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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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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Have you ever bought something, and you wish you didn’t, it did not meet your expectations or turn out the way you imagined? I thought I would bring up the subject of buyer’s remorse later in the season then I realized this topic is best before the season gets going...

Remorse comes from a lot of things and here is what I have seen.

#1. Buying for the wrong reason. some people buy houses based on others’ ideas, such as making it easier for them, for example encouraging mom and or dad to give up the huge two-story house, and buy a single story, less maintenance and they can worry less about mom living in a big house.  But for them they like their house and do what their family wants them to do and regret the move. Or families often…

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Catch the aloha vibe here! This lovely home in the heart of the lower westside, has an island feel. 2BR/1BA home well apportioned with, large bath, warm cork floors and amazing outdoor space with privacy fence of lush passion fruit vines, gracious outdoor deck with space for entertaining, slides or sandboxes. The home has gorgeous features such as Saltillo tiles in the bath, crown molding, space efficient refrigerator, surf board storage, planter boxes and outdoor shower. The outdoor deck allows for enjoy the evening ocean air and stars and hosting grand dinners.  Possibility for more outdoor storage. Enjoy this amazing area with trails, surf, sun and beaches. Circle by!

One amazing feature to this home is the proximity to the ocean, one can enjoy…

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The largest fires in California this year maybe housing prices in key areas. With record amounts of snowfall and large downpours our drought maybe fixed for a while and forest fires may retreat for a year, yet the spring housing market will take it’s place. Here in Santa Cruz there are a lot of reasons for the coming home price scorcher I see blowing our way.

There are a few factors that drive housing prices and rental prices to rise so steeply.

The great resignation of landlords.

For rentals it is the lack of them, a few years ago there was a push to pass rent control in the city of Santa Cruz. This caused a large amount of mom-and-pop rental owners to sell as they did not want to be caught in a very punitive rental market, where even…

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Congratulations! Did you get accepted into UC Santa Cruz? Yay! Wait, where am I going to live? After the first year of on-campus housing, where do you go?

Full disclosure: I'm a realtor. I don't do property management; I'm not a property manager. I do know a little bit about the rental situation here in Santa Cruz, but I know more about buying a home for your student to live in while they go to school. So I'm going to give you some resources for renting and some ideas, things to keep in mind when you're looking to rent. I'm going to talk about when the rental situation just gets too crazy, what else you could do, which would be buy.

I have a couple websites I'm linking. That is the student housing services for UCSC. It really is very…

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Who pays for home staging? 
A good question, realtor, seller maybe both, but it is worth it. Sometimes realtors pay for it, but may increase their commission, sometimes sellers are just fine paying for it and splitting the cost is always a good idea as it really helps the seller sell fast and helps the realtor market it properly.

Professionally staged homes are eye-catching and can encourage more buyers to consider your property, even before they see it in person. The first impression is always online and it is important to stand out because the listing literally has about 30 seconds to catch someone's eye the only other way to do it outside of that is price. 

Staging can help create that emotional connection between a buyer and your home by…

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