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!

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.

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.

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.”

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…

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!

On Thursday, January 26th at 6:30pm, there will be a City Wide Trails Presentation in the clubhouse.  Liz Katabian, Park Planner with the City of Carlsbad will be talking about the walking trails in the La Costa Oaks neighborhood as well as the citywide trail system in Carlsbad.

Maps of the trails will be shared at the meeting and they are available in the recreation office also.

This is a great opportunity to hear more about what is happening in your neighborhood, but also to meet your neighbors!  We’re hoping to attend on Thursday night, and hope to see you there too!

This year, we met up with some friends, and went down to Flemings in La Jolla at the Aventine.  It was FABULOUS!  The food was wonderful, and the ambiance was heavenly.

San Diego Restaurant Week started a few years ago as a once a year event designed to bring extra traffic in during the slowest times of the year for restaurants.  It has now expanded to a three times a year event – with many restaurants now making it Restaurant (Two) Weeks.  The next San Diego Restaurant Week continues through Friday, January 27th.

For those of you who have never tried it – I can’t recommend it enough. Select San Diego restaurants create a special three course menu – with their meal being either $20, $30, or $40 for your appetizer, entree, and dessert.  You always end up overeating – but you try so many things you might not have otherwise!

For a complete list, visit the San Diego Restaurant Week website.  Reservations are strongly encouraged, as many restaurants are full well in advance – especially some of the San Diego premier restaurants such as Mille Fleurs, Marine Room, and Bertrand at Mister A’s!

Even if you aren’t running in the Tri City Medical Center Carlsbad Marathon and Half Marathon, you might want to be aware of the event, and avoid certain parts of town.  Please click here for a complete list of road closures for Sunday.

The marathon starts at Plaza Camino Real on Sunday, January 22nd at 6 am, and the Carlsbad Half Marathon starts at 7:30 am in the same location – Westfield Plaza Camino Real.  The Health and Lifestyle Expo will be running from 7 am to 12 pm.  This is always a fun event – especially if the weather is good!