The Price is Right.

In todays market if you are selling your home price is the golden ticket.  It is imperative to understand the market in your neighborhood. Your real estate agent will help to show you the current market prices. Pricing in a competitive nature to sell your home gets you noticed in the market and creates activity around your home. This helps to generate and pull buyers in and when buyers are interested the offers soon start to appear.

Overpricing is a true killjoy.  The worst part about over pricing is that you was a buyer continue to chase the market.  In chasing the market you home then looks like a fire sale special.  This will not bring top dollar for you home and you will not feel that your agent has done the best  for you. Usually by the time the close of your homes happens you are tired, worn out and angry.  So remember listen to your agent  that is why you hired them.

A Winter Beach

One of my favorite activities is to go to the beach. Here in Northern California the beaches are quite nice in the winter time! Sunshine and what a view!!! Surfers up for a few waves as well.

Stable to Short Sale… Where does your neighborhood stand?

What is happening in the real estate market where you live? In your neighborhood? If you live in north Sunnyvale/Cupertino there are homes for sale and they are holding their prices rather well. Homes in this specific area maintain their value because of the school district. The average price of homes is this area is in the upper 800’s to the lower 1M price range. In obtaining a loan for those priced homes one must be well qualified and have a sizeable down payment. A buyer with this purchase power usually has been well qualified by the lender and therefore short sale is unlikely.

In saying this there are homes that in north Sunnyvale area that are all in short sale. This is because the buyers were not really qualified to take out the loan on the purchase price of the home. These homes usually sell in the higher 500’s to the higher 600’s. The buyers that get into these homes with no money down and the adjustable rate mortgage really pay the ultimate price. The adjusting of the rate causes the short sale to come into play and wreaks havoc on the their life as well as the real estate market itself.

Another view of this is phenomenon is written by Arn Cenedella of Coldwell Banker in Menlo Park.

Where is the good housing market?

We hear such doom and gloom about how bad the housing market is all the time. Are there any good markets out there and what is determining a good market. Here in the Sunnyvale/Cupertino area there are varied markets as well. There is interesting data that supports a good housing market with having a good school district tied to it.

When an home is in a school district such as Cupertino Union School District (CUSD) it sells well above a home with the same square footage in San Jose Unified School District. This causes the trend that we have seen in the Silicon Valley area for the past few years. As markets slide elsewhere education keeps the home value up and sometimes pushes it beyond the true value of the home. Is it actually worth more to be in the desired school district or to have a lower mortgage, possibly a larger home and send your children to private school. This is where things begin to washout for the buyer and seller the housing market. The seller is wanting to draw on the prestige of the public school district, but if the buyer is looking at private school the value of the school district is mute in the purchase of the home.

Along this same line of thought is Miri Bialik with Intero Real Estate in Cupertino.