The passage of the massive American Rescue Plan Act last week gave those who plot the ebb and flow of Costa Mesa housing activity much to ponder. Even without the Act, most observers already expected that by the end of spring, the majority of the U.S. economy would be undergoing a healthy recovery due to the escalating rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines. It was predictable that the Act's injection of trillions of dollars (including $20 billion for increased vaccine production) would add strength to the rebound.

But what would be the impact on real estate in general—and Costa Mesa housing in particular? For Costa Mesa sellers, the outlook couldn't help but be positive. According to website therealdeal.com, in February, U.S. sellers had been chalking…

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Freddie Mac’s slogan is “We make home possible”—a claim that is literally true for more than a few Costa Mesa homeowners. Freddie (the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.) has the stated mission to keep money flowing (that is, supply liquidity) to the nation’s smaller mortgage lenders, while “Fannie Mae” does the same for large retail banks. Both are government-sponsored enterprises.

This past Tuesday, Freddie published its “4 Reasons to Refinance Your Mortgage.” Since the Corporation has north of $2 trillion in assets under management, you could say there were at least two trillion reasons why anyone who ever deals with Costa Mesa home loans might find the ideas worth checking out. Freddie’s reasons for refinancing:

 

  1. Lower your monthly…

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It’s been a worrisome stretch of time, no doubt about it.

One worry that hasn’t troubled Costa Mesa homeowners was what could follow a nationwide surge in foreclosures. This is a once-removed kind of worry—one that would only become truly worrisome if widespread foreclosures took place.

The instigator for either worry is the COVID-19 pandemic’s triggering of U.S. layoffs and business closings. That could cause widespread defaults on government-backed home loans—the first worry. If defaults happened en masse, it might well be followed by the worry we’re talking about—Worry #2: a crash across the wider housing industry.

Needless to say, Costa Mesa homeowners would prefer that not happen.

Preventing a foreclosure surge would do the trick.…

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The rationale behind Costa Mesa’s “peak season” for home sales may be open to question, but the fact of its existence has been firmly established for decades. Across the U.S., come springtime and summer, history confirms that the pace of real estate transactions quicken. Last year provided a rare exception—but no one expects it to be repeated in 2021. All expect more homes will be put up for sale, more buyers will appear on the scene, and more sales will result.

The peak season phenomenon might seem counterintuitive since family fortunes and career ups and downs don’t necessarily correspond to the spring and summer seasons. There does exist the education factor—so timing a move from one school district to another so as to coincide with summer…

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“For Sale by Owner” (FSBO) enthusiasts certainly hoped that the ascendancy of the Internet would be just what the doctor ordered to catapult their endeavors—and why not? Once Costa Mesa buyers were free to do their own searches on the web, the listing information that professional real estate companies had previously controlled would be available to all. But just as Wall Street’s Pet.com sputtered and burnt soon after takeoff, at this juncture, decades of results are in—and FSBO promoters would rather not discuss them.

In 1981, 15% of home sales were made as FSBOs—and by last November, they were circling the drain at 8%. Some of the reasons for the decline are open to argument—but others aren’t. Briefly, here are a few of the less debatable ones:

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Last Thursday, NASA plunked a one-ton, car-sized vehicle down on Mars—complete with a pet drone aboard. On Friday, Costa Mesa screens showed the first high-definition pictures of the Martian neighborhood it will start digging up shortly, while meantime, hi-def videos of the landing were being processed for release this week.

There was a time when everyone could count on the world around them remaining pretty much as it had always been. Back then, it was safe to assume that your children would dwell in a community whose institutions and lifestyles would remain comfortably familiar. Needless to say, today, most Costa Mesa folks will be startled if everyday living doesn’t become markedly (and unpredictably) different.

We’re constantly experiencing…

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As Costa Mesa gears up for the traditional peak selling season, the internet is again teeming with facts and figures about selling your home—when is the best time to list, when to close, etc. Of course, in the real world, any “best time” to sell isn’t calendar-based: it’s individual living situation-based.

Mostly just for fun, here is a quiz about the seasonal factor in selling a home, based on a very reliable source for residential housing facts: the NAR®:

What’s a leading reason given for why late winter/early spring is a good time to sell a home?

  1. In colder climates, spring thaws allow lawns to become visible.
  2. Tax refunds make more funds available for repairs and renovations.
  3. Spring school breaks traditionally free families to…

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If last week’s Realtor® Magazine commentary is accurate, the timing for Costa Mesa’s peak homebuying season looks as if it is apt to return to traditional seasonal patterns—unlike what happened in 2020. If the economists at the National Association of Realtors are reading the tea leaves correctly, last year’s scrambled real estate sales activity should give way to something more closely resembling the regular pattern. That would reflect the current rise in optimism that recovery from the pandemic is on the way—reversing the disruptions that first crippled spring sales, then brought unusually brisk activity in the summer and fall.

If Costa Mesa’s traditional peak homebuying activity does follow the spring-to-summer pattern, Realtor’s advice to real…

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“A home inspection is one of the last hurdles that buyers and sellers have to get through before the sale of the property is complete.”

After that definitive declaration, the moving.com web site goes on to detail the importance of home inspections. It is unarguable—as far as it goes. It does capture the angst that can sometimes accompany Costa Mesa home inspections, particularly when a seller isn’t really certain that all the property’s systems will pass muster.

The thorough going-over by a professional Costa Mesa home inspector can reveal weaknesses that are unknown to the current owner—and that call for immediate attention. If too many individual issues come to light, even though they all may all be corrected without undue expense, the sheer…

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When you’ve been in the same home for quite some time, selling your Costa Mesa house to today’s buyers probably means studying market preferences that differ somewhat from those that were current the last time. If you check up on the Top Ten lists of features buyers value, you find that what people say they will pay a premium for does, indeed, change.

You can trace more specific examples of this phenomenon by downloading Top Ten lists from different eras to see how they differ. Here are two such lists, side-by-side, which make for interesting comparisons.

The first is from a USA Today list of “Features Buyers Will Pay Extra For” produced in 2013…the second (the column on the right) is last year’s Fool.com “Top Features Homebuyers are Looking…

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