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  Preparing your lawn for winter   Now that the warm months are past, many folks don’t realize that there are a few things they should do to keep their lawn healthy for the coming year.  These are some of the more-important projects for saving your lawn from the cold.   Keep leaves from accumulating.  When leaves pile up they trap moisture and can act as a catalyst for diseases that will destroy your lawn.  In addition, these piles deprive grass of sunlight and can kill it in patches.  What is the simple solution?  Rake up leaves and dispose of [&hellip

“Show me the Money” Solving distressed home owners’ problems I was introduced to Mary (not real name) at a very difficult point in her life. One major problem she had was her house was severely damaged and left abandon by a family member. She was unable to pay the mortgage for many months and the lender started foreclosures proceedings. I took on the project property to hopefully do a short sale before it was sold at foreclosure. When I inspected the house and did market research of real estate values I thought I could sell the house to an investor [&hellip

Opportunity lost? Interest rates are moving higher. The days of the lowest mortgage rates in history are no longer. It’s an opportunity lost to refinance or get the lowest possible mortgage. Real estate prices in California are on the move upward. The days of cheap housing prices are gone. The time to buy property at the lowest prices in a decade is gone. That is one way of looking at it. Two questions beg to be asked. Was that really the bottom? Is it a bad strategy to buy after the bottom has formed? If that was the bottom of [&hellip

What is the MLS? The acronym “M.L.S.” stands for Multiple Listing Service. The MLS is a database of properties available for sale and represented by a real estate agent in a given area. The MLS in northern California area including Sacramento is MetroList. HousingSacramento.com list of properties for sale are directly inputted by the Sacramento and Northern California MLS metrolist. That means the properties listed on HousingSacramento.com are accurate and up to date. The MLS creates the framework by which real estate agents agree to cooperate and compensate one another. There is also a high level of supervision by the [&hellip

Sacramento Housing Numbers September 2013 Charts are good for viewing what the data of the Sacramento housing marketing is doing. The chart of number of homes for sale and homes that sold shows an evening out of the trend. The last few months are showing a flatting of the market. The months of inventory chart shows how many houses in the Sacramento area are for sale. This is determined by how many houses need to sell to get to zero inventory if no new houses are added to the list. The more houses for sale, the more it becomes a [&hellip

  How to justify that new kitchen   The kitchen is one of the most used parts of a house.  This makes it one of the best places to invest money and time. Not only does it make life more pleasant, it also raises the value of the house for when it comes time to move and sell. Many people don’t want to invest time and money in a house if they know they are going to leave. But the reality is that improving a house, especially the kitchen, increases the value of that house and the improvement can actually [&hellip

  Will the Government Shutdown Impact for Sacramento Home Mortgages?   The impact on personal home mortgages will grow if the shutdown is long. The biggest impact is the IRS. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has indicated that they will not process any forms, including issue tax return transcripts (Form 4506 T), should a government shutdown occur. Without tax transcripts, loan processing may be delayed, depending on individual housing agency requirements and aggregator guidelines. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) operations, specifically the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), should not be significantly impacted as long as the shutdown is [&hellip

  Your House Listing Has Expired! What are the dangers and opportunities? Once a listing agreement with an agent expires, that agent is no longer responsible for selling the property.  The homeowners have the option of using the same agent again, getting a new agent, or trying to sell it themselves.  Even if you don’t keep the old agent, your ties to the old agent are not completely severed. In most listing contracts, there is a section that says the old agent will be the one to earn the commission if a buyer that he attracted buys the house.  So, [&hellip

What are CC&Rs? What are CC&Rs? CC&R stands for Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions.  While this may sound redundant, there are subtle differences between these types of regulation.  All of these are agreements on the part of the buyer to do or not do certain things.  The buyer automatically agrees to these by purchasing the property. The main difference between them is the punishment that can be doled out when an infraction occurs. If a buyer violates a covenant, they have broken an agreement, and the seller can sue for damages or get an injunction to prevent any future violations. If [&hellip

California Mello-Roos Property Tax Mello-Roos was signed into law in 1982 as a way to gain funding for new communities after Proposition 13 inhibited the raising of property taxes in California.  Though it isn’t technically a property tax, it is an additional tax that is applied to properties in newly developed areas.  The money is used to build the necessary facilities, utilities, roads, and the like for new towns.  This keeps the cost of development for the new town on the shoulders of the persons living there. Because Mello-Roos is independent of the property tax that is protected by Prop [&hellip