San Francisco Real Estate - Janice Lee

How to sell your ‘ugly’ house when no one is biting In today’s market, renovated move-in ready properties sell at a premium. But what if you can’t or won’t fix up your house? A property that is dated, unrenovated or unloved, can linger on the market for months, pushing the price down. Fixer-uppers may have been appealing a decade ago, but today they leave buyers cold, said McKenzie Ryan, an agent with Compass in New York City. “Ten years ago, most people wanted to add some value and put their own fingerprint on it,” she said. “Now it has been such a shift, particularly with millennial buyers — they want a finished product. They don’t want to put in the sweat equity.” For homeowners without the money or time for a renovation, new options can help sell a property with no out-of-pocket costs. Pre-sale renovations with no upfront cost Some real estate agencies, like Compass, Coldwell Banker and Keller Williams, are offering renovation services with no upfront ...

What further negotiations can take place after an offer is accepted?     - Once the purchase agreement between buyer and seller has been accepted, there are still items that can come up and require further negotiating. One of the most common is the home inspection - and unless a home is flawless-which few are-there will probably be some negotiations between the parties before the close of escrow. The purpose of the home inspection is to find significant defects that would cause a buyer to not want to move forward with the transaction, or, at the very least, have the items repaired. Negotiating repairs after a home inspection should be kept to what is vital, and not previously known prior to writing an offer. When negotiating home inspection items, we always recommend a credit at closing, or a price reduction, whenever possible. There is too much uncertainty and stress on seller to do repair work if it can be avoided. The buyer is likely to be particular about the ...

Should you walk your dog on the left or the right?   Q : My dog, Wanda, is taking chemo for lymphoma and fortunately, she’s doing great. I’m trying to get her on nice trail walks several times a week, and this raises a question. My habit is to walk on the left side of the trail, with Wanda on leash to my left. This way I’m between Wanda and other oncoming dogs and their people as we pass. Wanda loves everyone and wants to jump up on them and this helps me control her. I thought it was customary to walk on the left side, but more often than not, oncoming walkers and joggers position themselves to pass on Wanda’s side. Is there trail etiquette of which I’m unaware? A : The general rule for walking on trails is to stay to the right and pass on the left. As to which side the dog goes on, show and hunting dogs are trained to stay on their human’s left side, but for most dogs, it doesn’t matter. Experts, however, suggest you pick a side — left or right — and keep to it so ...

Saving for a Bay Area down payment? This is how long it could take New study looks at down payments across the nation Resolving to become a homeowner in the next few years? Buyers in places like St. Louis and Tampa need only to save a modest amount to make that goal a reality. But in the Bay Area, you’ll need a stash. According to a new analysis from Realtor.com, would-be homeowners in the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metro area need to sock away $3,379 a month for five years to cobble together a median down payment of $212,000. If that gives you sticker shock, forget the South Bay. In the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area, where the median home goes for more than $1 million, homebuyers are putting down an average of $265,000. That requires saving $4,224 every month for five years or a whopping $7,170 each month for three years. And those figures don’t account for any potential change in home prices. So if the market accelerates, those amount...

Will the housing market crash in 2020? The Bay Area just said goodbye to a decade when real estate prices soared to astronomical heights. The 2010s were marked by $1 million fixer-uppers and bidding wars, and many homeowners saw their property values double. In 2019, prices flattened out a bit compared to 2018. At the start of a new decade, what will 2020 bring? Is a crash on the horizon? What impact with the U.S. presidential election have? We reached out to four experts to weigh in on the outlook for the Bay Area real estate market in 2020. We've compiled their responses to several questions below. BOOM OR BUST: WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE HOUSING MARKET IN 2020? Ken Rosen , chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at UC Berkeley: "First of all, the rate of price increases flattened out for home prices in 2019 ... We expect that to continue in 2020. We have low-interest rates, but we also have the fact that housing is very expensive so it’s ...