Summer finally becomes a reality on Tuesday—as opposed to Memorial Day weekend, which eager beavers in the media like to pretend was the kickoff to summer. Realists don’t agree—they believe that falling for the "unofficial start of summer" line means giving in to one of those unsavory impulses Mother warned us about (like shaking hidden birthday presents to guess what we're going to get, or eating cookie dough raw). Grownups learn to be patient, to wait our turn, take a number at the deli line, etc.

But Tuesday's arrival of true summer does raise the philosophical question, "What really makes summer summer?" This isn't some abstract mystical speculation now that research has clarified what really makes summer summer. Science has been at work,…

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For those who keep a close watch on the outlook for Costa Mesa real estate, finding the upside amidst last week’s raft of less-than-cheery economic news was a tall order. Let’s face it: after years of buoyant tidings and record-setting Costa Mesa real estate advances, few had doubted the certainty that some retrenching was certain to come about at some point—the storm warnings had been there.
Even so, nestled among the worrisome economic dispatches, there actually were some bright spots:

  • Finally: the long-constricted supply of homes for sale began to stage a turnaround. The record inventory shortfall had been frequently cited for sluggish U.S. home sales volumes—but a turnaround was in progress. For the week ended June 4, the number of active…

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Earlier this month, Utah’s Deseret News did a stellar job of capturing the seemingly contradictory jumble of signals emanating from the nation’s housing market. At first, K. McKellar’s commentary seemed to be about a 9% drop in Zillow’s stock price. Costa Mesa housing market observers might have leaped to a conclusion that such a falloff might have clear local implications—but that wasn’t the case. Rather than being due to any steep dive in activity, it was chalked up to “uncertainty” in the company forecast.

Like all investors, housing market investors don’t like uncertainty. Sometimes it reflects internal management strife—although that wasn’t the case in this instance. It was the contradictory signals from the market that made any forecast…

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“You May Want to Invest in Real Estate While You Still Can” was Yahoo!finance’s doubletake-inducing lead article last Friday—although would-be Costa Mesa real estate investors weren’t immediately seen scrambling to closings in response. Local investors are a sophisticated bunch who tend to take high-pressure warnings with a grain of salt, anyway—and given the recent glut of dire prognostications on many fronts, Yahoo’s hint of an impending end for area real estate investment opportunities wasn’t likely to be taken very seriously.

Still…they did have a point.

There is renewed evidence that the incursion of large institutional players into the single-family and small multifamily realms is gaining steam. Their buying activity so far this year…

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CNBC.com’s producers know how to get your attention—it’s ‘what they do.’ Last week, they found an angle certain to snag readers for an otherwise ho-hum technical article about preparations for buying Costa Mesa homes—promising one move that “can end up saving you hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Most soon-to-be Costa Mesa homebuyers were probably skeptical that such a six-figure bonanza exists (it doesn’t). Even so, they’d probably have read on to be reminded of something they already knew: the identity of the potential savings bonanza. Individuals may be powerless to influence the forces that shape today’s marketplace, but one aspect remains “in their control”: their own credit score.

According to the article, the promised windfalls can be…

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Realtor® Magazine says that history shows that this is the week when “Homeowners looking for the greatest price premiums may find the best opportunities.” That would certainly be edifying for area homeowners who have already listed their Costa Mesa properties. And for those who’ve been on the fence, the just-released report by the ATTOM analysts might well serve as a reason to join them sooner rather than later.

ATTOM is the self-described “leading curator of real estate data” from throughout the U.S. Their multi-sourced records cover 99% of the nation’s population. For readers who are familiar with spreadsheets, the scope is impressive—their 20 terabytes of data fill nearly 30 billion rows of transaction-level data, further broken out into 9,000…

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The direction of Costa Mesa home loan interest rates has been spurring concern among this spring’s house hunters. Last week the trend continued as U.S. rates spawned headlines dotted with phrases like “highest in 13 years” and “Fed hits housing market.” Even for industry reporters at The Mortgage Reports—scribes who tend to emphasize the bright side—the best anyone could come up with on Thursday was, “Rates steady-ish today.” Fox Business struggled to find some positive spin, but settled for “Refinance Rates Plunge to 3-Week Low” (refi rates “plunged” from 5.37% to 5.125%).

Still, for those of us who choose to follow Louis Armstrong’s advice to “just direct your feet/to the sunny side of the street,” there were some optimism-tinged media reports:

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For homeowners preparing to add their own properties to the Costa Mesa listings, data from the most recent U.S. activity was heartening—although it might not have seemed so given the way it was presented in some news outlets. Examples:

  • From foxbusiness.com: “Housing industry getting hit by ‘perfect storm,’ billionaire real estate developer warns” (but the ‘perfect storm’ turns out to be “a real estate boom like we haven’t seen in the past.”)
  • From thehill.com: “Is the U.S. housing market headed for a price correction?” (the pace of sales eased somewhat, but only because of the shortage of listings—while the latest analysis “suggested that around 54% of homes still sold above their list price.”)
  • From fortune.com: “The odds of a home price…

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Second only to Forbes.com, MarketWatch is the most often-visited financial and business news site—pulling in more than 38 million unique readers a year. That beats out more prominent names like the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Reuters. Such popularity can be interpreted as “highly trusted”—but given today’s heightened level of free-floating skepticism, that remains to be seen.

Last week MarketWatch’s “Picks” page presented four predictions for the housing market that might interest Costa Mesa readers—including owners of Costa Mesa luxury homes and those interested in acquiring Costa Mesa high-end properties. It dealt with residential real estate as a whole, but the writers—economists and real estate pros—placed a luxury market prediction…

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It’s a tempting scenario: having accumulated a considerable amount of cash, you find your Costa Mesa dream house, agree that the asking price is within reason—and prepare to sit down to make an all-cash offer. By buying it outright with cash, the future looks like ultra-smooth sailing, financially speaking. No mortgage payment. No interest. No monthly insurance set-aside or property tax pre-payment impounded into some escrow account the mortgage company insists upon. And you really own the place yourself—with no strings attached!

Although there are undeniable plusses to buying your Costa Mesa dream house with cash, there are at least three opposing reasons why it would be prudent to at least think twice before writing that all-cash offer:

  1. …

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