123 Bursar Ln, Santa Cruz, CA

               
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Upper West Side! Westlake Cottages ~ a 14 year new development! Like New!  This 3 Bedrooms/2.5 Bathroom home has spacious open floor plan with large kitchen and living area all in hardwood for easy care and maintenance. The kitchen has gorgeous real wood cabinets with storage galore, granite countertops and an island for entertaining or easy dining. Powder room and washer and dryer are on main floor. Upstairs primary suite has a walk in closet, large bathroom with shower, soaking tub and generous sized shower. Guest bath with tub and shower and two guest bedrooms. There is alcove at the top of the stairs, great for a home office or study spot. Large two car garage with…

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14 Eastridge Drive, Santa Cruz

$1,399,000

 3bed - 4bath - 27,442.8 acres lot   

Here is your chance to live in the beautiful gated community of Pasatiempo!          

What if you came home from work and could hit a few balls or Saturday morning you could play around of golf in one of the premier golf clubs in America? Where do you want to spend your time? In Pasatiempo, pass the time.. here. moving to Santa Cruz

Become a member of the Pasatiempo Golf Club or grab a pool card for days for fun and sun at the pool! Or just stay home and lounge on the sunny deck and enjoy the lush green foliage. Spacious home that has Carmel Cottage vibe has a primary suite, two bedrooms, a separate bed and bath great for home office or family visits.…

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The market's changing. I think it is important that when you're interviewing an agent you find an agent that really does know the market. When you are talking to an agent and you found them online and you found them like me online and you found their qualifications and you think, I'll interview them. They must know the market they are advertising themselves so they must know the market. I thought about it and I thought, you know, how do you really know if an agent understands the current market? I've heard agents say, well, “I've been doing this for 30 years.”  I can promise you that every market is completely different. They all have so many facets to them. I've been doing it 18 years. We've had some ups and downs all caused by a myriad of different…

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Cost of Living Santa Cruz:

I Googled cost of living here in Santa Cruz, and there are these numbers, national average numbers, and they take all these numbers, and they distill them and pop 'em out and they do not take the area into consideration. So I thought I would go over just a few items such as cost of gas, cost of groceries, shopping here, an overview and discuss that this area gives back a bit too. There are work arounds to these expenses.

First a bag of groceries, full disclosure, I buy groceries at a very expensive store. Why? Well, because I really love their produce and their meats. They're very good. I believe them to be good quality, but you know, expensive. I think their bag of groceries and even trader Joe's, which we have two of…

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Is the market changing. Is there a shift in the air or is it just the tremors we've been having lately here in Santa Cruz? They market is definitely changing, but maybe just changing in our mind because I haven't really seen anything. I've been trying to make a market update video all morning long, and my phone has not stopped buzzing, ringing and, and pinging, because the market is still really very strong. You have sellers who want to sell, you have buyers that want to buy. Now the interest rate is 5.75%. That is higher than January 2022. It was 3.5% or so in January and it just skyrocketed. Is that going to really change things? Well, we expect that it will, but we're just not seeing it. I'm hearing of less offers, but I haven't heard a whole lot…

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Should you sell now or rent your home out?

Keeping your home allows you continue to build equity as you pay down the mortgage with rental income. Plus, the market value of the home continues to increase over time. If the house is in good condition, and you have adequate cash reserves, renting could be a wise decision. As with both scenarios I advise you contact your financial, tax professional and attorney.

Renting can change your home from financial liability to a profitable asset. One formula to use for rent is 1% of a home’s value for monthly rent, or $6000 per month on a home worth $600,000. As a rental owner strike that, as a landlord, you will need to maintain cash on hand to cover maintenance costs and the times when the home is vacant. Most…

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Before: scroll to bottom for after


Are you thinking of selling your house as is? What does that really mean? Is it really that easy? You just throw it on the market and that's all there is to it? I'm going to give you a couple pros and cons of selling as is, and then I'm going to explore what it really means in the market.

First, the pro, is you don't have to do anything. No stagers. No painting. No carpet. No nothing. You just throw it on the market, right? And everybody's going to love it. The other pro is not having to wait, hope that contractors are going to get back to you and call you back. You're going to come give me your money, and we're going to be done, right? Well, it's a little more complicated than that, but let's get…

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I looked on the Multiple Listing Service, the MLS, and it said there were 23 new listings posted in the last 24 hours. And it was like, oh my gosh, it was so exciting, a big list populated, and I was like, "Oh boy." Now not a lot of it would really fit what my buyers are looking for, but it was really exciting to think, oh we're starting to get some traction. We're starting to get some movement. Listings are starting to come on. The bad news is not so great. The interest rate rates are going up. As of March 22nd, 2022, conforming 30-year fixed rate is 4.75. Ouch. The conforming 15 year fixed, 3.875, which is really decent. And then the jumbo. Jumbo, remember that's above the conforming limit and it's a totally different loan product. Those rates are…

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How to buy a house! ~ I wrote this in 2015 and in some ways it is very quaint. It makes me long for simpler times. 

Buying a home is a scary prospect and I typically find that buyers who are not scared are either not really going to buy a house or bought a home before or have a relative who was in the real estate business.  Why is it scary? There are lots of reasons…

For a couple this can signify a bigger commitment than marriage because now there is mortgage. Mortgages are not easy to dissolve and may prove harder to dissolve than the marriage. Fear of the unknown, the housing market goes up and down and where it will go nobody knows. Buyers worry about their jobs, people’s jobs are no longer stable. This fact has changed in the last 5 years.…

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For the last two years, January just took off like a rocket, continued pretty crazy upstream, till about May. Usually when school lets out and vacations and other summer activities begin. Let's not count 2020. But, 2021 looked about like that. People started getting back into having family get togethers, and parties, and things started to be normal. So, we did see a dip last summer as more distractions of the season came about. Yet last January 1st the market took off like a shot. But are we really in a sellers market? What are sellers going to do this year. First I will summarize sellers and let you in on a secret about seller's markets and buyer's markets.

First Let us profile sellers.

This year, January 1st was crickets. It's okay. Really, as…

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