Last week was an authentic record-breaker for the stock market. The Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq all set record highs; the number of new unemployment benefit applicants swooned, and industrial production and retail sales both saw double-digit growth. With achievements booked at record levels and few voices calling for a turnaround any time soon, you’d think that many investors would be thinking ‘Dow Jones’ instead of ‘Costa Mesa real estate’—but that expectation wouldn’t be accurate. The opposite is overwhelmingly true if you ask the average American for their considered opinion.

At least that’s the finding of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York—a group with everything to gain from championing their hometown cottage industry (the Wall Street investment…

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Today's house hunters have at their command a wealth of information by which to compare the homes currently available on the Costa Mesa listings—numbers that enable the kind of apple-to-apple comparisons that bring a smile to the faces of hard-headed realists who value hard data. Right?

Sort of.

If you're one of those realist types who value the precision of hard numbers, last Thursday's Realtor® Magazine provided an article bound to provoke a spate of teeth-grinding. In fact, why don't you just skip reading any further—you'll probably be happier reading the morning's stock market quotes or last night's baseball statistics.

The article in question, "Handle Square Footage Issues," was actually aimed at us real estate professionals. It dealt…

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Last week we learned that U.S. housing price increases continued their uninterrupted climb. But at the same time, accounts also included a few rays of sunshine for financially pressed homebuyers.

The nationwide appreciation in real estate values that's been gladdening Costa Mesa sellers blipped upward again in February. According to Tuesday's CoreLogic press release, the 1.2% rise over January capped off a 12-month increase: an eye-popping 10.4%!

Figures like those may cheer Costa Mesa home sellers—but, as CoreLogic's spokesman put it, it also "is sobering for prospective buyers." The spokesman's advice for ambitious home seekers was scarcely enlightening. Due to the price rises, they should "save more for a down payment, closing costs, and cash…

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Personal matters may be most important in deciding when and whether it’s time to sell your Costa Mesa home, but at least one real estate industry designation may also factor into that all-important decision: the declaration that it’s now a “buyer’s market” or a “seller’s market.”

When buyers read that real estate is in a buyer’s market, expectations rise that sellers will be more prone to accepting offers that shave dollars off of an asking price. The opposite holds when it’s thought to be a seller’s market—few would be astonished if their full-price offer is outbid by another buyer. For buyers, overcoming seller’s market headwinds consists of moving fast when an opportunity arises—and being patient (and persistent) while awaiting the next one to…

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Realtor® Magazine’s editors have frequently described the financial hurdles facing first-time buyers in today’s market. Even so, despite rising home prices and stalled inventories, a third of recent existing home sales have been to the newbies.

A pair of recent RM articles directly (and indirectly) explored several factors that help explain some first-timer successes. The articles dealt with bridge loans and some advantages Costa Mesa first-timers may have over repeat buyers.

  • Last Thursday’s “Bridge Loans May Help with Intense Bidding Wars” describes the solution that temporary loans provide to existing homeowners. Current owners commonly face a situation where offers they make on a new home must necessarily be contingent on the successful…

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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 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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