Carolyn Gjerde-Tu's Blog: All Categories

The City of Davis is in the early stages of considering a green building ordinance in which would require homes and buildings to comply to a certain standard at the point of sale. The City, Natural Resources Commission and the Planning Commission are only exploring this issue at this time, but are investigating different methods and measures to reduce the total greenhouse emissions in Davis to levels found in 1990.

First, I and all the Real Estate Agents I know are strongly for improving air quality and environmental standards in Davis but there is strong opposition in the real estate community for these types of changes to be mandated at the time of sale.

According to Gregory Mahoney, Assistant Building Official for the City of Davis, there are…

Wild Wings is a development of newer homes most located on one of the two golf courses, Wildwings and Fliers Club.  The Flier's Club also has a private airport that has been in operation since the 1920's.

Wild Wings is located about half way between Woodland and Esparto and about 30 miles from Sacramento.  Most of the homes were built between 2003 and 2006 and they are large production built homes by both JTS and Morrison homes.

Come see if this is the community for you.  Learn more about  Wild Wings Real Estate

I've talked about the higher end Sacramento market before.  Due to all of the foreclosures (many of them at the entry level part of the market) there are fewer move up buyers which has created a strong buyers market at the upper end.  Not to paint too grim a picture but take a look at the following trendgraphix facts and trends report for Sacramento County for homes priced over $750,000.

The light green bar represents active listings, red line are pending sales and dark green are closed sales.  There are less than half the number of pending sales in October 2008 than there was in October 2007.  Another way to look at this data is months of inventory:

While most people would look at these numbers and see only negatives, I see…

I've had this screen shot of the REW LEC2 on my desk at the office since probably August.  Watched closely as Morgan laid out the development of the site here.  Checked the blog posts every few days to see if there was some new development to the site.  At first it was simply interesting to see the design process unfold but after a while, when some new feature was introduced I really started wishing my site had the quick search or the featured areas or the thumbnail listings, advanced IDX and on and on.

I always wanted a custom website.  I never liked the idea of a generic site, one of many copies, but a true custom website is still out of my budget.  Cal Carter who specializes in Gulf Shore Condos has one of the most beautiful custom websites I have…

Guest speakers for today's Davis MLS meeting were Bill Miller, Vice President of MetroList and Dave Howe, Regional MLS Coordinator.  Davis agents who aren't attending the Friday meetings are missing out on some good speakers.

Dave and Bill spoke about changes coming to MetroList, CalMLS and handheld technology.

MetroList has been working hard for the past couple of years to form alliances with other surrounding area MLS's. Within the next month, the remainder of the San Francisco Bay Area will be incorporated into the combined, Quattro database.  This means that Real Estate Agents can access data from Mendocino County to the north and west, to parts of Merced County to the south and east. It will include all of the data for the entire San Francisco Bay…

What does lower inventory really mean.

Recently the Sacramento Bee ran a front page story asking the question "Is worst over for Sacramento's housing market?" 

It is an interesting question, available inventory has  been going down to a more manageable number and home sales have risen over the past few months to match at least in volume numbers seen in 2005. Buyers have not been hesitant to act quickly to buy whatever properties appear to be a good deal.  For the majority of the Sacramento region that has meant distressed properties, short sales and REO/Bank Foreclosures. 

One reason for the decrease in inventory over the past few months is due to banks/mortgage holders holding off on foreclosure proceedings due to new legislation that was passed in…

The luxury home market in the Sacramento region has slowed as the majority of home buyers right now are first time homebuyers.  Because the market is flooded with foreclosures and short sales the number of move up buyers has decreased. So how has this affected markets like Granite Bay with exclusive gated communities and large luxury homes?  Granite Bay is in a strong  buyer's market.  There is currently over 12 months of inventory in Granite Bay with 194 homes on the market and 16 closed sales for the month of October.  There have been some foreclosures and short sales and it is likely that the number of distressed properties will continue to increase in the next few months.

 The difference between the original list price to sales price in the past 14…

Sacramento Real Estate has been hit harder than many other parts of the country  with distressed properties.  Bank owned/foreclosed homes and short sales are currently  the majority of actual closed sales throughout the region.  Buyers are looking for bargains and they are more likely to find them in distressed properties than from a typical seller.

Sometimes buyers want to look specifically for short sales.  This might happen because in certain price ranges there is stiff competition and there are typically fewer people searching for short sales.

A short sale is defined as a home offered for sale where the seller owes the mortgage holders more than what the house is worth.  A seller putting their house up for sale as a short sale may or may not be in…