Testimonials for Blog

A polished home exterior creates an inviting experience for visitors or passersby, which is especially important if your home is on the market. Check out our tips to get the most curb appeal for the lowest cost — while turning your neighbors’ heads and getting prospective buyers to your door. 1. Clean Up The easiest way to enhance curb appeal is dedicating a weekend to deep cleaning your home’s exterior. Sure, you’ll want to trim bushes, sweep and mow your lawn, but there’s more to curb appeal than keeping a tidy front yard. Turn the nozzle on your garden hose

As the year begins, the U.S. housing market doesn’t look very bright. Demand will likely stay depressed through 2019: Supply shortages are keeping prices high, especially in gateway cities where much of the job growth is occurring. Add to that higher interest rates, which are keeping existing homeowners from moving up the property ladder. However, demand could get a bump from millennials looking to move from renting to owning their homes, and in markets like Atlanta where the number of new homes is rising. “It’s not going to be a great year for the housing market — prices are way

California has come a long way since the housing market hit bottom in 2008. By February 2009, REO sales comprised 60 percent of all home sales, equity sales 30 percent and short sales 10 percent, according to California Association of Realtors senior vice president and chief economist Leslie Appleton-Young. The keynote speaker at the annual Silicon Valley Association of Realtors Economic Seminar & General Membership Meeting held this month, Appleton-Young said today’s market is the reverse — equity sales comprise 98 percent and REOs just 1 percent. The economy looks good. Unemployment is the lowest in 40 years. Consumer confidence

Higher home prices. Weaker demand. Fewer sales. More traffic. Economists for the California Association of Realtors on Thursday offered a somber forecast for the state housing market in 2019, expecting rising interest rates and a lack of affordable housing to push more prospective buyers out of the market. “Home ownership is becoming a luxury good in California,” said CAR chief economist Leslie Appleton-Young. Across the Bay Area, the strong economy coupled with a lack of new housing has led to record prices. “There is no quick fix.” California continues to be among the least affordable states in the nation for housing. Nationally,

California voters on Tuesday rejected a controversial ballot measure known as Proposition 10 that would have expanded local government authority to enact rent-control laws on residential property, according to an NBC News projection. Opponents of Proposition 10 claimed that the measure would worsen the state’s chronic housing crisis and lead to more than 500 local rental boards setting just how much homeowners could charge to rent out their home. More than $100 million was spent on the fight over Proposition 10, with opponents spending more than $76 million and backers shelling out about $26.2 million, according to state campaign finance

Last month, California housing statistics varied depending on which city you are in. While sales in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose and Orange County grew, prices were on the decline in many districts. California is still a shining star in US housing markets, and some cities such as San Bernardino were heating up in August/September. Predictions about California’s housing markets by CAR Realtors sees a slower market with homeowners hanging onto their homes. Without good locations to move to, and high prices for what’s available means everyone is staying put. CAR believes that will subdue sales throughout 2019. China Tarrifs and Growth in

Home prices in the United States have never been higher. In January, housing values eclipsed their 2006 pre-crisis peak and since then have only pushed higher, according to the Case-Shiller home price index.  The culprits are a crazy tight job market, rising wages and the fact that the homeownership rate is rising again after bottoming in 2016.  But storm clouds are gathering as the Federal Reserve pushes interest rates higher, part of its ongoing fight to keep a lid on inflation. Higher rates weigh on home affordability — and thus depress demand. Here are three growing headwinds the housing market faces:

After several years of rich home price gains, the market appears to have found a limit to what people can afford. Sellers are finally responding by lowering prices more often. Approximately 14 percent of all listings in June saw a price cut, that’s up from a recent low of 11.7 percent at the end of 2016, according to a new report from Zillow. In addition, home price growth is slowing in nearly half of the 35 largest U.S. metropolitan markets. Rising mortgage rates and affordability are behind the change. As the housing market recovered from its epic crash in the

In the California real estate market the “b” word is on the minds of many: bubble. With reports of sharp declines in home sales, shrinking inventory and rising home prices, it might be an understatement to call California’s situation a puzzle, and one that may have implications for the entire country. June marked the slowest home sales month for California in four years. The state saw an almost 10 percent year-over-year drop in transactions, according to a report by CoreLogic. This number stood in sharp contrast to the record-breaking cost of new and existing houses. The median price, across the

In the last few weeks, we’ve seen a lot of news stories about home prices losing their upward momentum in some U.S. cities. The word  “momentum” is in many of these articles because prices aren’t falling in most of those cities, they just aren’t increasing as fast anymore. People are wondering if these home price changes are random noise or the beginning of fundamental changes in home prices in those cities. Let’s review what people are saying about home price trends in the United States. Internationally, home prices are actually falling in Toronto, Vancouver, Sydney, and Melbourne. None of those four cities