Articles from Santa Cruz Real Estate - The Broker's Record

Mid-Year State of the Market
2007-07-13 17:12:04
I’d like to start out by saying - another edition of my Santa Cruz Real Estate Report is out! For those of you who haven’t signed up to receive it, you can easily do so by clicking on this link: Santa Cruz Real Estate Report If you’re reading this blog entry, I’ll tell you a little secret. Actually, you don’t have to sign up to receive my real estate report - you can get it simply by clicking on this link to the monthly Santa Cruz Real Estate Report. You can do that once a month or so and just download it without having to sign up for it! But signing up to receive it is going to be much easier - you get an e-mail when the newest monthly report is up on the server. You just click on a link to download it when you want to read it - there’s no PDF attachment to clog your in-box. This month brings news that the median home price in Santa Cruz during the month of June has dipped down 4.2% from the month before, and is down 0.4% year over year. Days ...

A Picture’s Worth
2007-06-26 21:15:36
I had a lovely day out showing property to a mother and daughter from Manhattan. They were referred to me by a friend of mine, she thought we’d hit it off - and we did! The morning started in Capitola, not far from my office, at the hotel they were staying in. A typical June morning - fog just starting to burn off by around 11 AM. We were going to look for view properties up in the hills, where I expected it would be warmer and sunnier. It was warmer and sunnier up in the hills, but the day was unusually cool nevertheless. We had lots of interesting conversation over a five hour period. One question was if I thought that Realtors here in town are dishonest. I said no, I didn’t think they were; generally speaking, I have a high regard for the Realtors I have worked with here. I then said, “The most dishonest thing they do, actually, is the pictures they put up on the MLS, and the descriptions they give to the properties.” That one is a fine line, of cours ...

Real Estate Podcasts
2007-06-20 10:22:40
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past several years (and not that there’s anything wrong with that!), you know what a Podcast is. If for some reason you’ve missed out on this phenomena, let me clue you in. A Podcast is like a radio (talk) show, but instead of being transmitted live over the radio, it is transmitted as a recording over the internet. Usually, people listen to podcasts on their iPods - hence the name, Podcast. I’ve been listening to podcasts for a year or two now. I first got into them to help me improve my Spanish. I’ve been learning and speaking Spanish for well over 20 years now, but the hardest part for me has always been understanding what people were saying to me in Spanish. I have now been listening to a great number of podcasts in Spanish from around the world, becoming accustomed to the various accents and colloquialisms of spanish around the world. It’s been a great help, and I’ve learned a bunch of ...

Market Statistics - May 2007
2007-06-15 08:58:29
Subscribers of my Real Estate Newsletter have received another copy, with the latest market trends. For those of you who don’t subscribe, here’s what is going on in a nutshell. This is county-wide, for single-family residences: Median Price: $790,000 (year ago: $755,000) Average Price: $832,842 (year ago: $846,921) Units Sold: 153 (year ago: 193) Sale/List Price Ratio: 97.9% (year ago: 98.0%) Days of Inventory: 238 (year ago: 174) Days on Market: 89 (year ago: 68) Clearly the best bit of news here is that the median price is up quite a bit. Everything else, though, definitely shows a softer market. And the median price number is deceptive - what’s going on here is that more middle-and-upper range homes are selling than on the lower end. The condo market might be classified as “in the tank,” for example. But, fear not - this too shall pass. Click here to subscribe to my e-newsletter. ...

(Mis) Application of Technology
2007-06-14 23:21:29
Last night I went to bed around 2:30 AM - a bit of a late night, especially for a Wednesday! And then, this morning, promptly at 4:01 AM, my alarm went off and a new day began. Today I had to go up to Sacramento, to attend my next-to-last GRI class. It was Course 107 - Technology Applications in Real Estate. I have a deep and abiding interest in this topic, so I thought it would be well worth the 3.5 hour drive. The class started out pretty slow, with discussions about what is a CD-ROM, what is RAM, etc. - pretty basic stuff, and certainly nothing new to me. I could see, though, that a lot of people in the class were learning a lot, and the instructor clearly loved the topic and he was pretty entertaining. Lunch was served, and afterwards, I started getting pretty drowsy as the class continued learning about what a web browser is. Fortunately, I had my Palm Treo 700p with me, which helps me keep me entertained at times when the GRI instructor is traveling over what is for me wel ...

Finding Rentals the RSS Way
2007-05-29 23:06:09
A couple of folks have asked me recently if I could help them find a rental. My brokerage doesn’t really do rentals, so it’s not something I have a lot of experience with. I do have an e-mail I send out to folks who ask me about this, and it talks a bit about finding rentals on-line. Many people from out of the area think they will see rentals on the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) - but we don’t really do that here. I think maybe in San Francisco they do it that way, and probably in some other large metropolitan areas, but not so much here in Santa Cruz. We have two main sources for finding rentals on-line here. One is the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and the other is Craig’s List. In the e-mail I send out to folks, I give out the URLs for both and say “have at it.” That solution works pretty well for someone (a parent, say, of a UCSC student) who is interested in spot-checking the market to see what rental prices are. However, if you are actively lo ...

New Lending Regulations - Good News for California
2007-05-25 16:32:38
The U.S. House of Representatives Passes H.R. 1427 - GSE Reform Bill On Tuesday, May 22 the U.S. House of Representatives, by a vote of 313-104 (15 did not vote) passed the “Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2007, H.R. 1427.” The legislation passed by the House: overhauls the regulatory oversight of the government sponsored enterprises (GSE) of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks, and creates a new, independent regulator with broad powers analogous to current banking regulators. In addition, the new regulator will have the authority to increase the conforming loan limit in high-cost areas — a high priority for California. The bill, which largely follows the contours of REALTOR(r) supported GSE Reform legislation passed in the 109th Congress, now moves on to the U. S. Senate and has the support of the Department of the Treasury. California Members of Congress who votes YES on H.R. 1427 are: Baca, Becerra, Berman, Bono, Calvert, Capps, Cardoza, C ...

Dream House Raffle
2007-05-15 23:12:10
A couple of friends of mine told me about this the other day - it took me a while to get it up here on my blog, but check this out: http://www.mmsraffle.com/ It seems that the Mount Madonna School is raffling off a house on West Cliff Drive! Well, I’m not quite sure where it is, they don’t say - but it’s right around there, somewhere. They say it has an appraised value of $1.8 million - and I believe them! Tickets cost $150 apiece, and they are only selling 32,000 of them. Instead of the house, you can opt to just take $1.5 million in cash. You might want to just take the cash - the IRS is likely to hand you a whopping tax bill if you win, and it might be good to have the cash handy. ...

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