Southern California Real Estate

I don’t know about you, but when I used to hear the term “affordable housing” I’d think ofvalue-priced Lake Forest condominium listings, some of the nicer area mobile home parks, ormaybe fixer-uppers likely to be snatched up by professional house flippers (ultimately to becomeslightly less afford...

As this season’s controversies swirl through Washington, one of them seems likely to windup being at the top of the heap: federal income taxes. Whether or not they will be simplified(hopefully) or lowered (ummm—probably?) will be sorted out in due time, but one detail is a leadpipe cinch: when th...

Last week, local home loan observers were hardly surprised by the news that the Fed’s keyborrowing rate—the one that’s most important where Tustin home loan interest rates are concerned—was left as-is. At least for the moment.What that indicated to most educated guessers was that the previous thr...

Selling your Lake Forest home takes marketing, of course. Highlighting its features—thespecific details that the Lake Forest MLS lists for every property—is only the beginning. Thenumber of bedrooms, square footage, lot size—even the architectural style—all help buyerseliminate offerings that won...

Has technology made investing in Tustin real estate easier? Entrepreneur Magazine hassupplied an answer to warm the heart of any Tustin REALTOR® (like yours truly). They say investingin real estate isn’t just easier—it’s grown significantly easier. The reason is the medium we’recommunicating thro...

Every now and again Forbes magazine assembles what it calls its “top financial brainpower” to comment on a topic of interest. Late last week, the topic was real estate—morespecifically, the answer to the question, “Is the Real Estate Market Still Healthy?” Speaking forour Mission Viejo real estat...

If you’re a typical Mission Viejo consumer, like most California residents, it wasn’t too longago that you were being constantly bombarded by offers to let you in on a secret: your credit score.The “free credit score” ads got a lot of responses, but lately, they’ve grown scarcer. I think I knowwh...

It’s called SLAM: an abbreviated approach that helps Tustin house hunters to quickly sortthrough listed houses for sale. Tustin homes that compare well using the SLAM categories warrantfurther investigation.The four parts of the SLAM list:Schools. The eventual resale value of a candidate property...

You might have had a science teacher who explained to the class why perpetual motionmachines aren’t possible. He would have had some common sense to back up his point(everybody knows nothing lasts forever). But the actual scientific explanation had to do withphysics and Newton’s Laws: in the end,...

The Rorschach (or inkblot) test is the one where a psychologist shows you a series of picturesthat seem to be random black-and-white splatters. The shrink asks you what you think they looklike. What you “see” in the inkblots tells something about who you are—how you look at things.If someone were...