“For Sale by Owner” (FSBO) enthusiasts certainly hoped that the ascendancy of the Internet would be just what the doctor ordered to catapult their endeavors—and why not? Once Costa Mesa buyers were free to do their own searches on the web, the listing information that professional real estate companies had previously controlled would be available to all. But just as Wall Street’s Pet.com sputtered and burnt soon after takeoff, at this juncture, decades of results are in—and FSBO promoters would rather not discuss them.

In 1981, 15% of home sales were made as FSBOs—and by last November, they were circling the drain at 8%. Some of the reasons for the decline are open to argument—but others aren’t. Briefly, here are a few of the less debatable ones:

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Last Thursday, NASA plunked a one-ton, car-sized vehicle down on Mars—complete with a pet drone aboard. On Friday, Costa Mesa screens showed the first high-definition pictures of the Martian neighborhood it will start digging up shortly, while meantime, hi-def videos of the landing were being processed for release this week.

There was a time when everyone could count on the world around them remaining pretty much as it had always been. Back then, it was safe to assume that your children would dwell in a community whose institutions and lifestyles would remain comfortably familiar. Needless to say, today, most Costa Mesa folks will be startled if everyday living doesn’t become markedly (and unpredictably) different.

We’re constantly experiencing…

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As Costa Mesa gears up for the traditional peak selling season, the internet is again teeming with facts and figures about selling your home—when is the best time to list, when to close, etc. Of course, in the real world, any “best time” to sell isn’t calendar-based: it’s individual living situation-based.

Mostly just for fun, here is a quiz about the seasonal factor in selling a home, based on a very reliable source for residential housing facts: the NAR®:

What’s a leading reason given for why late winter/early spring is a good time to sell a home?

  1. In colder climates, spring thaws allow lawns to become visible.
  2. Tax refunds make more funds available for repairs and renovations.
  3. Spring school breaks traditionally free families to…

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If last week’s Realtor® Magazine commentary is accurate, the timing for Costa Mesa’s peak homebuying season looks as if it is apt to return to traditional seasonal patterns—unlike what happened in 2020. If the economists at the National Association of Realtors are reading the tea leaves correctly, last year’s scrambled real estate sales activity should give way to something more closely resembling the regular pattern. That would reflect the current rise in optimism that recovery from the pandemic is on the way—reversing the disruptions that first crippled spring sales, then brought unusually brisk activity in the summer and fall.

If Costa Mesa’s traditional peak homebuying activity does follow the spring-to-summer pattern, Realtor’s advice to real…

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“A home inspection is one of the last hurdles that buyers and sellers have to get through before the sale of the property is complete.”

After that definitive declaration, the moving.com web site goes on to detail the importance of home inspections. It is unarguable—as far as it goes. It does capture the angst that can sometimes accompany Costa Mesa home inspections, particularly when a seller isn’t really certain that all the property’s systems will pass muster.

The thorough going-over by a professional Costa Mesa home inspector can reveal weaknesses that are unknown to the current owner—and that call for immediate attention. If too many individual issues come to light, even though they all may all be corrected without undue expense, the sheer…

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When you’ve been in the same home for quite some time, selling your Costa Mesa house to today’s buyers probably means studying market preferences that differ somewhat from those that were current the last time. If you check up on the Top Ten lists of features buyers value, you find that what people say they will pay a premium for does, indeed, change.

You can trace more specific examples of this phenomenon by downloading Top Ten lists from different eras to see how they differ. Here are two such lists, side-by-side, which make for interesting comparisons.

The first is from a USA Today list of “Features Buyers Will Pay Extra For” produced in 2013…the second (the column on the right) is last year’s Fool.com “Top Features Homebuyers are Looking…

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