Real Estate Blog - Matt Kanoudi

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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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Will Last Week’s Event Impact Your Costa Mesa Utility Bill?

Costa Mesa utility bills are headed upward—with nobody expecting them to head in any other direction. Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that their Energy Index increased 32.9% for the year ending last month—and that was the good news, since June’s 12-month increase had been 41.6%! Costa Mesa utility bills didn’t need to match those pain-producing national averages for the writing on the wall to be evident: household utility bills are bound to become big news—with some predictable real estate repercussions.

There are also actions Costa Mesa homeowners can take—most of which are well-publicized (and common sense, anyway). But last Tuesday, an event took place that could rate refiguring the cost-benefit analysis in one…

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Despite Recession Talk, Costa Mesa Home Prices May Advance

As the week ended, anyone who switched on a TV or radio or checked in on one of the financial websites was greeted with a term that hadn’t been seen before: “housing recession.” CNBC.com’s “housing market slides into a recession” was typical, as was MarketWatch’s “America has entered a housing recession, builders and brokers say.” Even Realtor Magazine joined the chorus with “Home Sales Data Points to ‘Housing Recession.’”

For local homeowners whose moods have been greatly buoyed by sizeable gains in Costa Mesa home prices, it was hardly a heartening way to enter the weekend. Even for those who won’t list their own properties anytime soon, the banner advances have made welcome additions to their family net worth calculations. But that “housing…

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