A client recently had me evaluate a house she owns that had been initially on the market for sale with one brokerage and then for lease with another, but neither effort coming to any avail. Based on preliminary analysis, the pricing didn’t seem to be far off on either count, and the data suggested instead that perhaps having a single brokerage market the home simultaneously for sale and for lease might make for a more coherent and effective campaign with a broader scope of po

Multiple readers responded to week’s column about ADUs, including a few who questioned whether the government-subsidized permit and design assistance is going to be effective in streamlining a process that has become notoriously difficult and expensive. Logically if the level of expertise isn’t up to snuff, as Plan B you can always opt to switch to a local expert who may be more adept at navigating the tricky waters of the application and approval process, and they might actu

If you haven’t brushed up on the rules around ADU’s lately, there have been recent changes at the State level that have made it a lot easier to get one approved, so if you have ever thought about building an ADU or getting an existing one permitted, now may be a good time to take another look.   Under California SB 543, size definitions, fee limits, and timelines for permitting and completeness-review rules have become State law. While our local planning departments are in th

It has been suggested that, to some extent, perception is reality to each person who is living out their experience of life. And this of course is reflected in our perspectives relative to the value of the real estate involved in our reality. There is a classic meme that depicts multiple versions of “your house, as seen by…” with captions of how it appears to you (a basic house), your buyer (a much smaller house), the tax assessor (a palace), an insurance adjuster (a shotgun

A longtime client recently reached out to get my opinion on how to either improve their cash flow or free up some equity from their home, which has an attached legal Accessory Unit that they were having issues with tenants running up their electrical bill.  After assessing their high utility costs, we determined the first order of business is to get an electrician to split the utility service between their home and the ADU so they can either install a submeter or a new meter

I recently attended a presentation on AI in real estate and was impressed by many of the systems that are being developed to improve how business is conducted—but it isn’t necessarily only cutting-edge technology that can bring such quantum changes. On occasion, I find we improve how we deliver our services simply through identifying a need where we can more effectively address it by adapting the way we use and access tools already commonly available to us.  Back in the Ninet

We have been guiding our agents and staff in their self-assessments and goal setting to chart their development, both within the context of the brokerage and beyond...

I recently addressed the impact of increasing governmental involvement around point-of-sale requirements and ongoing rental housing compliance, where the regulations tend to be focused on improving infrastructure and quality of conditions for individual properties on an incremental basis.  Other policy decisions made by the government have more to do with the long-range growth and the shape of the greater community for years to come. Some of these efforts seek to balance the

Over time, we have seen a steady increase in required Point-of-Sale regulations in our region imposing a whole new layer of responsibilities which have turned the role of owners and property professionals alike into informants and instruments for government compliance.  The most common justification for these rules is to promote health and safety, as in the case of geologic zone disclosures, pool barriers, smoke/CO detectors, and the new ordinances which now require sellers t