20 Tips for Relocators to the SFV and Burbank

Clients Angela Bergman and Christopher Tucker sent me a hilarious Xmas letter with 20 of their recent Burbank-L.A.-SFV discoveries. Check it out on my site at www.JudyGraff.com, then hit the "select page" button. Thanks, A&C!

L.A. Times' Blog Picks Up the Story

The Good News! post below, about the house on Groton, etc., has been picked up as a story in Peter Viles' excellent L.A. Times real estate blog, L.A. Land. Check it out here.

Good news! There's still life in the local r.e. market...

This house on Groton was listed earlier this week for $679,000. It has 3 beds, 2 baths, a pool and is about 1400 square feet. It's in great shape, although it has not been remodeled lately. It sold for full price in three days. So, I guess the real estate sky is NOT falling, at least for well-priced homes in nice neighborhoods that are in good shape. And the property that I have listed on Elmwood has four written offers on it after being on the market for a month.

More Burbank Animal Statuary -- The Cat Edition

Here are more Burbank animal statues! (See previous post on Smokie the Bear). Here's a larger-than-life wooden cougar in a front yard on Groton street. You'll note that s/he has a nice view. And, for those of you that worship the goddess Bastet, you now have a car-mounted graven idol in downtown Burbank! Who says Burbank doesn't have everything?

Mortgage Rate Freeze - Don't Get Excited Yet

Okay, the major financial institutions may be freezing the interest rate on some adjustable rate mortgages. If you have one of these, don't get excited yet -- the freezes will be only for certain "eligible" borrowers who have demonstrated that they can't pay the reset interest rate. If you're already in trouble, you don't qualify. The estimate is that only 12% of all ARM borrowers will be eligible. This is good news, however, for the few families who will now not be homeless within the next six months.

Discount Brokerages? Oh, Puleeze...

I sent the following letter to the L.A. Times editor:
Re Sunday's L.A. Times Real Estate section article about discount brokerages, I think it would have been only fair for the Times to have disclosed that its parent company, Tribune Corp, owns Help-U-Sell. Also, an excellent reason to use a full-service broker instead of a discounter appears right in the Times Homes advertising section: unlike the full service brokerages, discounters won't purchase print advertising for their listings because it costs them too much. Nor do the discount brokerages do much on-line advertising as the full service brokers do. For home sellers, now more than ever, media exposure is the path to sales and that means much more advertising than just a sign in the yard and a box of flyers. The question should be not why a seller would want to pay for full services, but why a seller would throw away money on a discounter instead of paying a percentage point or two more and getting the services they truly need.