Green Real Estate Appraiser

Calm, colorful, clean kids’ room

Posted on March 27, 2019 | Leave a comment

kids room

In many households, no room is a bigger magnet for clutter than a child’s bedroom. Designers say parents are increasingly interested in managing that clutter effectively — and attractively.

“Everybody wants their house to look like a magazine, and that includes the kids’ rooms,” Los Angeles designer Betsy Burnham says.

But her advice to parents: Be realistic about how you and your kids actually live. Be honest and really ask, “‘Are we a tidy family? Are we too busy? Do we have too much stuff?’ It’s OK if you’re not a tidy household.

Choose a neutral color palette for the major design elements in the room, like furniture and wall color, she says.

Then you can add pops of color through rugs, bedding and pillows.

Burnham also likes the neutral palette for kids’ rooms, where, she says, it’s easy “to overdo it, and think that just because they’re kids they get a brighter palette.”

Another way to create a relaxing feel for kids: Leave open play space — “to maximize their creativity and their imaginative play,” Martin says.

“It’s important to have an area where they can actually play in the center of the room,” she adds.

disclaimer: for information and entertainment purposes only

San Diego home prices gains slowest in nation for 2nd month

Posted on March 27, 2019 | Leave a comment

Home prices in the San Diego metropolitan area are going up, but slower than everywhere else in the United States.

San Diego metro’s home prices increased 1.3 percent in a year as of January, said the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices released Tuesday. It was the smallest increase of the 20 cities covered in the index for the second month in a row.

Home price increases are slowing across the nation, with many experts citing increasing mortgage rates. The most expensive markets are seeing the biggest slowdown.

Before last month, San Diego had not been in the bottom of the index since October 1996 (when the index was 19 cities). The last time San Diego’s annual increases were so slow was July 2012.

Former top metros in the index were among the bottom. Los Angeles was up 2.9 percent in a year and San Francisco up 1.8 percent in a year.

Low-cost markets posted the biggest gains: Las Vegas was up 10.5 percent in a year, Phoenix up 7.5 percent and Minneapolis up 5.1 percent.

“In 16 of the 20 cities tracked, price gains were smaller in January 2019 than in January 2018,” wrote David Blitzer, managing director of the index. “Some cities were prices surged in 2017 to 2018 now face much smaller increases.”

Last year at this time, San Diego home prices were up 7.4 percent.

The indices evaluate home prices by more than just price, tracking repeat sales of identical single-family houses as they turn over through the years. Prices are adjusted for seasonal swings. The median home price for a resale home in January was $588,000, said CoreLogic.

West Coast markets were hit especially hard by rising mortgage rates because already high prices meant small interest rate changes were devastating for some potential buyers, said Steven Thomas, founder of Orange County-based Reports on Housing.

Disclaimer: for information and entertainment purposes only

Class action lawsuit could change real-estate commissions

Posted on March 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

In what could be the most far-reaching antitrust lawsuit for the real estate market in decades, the National Association of Realtors and four of the largest realty companies have been accused of a conspiracy to systematically overcharge home sellers by forcing them to pay commissions to the agents who represent the buyers of their homes.

The class-action suit, filed in federal district court in Chicago, focuses on a rule it says has been imposed by the NAR. The rule requires brokers who list sellers’ properties on local multiple listing services (MLSs) to include a “non-negotiable offer” of compensation to buyer agents. That is, once a home seller agrees in a listing to a specific split of the commission, buyers cannot later negotiate their agents’ split to a lower rate. That requirement, the suit alleges, “saddle(s) home sellers with a cost that would be borne by the buyer in a competitive market,” where buyers pay directly for the services rendered by their agents.

In overseas markets where there is no such mandatory compensation rule for buyer agents, total commission costs tend to be lower — averaging 1 percent to 3 percent in the United Kingdom, for example — versus the 5 percent to 6 percent commonplace here. The suit alleges that if buyers in the U.S. could negotiate fees directly with the agents they choose to represent them, fees would be more competitive and lower. Today many American buyers are unaware of their agent’s commission split.

disclaimer: for information and entertainment purposes only

Calm, colorful, clean kids’ room

San Diego home prices gains slowest in nation for 2nd month

Class action lawsuit could change real-estate commissions

Follow Blog