Are you of the age (40+) where you might move one more time? Here are my resources to assist you.
Reasons to move again:
Be closer to family (primarily to be near the grandkids).
Change from two-story to one-story home.
Better neighborhood for you.
Being closer to family, and especially to be near the grandkids, is high up the list of reasons for seniors to move. Not only will it be easier for you to get some help from them as you grow older, but they will appreciate the free babysitting and help around the house!
If that means you will be leaving San Diego County, then Donna is the best at finding a quality agent in your new neighborhood. We are part of two different agent networks, and she will screen agents from those and make a recommendation. Cut & paste her email: donna@klingerealty.com
Are you thinking about buying a single-level home around here?
I upload the best one-story homes for sale from the MLS into my public collection here – it might ask you to sign-in but I promise I won’t call you every day:
If you want to buy and wouldn’t mind getting a reverse mortgage with no monthly payments, then Dean Jones is your guy. There are other private lenders that can do larger amounts but they cost more and the lenders want a piece of the equity – Dean only does government-backed FHA reverse mortgages:
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You may already be in a terrific neighborhood, but it may not be the best for you at this age. There are several active senior communities that have homes for sale and for rent. Some examples:
We had a fantastic experience with seniormovemasters.com in San Marcos. They moved the belongings for our seller and set them up in the new home for $1,000!
If you need to donate stuff to a good cause, rather than move it to your next home, then Rancho Coastal Humane Society is a good option because they take most everything.
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Hauling the remainder, including mattresses, can be done by Junk King in Carlsbad.
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One more thing – if you are thinking about giving your house to your kids, read this:
We know that covid, and it’s impact on schooling in particular, is causing some people to want more space around them. Bigger houses, with bigger yards, are becoming more desirable…..and buyers are scrambling to get situated and comfortable before school starts – or at least not get too far into the school year.
The Poway area offers such relief at a fairly affordable price.
My buyers and I finalized this list of homes on Monday, and picked yesterday as our tour date. By Wednesday night, this is how the list looked:
17307 St Andrews Dr., Poway. $1,399,000 Active listing
14260 Hacienda Ln., Poway. $1,150,000 Active listing
16105 Lakeview Rd. Poway. $1,350,000 Active listing
12612 Stoutwood St., Poway. $1,070,000 Pending
13615 Sunset View Rd., Poway. $1,100,000 Pending
11828 Clearwood Ct., San Diego. $1,290,000 Pending
12429 Damasco St., San Diego. $920,000 Pending
14473 Trailwind, Poway $1,465,000 Pending
14220 Primrose Ct., Poway $1,249,000 Pending
3428 Tony Dr., San Diego $1,329,000 Pending
12020 Blue Diamond Ct., San Diego $1,300,000 Pending
9972 Falcon Bluff, San Diego $1,389,000 Pending
14048 Old Station, Poway $999,000 Pending
12488 Caleta Way, San Diego $1,098,000 Pending
13427 Calle Colina, Poway $1,250,000 Active listing
Out of the 15 listings, eleven of them already went pending this week!
After looking at several houses along Alabama’s Gulf Coast, my new wife and I decided the sunny cottage on Audubon Drive in Foley was the one—so long as the seller came down a little on the $145,000 asking price.
There were two bedrooms, two bathrooms, an attached garage, a tidy shed that was painted picnic-table red, and a pair of towering longleaf pines. It sat in an oval subdivision of cookie-cutter homes on a lot roughly the size of a basketball court. There was just enough room for the dog to run in the backyard without trampling the vegetable garden. It was convenient to my newspaper office in Foley’s antique downtown and to the elementary school in Gulf Shores where my wife taught kindergarten in a trailer parked outside of the overcrowded elementary school.
The beaches along the Gulf of Mexico were a short drive from the house. Just built and bland as an egg inside and out, it offered a blank canvas with years to go before we could expect major repairs. I replaced the tacky ceiling fans and planted bushes in my head as we looked around. The real estate agent walked us over to see the neighborhood playground.
A week before Thanksgiving in 2005, we signed papers to buy the house for $137,500. We painted the walls and hung blinds in time to have friends over for the holiday.
Twelve years later, little about my life remained the same. I’d left the Mobile newspaper to take a job at The Wall Street Journal. I was no longer married. Pierre, the dog, had died of old age. But I was still sending mortgage payments each month to a bank in Alabama.
I would have sold the house, and in fact I tried. But when the U.S. housing market collapsed in 2007, the property’s value fell far below the amount I had borrowed to buy it. Walking away was never an option. I’d signed papers promising to pay the money back and I intended to do so one way or another. In case my moral compass ever needed a shake, laws in Alabama, as in many states, allow lenders to pursue the difference between the mortgage debt on a property and what it fetches in a foreclosure sale. For much of the next decade, that number kept growing. At one point, it would have been more than $70,000.
It’s more complicated to look at homes for sale these days. Open houses have been banned, everyone who enters must sign disclosures for each house in advance promising not to sue realtors if you get the bug, and of course you have to wear the PPE and sanitize before and after the experience.
It was already a challenge before Covid-19 to gather enough information in 10-20 minutes to make a decision that will affect the rest of your life. Compound the difficulty with a mask that makes it harder to breathe (and fogs up your glasses) while the listing agent is pestering you not to touch anything.
Today’s covid tip: TAKE A WORKSHEET WITH YOU.
Customize it with your own questions – here’s a start:
Is there a suitable downstairs-bedroom suite?
Is there extra space for office(s), or do I need to use a bedroom?
Is the floor plan suitable for longer quarantines?
Do I feel secure? Is it possible to improve security, and if so, how much cost?
Can I go in the backyard and relax day and night?
Does the kitchen have a gas or electric stove?
Is the fridge built-in, and if not, do I want the sellers to leave it behind?
Do I want the sellers leave the washer and dryer?
Does the garage have extra storage?
What improvements need to be done just to move in?
What improvements are needed long-term?
If the listing agent didn’t get the memo that matterport 3D tours are the worst thing for sales and is using them as a substitute for live showings, then use your worksheet while navigating the online tours too.
Over the history of real estate, buyers have determined the market.
They decide how much education and investigation they need to complete before making what is now the biggest decision of their life, and then they proceed when ready – or when they see an attractive house, hopefully in that order! There isn’t much education available on how to do it, so people just trust their gut and start looking around – even those who already own a home. HGTV makes it look easy (see three, and buy one), and the disrupters keep promoting that their agent-lite program is all you need. In a hot market, the investigation/education phase usually gets obliterated.
You’d think it would cause people to Get Good Help, to compensate – and many do (thanks!).
But once on the playing field, the buyers are split into two categories:
Those who own a home here now, and are trying to do better.
Those who don’t own a home here, and want/need to get in.
Buyers from the second category are determining the market.
They see every decent home get snatched up by those who got desperate sooner. It becomes a race for those newcomers to get desperate enough so they can compete with those ahead of them.
Buyers in Category 1 already have it good. Even if their home doesn’t suit their current needs, it’s what got them here. The property taxes are lower, the neighborhood is a known quantity, and they are comfortable. Are they going to rise to the same desperation level as those who don’t own a home here yet? It’s doubtful, even if the Prop 19 passes and sellers can take their property-tax basis with them anywhere – nobody is desperate to leave coastal San Diego.
It’s what is causing the inventory to be so thin, and why I’m convinced it’s only going to get worse.
Consider these factors:
Baby boomers are older now – if they haven’t moved yet, it’s probably too late. They will make do with their current residence, and make it last for the duration. Kids will inherit, and one of them will occupy as their primary residence – and the cycle of low inventory for sale will continue for another generation.
San Diego is a mid-range market – there are a number of more expensive areas that makes us look cheap, relatively. It’s those move-down buyers from affluent areas who are filling up Category 2, making it very tough for locals to compete, which prevents them from moving…..which means less inventory.
There aren’t any new-home tracts left to build in Coastal North County.
There will be massive pressure on the Fed to keep rates low for years to come.
The business is being dumbed-down for easier consumption, not smarter.
These factors will keep the inventory low, and competition high for a long time. It also means that the deliberate, informed buyers will keep getting run over by those who are just in a hurry to buy a house.
The old adage of buyers determining the market is being snuffed out.
Sellers can name their price now, and there is probably someone who will at least consider paying it. Until unsold listings are stacking up to the rafters, sellers will ensure that prices keep creeping upward.
Yesterday, we closed our fourth off-market buyer sale of the year (Richard, 1 and Jim, 3).
Here’s how they happened:
Reaching out to other agents working the neighborhood.
Saw one in the Compass Coming Soon section (which was public).
Saw one on Zillow as a Coming Soon.
I haven’t been a proponent of this method for my sellers. But pursuing off-market inventory is a good way for buyers and their agents to increase their choices.
One challenge to completing an off-market sale is that the seller will use the idea of going on the open market as a negotiating tool, and they are prone to beating you over the head with it. But at least the chances of getting into a bidding war are greatly reduced.
The new Clear Cooperation policy allows for in-house sales, which is legitimizing the off-market sale. Brokerages everywhere are being forced to develop their own exclusive off-market platforms.
Now we have Coming Soons being uploaded to our MLS only (and not to the search portals).
Everything seems like “If” these days, but if we had a market comeback, the dates of a modified and compressed selling season would be fairly predictable, looking at it logically.
The actual results will be a matter of compression and intensity.
If there isn’t much of a market rebound, then we might only have a couple of hot weeks in July, and a lot of standing around, relatively. If things get cooking, then we could have a solid 4-6 weeks before school starts (in red above) when the most sales will be made.
The dates in green is when buyers will be looking hard – and might be when the best deals are made.
Two to four weeks in October will be a lost cause, due to the election. In December, buyers and sellers will both pack it in early for the holidays, and prepare to GET ‘ER DONE IN ’21!
Next year’s selling season is 11-12 months away – we gotta be ok by then, right?
