The news may be that the interest rate increases and hits to the stock market have not had the extreme consequences for our local Belmont market as many have predicted.
Continue readingReal Estate Decreases in Home Values May be Mitigated in 2022
Housing Market Recedes as Buyers Run for Cover
In the last ten years, it has been very difficult for buyers—especially first-time buyers to enter the Bay Area housing market.
Multiple offers drove home prices up and out of the reach of many would-be homeowners.
In the first quarter of 2022 we saw an unprecedented run up in home values, fueled primarily by buyers wishing to purchase a home before interest rate hikes made housing even more unaffordable.
But by mid-April 2022, that influx of furious demand wanned. The light switch that was flipped on by buyers reentering the market in 2012, turning into a dimmer. As interest rates began to rise, and the stock market declined, buyers started to pull back.
This has significantly cooled the superheated Real estate market in the Bay Area.
With tech companies announcing layoffs, this cool-down will result in home values receding.
This is what savvy buyers have been waiting for. Less competition means fewer multiple offers and lower purchase prices.
The biggest mistake we have seen in our over 30 years in this industry, is Buyers waiting too long to get back into the market after a period of uncertainty.
The downturn in 2007 is an example worth evaluating. The market began its decline in 2007, and essentially leveled off by 2009. Yet it took many buyers until 2012 to reenter the housing market. By then it was too late. Multiple offers became the norm and remained so until just this April. Buyers who carved their own path and bought homes in 2009-20011 came out far ahead of the pack.
Higher Interest Rates
Higher interest rates will of course affect the ability to borrow money and lower purchasing power. But as we discussed in this post, playing the field with interest rates is a fool’s game.
Interest rates are still at a 40-year average low. Buying a home now, even with higher rates than one could have obtained a year ago, protects the homeowner from future increases in rates. If they go up, the buyer has already lock in a rate, if they go down, which we suspect they will not, one could always refinance at a lower rate.
Making a Move
There are opportunities that arise in uncertain markets. Investors that remain paralyzed and want to wait until the masses renter the market giving them comfort in their buying decisions, will find themselves in company with thousands of other buyers who will all renter the market at the same time−turning the light switch of multiple offers back on.
The Answer
Finding balance is key to making smart home buying decisions. If buyers wait until the housing markets and economy reach perfect stabilization, it will be too late to take advantage of opportunities. Job stability should be the number one driving factor in a buyer’s decision to purchase a home in a slow housing market—not interest rates of where on the curve home values lie.
Drew & Christine Morgan are REALTORS/NOTARY PUBLIC in Belmont, CA. with more than 25 years of experience in helping sellers and buyers in their community. As Diamond recipients, Drew and Christine are ranked in the top 50 RE/MAX agents nationwide and the top 3 in Northern California. They may be reached at (650) 508.1441 or emailed at info@morganhomes.com.
For all you need to know about Belmont, subscribe to this blog right here. You can also follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Morganhomes and on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/morganhomes
The information contained in this article is educational and intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute real estate, tax, insurance or legal advice, nor does it substitute for advice specific to your situation. Always consult an appropriate professional familiar with your scenario.
Shift in Housing Market Scares Young Buyers Away
The Interest Rate Hike Effect
In Belmont, the sales statistics for May 2022 show that the inventory of homes has grown to one month of inventory, while this past January it stood at .3 months. To help put that into perspective, during the downturn in 2009, the months of available inventory in Belmont sat at 10.
While some homes are still selling over the asking price, they are on average receiving 10% less over asking than in Q1.
Some of these anomalies are seasonal, and as such, with May being a month that is affected by seasonality in home sales, some of what the market is experiencing is seasonal and normal.
The most recent sales in Belmont are for far less than the sales in January-April. That is of course when the February interest rate hikes really kicked in, coinciding with the stock market taking a hit.
Since many Bay Area buyers are tech workers, whose compensation is augmented to a high degree with stock options, when the stocks are high, buyers are more bullish and can compete in the home bidding process by liquidating more stocks. Conversely, when the stock market takes a hit, buyers not only have less capital to work with, but they also tend to sit back and wait for the market to stabilize before liquidating their holdings.
Where We Stand Today
This graph illustrates the rapid rise in the 30-year mortgage rate this year. We suspect that much of the overzealous bidding that occurred in the first quarter of 2022 was due to buyers’ knowledge that rates were scheduled to rise, and their desire to take advantage of lower rates while they could—even if that meant overpaying in a bidding war for a home.
The S&P 500 and home values seem inextricably connected. One can see in this graph the rise and decline during that same Q1 period that buoyed purchasing power and is now waning.
As seen in this graph for all sales in San Mateo County, Condominium values take a hit first. We attribute this to two factors. The first being that condominiums tend to be akin to a commodity. Many are similar if not nearly identical. There are of course varying degrees of upgrades, whether one has an end or upper floor unit, the location within the complex, but overall, the differentiating factor in a market with growing inventory, comes down to price.
The secondary factor is that as prices and competition for single family homes fall, condominium owners have an opportunity to make a move into a stand-alone home, while buyers who were just shy of being able to purchase a home, and would have bought a condo, now turn to owning a home with a yard.
What is Different Now
What has changed is that with fewer buyers in the market, and less competition, they can be choosier. While it’s still too early to call it a buyer’s market across the board, certain sectors such as the condominium market and cities, and even neighborhood within cities that are less desirable, are most affected.
This means that not every home will sell—at least like they did in the past. Homes will have to be spruced up, staged, show well, and most likely be vacant to garner the level of excitement necessary to captivate the dwindling pool of buyers, so as not to take an inordinate hit on the sale price.
For the typical three-bedroom home, looking at the sales in Belmont, between March and April the seller’s enjoyed a list to sales price ratio of 119%. Since April that has dropped 11% to 108%. With the median home price still hovering around $2,400,000, that represents a $250,000 decrease in overbidding per home.
Is this a Correction?
We don’t see it so much as a correction, but rather the market simply returning to pre hysteria bidding. Interest rate increases along with poor stock portfolio performance has dampened the buying environment—for now. We wrote a previous piece on the monetary effect of rising interest rates and home purchasing power.
Gaining Some Perspective
Buyers are in shock because for the past 20 years, 30-year mortgage rates averaged 3.035%. They never knew rates prior to that 20-year period when between 1980 and 2000 they averaged 10.3%. And the average 30 mortgage rate since 1971 when interest rates were tracked, is 7.7%. Buyers who have never even heard of an interest rate over 4% will acclimate and become accustomed to the new norm, and life will go on. Longer term homeowners who have lived through the interest rate roller coaster ride, will be less effected emotionally, and probably move forward with life’s plans accordingly.
Drew & Christine Morgan are REALTORS/NOTARY PUBLIC in Belmont, CA. with more than 25 years of experience in helping sellers and buyers in their community. As Diamond recipients, Drew and Christine ranked in the top 50 RE/MAX agents nationwide and the top 3 in Northern California. They may be reached at (650) 508.1441 or emailed at info@morganhomes.com.
For all you need to know about Belmont, subscribe to this blog right here. You can also follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Morganhomes and on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/morganhomes
The information contained in this article is educational and intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute real estate, tax, insurance or legal advice, nor does it substitute for advice specific to your situation. Always consult an appropriate professional familiar with your scenario.
Bay Area Housing Market on Precipice of Unpredictable Change
One would think that predicting the seasonal course in our local housing market wouldn’t be that hard, right? What makes people decide whether now is the time to buy or wait on the sidelines? We’re not sure exactly what one thing it is, or if it even is one thing at all. More likely it’s a mix of factors that plays into their emotions, but one thing is in common—when buyers pull back, they almost all do it in sync—almost like the young, amateur traders transforming markets.
The Pandemic Changed the Norms
Prior to the Pandemic we took great pride in prognosticating seasonal real estate cycles by examining past performance of the market at various times of the year and during various cyclical events. Take for example election years. Whether it’s a presidential election year that stands to be decisive, such as Trump v. Biden, or even a less momentous mid-term election, we were pretty much guaranteed to realize a buyer pull-back from late September through mid-November. That was just one of the expectations that we had to throw out the window in 2020.
Of course, the stock market swinging wildly sets people off, and any hint of tech companies laying people off sends the pool of buyers into hibernation.
We had a lot of variables stacking up signaling buyers may take a siesta from house hunting during the Pandemic while jobs, the economy, really the entire future was in unchartered waters, but instead buyers came out in droves snapping up everything and anything so long as it had a yard—go figure. While in hindsight we can see the motivations for many of these first-time buyers jumping into the market—working from home while home-schooling two children in a 900 square foot apartment with not even a yard for sustenance is enough to get any procrastinator off the fence, though we certainly wouldn’t have bet on it.
We started this year with unemployment moderating, but inflation gathering steam, the “R” word entering economists’ vocabulary again, and threats of war in Ukraine which stood to further impact prices. Yet in Q1 we saw one of the biggest bull runs in the housing market we’ve seen in years.
While the median home price in San Mateo County went up 7% between Q1 of 2021 and Q1 of 2022, in Belmont the increase in those two periods was 28%.
So, what’s in store for Q2? Where is the market headed now as the landscape changes?
Even the mention of possible interest rate hikes tends to knock a lot of buyers off of the fence as they finally realize that the luxury they had to purchase a home “whenever”, knowing the rates would always be low, may be coming to a close. It’s odd too, as rates were nearly as high in 2019 and nobody seemed to care.
But this is different. Rate hikes are scheduled for this year and even though the Federal Reserve rate doesn’t automatically correlate to a hike in Mortgage rates, the markets take advantage of it to raise mortgage rates, and profits.
We didn’t so much as predict what would happen when the government artificially kept mortgage rates low after the Great Recession housing debacle in 2007, it was more akin to watching a plane crash from the sky. You don’t have to see it hit the ground to know what will happen. So, what IS happening that we knew would be inescapable? Homeowners who refinanced or buyers who purchased a home when rates were at historic lows—in the 2-3% range, aren’t going to be selling their home and moving anytime soon. Sure, in California they can now carry their low property tax base, but they can’t carry their low interest rate—so many are going to stay put and there will be even less inventory than there has been, and which will once again put upward pressure on housing prices.
However, the current rise in interest rates will have a mitigating effect on any upward pressure on home prices.
The current rates for mortgages that went from 2.5% to 5.2% now makes the monthly mortgage payment on a median price home in Belmont go up more than $4,000 a month, which is a 33% increase. Effectively, that means a buyer’s purchasing power just dropped by
~ $650,000.
What we cannot predict is the outcome of how the collision of these two contrasting forces will end.
The short of it is we don’t know what buyers will do going forward. Will they wait for a while to see if rates come back down, or jump in before they go higher? Or, will they jump in anyway while others are sidelined and refinance later? Will it put a cap on over bidding? Will higher interest rates dissuade homeowners from selling even if it’s to downsize, to keep a lower payment/interest rate? Will that be enough to throttle back inventory further to mitigate the impact of fewer buyers in the market?
On a micro scale, we have seen a recent slowdown in heightened level of enthusiastic home buying activity in the last few weeks, but then again we see that every year near tax time, Easter and Spring breaks—stay tuned.
Drew & Christine Morgan are REALTORS/NOTARY PUBLIC in Belmont, CA. with more than 25 years of experience in helping sellers and buyers in their community. As Diamond recipients, Drew and Christine are ranked in the top 50 RE/MAX agents nationwide and the top 3 in Northern California. They may be reached at (650) 508.1441 or emailed at info@morganhomes.com.
For all you need to know about Belmont, subscribe to this blog right here. You can also follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Morganhomes and on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/morganhomes
The information contained in this article is educational and intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute real estate, tax, insurance or legal advice, nor does it substitute for advice specific to your situation. Always consult an appropriate professional familiar with your scenario.
How to Stop Agents from Behaving Badly at Your Expense
If you’re considering selling your home, you’ve probably also been thinking about how to go about finding the right real estate agent to help.
Choosing precisely the right real estate representation makes a bigger difference than you might ever imagine. So where does one begin?
DEFINING A TOP AGENT
REALTORS banter around the term “Top Agent” quite loosely—Top 1%, Top 10%, etc. They earn that title for dollar volume in sales—not any independent measurement of the quality of their work or survey from past clients. In the Bay Area, most agents surpass any threshold for earning the Top award distinction due to the median sales prices—not the they are any better than their colleagues in Kansas who need to sell 10 times the number of homes to garner that distinction.
Discard any idea of using on-line companies that recommend agents or say they will “find” you a perfect match. These are nothing more than companies extorting money from agents to be in their directory. They are not recommending the best agents, but rather the ones willing to pay to be recommended.
YELP tends to do the same thing. Although the reviews are organic in nature, agents must pay to be listed at the top of the search, even though they are often far from top agents.
Agents with the most listings or yard signs in a neighborhood are also not necessarily the agent doing the best job, they’re just getting the most attention.
Doing a native on-line search is more time consuming, but it will yield you the best results. Search for local agents that have been in the business long enough to have learned the ropes at someone else’s expense. Any real training of agents happens in the field, not the classroom. Look for examples of their work product on their own web sites—video tours, photos, and descriptive informational pieces.
THE MEET
Once you’ve found an agent you’d like to meet with, reach out and set up an initial meeting. Don’t call three of four agents all at once. It takes hours to prepare for a meeting and you’re wasting agents’ valuable time.
If you’re not happy with the first agent you meet, by all means contact another.
No two REALTORS are the same and each one acts essentially as their own independent contractor. They develop a business plan on their own and so you’re really hiring the agent, not the company they work for.
Are their differences in the companies’ agents work for? Sure, but far less important than the agents you’re hiring. Most agents will focus on how big (or small) their company is—how much “market share” and how much “technology” they have but how does that really benefit you?
The fact is most agents are capable of selling your home in this seller’s market, but the service they offer and the attention to detail and marketing varies greatly.
With that invariably comes differing degrees of success and results.
SELECTING AN AGENT—WHAT QUESTIONS TO ASK
These are the questions most sellers are prepared to ask:
- How much do you charge?
- What do you think my home is worth?
More detailed sellers might throw in a few more:
- How long have you been in business?
- In what cities do you specialize?
- Do you work with mostly sellers, or buyers?
- Do you have referrals with whom we may speak?
And that’s pretty much the extent of most sellers’ questions. The two which paradoxically seem to carry the most weight are two sellers always ask—how much is my home worth and what do you charge. These are two very important questions, but they should have little to do with choosing an agent. You can always find a discount agent to sell your home and you will most certainly get cut rate service and results as well.
The price the agent tells you your home is worth should also have little to do with whether you hire them. You get to pick the asking price for your home and if you’ve watched sales in your neighborhood, you probably have a pretty good idea at what price homes are selling.
Be careful not to decide on your agent based solely on the highest estimated sale price you hear, since that agent may not know your market or could be trying to “buy” your listing—meaning they are trying to get you to list with them under the pretense that they can magically get more for your home just by asking for it. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way.
Buyers choose the price they are willing to pay for your home—not you as a seller or your agent!
We’ve heard sellers say, “We’re going to hire the REALTOR that sold our friends house—they said that they liked him and felt that he did a good job.”
And perhaps they did do a good job, but then again maybe the seller just thought because they received multiple offers well over the asking price that they must have done a good job. But could they have done better?
THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION
Results. Before you’d consider having any important surgery done, wouldn’t you like to know what your Doctor’s survival rate is for his patients? How many operations has she performed? How much they charge would probably be the least of your concerns, so long as you survive to pay the bill.
Wouldn’t it be nice before booking a flight to know how long the pilot has been flying and how many hours they’ve logged?
Any agent can proclaim to be the best, or sell their listings for more in a shorter period of time, but you need to ask for proof.
IT DOESN’T GET UGLIER THAN THIS
These sellers probably thought their agent did a good job as well. After all, they received $126,000 over asking!
When the sellers hired these agents, they no doubt never expected this shoddy work product would be what they received—and we can all but guarantee that it’s not what was promised.
This is what is referred to as a Moral Hazard—wherein under the contractual protection of a listing agreement an agent takes advantage of their client—promising one thing and doing another.
But as bad as the photo of the home on its side may be, the agents went on to boast in the private comments (in red) to all agents, that had they waited to hear offers, they would have received three more—and one back-up offer was for $25,000 more than the early offer they may have steered their seller into accepting. To add insult to injury, when they went back into the listing to amend the comments with self-aggrandized accolades once it closed, they still never took the time to fix the photo. So great job Dino!
This may be a gross example of agents taking advantage of a seller, but many agents are guilty of taking the path of least resistance, (e.g. work), to get paid.
We can’t count how many times we’ve represented a buyer, delivered an offer only to receive a call late at night that the seller accepted a different offer. Many times, if the agent had reached out to us, our buyers would have stepped up in price and the seller would have received even more for their home.
We often download disclosures for our buyers which is an indication that we have a very interested party. An offer date is set and we rarely if ever receive a call from the listing agents asking if our buyers are interested in making an offer, and if not, why.
BROKER TOUR, OPEN HOUSES & ADVERSE SELECTION
Agents will probably tell you that they will hold open your home for all agents to view on a special day referred to as “Broker Tour Day”. They may even tell you that they will serve food to attract the masses. And unless you ask if they will be present—they usually won’t. Agent Teams that have someone different for every aspect of the job are especially guilty of this. Many times, they don’t even go that far—they have a vendor such as a mortgage company hold open the home so they don’t have to bother being present. Other times we’ve seen the “Catered Broker Tour Lunch” promised to the seller relegated to a tray of stale sandwiches on a counter with the agent nowhere to be found. Being present at an open house is critical to answer other agents’ questions about the home.
Unfortunately, these breaches in moral behavior are more common than not.
YOU CAN DO BETTER
Do your homework. Research agents organically on-line to see what work product they are capable of and delivering. Then, be armed with the best questions most agents are ill prepared to answer.
If you’re interested in receiving a list of questions every seller should be asking, we’d be glad to deliver 35 of the best questions when we meet in-person for our initial visit.
Here’s a preview…
Drew & Christine Morgan are REALTORS/NOTARY PUBLIC in Belmont, CA. with more than 25 years of experience in helping sellers and buyers in their community. As Diamond recipients, Drew and Christine are ranked in the top 50 RE/MAX agents nationwide and the top 3 in Northern California. They may be reached at (650) 508.1441 or emailed at info@morganhomes.com.
For all you need to know about Belmont, subscribe to this blog right here. You can also follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Morganhomes and on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/morganhomes
The information contained in this article is educational and intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute real estate, tax, insurance or legal advice, nor does it substitute for advice specific to your situation. Always consult an appropriate professional familiar with your scenario.
A LOOK AT 2021 HOUSING AND WHAT LIES AHEAD IN 2022
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past two years, you’ve no doubt heard that home values climbed their assent into the stratosphere.
But as local agents for over 25 years, even we have a hard time wrapping our heads around the staggering numbers.
You may have also heard that there’s “no inventory”. Well, that’s not exactly true.
Then what’s causing the spike in prices? High demand, not lack of supply—unlike the overall economy that’s suffering from a lack of supply and high demand.
Comparing the annual number for 2020 to 2021, we’ll start with the inventory of homes for sale.
The number of new listings that came on the market in 2020 was 234 in 2020 and 249 in 2021 which is an increase of 6.4% more homes available for sale in 2021. Then why is everyone talking about low inventory? Because sales went from 183 units in 2020 to 254 in 2021—a whopping 38% increase—so there are no homes left to buy.
One might ponder, “How can that be?” If you only have an increase of 6.4% in new listings, how can you have 38% more sales. The answer is everything is selling in 2021 while in 2020 some of those new listings never made it into escrow.
That’s evident in the days on market, which dropped 45%, from 20 days to only 11, and the percent a seller received over the asking price climbed from 105% in 2020 to 114% in 2021.
Another indicator of the scant number of homes available at any given moment is the “Months of Inventory” statistic, that measures how long it would take to sell all of the available inventory at the current rate of sales. That dropped from a meager .4 months, to an almost immeasurable .1 month, (overall, the U.S. stands at around six months of inventory at any given time).
What effect did this have on home values? Nothing, but it had a lot to do with home prices. They hit their highest level in history recording a median home price of $2,245,000 up from $1,888,000—a 19% increase YOY and a 28% increase in the past two years—while the size of homes selling in the last two periods stayed statistically similar at 1,968 and 1,962 square feet respectively.
This is an article we did back in 2018 on the supposed crest of interest rate hikes.
There is some cooling off of the astronomical climb in prices as noted by the Case-Shiller study for the Bay Area’s metropolitan area, but that may not reflect our local hot spot trends in the mid-peninsula.
What to Watch Out For
Rising interest rates may give buyers some relief from a super-heated market, may also serve to quell their purchasing power while softening prices. The irony is just when buyers may be able to compete in the market, even if they were to pay less for a home, they’ll end up paying more in interest in their loans.
Drew & Christine Morgan are REALTORS/NOTARY PUBLIC in Belmont, CA. with more than 25 years of experience in helping sellers and buyers in their community. As Diamond recipients, Drew and Christine are ranked in the top 50 RE/MAX agents nationwide and the top 3 in Northern California. They may be reached at (650) 508.1441 or emailed at info@morganhomes.com.
For all you need to know about Belmont, subscribe to this blog right here. You can also follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Morganhomesand on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/morganhomes
The information contained in this article is educational and intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute real estate, tax, insurance or legal advice, nor does it substitute for advice specific to your situation. Always consult an appropriate professional familiar with your scenario.
The two prior years have been like a bad roller coaster ride for buyers, but that may all be about to change.
What’s in store for Bay Area housing demand and values?
Continue readingBELMONT HOME VALUES CONTINUE THEIR ASCENT AS SALES DECLINED
It wasn’t just Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos that have shepherded in a new era. Belmont single family homes values have continued their pandemic born steep ascent.
First, the numbers:
Belmont home values continued their astronomical ascent as sales declined in September of 2021. Belmont sales of single family homes fell 9.6% from September of 2020 to the same period in 2021. Compared to September of 2019, pre-pandemic, sales were up this year more than 53% in 2021.
The average time it took to sell a home went down from 19 days to 12.
The Months of Inventory—the time it would take to sell all the homes on the market at the current rate of sales—went from .8 months down to .5, and the available inventory of homes to choose from went from 21 in 2020, to only 11 in 2021. To put this into perspective, the U.S. housing inventory sits at 6.1 months.
The median home price rose from $1,925,000 to $2,235,000, close to a 12% increase YOY. It’s important to note that the size of homes selling in these two periods went down, from 2,150 ft² to 1,737 ft², a 19% decrease, which serves to only magnify the cost to the consumer.
The price per ft² in 2020 was $979 and increased to $1,299 in 2021. It’s typical for the price per square foot to go up when smaller homes are selling, since it does not take into consideration the lot which the homes sit upon.
What is noteworthy is while the size of homes selling in these two periods went down 19%, prices went up 12%—illustrating that for 12% more in 2021, one could only get a 19% smaller home.
The percentage sellers received also went up from 101% of the asking price in 2020 to 112% in 2021, underscoring the strong demand.
Due to the increase in home values, the cost of home ownership, while borrowing money at 3% interest, went up $1,000 per month in just the last year. If interest rates were to rise to just 4%, the median price home in Belmont would cost ~ additional $1,000 per month.
According to Mike Farrell of Wells Fargo, a person wishing to buy the median priced Belmont home with 20% down in 2020 needed to earn ~$225,0000 a year, while in 2021 that rose to $300,000 per year. That’s assuming the borrower has no other debt, such as credit card, car payments or school loans.
For buyers with stock options, puting a larger down payment may be an option to increase their buying power without worrying about needing more income to qualify for a mortgage. But for buyers with traditional salaries—essential workers from Teachers, Police, Firefighters, and hospital workers to grocery store employees, and restaurant workers who, without help from outside wealthy family members, will have little hope of ever buying into the dream of home ownership in the Bay Area.
Unfortunately, we see the same story playing out in San Mateo County as a whole.
The most important take-aways from these numbers are the median home price, which jumped 6% YOY, while the size of homes selling were 2% smaller, and the percentage the seller received of their asking price jumped 6 percentage points from 102% of asking to 108%.
As a direct result of the pandemic, many apartment renters, and condominium owners, found to work from home—and in many cases home school children, they needed more space. Since public gatherings were off the table—they wanted a yard as well as no common areas such as elevators. This created a glut of condominiums on the market.
It goes without saying, that we are in unchartered waters in terms of housing demand. Looking at this data from Case-Shiller®️, as compiled by FRED®, which covers the San Francisco MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) comprised of five of the nine Bay Area Counties, one can see the dramatic spike in home values beginning in 2020.
If you have considered selling your home and would like to maximize the proceeds from your sale, please contact us for a no obligation assessment.
Drew & Christine Morgan are REALTORS/NOTARY PUBLIC in Belmont, CA. with more than 25 years of experience in helping sellers and buyers in their community. As Diamond recipients, Drew and Christine are ranked in the top 50 RE/MAX agents nationwide and the top 3 in Northern California. They may be reached at (650) 508.1441 or emailed at info@morganhomes.com.
For all you need to know about Belmont, subscribe to this blog right here. You can also follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Morganhomes and on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/morganhomes
The information contained in this article is educational and intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute real estate, tax, insurance, or legal advice, nor does it substitute for advice specific to your situation. Always consult an appropriate professional familiar with your scenario.
The Forbidden Fruit is Thy Neighbor’s Tree
Do you have a neighbor that’s a nuisance? Many do, yet they may be unaware. We’re talking about nuisance trees. Say your neighbor’s tree has limbs over your fence, or the neighboring tree’s roots are damaging your driveway. What can you do about it?
The good news is you do have rights—but they’re limited. You can’t just walk on over to your neighbor’s property and start cutting the offending tree down, or roots back, as that could be trespassing. But California Civil Code 3346 does consider the encroachment of branches or roots onto your property to be a nuisance. You are allowed to trim the tree or roots from a neighboring property that are encroaching onto your land so long as that tree is not destroyed or permanently damaged. If your actions destroy your neighbors’ tree, or even cause substantial damage so that the tree’s value is impacted, you can be held liable for treble damages (three times the actual amount).
What about the fruit from your neighbor’s tree? This time of year your neighbor’s tree could be bursting with peaches, pears, lemons, and limes—almost falling off of the trees. Almost, being the operative word. If your neighbor has a fruit tree that overhangs your property, the fruit on the tree belongs to that of your neighbor, even if it’s on your side of the fence. Any fruit that has fallen from your neighbor’s tree onto your property is considered the fruits of your labor for picking them up. In other words, they’re all yours.
The information contained in this article is educational and intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute real estate, tax, insurance, or legal advice, nor does it substitute for advice specific to your situation. Always consult an appropriate professional familiar with your scenario.
Drew & Christine Morgan are REALTORS/NOTARY PUBLIC in Belmont, CA. with more than 25 years of experience in helping sellers and buyers in their community. As Diamond recipients, Drew and Christine are ranked in the top 50 RE/MAX agents nationwide and the top 3 in Northern California. They may be reached at (650) 508.1441 or emailed at info@morganhomes.com.
For all you need to know about Belmont, subscribe to this blog right here. You can also follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Morganhomes and on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/morganhomes
Why Cash Can Make or Break A Buyer’s Dreams
Cash Buyers beware—the landscape is changing.
Continue reading