How a Cluttered Garage Can Affect a Home Sale

If you’re selling your house, an overly-cluttered garage can affect the process in two different ways.

The first is by prolonging the general home inspection. If you have a ton of items along the walls, that will make it extremely difficult for the home buyer to conduct the inspection. They will most likely have to reinspect the property after you’ve removed those items. This can become an issue if you have a short inspection time period that’s been requested because the buyer will ask for more time until you actually clear everything out.

Inspectors need room to do their jobs.

The second is by obstructing termite inspections. If a termite inspection has been requested for the garage, the termite inspector has to be able to poke into the garage walls to check for subterranean and dry wood termites. If they can’t do that and then report that they were unable to complete the inspection because of too many personal items impeding their work space, the buyer will once again request that the inspection contingency not be removed until everything is cleared out.

If you’re putting your home on the market, you need to make sure there’s enough room in your garage for the home inspector and the termite inspector to do their jobs.

If you have any other questions, please give us a call or send us an email. We would be happy to help you!

What You Need to Know About the Proposed Tax Increases

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With so much focus on the presidential election this November, it’s easy to overlook some of the proposed state and local measures on the ballot that can affect homeowners in Southern California. Today I’d like to take an opportunity to discuss some of those with you so that you’ll be well-informed when it comes time to vote.

One of the proposed tax increases is coming from a Los Angeles city bond which will pay for housing for the homeless. If it passes, the city will be authorized to take out a $1.2 billion bond, which they will pay for by adding a new tax to property tax bills.

The city claims that the bond money couldn’t be used to pay for supportive services like mental health and substance abuse treatment, but only to buy land and housing. This would mean that the city would be allowed to use its powers of eminent domain to acquire land throughout Los Angeles. At that point, the land could be leased at a low cost to developers who win the contracts to build homeless housing.

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These tax hikes require the approval of two-thirds of the voters.

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The way this would work is that property owners would pay between $4.50 and $17.50 per year for every $100,000 of assessed value for up to 28 years in order to pay off the $1.2 billion homeless housing bond.

In addition, the Los Angeles County Community College District is seeking voter approval for a $3.3 billion facility bond, which would be paid for with another property tax as well.

Los Angeles County also wants voters to pay for parks with a parcel tax of 1.5 cents for every square foot of buildings on a property. This works out to about $22.50 per year for a 1,500 square foot building. This parks tax would affect businesses, too. Large commercial properties like warehouses and retailers would be hit with sharp tax increases, which will either be passed onto their customers with higher prices, or be absorbed as damage to their bottom line.

Luckily, because of Prop 13, initiated back in 1978 when the Tax Revolt Initiative was passed, the upside is that all of these proposed tax hikes require the approval of two-thirds of the voters in order to actually become law.

There is a lot to consider for November, not only with regard to the presidential election, but as far as local measures are concerned as well.

If you’d like more information about any of the proposed tax measures that we discussed today, or if you have any questions about real estate, feel free to reach out to us. Looking forward to your call!

What You Need to Know About the Porter Ranch Market

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Today, I’d like to give you a quick July real estate market update for Porter Ranch and the San Fernando Valley.

Earlier this month, we talked with Brandon Moss of Prime Lending about how Brexit would affect the interest rates here back at home, and we’ve already seen some of the effects of that:

Interest rates are now hovering around 3.5% for most home buyers and many are using the low rates to their advantage by taking the opportunity to refinance. This has put a huge strain on the system because there is such huge demand right now for people looking to buy as well as refinance.

On the home purchase side, this high demand is driving inventory down. If you go back to July of 2015, approximately 3,200 homes were up for sale in the entire San Fernando Valley, but right now there are fewer than 2,800 properties for sale. Why is this significant? July is one of the busiest months as far as inventory is concerned, so if something comes on the market right now that is priced accordingly, it will not stay on the market for very long and will quite often have multiple offers.

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You’re seeing a very strong and healthy real estate market right now.

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Since interest rates have dropped, we’re beginning to see more and more multiple offer situations than we did even earlier in the year. The bottom line is that we’re seeing a lot of demand from buyers, and there is simply not enough supply to go around.

This is also affecting what is taking place during escrow. Because so many lenders are backed up, a few different scenarios are taking place. First, there is a high demand for appraisals due to the large numbers of refinances and home purchases. The second scenario is that many lenders are experiencing delays when closing escrow. We’re starting to see a lot of lenders, especially the big banks, unable to perform on schedule due to high-volume backups. As a result, you should be sure to select a lender that is able to perform per your contract, since many appraisers have been unable to keep up with demand on time.

At the end of the day, you’re seeing a very healthy and strong real estate market right now in Porter Ranch. Again, there is a lot more demand than there is supply, which makes for quite the seller’s market.

If you’ve got any follow-up questions about the real estate market, you can always give us a call or send us an email and we’ll be happy to answer them!