They never fail to surface once real estate activity shifts into high gear: the Costa Mesa home loan scam operators. They seem perpetually ready to pounce on unwary would-be home buyers—notably those who are unfamiliar with the standard procedures employed by established mortgage lenders in the normal course of preparing a legitimate Costa Mesa home loan or refinancing package.

Falling prey to an unscrupulous mortgage scam can result in anything from inadvertently divulging personal information all the way to significant monetary losses—including home title fraud that takes expensive and time-consuming legal action to correct.

One simple way to protect yourself from some of the common home loan scams is to acquaint yourself with signs that an…

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For those who have never bought or sold a home during Costa Mesa real estate’s busy season, coming up with metaphors isn’t easy.

  • It’s not like end-of-model-year auto sales because that season draws buyers by offering heavy discounts. Newly manufactured real estate isn’t arriving from the factory, so price reductions aren’t called for.
  • Real estate’s high season isn’t like a nursery’s or hot tub dealer’s peak seasons, either—even though both get busier around the same time of year. The pricetags for Costa Mesa real estate transactions make such comparisons ill-suited—apt metaphors would have to be more momentous.

It might be more fitting to turn to nature or to science for a suitable analogy. If so, you could argue that Costa Mesa’s…

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The-L3-Real-Estate-Spring-Cleaning-Tips

If you are a homeowner who’s planning on selling your Costa Mesa house, this year’s spring cleaning efforts can merit some extra attention. For most of us, the past year meant a lot more time spent indoors. With potential buyers soon to be among the visitors, the regular airing-out and straightening-up procedures might not be sufficient.

It’s useful to examine the difference in the ways that professionals approach spring cleaning— something the American Cleaning Institute makes possible via its industry-sponsored website. In addition to the expected Quick Spring Cleaning Tips and the less seasonal ABC’s of Cleaning, the ACI offers a section that promotes stepping back and organizing an overall operational approach—especially useful for Costa Mesa…

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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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