Real Estate Blog - Matt Kanoudi

Selling Your Costa Mesa House as a First-Time Homeowner

The reasons commentators dispense so much advice to first-time homebuyers are clear: the process of finding and buying a house means making a huge financial commitment in an industry rife with customs and terms that are alien to most consumers. Once you have navigated the process, it’s all less intimidating—but you really have to do it once to feel at ease.

But what about selling your Costa Mesa house if you’ve never done that before? Since you’ve been through a successful sale from the buyer’s side, it may feel a good deal less daunting, but the considerations and choices do look different from the opposite side of the table. Again, selling your Costa Mesa house is a huge financial venture—and your lack of prior experience can make some…

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Why Some Say Now’s the Time to Sell Your Costa Mesa House

Given all the publicity given to supply chain disruptions, energy prices going bonkers, interest rates heading either slightly or not-so-slightly uphill, etc.—with all this going on—why are we also hearing that now is such a good time to sell? Especially if there is no pressing reason to compel a move, why would you choose now as a prime time to sell your Costa Mesa house? Wouldn’t it be more logical to hold off until things settle down?

The answer is based on one of the most rational of economic truisms—namely, that when there are more buyers than sellers, you’d rather be a seller. Assuming that waves of supply and demand inevitably ebb and flow, the next change would be a market with more sellers than buyers. In a buyer’s market, sellers compete…

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Sunday’s Costa Mesa Daylight Savings Onset: Is This Theft?

By bedtime on Saturday night, everyone in Costa Mesa will have been amply warned to set their clocks ahead an hour. That’s a good idea because, if we don’t get ahead of the game, when we open one eye on Sunday to see if it’s time to get up, we’ll either suddenly remember that the clock is lying to us, or else believe what it tells us—setting the stage for varying degrees of timekeeping disarray for the rest of the day. Either way, it will be less dismaying to take your medicine on Saturday. Just give up and surrender the hour ahead of time (literally).

There are those who feel that at 2 AM on Sunday, all Costa Mesa will actually be falling victim to what amounts to petty theft. It may be sanctioned, but once Daylight Saving Time is officially…

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Costa Mesa Mortgage Interest Rates Reflect European Conflict

For both sellers and the house-hunters they wish to attract, Costa Mesa mortgage interest rates have played a key role in enabling attractive real estate propositions. It is, however, an element that has been expected to weaken in the coming year as anticipation of rate hikes grows. With every notch up in Costa Mesa home loan rates, buyers will have to pencil in higher monthly payments. That would gradually remove one of the key elements that has energized the market.

But the story last week did not follow that script. By last Thursday, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was quoting U.S. average 30-year fixed loan rates at “3.76%. That not only remains in historically low territory—it’s even a drop from the previous week’s 3.89%.

Just ‘why’ was cause…

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Why the Supply of Homes for Sale Didn’t Really Explode

The rationale behind U.S. housing’s rising prices has been nothing if not consistent. The tale has been all about the supply/demand imbalance—a textbook example that makes perfect sense for everyone with a smattering of free-market economics. For those who have been tracking the number of Costa Mesa listings, that’s why last Thursday’s release from the Census Bureau seemed to make no sense at all.

In housing markets from coast to coast, house hunters have consistently grumbled about the meager number of homes for sale. ‘Inventory shortage’ was the term that kept appearing, often preceded by modifiers like ‘growing’ and ‘acute.’ ‘Housing shortfall’ was another. Typical was the National Association of Realtors®’ January press conference, which…

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Preparing to Scout Costa Mesa Houses for Sale: 4 First Steps

How to find and buy your first home is one subject that high schools decline to teach. An online canvass of theories why this is so yields two main lines of thought.

The first is that it is one result of a conspiracy to keep young people from making smart financial decisions. Not clear is who the masterminds behind this might be, nor how they would stand to benefit.

The second theory is more commonly cited by high school teachers. They say that instruction on the ins and outs of buying a house is ineffective “due to age-appropriate interests.” Buying a house is “too far off” to engage high schoolers. One teacher’s dismissal is typical: “Not useful for my students as teens”—an argument that’s hard to dispute.

A few weeks ago, the…

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Costa Mesa Real Estate Investors: Ahead of Wall Street

It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue: this new real estate “first” reported on by the Wall Street Journal last Tuesday. It was the kind of ‘break-through’ that sounded like it belonged in a footnote to an investment banker’s annual report. Nonetheless, for one segment of Journal readers who also happen to be Costa Mesa real estate investors, the topic and the phenomenon it described confirmed the wisdom of their investment.

The “first-ever” topic was “the first vacation-rental mortgage securitization.” This is a debt-raising innovation just launched by a short-term rental operator (AvantStay Inc.). What could be of interest to Costa Mesa investors is that it serves as convincing proof that the short-term rental industry is becoming “a thing”—at…

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News Yields Sparse Guidance for Costa Mesa Buyers or Sellers

Last week, the national real estate news was not likely to provide much guidance for local buyers or sellers. The “story” was simply too convoluted. On Friday, the “LATEST NEWS” from the National Association of Realtors® looked like this:

• Median existing home sales prices were up 15.4% over the previous January’s.
• The sales volume in the same year-over-year comparison dropped 2.3%.
• Yet the same volume of sales total was up a substantial 6.7% from December’s.
• Inventories, which had already been notably low, fell even more, to 1.6 months from 1.9 months a year earlier.
• Even so, for the second month in a row, December’s pending home sales fell 3.8% from November.

Those pending home sales are usually indicators of activity “a month…

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Hard-to-Follow Advice for Costa Mesa House-Hunters

"Budget better, shop smarter!" might be unassailable advice for shoppers of all stripes, but at the outset of 2022, Costa Mesa house-hunting readers of USA Today's Real Estate pages could have used a few more precise tips on how to follow the exhortation. "After a year of bidding wars and record-high prices, here's what's changing for homebuyers…" was a promising headline—but what followed consisted mainly of reasons why intelligent shopping is a good idea.

The reasons included cautions about rising home loan interest rates, which would make better budgeting important, and the continuing national "supply-demand imbalance," which would make more nimble (if not specifically "smarter") shopping advisable.

Experts added reasons why this year's…

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Latest House Sales Reveal Ultra-Cozy Design Trends

It didn’t take long for home decor industry pundits to sift through recent house sales data to announce evidence of the latest trend shifts. Relying on the insights from a nationwide cross-section of real estate agents, technology company Homelight supplied the NAR® with “7 Hot Trends” said to have resonated with recent buyers. In addition to the trends, a one-word style summary was also advanced.

For those planning on selling their own Costa Mesa house in today’s market, a neutral observer might point out that seizing on the latest trend is largely unnecessary. If the Costa Mesa home you plan to put on sale is in presentable condition, does not have a leaky roof or crumbling foundation, and whose ownership is not being claimed by title bandits,…

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