Found 23 blog entries tagged as real estate.

Why You Need a Trust!  I interviewed a trust attorney to explain why estate planning is so important. Watch the video and read this guest blog issue.

When it comes to putting off or refusing to create an estate plan, your mind can concoct all sorts of rationalizations: “I won’t care because I’ll be dead,” “I’m too young,” “That won’t happen to me,” or “My family will know what to do.”

But these thoughts all come from a lack of real education about estate planning and the consequences to your family. Once you understand exactly what planning is designed to prevent and support, you’ll realize there really is no acceptable excuse for not having a plan, provided you are able to plan and truly care about your family’s experience after you die or if you…

31 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

This Real Estate Market for the new year, I am going to tell you a little bit about where we've been, where we're going and a little bit about where we are. Happy New Year! For Santa Cruz County in 2022, we had about 1480 sales. The average sale price was $1.47 million, appreciation was 10.2% for 2022. For people who were worried about buying and paying too much because prices were going down last year, you have absolutely no worries. And I think overall you really shouldn't worry. I think your property is going to appreciate just fine. 43 year average appreciation is 8%. Taking record of this, started in 1979, do you know the average sales price in Santa Cruz County was $74,998!  Video below and podcast is bottom right hand corner.

Can you even…

56 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

Market update for August 2022 Santa Cruz edition

Do you think the real estate market is cratering? Interest rates going up and the buyers are going to be able to get a screaming deal and sellers missed out and it's terrible! Now as a buyer you can just do whatever you want. Like the wild west, you could just go make low offers and sellers have to take your offer, right? Well, I am here to set this notion straight. Currently I have a few listings and I have buyers. It is good to have both buyer and seller because you really get the perspective of what's truly going on in the market, not just from being a listing agent but being an agent representing buyers too.

I have four examples of where a buyer wrote an offer on my listing and thought that the…

147 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

                                                                         

A true Santa Cruz home! This home is in a class by itself. Here you can enjoy the aesthetic of Santa Cruz outside and the artful interior inside. Large picture windows draw the outside in, nature being the ultimate back drop to your home life. Large single level home has four bedrooms, with two large custom baths, all with gorgeous view windows. More about living in Santa Cruz here too 

Pros and Cons of Santa Cruz




New kitchen with creamy blue cabinets and appliance, custom tiles and light fixtures. Large living room, with entertainment nook, dining room in kitchen space for casual and formal dining. Newer roof, gutters, windows, doors, appliances, and hot…

149 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

123 Bursar Ln, Santa Cruz, CA

               
Click Here to Get Directions

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…

201 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

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…

134 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post


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…

136 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

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…

132 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

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.…

134 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post

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…

230 Views, 0 Comments

Read Full Post