Keeping It REAL, in Real Estate

A young man with an old-school approach to sales phoned me this morning. This may be of interest to you if you are planning to buy or sell a home in Silicon Valley (Los Altos, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, etc.), anywhere in San Mateo or Santa Clara Counties. I had emailed this ...

Santa Clara County Tax Assessor Larry Stone dropped a bombshell of sorts last week when he announced that property values in cities including Los Altos, Menlo Park, Mountain View and San Jose have experienced the largest drop since the Great Depression.This was the first time since the 1930s that...

How would you like to find out at a glance what the crime data are for a particular neighborhood?Bay Area home buyers (looking in Los Altos, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto and San Jose, among other locations) often ask how safe a particular neighborhood is. Sellers who list their homes for ...

The scenario (in Los Altos, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto or San Jose) is a familiar one: Buyer tells me she has found a loan agent who is going to give her a loan at an incredible rate, with no points and no fees. I caution buyer along the lines of the old truism that "if it sounds too go...

Several Bay Area home sellers who listed with us recently (in Los Altos, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto and San Jose) asked me about the use of fragrances to help sell their homes faster and for more money. This prompted me to put together the following information, for their benefit and th...

Why is the first offer usually the best? Why does the seller hold the advantage during the first few days of the listing, after which the advantage shifts to the buyers? These two questions are closely related, with critical implications for sellers. During the first few days of a listing, potent...

If you're selling your home and looking for Mountain View realtors, a Palo Alto realtor or a San Jose realtor, this news item may be of interest to you, in your realtor search, to sell your home. The media were abuzz last week, with news of a Silicon Valley "housing market rally." * Both Santa Cl...

An offer was presented orally at an open house in Palo Alto this weekend. It was a good offer, for several reasons. First, it was actually above market value (market value being the price point that buyers are willing to pay for this house in Palo Alto at this time), considering everything the of...

Q: How is globalization symbolized in the tragic death of Princess Diana? A: An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend in a German car driven by a Dutch driver crashes in a French tunnel while being chased by Italian paparazzi on Japanese motorcycles and is then treated by a Portuguese docto...

"Dual agency" is a situation in which the listing agent, representing the sellers, also represents the buyers in a transaction. Clients sometimes ask how the same agent can effectively represent both parties to a transaction. Isn't there a conflict of interest? This question is natural because at...