Friday, Saturday and Sunday

Hillsborough Antique Show - San Mateo Expo Center, Expo Hall

Date(s) and time(s) of Event:
February 8, 2013 11:00am-8:00pm
February 9, 2013 11:00am-7:00pm
February 10, 2013 11:00am-5:00pm

Saturday

Love On The Run – Street Festival

Every week in San Mateo

Explore San Mateo’s Parks via this link

San Mateo’s Libraries’  calendar just for  kids

Mini Train at Central Park, San Mateo

The Mini Train that operates in Central Park is a childhood delight. It typically runs on weekends from 11am-3pm, weekdays 10:30am-noon, and is closed on Thursdays.

Please call                         (650) 340-1520             in advance to confirm hours of operation.

Japanese Tea Garden at Central Park

The Japanese Tea Garden is one of the finest tea gardens in California and was designed by landscape architect, Nagao Sakurai of the Imperial Palace of Tokyo.  It features a granite pagoda, tea house, koi pond and bamboo grove. The Japanese Tea Garden is beautiful throughout the year, but be sure to visit in the late Winter and early Spring when the cherry blossoms are in bloom.

Hours
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday
11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Saturday and Sunday

Koi Feedings
11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, during Spring and Summer (fish are not fed during public hours November – February)

For more information, call                         (650) 522-7490            .

Dog Parks & Off-Leash Areas in San Mateo

Bayside-Joinville Park (fenced area; see below)	Daily	6:00am	10:00pm
Beresford Park (Chanteloup Field Only)	M-F	6:00am	8:00am
Central Park (Fitzgerald Field Only)	M-F	6:00am	8:00am
Los Prados Park (fenced area; see below)	Daily	6:00am	10:00pm
Seal Point Park	Daily	6:00am	Sunset

CuriOdyssey

A full week of fun with River Otter Day on Thursday, Bobcat feeding on Friday, Animal Connections on Saturday.  You’ve got to check them out!

CuriOdyssey
1651 Coyote Point Drive
San Mateo, CA 94401

Phone: (650) 342-7755

Wednesday - Food Trucks and Farmers Market

San Mateo Event Center
2495 South Delaware St in San Mateo

Moveable Feast, Pacific Coast Farmers Market Association and the San Mateo Event Center present:

EVERY Wednesday 4:30 pm to 8:30 pm.

FREE PARKING • FREE ADMISSION • OPEN TO THE PUBLIC • RAIN OR SHINE

Farmers Market at CSM

9 to 1 pm

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Around San Mateo

San Mateo area Groupon

Redwood City calendar

Foster City Calendar

San Carlos

Grace Cathedral in San Francisco is lit red for the 49ers. Clergy will wear red and gold vestments on Sunday.

All right, so the San Mateo real estate market is competitive.  Annoying to everyone but the sellers who are making bank.

So how do you get your offer accepted?

Cash isn’t winning right now.   And if you’re like most buyers you don’t have enough anyway.

• Make your agent ask tough questions.  The uncomfortable ones that nobody wants to ask.  Like, “How much are the other offers?”  They don’t have to answer.  But your agent should be asking.

• Don’t make any mistakes.  Your offer should be “clean.”  No funny business like asking the seller to fix the light bulbs or pay for a home warranty.  It’s $350 bucks, you pay for it.  

• Be accommodating.  If the seller wants to close in the middle of the month and that means you have to pay an extra month’s rent, do it.

photo:  El Granada

San Mateo is the land of cash.  Between being on the edge of Silicon Valley, IPO’s and foreign dollars, we’ve got a lot of cash coming in to residential real estate.

When getting a loan was a lot more difficult, confusing and uncertain, a cash buyer could offer a lower price and beat out anybody with a loan – no matter the price.

May not be true anymore.

Buyers with loans and higher offer prices are beating out the cash buyers.  Well, so far this week anyway.

photo:  El Granada, San Mateo County

The truth about them

The barrier to entry into real estate is so low you can walk upright under the limbo stick.

Something like 80% of the nation’s realtors didn’t sell any houses last year.  Zip.  Zero.  Zilch.  So how are they paying for that $650 a month Mercedes lease?  With sleepless nights.

We’ve done it to ourselves – or they have, I should say.  People’s impressions are that we make so much money we can give some of it away by reducing our commission.  Or that it’s so easy to make money everyone should get their license.  It’s not reality.

The truth about me

I’m debt free.  No credit card debt.  No car loan – although my car leaves a lot to be desired.  Hopefully I’ll get a new-used one this year.  After I’ve saved the cash to buy it.

My health made me do it.  It’s not been the greatest so I’ve had to learn the hard way what’s important.  Driving a brand new car – that I can’t pay for so I lease  - isn’t the key to happiness.  Although the smell of a new car…

Plus I read The Millionaire Next Door.

A realtor outside of the area asked me to list his client’s house because I’m in the top 80% of agents in my area.  Really?  That’s scary.  Just ask my checkbook.

What’s it about?

I’ll tell you what it’s not about.  It’s not about how long an agent has been in real estate.  Maybe they’ve been licensed 10 years but they’ve only sold one house a year.  Or maybe they’ve been doing it as a side hobby along with their job at Home Depot.

So what’s the point?

Need an agent?  Talk to friends.  Google them.  Read Yelp reviews.  Don’t look at the car they drive to determine their success.  It’s fake.

picture:  West Manor, Pacifica

Whether it’s houses, furniture or people – I love make-0vers.  Better After is one of my favorite blogs.

If you’re a client and I like you, you’ll never be rid of me.  I’m not a stalker, really, but I like connecting with the people I work with.  I like to keep in touch.

I sold this house in Shoreview in the fall of 2010 – it looked like this.

Jon wanted a fixer upper.   He really liked this house on Newbridge because it had potential.  The foundation was so bad it was like a skateboard park.  At first I thought I had vertigo.  That was a definite no.  He didn’t say no, I did.  It was going to be the Money Pit.  Turns out a friend bought it at an auction and it wasn’t “that” bad.  I think he worked on it for over a year.

By the time we got to this house, he was sick of looking and just wanted a house – any house.

He’s had a little time to personalize it.  I think it needs a pink flamingo.  What do you think?

Trending in national real estate news this week is the decline in inventory and why it continues.  We’ve been watching it happen here in the San Mateo real estate market for quite some time.

It’s gotten to the point of ridiculousness.  And it’s annoying.

The Wall Street Journal gives 6 reasons for the decline

• Many homeowners are underwater.  Some are frozen not sure what to do:  Short sale?  Let the bank take it with a foreclosure?  Keep making payments?
  

• There’s no equity.  This has been a problem for a while.  Home owners with growing families and bulging garages can’t move because they don’t have equity to buy a bigger house.

• Everyone wants to buy at the bottom, but few want to sell.  Isn’t that the truth.  You can sell high but you’re also going to have to buy high.  Everybody wants a deal.

• More purchases from investors of all stripes.  When investors got back in the market, I knew change was coming.  For awhile it was a ghost town – no buyers to be seen anywhere.  Then the investors started trickling in.  Then there were hordes.  Then the first time home buyers had to get in line behind the investors with bags of cash.  Now it’s a street fight.

• Banks have been slower at foreclosing.  They have so many government hurdles to get over, it’s taking longer.  Plus Bank of America – one of the largest lenders – had to pull back and get their house in order.  They all but stopped doing loans while they swept up the Countrywide mess.

Now what?

Bottom line:  we need more houses to sell.  We’re not even in the busy season yet.

Home buyers and sellers typically ramp up during Spring.  Everybody has gotten the cold weather, Christmas and the Super Bowl out of the way and they’re ready to move.

We didn’t get the shadow inventory everybody kept scaring us with.  That was supposed to be the demise of home ownership.

The latest upheaval is whether or not we’ll keep the mortgage interest deduction.  When 30 years of house payments are mostly interest, you need that deduction.

How will the new tax laws for 2013 impact me?  What can I do to lower my taxes?

Please join us for an hour of discussion hosted by Kalvin Sid, Certified Financial Planner with Sid Financial Services, and Carolyn Brandwajn, Certified Public Accountant.

They will explain the new tax  law changes and answer any questions you may have.

A few years ago – in the land before the www – the San Mateo County Assessor’s office was months behind in recording new owners.  So if you bought a house it would take them 3 to 6 months to catch up with you.  That meant you were totally responsible for figuring out your supplemental tax bill and getting it paid – on time.

There were so many houses selling, the Assessor’s office just couldn’t keep up with making the transfers and adjustments.

A new problem for the San Mateo County Assessor

The real estate market took a dive – a deep, long dive.  Home owners wanted their homes reassessed to get their tax bills lowered.

So many, in fact, that the Assessor’s office has a new problem.

Thousands of owners appealed their tax bill.  32,477 of them were denied.

The Mercury News says, According to state law, property owners’ appeals of parcel assessments — which determine the amount of property taxes — must be resolved within two years.

Limiting the filing time

I think they tried to manage the overload by limiting the amount of time you have to file your review.

The last day to request for an informal Decline in Value review was October 15, 2012 . The Assessor’s office is no longer accepting new applications for the 2012-13 tax year. However, a property owner has until November 30, 2012 to file a formal appeal with the Assessment Appeals Board and dispute the assessment. 

We will resume accepting requests for 2013-14 tax year in March , 2013.

Appeals are still overwhelming the office

The county is about to hire 5 new appraisers to help deal with the mess – at an annual cost of $535,825.  That’s just another belt in the gut to the county’s pocket book.

The SF Examiner reported in 2011 that the County lost $40 million in tax revenue.  The estimate for 2010 and 2012, was that the governments will lose another $30 million.

Schools take the brunt.  The largest proportion of San Mateo County property taxes, 45.1 percent, goes to school districts, followed by 21.5 percent for the county general fund, 16.7 percent to cities and 7.5 percent to redevelopment agencies.

photo:  Crystal Springs Shopping Center, San Mateo

Chillax people

Little to no housing inventory in San Mateo.  We’ve been here before.  Will you guys chill out?!?!

I’ve been writing about this for a year.  Tooting my own horn – in case you didn’t notice.  Here.  And here.

85 offers for 2334 Clipper in San Mateo.  C’mon!

I wrote an offer on 315 Glencourt, Pacifica on Friday because they said they would look at it right away.  They fooled me.

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After we jumped through hoops of fire they decided to wait until yesterday for more offers to come in.  I called the seller’s agent yesterday to find out what was going on.  His answer, “Forget it.  It’s insane.  Big, big money.”

The sale price is the new comparable

I understand the urgency.  When that house on Glencourt completes the process and everybody knows what it sold for, then it becomes the property that all other listing prices are based on.

More is coming

More houses are coming on the market.  We haven’t even had the Super Bowl yet – the marker for the start of the Spring selling season.

Once sellers realize their house is worth more than they thought, they’ll start moving.

photo:  Filoli