For a lot of families that are well-positioned to start serious house-hunting this summer, one question may give them pause: are Costa Mesa home prices just too high to be reasonable? The answer seems largely speculative, but there are objective benchmarks that point to an answer.

Back in the spring of 2018, author Aaron Terrazas compiled a thoroughgoing analysis of what seemed to be a serious threat to U.S. residential real estate’s immediate future. Impending mortgage rate hikes looked likely to “threaten housing affordability and inventory.”

As Terrazas wrote, then-current mortgage interest rates were “very low by historical standards.” His analysis described this rare circumstance which had kept monthly payments relatively affordable “even…

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It’s a saying that doesn’t make much literal sense, but everyone in Costa Mesa knows what it means:

“The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

Literal or not, the message is dead-on: some truisms are as valid in 2021 as they were in grandma’s day. For Costa Mesa real estate, one of those observations is about the undeniable importance that curb appeal has for selling your Costa Mesa home. Like “first impressions are lasting” and “you only get one chance to make a first impression,” it’s simply true that human beings seem to be hard-wired to tend to stick to initial reactions. Undoing them can require an inordinate degree of persuasive information and experience.

Without challenging the validity of the “the more things change,…

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This spring, Costa Mesa readers have grown accustomed to hyperbolic descriptions of what’s been going on in the nation’s housing market. In parts of the country, words like ‘boom’ and ‘frenzied’ have been appearing regularly in real estate commentaries—and many of them aren’t exaggerations. More often than any time in recent memory, it seems that some buyers are bent on owning a particular home no matter what!

CNN Business published a commentary last week with a headline that read like a not so funny answer to a late-night comic’s setup line:

“Just how hot is the housing market?”

“The housing market is so hot buyers are paying $1 million over the asking price.”

It was a headline that would no longer raise eyebrows in some regions where few…

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Regardless of folks’ wider views on climate change, there is universal agreement when it comes to one change in Costa Mesa’s climate: it’s going to get hotter. It’s one climate change that happens every summer.

For the moment, the experts who monitor patterns of energy usage aren’t making predictions about whether this summer will see local energy prices rising or falling (the Department of Energy will only venture that “prices change rapidly”). But the DoE is more enlightening about the cost of cooling. It’s bound to add significantly to most Costa Mesa homeowners’ utility bills. If prices do, in fact, “change rapidly” in the wrong direction, the DoE’s tips for simple ways to cut energy usage will be timely. Here are their Top Four:

  1. Deal…

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Last week, if you were among the Costa Mesa readers who happened across Mortgage News Daily’s banner headline, you could almost hear the writer’s yawn as he penned, “April’s Home Prices Grew by 13% and Broke More Records.” The implied ‘ho hum’ behind the words is understandable, but if it might lead Costa Mesa homeowners to accept such record-breaking as a new status quo, it could be misleading.

A close reading of the latest Gallup poll on how Americans expect residential prices to perform in the coming year leaves a more nuanced takeaway. “Americans Expect Home Prices to Rise…” was Gallup’s top line—but it added, “…Divided on Buying Now.” The poll confirmed that 71% of American adults predict that prices in their own neighborhoods will increase…

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