San Diego Real Estate Information Archive

Great bungalow home in North Park with an oversized backyard. Swimming pool on the far left corner, lush trees, vegetable garden.  Come take a look. We will be Open to the public on Sunday July 11th from 1-3pm

Everyone has their own opinion on whether they should stage a home before selling it. In my experience in selling homes in the North Park and in the South Park neighborhood of San Diego, the  seller will always get a higher dollar amount if they are willing to stage their home.  The way one lives in their home is always different then the way a home should look when put on the open market for sale.  You must create an illusion.  Your home must look much nicer than any other home on the market in that market price.

Here is an example of one of the homes that we sold.  There are befores and after staging.  Let me know which one you would buy.

Today was a good day.. The Real Estate Market is doing well in North Park and South Park despite a little negative media.  Three of our listings went into pending and we just took on 3 more listings which will go on the market pretty soon. We are getting them ready for showtime. It seems that this is the place where people want to live.  We pretty much have it all here with-in walking distance.  Theater, restaurants, wine bars, great coffee shops, shopping, parks and much more.

This is such a sweet Craftsman with lots of charm. The backyard is an entertainers delight. Come and take a look at this darling home.

Come take a look at the fabulous Contemporary Craftsman Home that has been remodeled with mostly everything new yet still has old charm.

A wild and amazing turn of events happened last week that had to do with the boaters that were lost out in the sea in Jacksonville Florida for 3 days.  Two of them were my nephews and one was their friend.  It was as though I was having a bad dream and I could not wake up out of it.  How could this happen?

The boat had capsized and they had been treading water and using a coleman cooler that was on their boat as a floatation device. Besides the coleman cooler, all they had was the will to live and each other. Besides being stung by jelly fish and nibbled on by baby sharks the 3 of them were badly burned by the sun and started hallucinating by the third day. Coast guards all over the east coast were looking for them in planes, boats and helicopters. It turns out that someone who didn't even know they were missing found and rescued them.

These last 2 weeks have taught me to appreciate the things and people that we have around us and in our lives and not worry about what we don't have. Don't take things or people for granted because you may never see them again. Enjoy every minute if you can and if things are not going your way at the moment, take a moment and figure it out before getting bent out of shape. Life is very short. 

Wow..Beware of angry phone calls  early in the morning….I received an angry call from an angry person this Sunday morning. Bummer…Our real estate group has been hired to market and sell a wonderful home in South Park ( a fabulous little community of San Diego) this week. We usually work with our clients in preparing the home for show which includes bringing in our stager and making some suggestions on what to do to prepare the home before opening the doors to potential buyers. Well, we did that.  Then we sent out a marketing piece inviting all the neighbors to a pre-open house party from 6:30 -8:00PM  where we had wine and horderves (it was a hit). Besides sending the marketing piece I had one of our associates place open house signs through out the beautiful neighborhood just so neighbors would remember. After the open house party the signs were removed  (Well I guess they forgot 1 sign). It was about 9:30pm, dark out and I forgot where each and everyone of them was placed.

Three days later, it is now Sunday and our associate was putting out signs very early in the morning. Our open house was going to be from 1-3pm.  Low and behold, I guess the angry neighbor saw our signs out in the morning and I don't know what got into him. Maybe pink is just not his color.  He dialed my phone and left me a very angry message with no return phone number to call him back and maybe have a chat with him and maybe apologize for having missed the previous sign that we had forgotten the other night. You know, the one that I didn't know about until he told me about it. You think he would have just called me the morning that he saw the sign that was left out.

Well his number did show up on my cell phone and yes, I did call him and boy was he mad….Turns out that he hung up on me…How sad.. My intentions were not to upset him or anyone in the neighborhood for that matter. My intentions were solely to sell our clients home for as much money as possible and to keep our prices in our neighborhood steady and rising. Our signs bring in many people that come looking to live here and don't know how to get around yet. They just follow our pink signs and Voila, they find the home!

A funny thing. I did a reverse phone search and found out who this angry person is. Seems like he is supposed to be an environmentalist with a little experience in remodeling a historic home and oh yes a little experience in being a financial advisor. Well, I will make sure to never put a sign in front of his home again, never ask for remodeling tips and oh BTW, never ever ask for financial advise. He might fly off the deep end..

When hiring a contractor to do work on your home, please do some initial homework so as to avoid some challenges in the long run.This can be tricky but think of it as if you were going to put your home on the market.  In this current housing market buyers are very picky and needless to say so are lenders.  Home buyers are asking for receipts of remodeling work that was done. They want to know that a licensed professional did the work and that it meets the current code requirements. Whether it is a general contractor that does the work or your favorite handy man, make sure that you do your homework first by getting a few referrals. Go out and look at their previous jobs. Also, go out and look at current one's as well.  See if they are tidy and their clients are happy so far. 

Let's applaud  Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for extending the successful homebuyer tax credit. There will be a $10,000 tax credit to homebuyers in California who are buying their first home. Read more on this here

A local San Diego shuttle service for uptown neighborhoods such as North Park, South Park, University Heights and Normal Heights. Enjoy the restaurants and bars, art and music venues and lots more with out having to worry about driving.  Eat, drink and be merry..Find out more information on www.sdpark2park.com . What a great service for our community!