Whenever another celebrity appears on Costa Mesa TV screens to offer their two cents' worth about the value of reverse mortgages, young people can be forgiven if they tune out the message. After all, reverse mortgages are only available to homeowners who are 62 years of age or older.

It's also highly probable that many of the Costa Mesa homeowners who meet the age eligibility requirement tune out, too. Experienced people tend to be suspicious of strangers whose message seems to rely on the "trust me" element. The TV actor-spokesperson may be a beloved personality, but it's important to remember he's reading a script composed by less-beloved advertising writers.

Reverse mortgages can, as promised, provide some valuable "peace of mind" for…

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Usually, paranoia is a mental disorder—a subject more suitable for psychiatrists than for Realtors®. But that depends on its being entirely divorced from reality. When the subject is your offer to buy one of Costa Mesa’s listed properties, it may well be that a slight touch of paranoia can be useful—at least when it comes to defining contingencies.

Back last October, Realtor.com had an excellent commentary about realism and contingencies. It listed five of them “you should never waive.” “Never” is a strong word—especially in a season when competing offers abound. But the reasons for including basic contingencies in your offer are anything but paranoid. These are Realtor’s Big Five:

First is the inspection contingency. Unless you are an…

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Costa Mesa homeowners will not be surprised to hear that the U.S. rate of inflation will impact some of their 2022 income tax calculations—the basic income tax tables among them. The Labor Department charted the rate at an annual 6.8% increase through November, although locally, the actual prices paid for many day-to-day purchases were definitely higher than that. Calculating Costa Mesa inflation as experienced here is inexact for a number of familiar reasons—but nobody who shops for groceries or drives more than a mile or two to work hasn’t noticed it.

On Friday, Laura Saunders, the Wall Street Journal’s tax expert, sounded her take on how inflation will affect 2022 federal income tax bills—and the details touching on Costa Mesa real estate…

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Leave it to the news media to uncover the latest threat to Costa Mesa house-hunters’ peace of mind. Last week, the guilty party was the Associated Press, whose contribution seemed timed to introduce a disquieting competitor into the already-crowded field of prospective home buyers.

Today’s Costa Mesa house-hunters had already been subjected to scare-mongering stories about recent buyers having to dig deeper into their pockets to land houses over the bids of hordes of competitors. Now comes the AP with word of a new sci-fi addition to the reputed multitude of overeager competitors: robots.

Robots who want to buy houses.

It might not have inspired a War of the Worlds panic, but CBS News’ headline was alarming:

Friend or Foe? Home-buying Bots…

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When a website like lexology.com assesses the year in real estate as one “which faced unprecedented challenges,” Costa Mesa readers know what to expect: details that amount to a torrent of excuses justifying a lame showing in the year just ending. But--not so. As Year 2021 goes into the record books, its history is anything but—as any number of Costa Mesa homeowners will attest. They have good reason to be elated by the ballooning value of their primary investments—their Costa Mesa homes.

The buoyant details weren’t limited to Costa Mesa, either. Throughout most of the nation, the story was the same. Home.com “saw home prices skyrocket like never before.” CNBC headlined, “Homeowners are sitting on record equity,” while theclose.com could note, “the…

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As December began, at least one Washington Post report—the one from award-winning real estate reporter Michele Lerner—didn’t spare the superlatives. For Costa Mesa homeowners looking to add their home to the Costa Mesa listings, the details could scarcely have been more auspicious. According to the headline, buyer demand in the month just ended wasn’t just good. It was record-setting.

Lerner relied on two separate reports from Redfin for much of the data that validated the claim. One index which records buyer demand as reflected in requests for house tours and various other home-buying services eclipsed the previous record. By another measure, 45% of U.S. properties were sold within two weeks of being listed—during the four weeks ending November…

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The New York Times recently published an article under a headline that sounded like a do-it-yourselfers’ instruction manual. But instead of a hobbyist’s step-by-step for making macrame wall hangings or scrapbook assemblages, the How-to subject was the largest acquisition most families make in a lifetime: “How to Buy a House.”

The first step in the How-to was to determine “Rent vs. Buy?” That’s a reasonable starting point because if renting makes more sense than buying, time spent learning how the Times would go about buying a house would be better used in learning, say, how to keep your pets from damaging the rental.

There were three “basic questions” for determining whether to buy a house—the first two being:

  1. How long will you be staying…

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Last week, Costa Mesa residents couldn’t escape the new word, “Omicron”—the latest permutation of the COVID-19 virus. The Greek alphabet doesn’t usually work its way into daily conversations, but in Costa Mesa, “Omicron” was one Greek letter that made its way into discussions about everything from holiday parade gatherings to global travel plans. It hadn’t yet been invoked in connection with the gasoline price rises—but that may have been just a matter of time.

The topic of real estate was no exception. In fact, to the extent that it affected local mortgage interest rates, the new variant had indeed touched on Costa Mesa home sales. By midweek, the home loan industry’s Mortgage News Daily was dominated by two Omicron stories:

“Big Swings as…

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It’s a life-altering milestone if ever there was one: the decision to move away from the family home. There have always been a variety of reasons why retirees and near-retirees choose to make the leap—with today’s head-spinning social changes certainly doing nothing to pare down that list. Deciding to change your Costa Mesa housing situation often boils down to an intended (or already proceeding) lifestyle change. Since these are the very definitions of “personal” reasons, you might assume that since everyone’s situation differs, their motivations are all over the map—making them all but unclassifiable.

True enough—but it turns out that some generalizations are possible (and useful, if you are uncertain whether your own upcoming decision is an…

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One puzzle for homeowners deciding whether now is the time to put their Costa Mesa homes up for sale is whether rising mortgage rates will measurably slow the response. It’s far from certain that Costa Mesa home loan rates will continue to rise as we go forward—but it’s likely enough. The picture becomes even less predictable if you add in the notion that it’s far from certain that higher borrowing rates will necessarily dampen buyer activity.

The reason for the hemming and hawing on this point was laid out by realtor.com’s Sharon Lurye earlier this month. She points out that this has already been a “paradigm-breaking” real estate market—one with the promise of more common-sense-busting developments to come.

Granted, it’s a given that today’s…

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