Silicon Valley Real Estate Blog - 1SiliconValley.com

Whether you’re preparing to sell a home or are in contract to purchase a home in Silicon Valley, you likely will be faced with the prospect of hiring professionals to inspect your home. This can run hundreds of dollars, a thousand dollars or more. The potential liability, though, could be much higher than the cost of paying the professionals to inspect your home, so you’ll want to hire very carefully.

What do you need to know when hiring inspectors in Silicon Valley?

There are specialized inspectors for particular elements of residential real estate, such as termite or pest inspectors, chimney inspectors, and others. Most of these are licensed by the state of California, and they are allowed to do repairs on the work they find needing.

But not home (or property) inspectors. There’s no license for doing home inspections in California. Is that good or bad? Part of that package is that they cannot do any repairs on defects they may detect. You can see why it’s good to separate finding problems from being paid to fix them. That’s the plus.  There is another side, though.

Continue Reading »

April 22, 2008 | Filed under: Silicon Valley News

From our Geography lessons and possibly from our travels, we know that Bordeaux is a very well toured port city in the southwest of France with over 1 Million Bordelais inhabitants and is proud to be known as the world’s wine industry capital. 

It is a diverse city with makeup of all different races and cultures of people and over the last decade has become an urban metropolis.  If you live here in the Bay Area you don’t have to travel to France to visit the newest community named Bordeaux; it is located in the heart of Santa Clara County , in the urban setting of Sunnyvale.  Like Bordeaux France, Sunnyvale is known to be a diverse and culturally varied city with neighboring industry and a rich past of agricultural history.  Perhaps this is how the name of the newest KB Homes community was formed, because of this vague likeness shared with the city of the same name.

Continue Reading »

April 14, 2008 | Filed under: Sunnyvale

Don’t be fooled!  Homes in Silicon Valley come on the market in a variety of conditions from horrible to breathtaking.  Some are dirty, cluttered, and perhaps even run down. I saw one this week that desperately needed exterior paint, landscaping to be tamed, and the removal of large quantities of faded plastic flowers that droop down over the living room window (all this in Los Gatos, with a million dollar price tag). 

Most homes, though, are better prepared for sale, as they should be. Savvy homeowners and agents know that the old adage is true: "you only get one chance to make a first impression". The home needs to be clean, uncrowded, and appealing from the day it goes on the market to maximize the seller’s return.  You want to make the right changes to improve the bottom line when selling, without over-improving such that the return begins to diminish.

In addition to that range of conditions in which homes are sold by their long term owners, we have to consider the "flipped house". A flipped house is one in which an investor has recently purchased a home, often from an original or long-time owner, usually in solid condition but with a dated, tired appearance.  What should buyers be on the lookout for?

Continue Reading »

April 13, 2008 | Filed under: Home Buyers

In most of California, the purchase agreement form used when writing an offer to buy residential real estate is the California Association of Realtors form, the Residential Purchase Agreement.  Along the San Francisco Peninsula and in Silicon Valley, though, often we use another form, the Peninsula Regional Data Service purchase agreement (PRDS contract).

Does it matter which one you use?  It certainly does!

While anything in the boilerplate can be modified (deleted or added to), the basic text is not identical from one to the next, and neither are the ramifications to buyer and seller. Here are a few examples:

- Property condition: one is an “as is” contract and the other requires that the property be delivered with a warrantee of condition (no leaks, no cracked glass, no structural defects in chimneys, all systems operational, etc.)

- Repairs in escrow: one says that repairs must be by a licensed contractor, the other that repairs must be done in workmanlike manner (can be done by anyone)

- Defaulting: one contract has more “teeth” with buyer or seller defaults than the other

There are pros and cons to each of these two forms. A skilled agent is “bilingual” in both, understands the strengths and weaknesses of each one, and can modify as needed the form to benefit the client.  Let’s look at some examples of why it matters.

Continue Reading »

April 02, 2008 | Filed under: Home Buyers, Home Owners

Lane Woods, by builder Summerhill Homes, is opening a new community of 32 residences in Menlo Park targeting the active, outdoorsy family of four. 

The model homes will be opening for tours in mid-April and move in will be mid-to-late summer.  There have already been many inquiries into this community, with the majority of the curious home-buyers being families with small children and babies. 

The Lane Woods development takes its name from the Lane Family, a family of publishers dating back to the 1920s; The Lane Family put their heritage on the map with the popular Sunset Magazine, ‘the’ Western Lifestyle periodical of the time.  Within this beautiful community will be the 2008 Sunset Magazine ‘Idea House’, where the concept is to build a home with exciting new ideas and smart products in mind.  The very first idea house was built in Menlo Park in 1998, and for the 10 year anniversary of this project they are returning to the roots where the idea emerged.

Continue Reading »

April 02, 2008 | Filed under: Menlo Park

I’m proud and honored to announce that several bloggers are joining the Silicon Valley Real Estate Blog here at 1SiliconValley.com.  You might have noticed that my friend Alex Wang, broker and owner of Rainmaker Properties has been contributing over the past several weeks.  His on-the-ground experience, integrity and dedication to his craft have led him through a successful Silicon Valley real estate career which started in 1999.  His clients speak highly of his service and knowledge.

Sara Greenwood, who works with Alex at Rainmaker Properties, is our new homes specialist.  As a lifelong resident of the Bay Area, she brings perspective to how our beloved area has evolved over the years.  Her intelligence, charm and capability are obvious to anyone who’s had the distinct pleasure of getting to know her.  

Finally, I’d like to welcome my friend Mary Pope-Handy, winner of the prestigious Project Blogger contest, veteran real estate agent (since 1993 — second generation, no less) for Keller Williams, and the co-author of the book "Get the Best Deal When Selling Your Home in Silicon Valley".  She’s not only lifelong resident and an oracle of real estate knowledge, she’s also a fervent and passionate consumer advocate.

Please join me in welcoming this family of real estate experts to my blog.  We welcome your participation, news (non-spam, non-commercial), and inquiries into how we can help you achieve your goals and hope that you will strongly refer and continue to link to this blog as we continue to provide consumer-focused real estate expertise.  Thank you much, and welcome again!

April 02, 2008 | Filed under: Silicon Valley News

"The kids miss you."  Those weren’t the words he expected to hear that night but it didn’t come as a complete shock.  After all, he was gearing up for his commute tomorrow and it was going to be the same as it always was on Monday mornings.

"Besides, what if there’s an emergency?" she said.  He passed the commute time listening talk radio and audio books, and he’d learned enough French to get him through his last business trip without accidentally ordering snails at local restaurants.  (See the article How Long Will My Silicon Valley Commute Take?)  But he knew that when the tide flowed anytime after 3pm, there was no such thing as a person in a hurry: there were just kindred spirits parked on the highway.

They could afford it now and the extra time would help better their standard of living.  She knew he had work-a-holic tendencies and had a freelance job herself.  So it just made sense to move — but not only because of the extra time.  While this part of Silicon Valley was closer to other opportunities for both of them, she also said off-hand that she liked that it was a more prestigious neighborhood with stronger schools and less cars parked along the street.

We talked earlier about the logistics of moving up to another home.  (See the article Keeping Your Sanity While Moving Up to a Larger Home.)  Because it’s such an important decision both financially and emotionally, it’s important to understand what you’re getting when you upgrade.  (Also see the article Emotions in Real Estate: From Fear to Elation.)  Here are some of the factors to look for.

Continue Reading »

March 23, 2008 | Filed under: Home Buyers, Home Owners

It wasn’t so much about the squirrels.  This Silicon Valley development was advertised as brand new — which is technically true because no one had lived in these homes for sale.  But the first proverbial "for sale" sign had been put up almost two years ago and the developer still had leftover inventory.

The first to move in, though, weren’t the people who had signed their contracts.  The first occupants were actually a set of long-tailed friends using the attic as a roost. 

Indeed, uninvited guests in the attic are annoying, but there was a good chance they wouldn’t have been more than an irritating nuisance to be taken care of "soon".  Except they brought their own uninvited passengers, which were so great in number that they fell from the ceiling. 

The owners were obviously unhappy with an indoor rain made up of mites landing on the bed, couch and kitchen table — especially in their new home.  And you can bet that the threat of a lawsuit was broached more than once. 

Prevention is the best cure and knowing your rights when buying a new home will help you sidestep major headaches down the road.

Continue Reading »

February 28, 2008 | Filed under: Home Buyers

To everyone who attended or organized the event, it was an honor and a pleasure to be a part of the panel speaking in Los Gatos on real estate blogging today.  I sincerely hope you took away tips that will help with your success and I’m happy to follow-up with you. 

Many expressed interest in the e-book.  If you are a real estate agent or attended the event, please email me directly instead of using the email form for sign-up.  And thank you again for being such great hosts.

January 16, 2008 | Filed under: Silicon Valley News

I hope you all had a great holiday season and New Years!  Looking back, it seems that 2007 was the year of the mortgage for real estate here in Northern California.  A screenshot from the New York Times mortgage rate chart illustrates how buyers (and sellers) were impacted by the dynamics of the mortgage industry this year.

This chart shows the change in jumbo mortgage interest rates during 2007.  Put in historical context, the jumbo interest rates over the summer didn’t approach the level of rates in, say, 1981, but since 2002, the housing market has benefited from mortgage rates that are historically low.

It wasn’t 2005 or 2006, though.  In May and July, some buyers discovered the home they were interested in just became about 5% more expensive at the same price because of another interest rate bump.  (A $1,000,000 P&I mortgage costs $5,996 per month at 6% and $6,321 at 6.5%.)  All the more reason to better understand how rate locks work.

Some homeowners with adjustable rates found themselves in a similar situation and ended up attempting a short sale.  Many neighborhoods were unaffected, others were peppered with short sales — where the available homes may or may not have real estate signs indicating a sale.

But many of the markets around Silicon Valley didn’t behave like one would expect from reading the news reports.  It’s the sales transaction information that tells the best story.

Continue Reading »

December 31, 2007 | Filed under: Silicon Valley News, Market Updates