether prices really held up that well for the new single-family homes in the metro area (probably not) or whether the slight increase had more to do with the mix of homes that sold, and how big they were. Seen any good model homes lately and checked in on their prices, incentives? I am planning to go visit a KB Home development in Sunnyvale next week just to get up to speed with some of what that company is doing locally, as it’s been awhile. Will try to report back on that.

Any lenders or loan brokers out there want to weigh in and tell us your two cents on the situation? Or if you’d rather call me, I’m at (408) 920-5833.

Rates for 30-year fixed-rate loans are down again today, at least the national average is — 6.09 percent, according to Bankrate.com.

A 10-day trip to Oregon left me with at least two small anecdotes about the real estate market there. One was the prevalence of a for-sale sign “rider” that I don’t believe we have in Santa Clara County. The sign rider says, “New Price!” as opposed to “Price Reduced,” which is what we see around here. “New price” cracks me up. Is the price newly higher? I don’t think so.

Second small anecdote is that I saw my very first (and second, third and fourth) attached garage for a recreational vehicle! Have you seen them? An RV garage, as you can imagine, looks like someone bolted a structure big enough to house a fire engine onto a regular garage and regular house. This particular development was outside the town of Redmond, Ore., and I am assuming all the houses with RV garages were custom projects, and the homeowners actually wanted covered RV parking. If you bought the home and did not need hangar-like parking, I suppose you could use the space for indoor kite-flying. Or a climbing wall. Giraffe storage. Something.

I’ll try to paste in a picture of an RV garage I found online, but again - I’m still a WordPress novice and it may not work out. I meant to drive back to site in Redmond and take my own pics, but I never got around to it.

I hope July is off to a good start for everyone. Thanks to Olaf, Ryan, Jill et al for a good discussion last week on whether and how real estate agents earn their keep.

Nicely Landscaped Front Yard. Sweeping Front Lawn on Large Corner Lot. Formal Entry Leads to Living Room with Gleaming Wood Floors and Cozy Wood Burning Fireplace. Step Down to the Spacious Dining Room with Tile Floor, Garden Window & French Doors to Side Patio. You Will Love the Gourmet Kitchen with Granite Counters, Wood Cabinets, Built in Appliances & Pantry. Upstairs Master Bedroom Suite Addition With Large Bedroom and Beautifully Updated Master Bathroom. Convenient Upstairs Inside Laundry Adjacent to Master. Additional Laundry Inside the One Car Garage. Down Stairs Master with Sliding Glass Door to Rear Patio and Large Closet with Custom Woodwork. Master Bath Updated with Custom Tile. Two Large Additional Bedrooms with Large Closets are Great for Den, Guests or Growing Family. Hall Bathroom is Updated with Wood Cabinets and Custom Tile Floors, Counters and Tub Surround. Additional Interior Amenities Include Wood Floors in Living Room, Entry, Down Stairs Bedrooms and Hall, Double Pane Windows, Sculpture Ceilings, Six Panel Interior Doors, Custom Closet Doors, Crown Molding Custom Built in Cabinetry and More. Landscaped Rear Yard is an Entertainers Dream with Patio, Built In Pool, Spa and Wet Bar. 2,084 Square Feet of Elegant Living Space on a 6,970 Square Foot Lot. Home Warranty Included.

Can you believe how many capital letters were used there? It gives me a repetitive stress injury just thinking about typing that. It’s from a listing on Tioga Way in San Jose’s Willow Glen, MLS number 80815689.

But anyway, now in addition to having lengthy descriptions, today I found animation in an MLS posting! Scrolling, oversize, multi-color type. I know - big deal. BUT — We don’t really need the calm, legible, publicly accessible MLS site to get all out of hand, with sellers and agents deciding that what it really takes to sell a home in this market is scrolling colored type with flashing smiley-face icons attached. (I made up the icons — didn’t find any of those yet.) The MLS number of the San Jose property with the gussied-up description is 80812906, if you want to see it.

Do any of you use eBay? (Stupid question.) Have you ever clicked on an eBay seller’s item or web site and found the resulting page so full of bizarre-o, ornate fonts and day-glo colors and animated doo-dads that you fled from the site and decided you’d rather drive to Target on a Saturday afternoon for whatever it is you wanted to buy? Please, REInfolink, don’t let the MLSlistings.com pages get all eBay on us. (I perhaps should not pick on eBay sellers so much. A lot of people who post on the Babycenter.com bulletin boards are just as flagrant, as another example. Perhaps some of you real-estate-loving moms will have seen that stuff too.)

By the way, I am going on vacation and won’t be back until July 9. Keep an eye on the local inventory, and when I get back we can discuss the trends.

For example, Richard Dugas, president and chief executive of Michigan-based, publicly held builder Pulte Homes, said yesterday “We have laid off 60 percent of our workforce; it’s been absolutely devastating.” And in response to a question from panel moderator John Burns, a real estate industry consultant, about whether some markets will recover faster than others, he answered that yes, some would. “I haven’t seen it yet, though. If you see some, let me know,” he said, to rueful laughs from the 250 or so builders and suppliers in the audience.

Later, at a session with reporters, California Building Industry Association president Ray Becker said, “There’s no question the building industry is in dire shape.”

You’ll find a couple more examples in the article I wrote after that hectic tour.

Maybe the plain-spoken assessments were notable because I was comparing the builders’ candor with that of some people at last fall’s National Association of Realtors conference, which was held in Las Vegas. And perhaps something about Vegas made the Realtors want to think that the downturn was really all media smoke and mirrors. At any rate, NAR execs were prone to blame the media for their woes.

But many builders admit that they are struggling for survival and will continue to. But they also know, as one of the slides in John Burns’ presentation read yesterday, “The day is coming when you will make a lot of $$$ again.”

At PCBC this year, TOTO introduces the NEOREST 550 High-Efficiency Dual Flush Toilet and integrated personal cleansing system. This high-style unit is chock-a-block full of technological innovations. For example it uses sound to conserve water by playing the sound of a toilet flushing, babbling brook, or waves crashing on the beach, enabling users to preserve their dignity and mask bodily noises (which they traditionally use actual running water to do).

This is but one of its myriad innovations, come SEE the others for yourself at this year’s Pacific Coast Builders Show, TOTO Booth #1311, South Hall of the Moscone Center.

I’m pretty sure this is the first time anyone’s sent me an email with the phrase “mask bodily noises” in it. And I kinda hope it’s the last time.

By the way, if you are currently remodeling a home, or in the process of finding a contractor to help you remodel, my colleague Sonia Narang would like to hear your anecdotes about how the process of finding a contractor went or is going. You can contact Sonia at snarang@mercurynews.com, or call her at (408) 920-5073. Thanks!

It’s not a good idea to read a lot into this increase, said CBIA economist Alan Nevin when I talked to him about half an hour ago. With numbers that low, relatively speaking, anything could have happened to cause the year-over-year bounce. A single townhouse project could have pulled permits in May, for example, and - boom - all of a sudden there’s an annual increase in May.

So, before anyone gets all excited about a positive blip in local home building figures, I want to figure out this 70-unit increase. Ideas? Any new-home projects near you that are defying the trends to build new houses?

Update posted Tuesday, June 24: Reporting done, and the answer is: It’s Sunnyvale Town Center that’s behind the big increase. And here’s the lil story I ended up writing.

“Days of unsold inventory” — or how many days it would take to sell out the existing houses for sale (not condos in these numbers) given the pace of sales in recent 5-week period, in various combined areas:|

For south county: 187 days (this was once up in the 300-day range, if I remember right)
Santa Teresa, Blossom Valley, Milpitas, North Valley: 117 days
East/Central/South San Jose: 181 days (this also used to be sky-high)
Saratoga, Los Gatos: 130 days
Cupertino, Sunnyvale: 62
Santa Clara, Willow Glen, Campbell, Cambrian: 102
Los Altos, Palo Alto, Mountain View: 52