Real Estate Blog - Real Estate Market

What Group Has the Costa Mesa Homebuying Advantage?

Passenger's 'Let Her Go" is a song that only caught on years after it was first recorded— ultimately becoming a #1 hit in 22 nations. Costa Mesa FM and satellite stations are still playing it::

But you only need the light when it's burning low
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow

It's hard to argue with the way we humans validate those lines. It could easily apply to area homeowners who didn't take advantage of Costa Mesa homebuying and refinancing deals when borrowing rates were at sub-basement levels. Past generations often had only dim memories of distant decades' missed "wish I'd taken advantage back then" opportunities—but this turnaround has been so swift that it's much easier to appreciate what was available so recently.

With last…

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The Costa Mesa Listings Include All the Homes for Sale—Almost

The Costa Mesa real estate listings are updated around the clock, providing everybody entrée into the Costa Mesa properties currently on the market or under contract. That makes the Costa Mesa listings a ‘live’ catalog—one vastly superior to what was available to the public up until the mid-1990s. Those MLS books resembled skinny black-and-white Sears catalogs. They were distributed to real estate offices every couple of weeks or so.

The old method provided the only option available to the public when they wished to assess the properties currently being offered. Now everyone with a smartphone or computer has instant access to a truly timely inventory of Costa Mesa homes now on the market. You don’t need a real estate handbook to know what “on the…

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Despite Costa Mesa Equity Dips, it’s Still a Good News Story

Local homeowners who had developed an agreeable habit of checking online for their home’s latest Costa Mesa home equity estimates are doing so less often lately. For years, as Costa Mesa home equity estimates rose steadily, thousands of dollars were (theoretically) being amassed by area residents at a dizzying clip. It may have run contrary to the maxims we’d all been given since childhood (“there’s no such thing as a free lunch;” “you don’t get something for nothing”)—there was evidence right there on the screen that something like that seemed to be happening. And it wasn’t imaginary, either: local comparables supported the mounting gains.

But that was then—‘way back in the spring. Now, checking into those online good news vendors is less pleasing…

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Costa Mesa House Hunters Could Face Less Competition

Last month ended with a continuation of the same housing market conditions that had held for most of the summer—adding only a glimmer of optimism for Costa Mesa house hunters. The big picture for the U.S. on Labor Day, 2022, was still a slowing of the volume of pending home sales everywhere except in the West (which notched a minuscule monthly gain). But slowing transaction totals didn’t seem to have created much market turmoil—certainly, sellers weren’t listing en masse.

Although many homeowners had relished checking into websites that showed estimates of their home’s value that leaped by thousands of dollars seemingly every month, many of those estimates were now coming down. Still, there was ample reason to suspect that this was merely a…

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Selling Costa Mesa Homes by Adding without Adding

Homeowners who are on the fence about selling their Costa Mesa home in the coming months find little guidance from the national and regional trends. Reports from the U.S. market have highlighted the minority of sellers who are dropping their asking prices—yet even so, closing prices are still significantly higher than those of a year ago. They also report an increase in the national inventory. More homes being listed is a boon for buyers—but also a mixed blessing for sellers who will need to secure their next home.

Regardless of how the national or local markets are performing, one way sellers maximize their bottom line is to boost their Costa Mesa property’s value without squandering an undue amount of time and capital. The first step is to assess…

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Costa Mesa Mortgage Interest Rates Make Decisions Harder

What a difference a year makes—at least where Costa Mesa home loans are concerned. For what seems like forever, the recommendations of experts, man-in-the-street consensus, and plain old common sense had all aligned to point to the same advice: take advantage of today’s home loan interest rates while you can!

The unanimity was comforting, especially since the decision to sign on the dotted line for a 30-year mortgage is a commitment that stretches decades into the future. But when everybody can agree that the entire history of homebuying verifies the wisdom of taking advantage of a loan offered at historically low interest rates, the only issue is whether the property being financed is reasonably priced.

But now, at the end of last week, Money…

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Costa Mesa Home Prices: Expectations, Reality, and Emotion

Although you’d think that when a celebrated Yale economics professor is queried about home prices, he’d trot over to the whiteboard and start scribbling equations. If the prof in question is Robert Shiller—co-creator of the Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index—all the more so. The Index has become the benchmark reference tracking residential real estate prices. When it comes to American home prices, Shiller is The Man.

So when the vaunted economist seeks to examine the factors best explaining the latest dramatic changes in Costa Mesa home prices, you expect to hear a lot about the inflationary effects of trillion-dollar government expenditures, the bond market’s inverse reaction to Fed funds management, etc., etc. You expect formulas with…

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Will Last Week’s Event Impact Your Costa Mesa Utility Bill?

Costa Mesa utility bills are headed upward—with nobody expecting them to head in any other direction. Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that their Energy Index increased 32.9% for the year ending last month—and that was the good news, since June’s 12-month increase had been 41.6%! Costa Mesa utility bills didn’t need to match those pain-producing national averages for the writing on the wall to be evident: household utility bills are bound to become big news—with some predictable real estate repercussions.

There are also actions Costa Mesa homeowners can take—most of which are well-publicized (and common sense, anyway). But last Tuesday, an event took place that could rate refiguring the cost-benefit analysis in one…

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Selling Homeowners Unfazed by Adjectives

As a rule, those who have Costa Mesa homes for sale generally welcome real estate headlines that include words like “soars” and “surge.” On the other hand, words like “slowdown” are less likely to be well received. Last week’s residential real estate dispatches featured all of the above—although not always in the most welcome contexts.

The ‘soars’ came into play in Bloomberg.com’s review of U.S. home inventory levels. These were said to have expanded at a record rate in July. The authors cited realtor.com®’s tally of active listings nationwide, which jumped 31% from a year earlier. Even more notable was that this marked the third straight month of record increases. Such soaring inventory levels were clearly “good news for shoppers still in the…

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Costa Mesa Real Estate Guidance: Best Avoid Market Timing

By the end of last week, Costa Mesa real estate observers were finding confirmation from across the nation of what the NAR’s chief economist had just told Forbes. July data reflected buyers who were “tightening their budgets” and sellers “responding with price reductions.” The seller’s market conditions that had been ruling the market might have largely vanished, but buyers who “expected to find a bargain” were likely to be disappointed. Nonetheless, “home shoppers who kept searching saw more available options.”

All in all, local Costa Mesa real estate watchers were left without a clear way to characterize the late-summer market. Nor were the experts particularly helpful—nowhere were the words ‘buyer’s market’ to be found. One 38-year real estate…

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