The other day, it was interesting to read a featured commentary on the MoneyCrashers.com website. It promised to pinpoint the “6 Factors” to consider when deciding whether you “should buy a home now— or wait?” No dateline was visible, but you’d have to deduce that it had first been published a while ago. The absence of any mention of today’s changed circumstances and the uncertainties ahead made it pretty clear that it had been written in pre-pandemic days (remember those)? Even so, the “6 Factors” do hold their validity. They may not cover all the key considerations—but they do set the stage for that very weighty decision.

The first factors dealt with financial viability. Realistically, those first three are basic qualifiers for buying any home in…

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About the last thing area homeowners need now is to spend time worrying about the effect the pandemic will have on their Costa Mesa home values. Given that memories of the Great Recession have yet to fade, a replay of that decline in home values might seem logical.

So, it was reassuring to read Claire Trapasso’s calming analysis pointing out the multiple reasons why a housing crash is viewed as highly unlikely in today’s circumstances. Professor Trapasso’s analysis highlighted a number of points, including these five:

  •          Mortgage Stability. Housing market fundamentals “couldn’t be more different” than those that prevailed in the 2007-2009 meltdown when “just about anyone could get a mortgage.” Today, stricter borrower qualification…

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For Costa Mesa mortgage interest rate chroniclers, this month began with the culmination of a trend that’s been playing out for quite some time. It’s “the other shoe” that finally dropped. The headlines confirmed the numbers that government-owned mortgage backer Freddie Mac posted: 

“Mortgage Rates Dip to New Record Low.”

The 3.23% national average on the 30-year fixed-rate hit was, literally, an all-time low. It represented a drop of a tenth of a percent below the previous week’s mark (and nearly a full percentage point below what had been posted a year earlier). 

In other words, the come-hither phrase advertisers have been long spouting—"home loans near historic lows”—was suddenly passé: rates were now surpassing historic lows! There were,…

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The “Real Estate News” tab in Realtor.com is a reliable source for information that real estate followers—especially active Costa Mesa home buyers and sellers—can turn to for the latest takes on real estate market activity. Since it comes from the National Association of Realtors®, it’s not where you’d turn to for a completely impartial view—nonetheless, the underlying information it dispenses is dependably accurate.

Since that’s the case, the leading article from a couple of weeks back had been discomfiting. “Gallup: Only 50% of Americans Believe It’s a Good Time to Buy a Home” isn’t exactly supportive for anyone who’s been weighing the pros and cons of a real estate purchase right now. The basis for the piece was, indeed, slightly unnerving. A…

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