In the real estate buzzsaw

Will Lodi's housing market help me out of a pinch? I can only hope

A month after leaving Lodi and relocating to Pittsburgh, my move has a new focus.

For the last several weeks, everything relating to moving has been, for the most part, under my control: the packing, the cross-country travel and the unpacking.

But now the spotlight changes to something that is frighteningly out of my hands.

Will my Lodi home of more than 20 years sell quickly at its fairly priced level? Or will it linger on the market, as so many other homes in my neighborhood have?

If it remains unsold, then I may be forced into a coin-flip decision of whether to accept the inevitable low-ball offer or put the house up for rent. A third chilling possibility is that I could take the maximum gamble and carry the house until the market improves, as it inevitably will.

Contractors have spent the month since I left inside and outside my house, renovating and upgrading. It goes on the market this month. By my calculations, I have 10 prime weeks left in the selling season, between Aug. 15 and Nov. 1, to find a buyer.

The equity that I have built up during two decades of home ownership protects me from financial devastation.

I bought my house in 1988, so I'm not going to lose money.

But I do regret that I couldn't move fast enough two years ago to cash in on the real estate bubble that I knew, from years spent on Wall Street analyzing inflated markets, was headed for the tank. An unexpected health issue kept me from selling and, in the process, cost me at least $100,000.

Despite the mortgage meltdown, my part of town retains its solidly middle-class ambiance, nurtured by my conscientious neighbors.

Still, I'm caught in the housing crisis buzz saw: As my Lodi house drops in value, although more slowly than in previous months, so too does my Pittsburgh home.

As if the reality of owning two houses in a disastrous market isn't bad enough, the news from every print and television report is a non-stop stream of gloomy predictions.

In July, the Christian Science Monitor wrote that houses in Victorville, Calif. have plunged by 43 percent over the last year.

Other reports, and you don't have to look hard to find them, predict that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that prices may continue to fall for two more years. One particularly ominous expert evaluation earlier this week described it this way: "Housing crisis worse than imagined."

As one who always tries to find the glass-half-full perspective, I searched the Internet until I finally came across a U.S. News & World Report article that, after studying all the data, concluded that housing prices fell further during the 1930s Great Depression.

Needless to say, I found that cold comfort.

But amazingly, even though Stockton is the world's foreclosure capital, pending sales have risen in San Joaquin County for five consecutive months, although at lower median prices. This encouraging tidbit comes from no less an authority than Linda Bush, president of the Lodi Association of Realtors.

To help me sleep at night, I repeat and repeat in my mind the words of my ever-optimistic agent, Joanie Selman-Prince, that I only need one qualified buyer and that Lodi is still one of the state's most desirable locations.

Attention all buyers! Come forward, please. No reasonable offer will be refused.

Joe Guzzardi, a native Californian, recently retired from the Lincoln Technical Academy and reluctantly moved to Pennsylvania to seek an improved quality of life. Reach him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.