I am an active rain newbie, but I am jazzed about being a part of this great community! I have to share with everyone what happened this week...Our local Chamber of Commerce called about a week ago and said that they wanted to do an article on our company. They are doing a special edition of the Valley Business News that is going to be only about real estate and wanted to highlight our company in the property management portion. That is cool enough in itself. Anyway, the editor called and wanted to get our rates to publish in the article. I started talking to her about ACTIVE RAIN, and she became very interested and asked if I would e-mail her some information, which I did. She said that she is going to put this information on the FRONT PAGE of the Valley Business News! I haven't verifi... 03/22/2007

I often get asked by clients what the rental market is like here in Santa Clarita. This post will attempt to answer that question. The rental market in the Santa Clarita Valley is VERY STRONG. It has been for the last couple of years. I personally believe the reason for this is the change in the resale market. Now, I understand that is a pretty broad statement, so I am going to try and breakdown the change in our resale market and how it has impacted the rental market. 1) The resale market has softened. One of the consequences of this is the number of homes that were listed for sale but didn't sell as quickly as, or for as much as, the owner needed, and then were listed for rent. This provided us with a solid inventory of rental homes. To counter this increased inventory, we needed more... 03/21/2007

                     Ever since the days of the wild, wild, west branding and logos have been a common way of identifying what is yours.  Whether you're branding cattle, products or services, your brand communicates your identity and is perhaps one of the most important pieces of your marketing plan. So how do you know if your logo, your trademark, your brand represents you well?  Do consumers instantly know who you are just by looking at your logo?  Everyone knows the swoosh, the golden arches, the apple with a bite.  So how do you get your logo recognized and how do you brand yourself within your sphere of influence and beyond. To get a better understanding of branding, I interviewed CEO/President of QM Design Group, Hillary Broadwater.   Hillary has 12 years of experience designing l... 03/11/2007

Greetings everyone! Last week the Saugus Union School District voted to start the process to form a Community Facilities District for two new developments being implemented by Newhall Land & Farm, and to be built out by Lennar. These two communities are named River Village and Villa Metro (possibly Soledad Village - they can't make up their mind on a name). There are no homes built as of yet in the proposed CFD area, however there will be many in the near future! As allowed by California law, the Saugus Union School District can form this special CFD after an approval from the land developer/Owner (Newhall Land). This will enable the school district to fund a necessary upgrade and expansion to the Emblem elementary school that will most likely be heavily impacted after these two new dev... 11/27/2006

According to Morgan Quitno Press' 13th annual safest city list, Santa Clarita is now the 34th safest city in the country with a population of 75,000 or more for the year 2005. This is a move up from the 2004 ranking of 36th safest.Santa Clarita is however the 4th safest city when it comes to cities which have a population of 150,000 or more. The report that Quitno publishes on an annual basis is misleading according to some local SCV officials. One reason being that it is not necessarily fair to compare a city with about 180,000 citizens (Santa Clarita) to a city with about 100,000. Furthermore, crime that does occur in Santa Clarita is reportedly quite often perpetrated by individuals that live outside of Santa Clarita (ie Antelope Valley or Los Angeles). Which puts us at a disadvantag... 11/13/2006