For past generations, the magic summoned up by the phrase “Million-Dollar!” would be hard to exaggerate—so the idea of Costa Mesa million-dollar homes would have represented gawk-worthy artifacts of success. Even though today, “million-dollar” this and that are attached to everyday news items, last week’s announcement from Redfin’s Economic Research unit may have come as something of a surprise. The news was short and sweet:

“Nearly one in 10 U.S. homes are worth $1,000,000 or more.”

The rising proportion of million-dollar properties may be due in part to a weakening U.S. dollar, but by no means is that the whole (or most interesting) story. Some details:

  • 55 of the 99 most populous metros have seen a rise in million-dollar and…

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Last Thursday, under the headline “The Housing Recession is Over…,” Costa Mesa real estate observers found a MarketWatch report laden with positive indicators. All of them were, however, less than earth-shaking in scale. The optimism-tinged phrases like ‘ticked up,’ ‘inched up,’ and ‘small positive increase’ were balanced by negative results that were equally minuscule—‘falling only slightly,’ was one of those.

Even so, it was hard not to applaud the overall message—a fairly convincing gathering of June month-end numbers that look as if real estate industry momentum is stirring. The springtime doldrums seem to be over—but only ‘just.'

Here are MW’s particulars:

  • Pending home sales advanced a bit on a month-to-month basis—the first…

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Costa Mesa homeowners have ample reason to expect to attract bids that reflect the recent run-up in U.S. real estate prices, but that alone shouldn’t lull them into complacency as they prepare their property for entry into the Costa Mesa listings. That’s a real estate truism—even in a well-defined seller’s market. For area homeowners who see tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands!) of dollars more in market value indicated by recent comparable sales, it’s tempting to then assume that little preparation will be needed to achieve similar results. Not true.

The value of thorough preparation to show off any property continues to make a substantial difference at the signing table. Since the word “thorough” may be too vague to be of much value, here…

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For Costa Mesa parents who have yet to experience the wonders of Disneyland or Disney World, despite the expense and the line waits, there’s a good chance you will come to agree with the majority takeaway: the memories are worth it. Even so, the corporate powers-that-be at the Walt Disney Co. have never relied on word of mouth to keep the crowds coming—and now they have come up with an amusing promotion that includes a real estate twist.

As World Real Estate News wrote last week, this attention-getting gambit sounds like it came “from the leave-no-stone-unturned school of marketing.” Disney decided the moment had arrived to add their landmark Haunted Mansion to real estate site Zillow’s national listings. For veterans of the eternally popular ride,…

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If you have ever tuned into “Today’s Homeowner,” you’ll be familiar with Danny Lipford, the friendly, drawling host of one of TV’s longest-running home improvement shows. Lipford is a contractor who demonstrates practical tips on how Costa Mesa do-it-yourselfers might remodel outdated or rundown areas in their homes with little more than ambition, energy, and a few bucks. He makes it look fun and easy, which is undoubtedly why the program has been syndicated for a quarter of a century.

The show has a website, too, which last week published a valuable safety tip: “20 Ways to Reduce the Effects of Indoor Air Pollution in Your Home.” It covered the topic from top to bottom: everything from what it is and what its health effects can be to what to…

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If there’s one question about Costa Mesa residential real estate that is posed more often than others it’s the one that’s hardest to answer: “What do you think? Are prices heading up or down?” Usually, that question is an easy one to answer without really answering: “Short term, anyone’s guess. Long-term, history says, ‘almost certainly, up’!” It has a lot of history to back it up, so it sounds authoritative.

At this moment in Costa Mesa’s history, the long-term portion of that answer still holds, but increasingly, the ‘anyone’s guess’ part seems unsatisfactory. Despite an abundance of published data on how markets have performed from the West Coast to the East, the trend lines seem more scrambled than usual. Last week, Fortune magazine…

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It’s always a good idea for local homeowners who are in the planning stages for some serious property updating to check into some of the new Costa Mesa home design trends that have recently surfaced. It’s not that they are likely to mindlessly follow the newest and greatest trends—few homeowners actually make expensive decisions based on those. It’s more likely that one of the newer creative ideas could spark a direction that hadn’t been considered before. After all, to qualify as one of the “most popular” trends it must have captured more imaginations than others.

Identifying design trends that are more than just promos for their creators is easier said than done, though—but home improvement site houzz.com came up with what looks like a valid…

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Among life’s problems most people wish they could have is a challenge faced by sellers of Costa Mesa’s luxury properties: the task of developing an asking price that attracts the sophisticated, value-conscious buyers who qualify as legitimate prospects while still taking advantage of the “favorable market currents” reported in this month’s North American Luxury Review. As described, this is now a U.S. market that has “resulted in a consistent increase in the demand for luxury properties during the first five months of 2023.”

Taking advantage of any market often depends on developing a market-conscious asking price. In that connection, here are three widely agreed-upon pointers:

  • For starters, if the nature of the property includes substantial…

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The good feeling you might have gotten after reading the lead story in last Thursday’s yahoo!finance was a lot like hearing welcome news at the doctor’s. If he tells you you’re in good health at the end of your annual checkup, it feels great—even if you hadn’t suspected anything was wrong. So when the yahoo!finance headline announced that “the housing market recession is over,” it was momentarily uplifting—even if you hadn’t worried about any true Costa Mesa housing “recession.”

The article in question did make a reasonable case that for much of the U.S., a ‘buyer affordability shock’ stemming from ‘spiked mortgage rates’ had sent markets into a housing recession—but one that was pronounced only in some western housing markets “like Reno and…

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It does seem that around this time of year Costa Mesa’s weather gets a proportionately larger share of attention from the news media. This would stand to reason when it breaks records or registers one extreme or another, but it seems as if Costa Mesa’s weather doesn’t even have to misbehave to gain extra attention. Come this time of year (right around graduations, Juneteenth, and Father’s Day), weather always hogs more of the spotlight.

The reasons could be because right now is when heat waves or tornados usually start to break out somewhere, and since that makes for interesting pictures, news providers grab it. Also, this is when media workers start to take vacations, so short-staffed editors can’t depend on being able to fill news columns or…

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