Today, I’m joined by miniature Schnauzers Trixie and Savannah, (and a guest appearance by my daughter Hannah) and we want to invite you to Doggie Photo Day here in Viking Park-Porter Ranch.
Join us on Saturday, April 14, from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.There will be a professional photographer, prizes, donuts, coffee, and treats for your four-legged friends.
There will be costumes for you and your dog. You can get a complimentary picture of just your dog or take a family portrait.
Join us on Saturday, April 14 from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. for Doggie Photo Day!
We’ll also be raffling off prizes every 30 minutes, including: a gift basket from Nectar of the Dogs winery, a local winery that donates a portion of their proceeds to local pet charities; a custom graffiti dog collar by Debbie Wubben, a local artist; and a $30 gift card from Petitude, a local pet store.
So make sure you come visit us this Saturday, April 14, and bring your four-legged friends! We look forward to seeing you! For more information click here.
There are a few factors that can affect your homeowners insurance policy in ways you might not expect, which is why you should discuss these things with your insurance agent.
Now more than ever in our Southern California region, it’s important that you talk with your insurance agent about how much coverage you have in case disaster strikes.
For Zachary Schneiderman of Schneiderman Insurance Agency, most people he works with or who call him for a quote just end up asking him to match their current coverage. The problem with this, though, is your current coverage isn’t always correct, and a lot of people don’t know how much insurance they really need to rebuild their home.
According to Zach, the purpose of having a homeowners insurance policy is based on the idea that if something was to happen, how can an agent such as himself replace your home as it was and get you back to normal? As time goes by and you make upgrades and renovations to your home, those changes change the value of what it would cost to rebuild that home. That’s why it’s never a bad time to call your agent and ask them to give you an updated cost estimation of your home and verify that you have the right amount of coverage.
Another issue to consider is how long you’ll be out of your home because of how long it takes to rebuild. Depending on the size of your loss, you can be out of your home longer than expected. It doesn’t seem like it would take that long to rebuild a home, but for a large loss, you’re looking at a rebuild of anywhere from 18 to 24 months.
It’s never a bad time to call your agent and ask them to give you an updated cost estimation of your home.
Another problem is a lot of insurance carriers out there only offer 12-month loss of use coverage. If you have to move your whole family, that might not be enough to rent the kind of home you need while your original home is being rebuilt. Oftentimes in this case, people end up paying out of pocket. Also keep in mind that when you have a loss, you’re still paying the mortgage on your home—the insurance company just pays for the additional expenses you wouldn’t normally incur.
If your home is older, building code changes can also affect your insurance policy. The standard coverage of a homeowners insurance policy is meant to rebuild the home in the manner it was built. If you don’t have a policy with sufficient code upgrade coverage, you’ll have to pay out of pocket to make certain changes. The costs of these changes can be substantial, so make sure you have coverage that allows you to get by without paying more than what your deductible was in the first place.
If you have any other insurance questions or you’d like to have your policy reviewed, you can give the Schneiderman Insurance Agency a call at (818) 322-4744.
If you have any real estate needs, feel free to give us a call or shoot us an email anytime. We’d be glad to help you.
Though interest rates have risen, the introduction of new lending programs and the loosening of lending guidelines mean now is a great time to buy or sell a home.
One of the most common questions we’re getting right now is how interest rates are affecting buyers and sellers in our market, so I’ve once again brought in our preferred lender Brandon Moss to shed some light on this topic.
Interest rates have gone up by roughly 0.5% since the start of 2018, and they’re still sitting in the mid-4% range for 30-year fixed mortgages. Stocks have also continued to hit all-time highs, and the 10-year yield nearly reached 3%, which is the highest point it’s been in four years.
According to Brandon, this means it’s a great time for buyers and sellers to get off the fence while affordability is at an all-time high. If you’re a seller, you can get top dollar now while buyers can still qualify for higher-priced homes and afford low interest rate payments.
There have been some notable changes to conforming loans that are advantageous to buyers. Their guidelines have become more flexible, and their limit was raised from $634,000 to $679,000. This helps buyers qualify for higher loan amounts with less of a down payment and, due to rising prices in LA County, increases their purchasing power.
It’s a great time for buyers and sellers to get off the fence.
If you’re a buyer, Fairway Mortgage is offering some new programs this year that you might be interested in, including programs designed for self-employed buyers who can’t show enough income to qualify, reduced documentation programs, and reduced down payment programs.
Though interest rates have gone up, the introduction of these new programs and the loosening of lending guidelines has opened up more doors for buyers and made now a great time to get a loan and buy a house.
“You’d be surprised what you might qualify for nowadays and how easy it might be to get a loan,” Brandon says.
If you have any lending questions for Brandon, you can call him at (818) 256-4330. If you have real estate questions for me or you’re thinking of buying or selling a home, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I’d be happy to help you.
If you are buying a home for the first time, there are 10 important terms that you need to know:
1. Fixed-rate mortgage: This is a mortgage with a fixed-rate term. If you have an interest rate of 4.5%, you typically have a five-, 10-, 15-, or 30-year time period on your mortgage, and your interest rate won’t change unless you refinance.
2. Adjustable rate mortgage: This is the opposite of a fixed-rate mortgage. With the adjustable-rate mortgage, you’ll have a shorter term for your loan, maybe five to 10 years. Once that term concludes, your interest rate will adjust according to other interest rates charged by the bank. This can get confusing, so I always recommend that you talk to a lender if you want more clarification.
3. Pre-approval: This is different from a pre-qualification. When you’re pre-approved, that means you’ve talked to a lender and given them all of your paperwork, including tax documents, bank statements, your W-2, and other documents the lender may require so they can verify whether or not you are qualified to buy. If you make $10 an hour, you’re probably not qualified to buy a $1 million home. If you earn $1,000 an hour, then you probably are.
4. Conventional loans: These loans typically carry a 15- or 30-year time period. You generally need a 650 FICO score to qualify for a conventional loan and a 20% down payment. The average down payment for a first-time buyer is only about 5%, so if you don’t have 20% down or a high credit score, there are a lot of other loan programs out there.
5. FHA loan: This is a great loan for anyone who has gone through some credit dings. FHA stands for Federal Housing Administration, and with this loan, you can put down a minimum of 3.5%. You will have to carry mortgage insurance, but you can take that off later down the road.
Closing costs are usually 2% to 5% of the purchase price.
6. Appraisal: An appraisal is when a third-party company, working on behalf of the bank, analyzes your property and compares it to comparable properties within a certain radius. The home’s condition, style of the property, and lot size are just a few of the factors taken into consideration. If you offer $500,000 for the home and the appraisal comes in at $475,000, either the purchase price has to come down or you have to bring another $25,000 in cash to make the deal work.
7. Mortgage insurance: This type of insurance exists to protect the bank. If you don’t want mortgage insurance, you have to put at least 20% down. If you don’t put 20% down, you will get anywhere from 0.03% to 1.15% mortgage insurance tacked onto your rate. There are always ways around it and plenty of programs out there that don’t require mortgage insurance, so again, make sure you talk to your lender.
8. Closing costs: What you pay in closing costs depends on you and what third-party vendors you may have brought in for expenses such as escrow, title, lender fees, and inspections. Whatever it may be, you can expect closing costs to be between 2% to 5% of the purchase price.
9. Buying down the rate: If your credit score isn’t great or it’s not where you want it to be and you have a lot of cash on hand, then you have the opportunity to take a high interest rate and reduce it. You are literally paying to buy a better interest rate.
10. Escrow: This means that you are at the table and signing away. An escrow account is a locked account that holds the buyer’s deposit so the seller can’t pull it out and the buyer can’t spend it. It’s kept safe through non-conflicting instructions regarding the buyer and seller releasing that cash, and that’s usually when the deal ends.
I hope you found this top 10 list helpful. If you have any questions about buying a house or real estate in general, just give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!
Will The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act keep more San Fernando Valley buyers on the fence? C.P.A. Issam Aljaber is here to discuss this and other concerns about tax reform.
Today I’m joined by C.P.A. Issam Aljaber to discuss some of the concerns we’re hearing from home sellers about the new tax reform act.
Do buyers really want to buy a home right now after the tax reform act?
Issam believes that buyers will still want to buy a home regardless. Although there may not be as much of a tax incentive to buy a home, homeownership is still exciting. We haven’t seen any less buyer demand in our market. The tax deduction was more of an incentive rather than a dealbreaker for people planning on buying a house.
That said, there are a few points in the tax reform act that buyers and sellers in California should know about.
One of them is the mortgage interest deduction. Under the previous tax law, up to $1 million of mortgage interest was deductible for the personal income tax. The new limit is $750,000.
If you are buying in the $1 million range and putting 20% down, Issam believes you are still safe in that range and able to deduct mortgage interest. Once you are over that price point, a lot of the homes sold in that price point are often cash transactions anyway.
Although there is less of a tax incentive to buy, people still want to become homeowners.
Price points under $900,000 are not affected that much by this change. People used to feel more of a tax savings when they bought a $200,000 or $400,000, so there is not much of an incentive there anymore. Like we mentioned earlier, though, tax incentives are not necessarily make-or-break for those planning to buy a home.
Finally, sellers have also been asking if the capital gains exemption was affected by the tax reform.
Although there were talks in earlier versions of the bill about changing the capital gains tax exemption, no changes were made in the final bill. If you are thinking of selling your house, single taxpayers can still get up to $250,000 in capital gains tax-free, and married couples can still get up to $500,000 in capital gains tax-free.
If you have any other questions about the tax reform act, you can contact Issam Aljaber at (818) 383-8029. As always, if you have any real estate questions, just give me a call or send me an email. We would be happy to help you!
It’s time to recap what happened in the 2017 real estate market. I also have a forecast of what you might be able to expect in 2018 for Porter Ranch and the San Fernando Valley.
2017 started off with very low inventory. There were only about 47 properties for sale out of 11,600 single-family units. We ended the year with slightly less inventory. That low inventory really fueled the market—not just here in Porter Ranch but all over Southern California.
When you look at the inventory in 2017, it stayed very low the first half of the year. In June, as spring transitioned into summer, inventory doubled from what it was at the beginning of the year. Still, it just wasn’t enough to satisfy buyer demand. Even though inventory increased in the summer, that inventory got gobbled up.
From the beginning of 2017 to the end of 2017, inventory decreased by 24% and the average price in San Fernando Valley went up 13% in most neighborhoods.
In most neighborhoods, there is only two to two and a half months of inventory in most areas. As a result, most prices are going up.
Low inventory really fueled the 2017 real estate market.
In order to have a healthy market, there need to be about 7,500 homes for sale in the San Fernando Valley. If you look at the total amount of inventory at the end of 2017, we only had about 1,700 homes for sale. That is down from the 2,200 homes for sale at the end of 2016.
You can see more details about the 2017 real estate market in these charts.
So, what can you expect in 2018?
I think the 2018 market will be more of the same. There is very little inventory and economic growth in the San Fernando Valley as a whole economically. A lot of people are priced out of areas like the West Side, Pasadena, Glendale, and the South Side of the Valley. As a result, more people are moving up to the North Side of the Valley, where they can get more house for their dollar. Homes are moving quickly in this area because they are more affordable and there is a lot of competition. I predict that we will see about 5% to 9% growth in both neighborhoods.
If interest rates go up, that could have an impact on our market. We’re also keeping an eye on how the new tax reform bill will impact real estate here in the San Fernando Valley. We’ll have more information about that in our next video.
Do you want to know how much your home is worth in the 2018 market? You can get a free market evaluation here.
As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me with any other real estate questions. I would be happy to help you!
I hope you all had a happy holiday season. Today, I’m joined by Keith Morgan from Property Inspection Consultants to discuss the California Pool Safety Act and how it affects buyers and sellers.
These changes were made on October 11, 2011, when Governor Brown signed Senate Bill 442 into law. This law modifies the business professionals code as it applies to the home inspection profession.
At this point, any time a home inspector conducts an inspection of a single-family residence that has a pool on the property, that inspector has to identify a certain number of pool safety access provisions. It doesn’t matter whether the home inspector conducts an investigation of the pool in addition to the home inspection or not. A minimum of two safety items must be included on the home inspection report in order to pass the general home inspection.
This law is in place to prevent as many child drowning deaths as possible.
Here are seven possible safety items that could be included in the home inspection report:
An enclosure that isolates the swimming pool or spa from the private single-family home, i.e., a fence or wall.
Removable mesh fencing.
An approved safety pool cover that prevents someone from entering the water. These are not the same as pool heating covers, which offer no safety protection.
Exit alarms on the private single-family home’s doors that provide direct access to the swimming pool or spa. A typical home security system does satisfy this requirement.
A self-closing, self-latching device with a release mechanism placed no lower than 54 inches above the floor on the doors providing direct access to the swimming pool or spa.
An alarm that, when placed in a swimming pool or spa, will sound upon detection of an accidental or unauthorized entrance into the water.
Other means of protection verified by ASTM or the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
It is the inspector’s job to point out these items and let you know which safety features are available for the pool.
If you are a homebuyer looking at properties with pools, make sure that you work with an inspector who is aware of and conversant with the new requirements. This law does not require you to make corrections or upgrades. You simply need to be aware of the pool’s safety features.
At the end of the day, the California Pool Safety Act is there to prevent as many child-drowning deaths as possible.
Thank you to Keith for stopping by today. If you have any questions for him, you can give him a call at (818) 363-6670.
As always, if you have any real estate questions, just give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!
