2012 U S Economic and Housing Market Outlook
Freddie Mac released its U.S. Economic and Housing Market Outlook for 2012: Outlook Highlights Economic growth will likely strengthen to about 2.5 percent in 2012. The U.S. unemployment rate will decline but likely remain above 8 percent. Mortgage rates will likely remain very low, at least through mid-2012. Housing activity will…
Should Home Sellers Take Contingent Offers?
Everyone who sells their home would love a clean, full price offer from a strong, well qualified buyer within the first couple of weeks after they list. If you don’t get any offers at all within the first three weeks, the property is probably over priced and it is usually…
How’s The Saratoga Real Estate Market?
According to Altos Research’s Market Action Index, it has been a buyers market for Saratoga, CA real estate since fall 2007. From Alto’s August 1, 2001 report,”the Market Action Index has been trending down lately, while inventory and days-on-market are climbing. The trends imply a weakening market. The market has been consistently cool…
Saratoga, CA Lifestyle Search
Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate LLC conducted a survey in April 2011 and found out that at least 1 in 5 homeowners say that their community does not fit their lifestyle. This suggests that homebuyers would place more weight on lifestyle criteria in future home searches next time around,…
Escrow in California
Escrow is a neutral, impartial third party that acts on the instructions of the principals in a real estate transaction. Most California real estate Purchase Agreements (CAR or PRDS contracts) are also escrow instructions, that give authority to the escrow company to transfer title when all terms of the Purchase…
Saratoga 2010 Real Estate Market In Review
Price Trends: Median prices in Saratoga, CA have fluctuated inversely with inventory – they reached a low after the recession in Spring 2009, recovered by January 2010; dropped again and are on the rise again. Buyers Market: As the chart above shows, according to Altos Research, Saratoga CA has been…
How’s The Saratoga Real Estate Market?
Currently, the median price of closed home is $1.87 million; while the median list price is $2.174 million. The Interactive Chart above for Saratoga, CA is updated weekly so SaratogaVoice can be your community resource to answer your question “How’s the real estate market?” The median price of homes for…
California’s Home Energy Rating System
NEW ENERGY SAVINGS BOOKLET NOW AVAILABLE The California Energy Commission has recently released a Home Energy Rating System (HERS) booklet to help homeowners determine the energy efficiency of their homes based on an HERS rating scale of 0 to 250, and identify energy-saving improvements. This new publication offers a reliable…
2011 Economic Forecast
Mid October, 2010 I was at the CAR Expo in Anaheim where Chief Economist Leslie Appleton-Young gave the California Association of Realtors 2011 Economic Forecast. Here are some highlights: The housing market next year in 2011 – will be driven by the slow pace of recovery in the economy and…
Realtor Property Resource Launched in Silicon Valley
Earlier this year I participated in the beta testing of Realtor Property Resource (RPR), a powerful new tool which is now available exclusively to Realtor members of MLS Listings, Inc. and to date only six other MLS’s in the nation. RPR was quietly launched live to all SILVAR members in…
Santa Clara County 2010 Tax Roll Declined by 2.43%
Image via Wikipedia According to the Santa Clara Assessors Office 2010-2011 Annual Report , assessed value tax rolls in the County declined in 2010 by 2.43% – the first time since 1978, when proposition 13 was passed in California. This means city and county governments are tightening their belts to…
How’s The Real Estate Market?
Image via Wikipedia Recent media news reports trumpet that sales of existing homes plunged by 29 percent in July 2009. Is this the whole story… or is this the beginning of election year rhetoric? Further, do the national statistics have any bearing on how the real estate market is doing…
Closing Costs in Santa Clara County
Image via Wikipedia Each county in California has customs as to who pays for closing costs in a real estate sale transaction. In Santa Clara County it is customary for the seller to pay for escrow charges/fees, title fees (Owners Policy) and County transfer tax of $1.10 per thousand. Buyer…
Trustee Foreclosure Sales
I am not a foreclosure expert, but I have received training from Alain Pinel Realtors that empowers me to represent buyers of distressed properties. As I have previously noted on this blog, Saratoga, Monte Sereno and Los Gatos are now experiencing some distressed property sales, but they are generally random…
Distressed Property Educated Buyers Agent
Short sales, (sales of homes for less than the amount of their outstanding mortgage debt) have tripled since 2008, particularly in California, according to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times. The number of transactions rose to more than 160,000 in 2009 from roughly 96,000 in 2008, with more…
