Real Estate Information

1912-2012 Field House
100 Years Celebration
Saturday, October 6, 2012

10AM to 3PM

4025 Santa Fe Road Brea, CA 

The Olinda Oil Museum and Trail will be opening its door for the hundred year celebration. Free to All! Period music from the 1900s, A celebration cake, 1915 T Ford Tank Truck, tours of the field house museum with a guide. The field office was once the headquarters and operations for all the oil fields in Brea. The Olinda Oil Museum and Trail sets on 12 acres with nature trail, the field office is filled with items from the oil field. In the early 1900s Olinda was a large oil producing area. California State Parks will be giving walking tours of the nature trail. For more information, call 714-671-4447 or visit cityofbrea.net. For more information on Brea, California Real Estate and Community Information.

A jump in home sales this summer indicates that Orange County’s housing slump may finally be coming to an end. According to housing tracker DataQuick Information Systems, sales were up 25.7% in July 2012 compared to July 2011 – that’s the biggest percentage gain the local market has seen in approximately 40 months. And, the boom isn’t isolated to a single area. According to the data, home buying rose in 80% of Orange County zip codes.

Market observers speculate that lower inventory – particularly of distressed properties that have been discounted in price – is driving the jump in purchases. Foreclosures, for example, accounted for only 13.2% of recent Orange County transactions. When compared to a historical average of 26% per month for the past four-and-a-half years, this indicates a significant decrease in supply. And, it’s that lack of supply that’s likely driving up prices.

While demand is highest for homes priced under $300,000, the median price for an Orange County home was $450,000 in July. And, thanks to a stabilizing market, low interest rates, and an increase in “normal” (that is, non-distressed) sales and purchases, most experts expect the upswing in real estate sales and prices to continue.

"Homebuyer confidence has returned ... and low borrowing rates and rents are attracting investment at higher than normal levels," Orange County Association of Realtors President Maria Elena Banks told The Orange County Register. "Buyers are jumping off (the fence) to follow investors, lured by low rates and the sense that prices will rise in the future as the economy improves."

Based on the data, it seems now may be the best time to buy or sell a home in years.

Mortgage fraud reports have increased nationwide from more than 6,900 in 2003 to more than 93,500 in 2011, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). And the nonprofit Homeownership Preservation Foundation reported the number of mortgage foreclosure scams has shot up 60 percent so far in 2012.

In response to the growing fraud, the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® is educating homeowners and warning consumers they are at risk of being scammed by third parties, such as those that promise loan modifications for an up-front fee, which is illegal.

Many so-called foreclosure rescue companies or foreclosure assistance firms review foreclosure notices in newspapers, the Internet, and public files to identify potential victims, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). They then ask for money up-front and claim they can help homeowners save their home. Some are bold enough to offer a money-back guarantee. However, the scammers simply take the homeowners’ money, often leaving them in worse circumstances than before.

Consumers should NEVER pay money up-front for services promised. Instead, get a referral to a free HUD-approved housing counselor to advise on loan modifications, short sales, and other alternatives for avoiding foreclosure by calling (888) 995-HOPE. http://www.995hope.org/.

Homeowners who have a home loan with one of the participating lenders or servicers should visit their home loan assistance site:

• Ally/GMAC: 800-766-4622
• Bank of America: 877-488-7814
• Citi: 866-272-4749
• JPMorgan Chase: 866-372-6901
• Wells Fargo: 800-288-3212

Please take a moment to enjoy the people, friends, and family around you we are on this earth for a short time and in a blink of and eye we are gone. Enjoy the coffee not the cup.

Life is Like Coffee
Author Unknown

 A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old college professor.Conversation soon turned to complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite. He told his guests to help themselves to the coffee. After everyone had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said:  If you noticed all the nice looking expensive cups have been taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves… that is the source of your problems and stress be assured that the cup adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it’s more expensive, and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup.  But you consciously went for the best cups… And then you began eyeing each other’s cup. Now consider this … The jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain LIFE. And the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of life we live. Sometimes…by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee. Savor the coffee not the cup! The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything! Live simply. Speak kindly. Care deeply. Love generously. The richest person is not the one who has the most, but the one who needs the least.  “Life is like Coffee”

Here was a wonderful slide show with music: http://www.flickspire.com/m/SimpleTruths/LifeIsLikeCoffee

1. Accepting the buyer with the highest offer without regard to the other contractual terms.

2. Not properly handling mu1tiple offer situations with multiple buyers.

3. Not properly handling back-up offers.

4. Entering into an agreement with no earnest money deposit from the buyer, or a very small amount.

5. Entering into an agreement before verifying the buyer's financial ability to dose escrow.

6. Not disclosing known material fact affecting the value or desirability of the property.

7. Not providing the buyer with legally required disclosures.

8. Not obtaining the buyer's written acknowledgment of disclosures.

9. Not considering whether to require the buyer to remove contingencies.

10. Not excluding items from the sale that the seller wants to keep.

U.S. housing permits rise for the third month in May 2012. The Commerce Department said builders broke ground on 3.2% more single-family homes and April figures revised up to 744,000 - fastest building pace since October 2008. 780,000 permits were requested by builders the largest number since September 2008.

South Florida has seen an increase in foreign spending on real estate and tourism, Canada, South America, and even Europeans have been actively buying properties in areas of distressed residential real estate.

Austin Texas homes prices rise 6.5%, home prices appreciating at a higher rate than the national average and this includes distressed sales according to a report by CoreLogic.

Las Vegas is beginning to see a glimmer of renewed hope with a 90.4 percent increase in building permits and new-home builders have started increasing their home prices by $1000-$5000.

 Arizona ranked third for construction job growth in May. It’s happening all over the country signs of renewed hope that the housing market is truly on the mend.

California, 44% percent of all properties sold had multiple offers this year. Orange County California, personally are sales are up, multiple offers, homes selling over listing price, and Open Houses with a continues flow of potential buyers. Inventories are at the lowest level in years. Brea California today: 44 active listings, 92 with offers to purchase accepted by sellers (pending sales or taking backup offers), and 141 closed home sales since the first of the year with an average of 26 per month.

Steady builder confidence in June good article atThe Natioanl Association of Home Builders (NAHB) webiste

Opportunities knocking, will you be the one to take advantage of it this time?

If you are thinking about buying or selling a home, give us a call at (714) 726-3166 or send us an email to explore your options and to find out when is the best time for you to make a move. Texting ok

You just found the perfect home on Zillow and pick up the phone to call your real estate agent and boy are you excited you want to go see it now! Your agent says let me look up the property to call the home owner. Sign on to CRMLS to look up the property on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and get the phone number and staring right at the top of the page is "PENDING SALE". Your shoulders visibly sag and you tell your client your dream home is already sold and everyone is disappointed.

I can’t tell you how many times this happens.  Unfortunately this is one problems looking for homes using internet homes for sale websites.  The only properties you can see on these websites are the active listings. What does the word active listing mean? An active listing is any property listed on our MLS that is NOT a closed sale.  Active listings include; Pending Sales, Taking backup offers, hold do not show,  properties do fall out after a contract is signed to purchase that is the reason they stay active. 

When you look at the chart on the right the first section “CRMLS” is the information out of our real estate Multiple Listing Service.  At that date and time these were all the active listings without; pending sales, taking backup offers, and hold do not show. When you look down the graph there are significant differences from the CRMLS making it impossible to really know what is active listing, doesn’t it. Prudentialproperties.com, site works different that the rest. It shows: “ Newly listed within the past 15 days”. So anything active more that 15 days are not shown in the search results, but it still has all the pending sales, taking backups, and hold do not show properties.  So in the end it doesn’t show all the active listings in the MLS. 

Now, you can see why when looking on the internet for homes for sales it can be disappointing.  What it is good for is picking out an area you would like to live in, see how much properties are listed for in specific area, and find out about the city you want to live in. Beyond that there can be a lot of heart ache.  It’s always better to receive your home search information directly from a real estate agent.  It will be up to date and should be accurate.

Reference:  this is my opinion below I’m sure other agents may have somewhat of a different view.

Active Listing:  any property listed for sale on MLS that is NOT a closed sale.

Taking Backups:  A property for sale that has an accepted contract to purchase, but the buyer has not yet removed all the buyers’ contingencies. Home inspections, appraisal, final loan approval, disclosures haven’t been approved, etc.

Pending Sale:  All contingencies have been removed waiting for loan docs to be drawn, signed and then to close.

Closed Sale:  Everything is done and buyer can move in the property they have purchased.

CRMLS: California Regional Multiple Listing Service, Inc. The member service I belong too.

If you are ready to start the process you will find our Home Buyers Guide Helpful

If you are thinking about buying or selling a home, give us a call at (714) 726-3166 or send us an email to explore your options and to find out when is the best time for you to make a move. Texting ok

I stopped by McDonalds today and their doors were locked at lunch time, a sign on the door said "Come back after 2PM" So I drove over to Carl's Jr.  and had lunch there. Afterward I headed to Best Buy and was told that 11-12 was not good time to stop in and it would be better if I came back after 3 pm.  Better yet, why don't you call next week and set up a time to stop in? Pretty absurd, right! Yet, home sellers do this all the time! 

I blame this on the sellers' real estate agent. As an agent we are supposed to council our home sellers on the comparable sales, pricing their home properly, preparing the house for show, and making the home available 9 AM - 7PM every day of the week until they have an accepted offer. Sellers should not negotiate the time that an agent would like to show the home. They are with their clients for a certain amount of time and have a route of showings planned. When a seller makes their home unavailable, they may have lost the one buyer that was willing to make an offer. Put a lock box on the property for easy access! I guarantee you will sell the home faster and for a higher price if you make the home available with a lock box.

A pet peeve, if you haven't guessed it, is sellers wanting the agent to come at a different time than they are requesting. Remember the agent isn't picking the time the "buyers" have available to see your property. I show a lot of property during the week at lunchtime and evenings. Showing during the week, you can sometimes be the first in on a new listing and beat the rush of the weekend.

You can learn a lot from new home builders. Most people enjoy looking at new homes because they are staged. Builders hire decorators and pay them huge amounts of money to make their homes look amazing.  Lights turned on, tables set, furniture is optimized to make rooms look bigger, grass is green, bushes trimmed and flowers planted. Everything is clean and its place.  Times may be tough but you still can scrub, clean, pickup, and remove the extra clutter. This will do a lot to help sell your home faster and for a higher price.

Home sellers, when than phone rings and agent wants to show your house remember that this may be the agent that may write you an offer. It only takes one buyer to buy your home and the one you turn away might have been that one. Make your home available! 

Reward the kids for keeping their rooms clean. We had some sellers that gave gold stars to their kids for picking up their rooms and making their beds. They had a schedule of goodies that were they could exhcange the gold stars for, this included  going to the show, a frozen yogurt, a trip to McDonalds, etc. Make it a game. Plan things to do on the weekend so that you will not be frustrated as the Realtors wander through your home trying to sell it for you. There are a thousand things you can do.  This will lower your stress level over selling.

If you are thinking about buying or selling a home, give us a call at (714) 726-3166 or send us an email to explore your options and to find out when is the best time for you to make a move. Texting ok

Lease agreements may not seem like much of a newsworthy topic, but here in Orange County, the word that Amazon is moving to town is spreading like wildfire!

The location in question is the Spectrum Building at 40 Pacifica in Irvine. This high-end office building, until last year, was the home of an FDIC satellite office. The FDIC, as you may recall, has been in charge of swooping into communities to clean up the messes that the recent financial crisis has left behind. Namely, this “clean up” has been in the form of managing receiverships and liquidating the assets of failed financial institutions.

However, last year the FDIC elected not to renew its lease in the Spectrum Building, freeing up about 110,000 square feet of office space. And according to CoStar Group Inc., a2z Development (a unit of Amazon) is set to move into the building in July of 2012.

So Why is This Such Good News?

The fact that the FDIC no longer feels it is necessary to maintain an office in Orange County is a clear sign of improving health in the financial sector—significantly helping to lift the cloud of economic doubt in Orange County. But even more exciting is how filling up that office space with the likes of a2z Development will positively impact the local economy. For starters, this means a boost in jobs. In fact, the a2z Development website has already listed openings for over a dozen jobs in its new Orange County office. This inlcudes positions for game designers, lead engineers and software developers.

A boost in jobs in Orange County could very well translate into an influx of new homebuyers, which is very good news for the health of Orange County real estate. Moreover, Amazon’s continued presence in Orange County will likely bolster the local economy, as Amazon and Amazon employees bring money into the community—also great news for Orange County real estate!

Written by a Cop for Our Own Safety......Everyone should take 5 minutes to read this. It may save your life or a loved one's life.

This is for you, and for you to share with your wife, your children, & everyone you know. After reading these 9 crucial tips, forward them to someone you care about. It never hurts to be careful in this crazy world we live in.

1. Tip from Tae Kwon Do: The elbow is the strongest point on your body. If you are close enough to use it, do! 

2. Found this in a tourist guide; if a robber asks for your wallet and/or purse, DO NOT HAND IT TO HIM. Toss it away from you....Chances are that he is more interested in your wallet and/or purse than you, and he will go for the wallet/purse. RUN LIKE MAD IN THE OTHER DIRECTION!

3. If you are ever thrown into the trunk of a car, kick out the back tail lights, stick your arm out the hole and start waving like crazy...The driver won't see you, but everybody else will. This has saved lives.

4. Women have a tendency to get into their cars after shopping, eating, working, etc., and just sitting (doing their checkbook, or making a list, etc.) DON'T DO THIS! The predator will be watching you, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to get in on the passenger side, put a gun to your head, and tell you where to go. AS SOON AS YOU GET INTO YOUR CAR, LOCK THE DOORS AND LEAVE.  

If someone is in the car with a gun to your head

DO NOT DRIVE OFF,     Repeat:     DO NOT DRIVE OFF!

Instead gun the engine and speed into anything, wrecking the car...

Your Air Bag will save you. If the person is in the back seat they will get the worst of it. As soon as the car crashes bail out and run. It is better than having them find your body in a remote location.

 5. a few notes about getting into your car in a parking lot, or parking garage:  A.) be aware: look around you; look into your car, at the passenger side floor, and in the back seat.

 B.) If you are parked next to a big van, enter your car from the passenger door. Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars.

C.) Look at the car parked on the driver's side of your vehicle, and the passenger side...   If a male is sitting alone in the seat nearest your car, you may want to walk back into the mall, or work, and get a guard/policeman to walk you back out.

IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY.

(And better paranoid than dead.)

6. ALWAYS take the elevator instead of the stairs. Stairwells are horrible places to be alone and the perfect crime spot. This is especially true at NIGHT!)

 7. if a predator has a gun and you are not under his control, ALWAYS RUN! The predator may hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times; and even then, it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ. RUN, Preferably in a zigzag pattern!

 8. as women, we are always trying to be sympathetic: STOP It! It may get you raped, or killed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was a good-looking, well educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women. He walked with a cane, or a limp, and often asked ’for help' into his vehicle or with his vehicle, which is when he abducted his next victim.

 9. Another Safety Point: Someone just told me that her friend heard a crying baby on her porch the night before last and she called the police because it was late and she thought it was weird.  The police told her 'Whatever you do, DO NOT open the door...'The lady  then said that it sounded like the baby had crawled near a window,  and she was worried that it would crawl  to the street  and get run over. The policeman said, 'we already have a unit on the way, whatever you do, DO NOT open the door.' He told her that they think a serial killer has a baby's cry recorded and uses it to coax women out of their homes thinking that someone dropped off a baby...

He said they have not verified it, but have had several calls by women saying that they hear baby's cries outside their doors when they're home alone at night.

 10. Water scam! If you wake up in the middle of the night to hear all your taps outside running or what you think is a burst pipe, DO NOT GO OUT TO INVESTIGATE! These people turn on all your outside taps full blast so that you will go out to investigate and then attack.  Stay alert, keep safe, and look out for your neighbors!

Please pass this on...

This should be taken seriously because the Crying Baby Theory was mentioned on America's Most Wanted when they profiled the serial killer in Louisiana.      

Send this to any woman you know that may need to be reminded that the world we live in has a lot of crazies in it and it's better to be safe than sorry. I have had this a file on my computer for a long time and just recently a friend sent it to me. I thought it was worthy of publishing to our friends and clients

If you are thinking about buying or selling a home, give us a call at (714) 726-3166 or send us an email to explore your options and to find out when is the best time for you to make a move. We like Texting!