Real Estate Blog - Matt Kanoudi

Costa Mesa Open Houses May Not Face Climate Disruption

It's a stubborn fact that Costa Mesa open houses (and even agent-chaperoned showings) are somewhat at the mercy of the elements. When the weather turns nasty, it's hard for prospective buyers to imagine a property as it sparkles on a balmy spring day. In the gloomiest days of winter, at a minimum, it's a full-out lamps-on/drapes open drill.

For the future sellers who will be hosting this winter's Costa Mesa open houses, largely unnoticed was an August update of the government's climate.gov blog. It held important scientific news about the weather to come—although the non-climatologists among us would have had trouble wading through the details.

August's entry led off with the ominous warning: "La Niña continues! It's likely that the La Niña…

702 Views, 0 Comments

The Costa Mesa Listings Include All the Homes for Sale—Almost

The Costa Mesa real estate listings are updated around the clock, providing everybody entrée into the Costa Mesa properties currently on the market or under contract. That makes the Costa Mesa listings a ‘live’ catalog—one vastly superior to what was available to the public up until the mid-1990s. Those MLS books resembled skinny black-and-white Sears catalogs. They were distributed to real estate offices every couple of weeks or so.

The old method provided the only option available to the public when they wished to assess the properties currently being offered. Now everyone with a smartphone or computer has instant access to a truly timely inventory of Costa Mesa homes now on the market. You don’t need a real estate handbook to know what “on the…

700 Views, 0 Comments

Despite Costa Mesa Equity Dips, it’s Still a Good News Story

Local homeowners who had developed an agreeable habit of checking online for their home’s latest Costa Mesa home equity estimates are doing so less often lately. For years, as Costa Mesa home equity estimates rose steadily, thousands of dollars were (theoretically) being amassed by area residents at a dizzying clip. It may have run contrary to the maxims we’d all been given since childhood (“there’s no such thing as a free lunch;” “you don’t get something for nothing”)—there was evidence right there on the screen that something like that seemed to be happening. And it wasn’t imaginary, either: local comparables supported the mounting gains.

But that was then—‘way back in the spring. Now, checking into those online good news vendors is less pleasing…

488 Views, 0 Comments

Costa Mesa House Hunters Could Face Less Competition

Last month ended with a continuation of the same housing market conditions that had held for most of the summer—adding only a glimmer of optimism for Costa Mesa house hunters. The big picture for the U.S. on Labor Day, 2022, was still a slowing of the volume of pending home sales everywhere except in the West (which notched a minuscule monthly gain). But slowing transaction totals didn’t seem to have created much market turmoil—certainly, sellers weren’t listing en masse.

Although many homeowners had relished checking into websites that showed estimates of their home’s value that leaped by thousands of dollars seemingly every month, many of those estimates were now coming down. Still, there was ample reason to suspect that this was merely a…

693 Views, 0 Comments

Selling Costa Mesa Homes by Adding without Adding

Homeowners who are on the fence about selling their Costa Mesa home in the coming months find little guidance from the national and regional trends. Reports from the U.S. market have highlighted the minority of sellers who are dropping their asking prices—yet even so, closing prices are still significantly higher than those of a year ago. They also report an increase in the national inventory. More homes being listed is a boon for buyers—but also a mixed blessing for sellers who will need to secure their next home.

Regardless of how the national or local markets are performing, one way sellers maximize their bottom line is to boost their Costa Mesa property’s value without squandering an undue amount of time and capital. The first step is to assess…

775 Views, 0 Comments

Costa Mesa Mortgage Interest Rates Make Decisions Harder

What a difference a year makes—at least where Costa Mesa home loans are concerned. For what seems like forever, the recommendations of experts, man-in-the-street consensus, and plain old common sense had all aligned to point to the same advice: take advantage of today’s home loan interest rates while you can!

The unanimity was comforting, especially since the decision to sign on the dotted line for a 30-year mortgage is a commitment that stretches decades into the future. But when everybody can agree that the entire history of homebuying verifies the wisdom of taking advantage of a loan offered at historically low interest rates, the only issue is whether the property being financed is reasonably priced.

But now, at the end of last week, Money…

531 Views, 0 Comments

This Year, Costa Mesa Labor Day Could Signal…Who Knows?

If more Costa Mesa homeowners think of Labor Day as signifying the end of summer than as the beginning of fall, that could be due to the tyranny of school calendars. Even after the last school-age kid has graduated, for many families, the rhythms established during their small frys’ school days can repeat for years out of sheer momentum.

For whatever reason, for Costa Mesa real estate, it’s long been taken for granted that, more years than not, a lull in activity can be expected—even for families with no school-age children.

Throughout the nation, a Labor Day-real estate connection does have a legitimate basis in the vacation home sector. Sellers frequently choose to enjoy their second homes for one last summer before listing them as autumn…

483 Views, 0 Comments

Flippered Intruder Raises Costa Mesa Home Security Issue

Costa Mesa home security issues—and family safety as a whole—are always high priorities named by future homeowners. A recent Mortgage Professionals Association survey found safety and security to be “the most important” factors for homeowners deciding where to move.

That growing concern could be why last week’s dispatch from afar was picked up by many U.S. media outlets. Knowing that today’s homeowners are becoming increasingly edgy about the issue, they brought word from the far side of the globe of a threat that few had previously considered. The Guardian said it all with last week’s dramatic headline:

“Seal breaks into New Zealand home, traumatizes cat and hangs out on couch.”

Seldom has a headline packed so much detailed…

589 Views, 0 Comments

Costa Mesa Home Prices: Expectations, Reality, and Emotion

Although you’d think that when a celebrated Yale economics professor is queried about home prices, he’d trot over to the whiteboard and start scribbling equations. If the prof in question is Robert Shiller—co-creator of the Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index—all the more so. The Index has become the benchmark reference tracking residential real estate prices. When it comes to American home prices, Shiller is The Man.

So when the vaunted economist seeks to examine the factors best explaining the latest dramatic changes in Costa Mesa home prices, you expect to hear a lot about the inflationary effects of trillion-dollar government expenditures, the bond market’s inverse reaction to Fed funds management, etc., etc. You expect formulas with…

1060 Views, 0 Comments

Costa Mesa Listing Prices in a Post-Bidding War Environment

Traditionally, the asking prices that headed Costa Mesa listings represented the seller’s idea of their property’s reasonable value—an acceptable amount that a buyer would (hopefully) consider to be fair. However, during much of the recent seller’s market conditions that prevailed across most of the U.S., it was not unusual to read eye-opening tales of bidding battles that resulted in closing prices that were significantly higher than the original asking price.

Costa Mesa listings may not always closely follow what’s going on throughout the rest of the nation, but they do tend to be influenced by major tidal shifts in the nation’s economic fortunes (as well as the public’s perceptions of them).

Lately, as reports of bidding battles have faded…

711 Views, 0 Comments