If you have ever tuned into “Today’s Homeowner,” you’ll be familiar with Danny Lipford, the friendly, drawling host of one of TV’s longest-running home improvement shows. Lipford is a contractor who demonstrates practical tips on how Costa Mesa do-it-yourselfers might remodel outdated or rundown areas in their homes with little more than ambition, energy, and a few bucks. He makes it look fun and easy, which is undoubtedly why the program has been syndicated for a quarter of a century.

The show has a website, too, which last week published a valuable safety tip: “20 Ways to Reduce the Effects of Indoor Air Pollution in Your Home.” It covered the topic from top to bottom: everything from what it is and what its health effects can be to what to…

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If there’s one question about Costa Mesa residential real estate that is posed more often than others it’s the one that’s hardest to answer: “What do you think? Are prices heading up or down?” Usually, that question is an easy one to answer without really answering: “Short term, anyone’s guess. Long-term, history says, ‘almost certainly, up’!” It has a lot of history to back it up, so it sounds authoritative.

At this moment in Costa Mesa’s history, the long-term portion of that answer still holds, but increasingly, the ‘anyone’s guess’ part seems unsatisfactory. Despite an abundance of published data on how markets have performed from the West Coast to the East, the trend lines seem more scrambled than usual. Last week, Fortune magazine…

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It’s always a good idea for local homeowners who are in the planning stages for some serious property updating to check into some of the new Costa Mesa home design trends that have recently surfaced. It’s not that they are likely to mindlessly follow the newest and greatest trends—few homeowners actually make expensive decisions based on those. It’s more likely that one of the newer creative ideas could spark a direction that hadn’t been considered before. After all, to qualify as one of the “most popular” trends it must have captured more imaginations than others.

Identifying design trends that are more than just promos for their creators is easier said than done, though—but home improvement site houzz.com came up with what looks like a valid…

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This is one of those years when Costa Mesa’s Fourth of July happens to fall on a day that might best be described as commercially troubled. Tuesday is just not ideal for employees who could use a long weekend—the kind that is easy to arrange when Costa Mesa’s Fourth of July hits on a Friday, or Monday, or over the weekend (when it’s practically a done deal to include Monday in the celebrating).

Although those who make the rules aren’t unanimous, this year’s example is typical: few employers are enthusiastic about a Friday-through-Tuesday 4-day holiday. We can celebrate over the weekend, and generally follow the regular Independence Day custom to make Tuesday a day off—but Monday is a workday for most.

The news was bad enough that over the…

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Among life’s problems most people wish they could have is a challenge faced by sellers of Costa Mesa’s luxury properties: the task of developing an asking price that attracts the sophisticated, value-conscious buyers who qualify as legitimate prospects while still taking advantage of the “favorable market currents” reported in this month’s North American Luxury Review. As described, this is now a U.S. market that has “resulted in a consistent increase in the demand for luxury properties during the first five months of 2023.”

Taking advantage of any market often depends on developing a market-conscious asking price. In that connection, here are three widely agreed-upon pointers:

  • For starters, if the nature of the property includes substantial…

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The good feeling you might have gotten after reading the lead story in last Thursday’s yahoo!finance was a lot like hearing welcome news at the doctor’s. If he tells you you’re in good health at the end of your annual checkup, it feels great—even if you hadn’t suspected anything was wrong. So when the yahoo!finance headline announced that “the housing market recession is over,” it was momentarily uplifting—even if you hadn’t worried about any true Costa Mesa housing “recession.”

The article in question did make a reasonable case that for much of the U.S., a ‘buyer affordability shock’ stemming from ‘spiked mortgage rates’ had sent markets into a housing recession—but one that was pronounced only in some western housing markets “like Reno and…

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It does seem that around this time of year Costa Mesa’s weather gets a proportionately larger share of attention from the news media. This would stand to reason when it breaks records or registers one extreme or another, but it seems as if Costa Mesa’s weather doesn’t even have to misbehave to gain extra attention. Come this time of year (right around graduations, Juneteenth, and Father’s Day), weather always hogs more of the spotlight.

The reasons could be because right now is when heat waves or tornados usually start to break out somewhere, and since that makes for interesting pictures, news providers grab it. Also, this is when media workers start to take vacations, so short-staffed editors can’t depend on being able to fill news columns or…

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If you’ve been checking into the Costa Mesa listings from time to time, you might be puzzled by the number of experts who refer to a ‘housing market downturn’ or ‘real estate recession.’ The Costa Mesa listings regularly show new properties coming onto the market—just as they record those that go under contract and, later, join the ‘SOLD’ group. With asking prices that aren’t exactly in buyers’ market territory, the ‘downturn’ characterization could be confusing.

Last Thursday, when Realtor.com’s chief economist Danielle Hale appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box program to discuss the latest housing market news, the discussion provided some clarity on what today’s ‘downturn’ means for homeowners and prospective buyers. A large part of the ambiguity stems…

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CNN’s Business web pages published an analysis that would interest the Costa Mesa real estate watchers who track the national press’s interpretation of the latest housing activity—it is they, after all, who establish the public perception of “how real estate is doing.” If the emphasis is on falling prices and activity, most would-be homebuyers expect that deals are there to be made. If the press describes a seller’s market atmosphere, emphasizing examples where multiple offers are the rule, homebuyers can often become discouraged before even taking a look at the actual Costa Mesa real estate market returns.

That was why, last Thursday, CNN Business writer Anna Bahney’s article rated a close second look. “Middle-income buyers face the most severe…

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As U.S. middle-income households find it harder to find or afford suitable properties, denizens of the ultra-high-end of the income scale are, as usual, facing different issues. From the West Coast to the East, the top end of the U.S. housing market’s wealthy clientele has had hit-or-miss sales results over the past couple of decades. But as Broadway’s Evita once advised, “Don’t cry for them, Argentina” (or anywhere else on the planet) because the mega-wealthy usually do eventually manage to weather even wild market gyrations.

The Wall Street Journal explored the current situation for the group of Manhattan’s super-tall condominium towers. Known collectively as “Billionaire’s Row,” these Central Park neighborhood structures are often more than…

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