Mewborn Team Real Estate Consultants: CoastalLuxurySanDiego.com

January 29th, 2012

A Weekend Favorite – Claire’s On Cedros

Categories: Restaurants

This morning, Mike and I got up and were trying to decide what we wanted to do with this glorious 80 degree January day!  As we were chatting, we decided to go to one of our absolute favorite weekend spots – Claire’s on Cedros in Solana Beach.

A cute, little restaurant on Cedros Avenue across from the Solana Beach train station, this is a weekend favorite of many!  When we arrived this morning at 10:30, they had a one hour wait to be seated for breakfast!  But if you are planning on heading over to Claire’s – call ahead.  They’ll put your name on the list – dramatically reducing your on site wait time!

Claire’s is primarily only open for breakfast and lunch – open from 6 am to 3 pm Monday through Friday and 7 am to 3 pm on the weekends.  They take pride in getting their produce from local farmer’s markets, and their meat from farmers that commit to no hormones and humane treatment of animals.  They also cook their food in the healthiest manner possible.

If you’re looking for a great place to meet up with friends, or even just to go with your significant other for a nice, leisurely, healthy meal – we strongly recommend Claires on Cedros.  Just remember – call ahead!

Tags: Favorite Restaurants, Solana Beach Favorites

Posted by Mike and Amy Mewborn// Please leave a comment.

January 29th, 2012

Have you visited the NEW La Costa Resort?

Categories: La Costa, Uncategorized

I live in La Costa Oaks, and one of my favorite things to do in the summer is to go to the La Costa Resort’s Spa and lay by the pool – complete with a day of sun, swimming, champagne, and a spa lunch!

As one of the premier resorts in the United States, the La Costa Resort put about $50M in renovations into the property in 2011 to ensure that they continue to offer the best amenities available!

With upgraded rooms, improvements to the pool, kids’ club, the spa, and the golf course, La Costa Resort has focused on remaining a top notch family destination – some times even being a local hang out for La Costa family staycations!

Due to the economy, and increased vacancies in high end hotels, this might be a great time to treat your family to a weekend of luxury – in your own back yard!  They are offering specials with some packages being as low as $325/night – including up to $280 in resort credits!!!!

For more information, visit The La Costa Resort.

Tags: La Costa Oaks, La Costa Resort

Posted by Mike and Amy Mewborn// Please leave a comment.

January 28th, 2012

How accurate is Zillow’s Zestimate?

Categories: Buyers, Sellers

Real estate websites have transformed the whole experience consumers have of home buying or selling — they have made public what used to be private and difficult to get to — namely, listing and sales data about homes across the country.

Several of these sites offer nearby recent sales, with the promise that savvy sellers can go online, input your address and find out what specific homes in your neighborhood have sold for lately — some even go so far as to take the leap from what those homes have sold for to placing an estimated value on your home.

These sites try hard to do a lot of the work for you — surfacing the homes they see as comparable to yours.

However, these are just that – computer programs that rely on formulas, not necessarily all the facts.

So, what’s involved is a computer taking the description of your home from the public records (which usually reside at the county recorder’s office and in their databases) or from a recent listing (if your home has been sold in the past few years), in terms of the number of bedrooms, bathrooms and square feet, primarily, and pulling out the closest homes to yours that have sold recently that have similar data on record.

However, the computer can’t necessarily distinguish nuances in a property’s condition or aesthetics, nor does it always correct for whether the house two blocks over was a short sale or a foreclosure.

Depending on where you live, how similar homes are to each other in your area, the level of sales activity near your home and the level of accuracy found in the public records for your house and nearby homes, these sites can offer very comparable “comps” — or comparables that aren’t really comparable at all.

If you live in a fairly cookie-cutter subdivision where several homes just like yours have sold very recently, you’re likely to get a good set of comparables, and a value estimate that’s at least in the ballpark. But in many areas, lots of fairly common scenarios can come between you and a good set of automated comps:
• if your home is older and has had a lot of improvements and even additions that are not in the county records, you’re likely to get bad comps;
• if homes in your area are very different from each other, you might get bad comps;
• if you live in a neighborhood very nearby another neighborhood where homes have a much higher or lower value than your area’s (say, because they belong in a better school district or even on the other side of the city limits), you’re prone to getting bad comps;
• if your home is in an area where homes are dense, the algorithm might jump over many very nearby properties to get to a relatively dissimilar one even a half-mile away, and that can give you bad comps.

The listings provided by the sites can be very useful for homeowners trying to stay on top of what homes around theirs are selling for — not listed for, but actually selling for. They are less useful, in my opinion, at placing values on properties; the sites that do this usually have their accuracy rates listed somewhere on the site, and I haven’t yet seen one that’s impressive.

But when it’s time to actually list your home, or figure out what it is worth, no computer — no algorithm — is as accurate as a living, breathing local real estate professional who sees and sells all the different specimens of homes in your neighborhood and sees firsthand what ready, willing, qualified buyers actually pay for them, day in and day out.

This is a great way for you to do some initial research.  But one of the reasons that agents are so invaluable to the home buying and selling process is that they bring more, structured, valuable, precise information to their clients.

Posted by Mike and Amy Mewborn// Please leave a comment.

January 28th, 2012

Bank Owned Homes and Pre-Foreclosures sell at Lowest Prices

Categories: Buyers, Market Trends, Sellers

The share of bank-owned homes and homes in some stage of foreclosure dropped 5 percent from the first quarter to the second quarter, falling from 36 percent to 31 percent, but was up from 24 percent in second-quarter 2010, according to a report released today by foreclosure data provider RealtyTrac.

And distressed properties are selling at a larger discount these days, RealtyTrac reported:

• The average sales price of a bank-owned (also known as real estate owned or REO) home was $145,211 in the second quarter, which was about 40 percent below the average sales price of a nonforeclosure home. That compares with a 36 percent discount in first-quarter 2011 and a 34 percent discount in second-quarter 2010.

• The average sales price of a preforeclosure home (preforeclosures, which are homes in default or scheduled for sale at public auction, are often sold in a short-sale process) was $192,129 in the second quarter, which is 21 percent below the average sales price of a nonforeclosure home. That compares with a 17 percent discount in first-quarter 2011 and a 14 percent discount in second-quarter 2010.

There were 162,680 sales of bank-owned homes to third parties in the second quarter, RealtyTrac also reported, roughly flat compared with the 162,900 reported in the first quarter and down 10 percent from second-quarter 2010.

REO sales accounted for 19 percent of home sales in the second quarter, compared with 23 percent in the first quarter and 15 percent in second-quarter 2010.

There were 102,407 sales of preforeclosure homes to third parties in the second quarter of this year, up 19 percent from the first quarter but down 12 percent compared to second-quarter 2010. These sales accounted for 12 percent of sales in the second quarter of this year, flat with the first quarter and up 10 percent compared to second-quarter 2010.

“The jump in preforeclosure sales volume, coupled with bigger discounts on preforeclosures and a shorter average time to sell preforeclosures, all point to a housing market that is starting to focus on more efficiently clearing distressed inventory through more streamlined short sales — at least in some areas,” said James Saccacio, RealtyTrac CEO, in a statement.

“This gives distressed homeowners who do not qualify for loan modification or refinancing — or who are not interested in those options and want to sell — a better chance of completing a short sale to avoid foreclosure.”

Expedited short sales, he added, “also give lenders the opportunity to more pre-emptively purge nonperforming loans from their portfolios,” and avoid a lengthy foreclosure and REO process.

Tags: Home Prices

Posted by Mike and Amy Mewborn// Please leave a comment.

January 28th, 2012

No Increases in San Diego Home Prices Until 2014?

Categories: Buyers, Market Trends, Sellers

Two prominent home-price indices continued to show declines in September and October, with one outlook indicating no more than flat growth in the next two years.

A home-price index report from loan data aggregator Lender Processing Services showed the national average sales price for single-family homes fell 4.4 percent year over year and 1.2 percent month to month in September, to $202,000.

LPS’ Home Price Index, tracks monthly sales in more than 13,500 ZIP codes. Prices declined on a monthly basis in all ZIP codes covered by LPS. The top 20 percent of homes (selling for more than $317,000) saw a slightly smaller monthly decline, 1.2 percent, than the lowest 20 percent (selling for less than $102,000), which saw a 1.4 percent drop.

“Home prices in September were consistent with the seasonal pattern that has been occurring since 2009,” said Kyle Lundstedt, LPS Applied Analytics’ managing director, in a statement.

“Each year, prices have risen in the spring, but revert in autumn to a downward trend that has not only erased the gains, but has led to an average 3.7 percent annual drop in prices to date. The partial data available for October suggests a further approximate decline of 1.1 percent.”

A report released by property data firm CoreLogic bears out the monthly decline in October. For the third straight month, nationwide single-family home prices fell on both a monthly and yearly basis, dropping 1.3 percent from September and 3.9 percent from October 2010. Excluding distressed sales (short sales and real estate owned home sales, also known as REOs), October’s index fell 0.5 percent from a year ago.

“Home prices continue to decline in response to the weak demand for housing. While many housing statistics are basically moving sideways, prices continue to correct for a supply and demand imbalance. Looking forward, our forecasts indicate flat growth through 2013,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic, in a statement.

The index was down 32 percent in October from an April 2006 peak. Excluding distressed sales, the drop was 22.4 percent. CoreLogic’s index is based on 30 years of data for repeat sales transactions, and “price, time between sales, property type, loan type and distressed sales.”

Tags: Home Prices

Posted by Mike and Amy Mewborn// Please leave a comment.

January 25th, 2012

Celebrity Homes – Jennifer Aniston

Categories: Uncategorized

Mike and I came by our career in real estate through a genuine love for homes.  Your home is a place that you spend so much time, and it is ultimately a reflection on your personality, loves, style, and lifestyle!  Before becoming so busy – we used to spend weekends just walking around new construction model homes, just because.  We still do a lot of this – but our “just because” time has dwindled.

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still love a great home – and celebrity homes really are the pinnacle – right?

Photo from Curbed

Photo from Curbed

To read more about this gorgeous home in Bel Aire…

Tags: Celebrity Homes

Posted by Mike and Amy Mewborn// Please leave a comment.

January 21st, 2012

La Costa Oaks New Construction – Available Right Now

Categories: Buyers, Carlsbad, Communities, La Costa Oaks

Move in ready La Costa Oaks home available in Sandalwood at La Costa Oaks.  Lot 116  Plan 3 is available right now for $824,000.

Home Amenities:

• 3684 square feet
• 5 Bedrooms
• Bonus Room
• 4.5 Baths
• Outdoor Courtyard and Deck
• 3 Car Garage
• Front and back yard landscaping included (NOT typical in new construction)
• Upgraded wood flooring
• Gourmet kitchen with granite counter tops, and Bosch stainless steel appliances
• Access to La Costa Oaks amenities (clubhouse, two pools, fitness center, playgrounds)
• Encinitas and San Dieguito school districts

If you or someone you know may be looking for a fabulous home in La Costa Oaks, contact us!

Tags: La Costa Oaks, La Costa Oaks Homes For Sale

Posted by Mike and Amy Mewborn// Please leave a comment.