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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If last week’s Realtor® Magazine commentary is accurate, the timing for Costa Mesa’s peak homebuying season looks as if it is apt to return to traditional seasonal patterns—unlike what happened in 2020. If the economists at the National Association of Realtors are reading the tea leaves correctly, last year’s scrambled real estate sales activity should give way to something more closely resembling the regular pattern. That would reflect the current rise in optimism that recovery from the pandemic is on the way—reversing the disruptions that first crippled spring sales, then brought unusually brisk activity in the summer and fall.

If Costa Mesa’s traditional peak homebuying activity does follow the spring-to-summer pattern, Realtor’s advice to real…

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“A home inspection is one of the last hurdles that buyers and sellers have to get through before the sale of the property is complete.”

After that definitive declaration, the moving.com web site goes on to detail the importance of home inspections. It is unarguable—as far as it goes. It does capture the angst that can sometimes accompany Costa Mesa home inspections, particularly when a seller isn’t really certain that all the property’s systems will pass muster.

The thorough going-over by a professional Costa Mesa home inspector can reveal weaknesses that are unknown to the current owner—and that call for immediate attention. If too many individual issues come to light, even though they all may all be corrected without undue expense, the sheer…

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When you’ve been in the same home for quite some time, selling your Costa Mesa house to today’s buyers probably means studying market preferences that differ somewhat from those that were current the last time. If you check up on the Top Ten lists of features buyers value, you find that what people say they will pay a premium for does, indeed, change.

You can trace more specific examples of this phenomenon by downloading Top Ten lists from different eras to see how they differ. Here are two such lists, side-by-side, which make for interesting comparisons.

The first is from a USA Today list of “Features Buyers Will Pay Extra For” produced in 2013…the second (the column on the right) is last year’s Fool.com “Top Features Homebuyers are Looking…

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You can bet that just about every one of the Costa Mesa homes currently for sale is owned by someone whose wish is for a rapid sale to a buyer who will be delighted that their offer was accepted. For this happy tableau to play out in reality, it’s only necessary that the Costa Mesa home for sale has been described fully and accurately, that the prospective buyer has thoughtfully assessed that information, and that the sale price is satisfactory to both parties.

In reality, instantaneous success is rarely expected by sophisticated buyers or sellers. Most successful closings are usually the product of a certain amount of give-and-take—something knowledgeable adults naturally expect for a transaction with such momentous consequences in so many areas…

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We keep reading about the widespread shortfall in U.S. home listings—usually credited for the steady rise in prices. For the typical Costa Mesa homeowner inclined to sell anyway, you’d think those conditions are reason enough to add their property to the Costa Mesa listings.

It seems unlikely. Evidently, there is a shortage of sellers willing to put their homes on the market, yet the latest U.S. data indicates strong sales activity. For the year just ended, existing-home sales reached 5,640,000. According to the Trading Economics website, that volume constitutes the highest level since 2006. Despite the shortage of inventory, the market is moving briskly.

There are reasons why that might make sense. The allure of being able to sell quickly and…

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There’s no shortage of research and insights into how men and women differ when it comes to consumer attitudes—but scarcely any that deals specifically with the most important purchase either sex makes: buying a home. A while back (2013), Realtor® Magazine did tackle the topic in a piece based on a 50,000-consumer survey of active house-hunters.

In general, the house-hunting process itself was slightly more enjoyable for women, with 87% saying they liked looking at homes—10% more than for the men. Their views of homeownership differed as well. Men tended to associate it with “control over living space” and “more space for my family,” while women linked homeownership to words like “pride,” “accomplishment,” or “independence.” Those answers…

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