Local Market Conditions
49ers at Levi's Stadium – Good or Bad for Local Home Prices?
Last week, the Santa Clara 49ers stadium has officially been named Levi's Stadium. This is another step closer for the 49ers to take residence in Santa Clara. When the San Francisco 49ers made it into the Super Bowl this February, it woke the South Bay from sports-apathy into football fanatics. While the 49ers did not [...]
Read More >>How to Sell Your Home for Top Dollar – Part 2
As both a buyer’s and seller’s agent, I’m constantly reviewing listings and visiting homes. More often than not, I find homes that are not presented and marketed to their full potential. Many are neglected short sale and REO listings. For others, I would see poor to no home descriptions or no showing schedules. For these [...]
Read More >>How to Compete with Cash Buyers (Part 2)
We discussed last time that many homes in Santa Clara County are bought by cash buyers. If you are in a multiple offer situation and are facing cash buyers, does that mean you just throw your hands up in the air and concede defeat? Don’t be discouraged yet. Let’s take a look from the sellers’ [...]
Read More >>The Christmas Housing Indicator
As we finish the last week of 2011 and usher in 2012, lingering questions about the up-coming year fill many with doubt and worry. Our national economy continues to work through a long recovery process, with no clear end in sight. Growth is marginal at best while we’re seeing some modest improvements in the levels of [...]
Read More >>How to Decide Whether to Renovate or Not
As the housing market continues to grind through its fourth year of a protracted correction, many homeowners are wondering whether it makes sense to renovate their existing homes, since trading up is no longer a real option. On the surface, there are plenty of generic good reasons to renovate — it helps to increase property [...]
Read More >>Silicon Valley Growth in 2011 is Driving a Recovery in Local Real Estate
After another uninspiring summer season for real estate transactions, Silicon Valley seems to have regained some confidence. For the month of August 2011, DataQuick reports that transaction volumes in Santa Clara County have rebounded by 11.2% over last year and prices have actually climbed 2.4% in the same time period. Across the rest of the Bay Area, [...]
Read More >>Mortgage Rates Hit New Record Lows – How Low Can They Go?
As discussed in our prior blog postings, mortgage interest rates are headed lower. Indeed, the Associated Press put out an article today about new record lows in mortgage rates to confirm this forecasted trend. With the Federal Reserve indicating its intention last week to keep funds rates at near zero percent for up to two more years, [...]
Read More >>S&P Downgrade of US Treasuries Leads to Lower Mortgage Interest Rates
The intrepid action by S&P to finally break the seal on the illusion of the US credit quality and lower its debt ratings has people wondering about the future of interest rates and specifically, mortgage interest rates. Unfortunately, most real estate professionals are still holding on to inadequate elementary school conceptions of US sovereign credit [...]
Read More >>Getting the Runaround on the Direction of Interest Rates
Does the following scenario sound familiar? You’re looking to buy a house. You ask your real estate agent for some professional opinion about the direction of mortgage interest rates. So, she or he answers: “Well, interest rates are at historical lows, so it must be going up soon. You should buy now.” If you had posed that question anytime [...]
Read More >>Debunking My Old Real Estate Finance Professor's Take on Homeownership
Back in my MBA days at USC, the party line of my finance-savvy classmates was solidly against the housing market and homeownership in general. Doubtless, this was fed by the considerable weight of the retrospective analysis being promulgated by our professors, some of whom have been intimately involved in real estate for 20-30 years. The [...]
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