As Costa Mesa residents strive to resume life and career in anything like their pre-pandemic forms, one phrase that used to appear a lot less frequently keeps popping up: “the new normal.”

The American Enterprise Institute just invoked that phrase in a report that has implications for area house hunters and home sellers alike. The report from the AEI Housing Center takes a unique look at a home finance statistic they believe is a valid indicator for the direction of residential real estate activity as a whole: rate lock data.

Since mortgage interest rates can rise and fall from day to day, future Costa Mesa home buyers often secure “rate locks” from home loan providers. Locks guarantee that, when a mortgage is issued, its interest rate won’t…

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For those who are on the fence about whether this summer is the right time to sell your Costa Mesa home, last week’s Realtor.com website provided some video guidance. Their video brief noted five signs that it might be time to start looking for your next home:

  1. If the price per square foot for comparable Costa Mesa homes is on the increase, it means “the market is hot”—hospitable to sellers and a good time to sell.
  2. You have tired of barely being able to make ends meet—so cashing out now to facilitate a move to less stress-inducing quarters would make good sense.
  3. Your family has grown, but your Costa Mesa house hasn’t (as when a starter home is no longer adequate).
  4. Maintenance costs are more than you bargained for (in both cash and time…

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Like most of the rest of the news, midsummer real estate reporting usually draws little attention. It’s what journalists call the ‘silly season,’ when unimportant or just plain silly stories fill in for real news. This is the time of year when newsgatherers feel it safe to head off to the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard—especially since their alternative is a steamy July in Manhattan or D.C.

On our local scene, Costa Mesa weather reporting usually gets a larger slice of TV newscasts. Since outdoor family activities depend on coordinating with the weather, it’s the segment more viewers tune in for.

By last Friday, though, Costa Mesa real estate followers who persist in tracking national trends found an unusual number of late-July stories…

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For many Costa Mesa residents, “The American Dream” is often loosely thought of as synonymous with homeownership, even though a number of other attributes probably deserve equal consideration. Another strong contender is the rags-to-riches stories where hard work and creativity (and usually a goodly dose of luck) result in fame and fortune.

That it’s peculiarly an American dream is more than a myth: it’s an observation that’s demonstrated staying power over time. Notions have to be based on more than a grain of truth to last long in the popular mind. Perhaps it’s peculiarly American because of our particular mix of social and economic mobility—not to mention the considerable physical mobility that makes moving from one community or state to…

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The decision to go ahead and list your Costa Mesa house is often governed by personal and professional developments, but when the timing isn’t dictated by individual circumstances, the performance of the real estate market in general can be decisive. When a pronounced downturn is in the headlines, most homeowners will hold off for a while. Likewise, when a healthy market is being widely ballyhooed, more sellers will list their Costa Mesa houses—it’s only natural.

Too, the seasonality factor can also affect the decision. Although July is sometimes thought to be included in the ‘busy season,’ by now, most of the buyers who have planned to be settled into their new homes by the end of summer have finalized their choice (or are in the process of doing…

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With U.S. home prices at record levels, it’s reasonable to speculate about the future of Costa Mesa real estate—particularly whether it’s such a good idea to buy right now. Most everyone recalls the last time real estate prices set records—and the drop-off that followed.

Once the U.S. market hit bottom, even though history teaches that it was an ideal time to buy, most regular consumers didn’t even want to think about anything connected with real estate. That, of course, was when the big corporate players (aka, the ‘smart money’) moved in to buy up distressed residential properties by the thousands. It’s a familiar story.

The future of Costa Mesa real estate prices is always a mystery, but lately there have been more than a few signs that…

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For a lot of families that are well-positioned to start serious house-hunting this summer, one question may give them pause: are Costa Mesa home prices just too high to be reasonable? The answer seems largely speculative, but there are objective benchmarks that point to an answer.

Back in the spring of 2018, author Aaron Terrazas compiled a thoroughgoing analysis of what seemed to be a serious threat to U.S. residential real estate’s immediate future. Impending mortgage rate hikes looked likely to “threaten housing affordability and inventory.”

As Terrazas wrote, then-current mortgage interest rates were “very low by historical standards.” His analysis described this rare circumstance which had kept monthly payments relatively affordable “even…

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It’s a saying that doesn’t make much literal sense, but everyone in Costa Mesa knows what it means:

“The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

Literal or not, the message is dead-on: some truisms are as valid in 2021 as they were in grandma’s day. For Costa Mesa real estate, one of those observations is about the undeniable importance that curb appeal has for selling your Costa Mesa home. Like “first impressions are lasting” and “you only get one chance to make a first impression,” it’s simply true that human beings seem to be hard-wired to tend to stick to initial reactions. Undoing them can require an inordinate degree of persuasive information and experience.

Without challenging the validity of the “the more things change,…

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This spring, Costa Mesa readers have grown accustomed to hyperbolic descriptions of what’s been going on in the nation’s housing market. In parts of the country, words like ‘boom’ and ‘frenzied’ have been appearing regularly in real estate commentaries—and many of them aren’t exaggerations. More often than any time in recent memory, it seems that some buyers are bent on owning a particular home no matter what!

CNN Business published a commentary last week with a headline that read like a not so funny answer to a late-night comic’s setup line:

“Just how hot is the housing market?”

“The housing market is so hot buyers are paying $1 million over the asking price.”

It was a headline that would no longer raise eyebrows in some regions where few…

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Regardless of folks’ wider views on climate change, there is universal agreement when it comes to one change in Costa Mesa’s climate: it’s going to get hotter. It’s one climate change that happens every summer.

For the moment, the experts who monitor patterns of energy usage aren’t making predictions about whether this summer will see local energy prices rising or falling (the Department of Energy will only venture that “prices change rapidly”). But the DoE is more enlightening about the cost of cooling. It’s bound to add significantly to most Costa Mesa homeowners’ utility bills. If prices do, in fact, “change rapidly” in the wrong direction, the DoE’s tips for simple ways to cut energy usage will be timely. Here are their Top Four:

  1. Deal…

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