The spring market heat up is officially here! It’s so busy that this newsletter is 6 days late to go out. Time is flying by!
 

In both the Peninsula and in San Francisco, single-family homes priced under $2,000,000 are hot. $1.5M and below is smokin’ hot! The really nice listings are getting as many as 38 disclosure requests and multiple offers within 7 days on the market. This is fueled by the fact that rates are still at a low, with 30-year fixed rates (for great credit) hovering just under 4% APR…

I spent the weekend in Napa and the drive up was absolutely gorgeous! Beautiful blooming flowers lined the roadside and the green rolling hills and vineyards announced that Spring has arrived!  With the arrival of the California Poppy also comes the annual uptick of the real estate market. This is the time of the year when we typically see the most gains in pricing and many home buyers and sellers…

Greetings Clients and Friends! Happy March! We’re at the beginning of the end of the first quarter in 2019! 

The real estate market is still a little wonky. Some neighborhoods / areas are super hot and while others are a little stale. You really just have to be in it to know what to expect from wherever you are buying or selling. For example: In San Mateo County, properties are still selling and for good prices. Offers / sale prices are averaging between 95 – 105% of the list price…

With Valentine's Day around the corner, it's interesting to see today's consumers either loving or hating the real estate market right now. This market is like a two-sided coin with polar perspectives depending on what side you are on. For would-be buyers, the real estate market looks encouraging as sales and prices are showing a decline and we have officially shifted from a sellers  market to a more even keeled housing market. On the other hand…

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Happy New Year folks! 2019 is upon us and we're excited it's arrived! Last month, I traveled around Asia for a month to enjoy some RnR and to attend to some family matters. Good news is that the trip really revived me and put a lot of things into perspective. I had the opportunity to see both ends of the real estate and life spectrum, with homes in the Deep Water Bay neighborhood of Hong Kong Island being sold for $5,000/sqft while shanties in the provinces of the Philippines could be built for less than $300 in scrap materials.  While prices in the Bay Area are the highest in the nation (currently between $500 - $1500/sqft), in relation to the rest of the world, I'd say we're doing ok…

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I hope you all had a Happy Halloween! From what I saw on social media, it was all about school parades and costumes parties this week. Glad you all had fun. 

In the real estate world all is still good in this transitional market. Both the real estate and stock market are going through a slight correction and we're all trying to make sense of it. Is it just the season? The upcoming elections? Social unrest? Increasing interest rates? Trade wars? Whatever it is, thankfully the sky is NOT falling and people are still buying homes...Buyers these days are just being more picky and are waiting for the perfect property to pull the trigger. Gone are the days when buyers compromise their "must haves" just to be able to land a home in the Bay Area…

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Now that the kids are back in school, summer is officially over and we're heading into fall! I can't wait until Indian Summer hits the Bay Area for our 2nd warming trend! I love this time of the year!

August proved to be a pretty busy month for us at Hatch Realty with 9 closings and 2 more escrows closing right after the holiday weekend. Congratulations to our happy buyers and sellers who were able to perform well in this market.

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Second mortgages are a lot more common now than they were just a few years ago. There are several reasons for this--many people took out a second mortgage to make home improvements, consolidate their debt, or because they purchased their house with a small down payment and wanted to avoid Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI).

Regardless of the reason someone has a second mortgage, there is a near universal truth regarding second mortgages--they usually come with much higher interest rates. These higher interest rates can be deceptive because the monthly payments tend to be small, but stretch out for long durations, often as long as your primary mortgage, or up to 30 years.

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