The San Jose Way

It was recently brought to my attention that a number of people in the San Jose area and Santa Clara County have been hit by moving scams (http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_17138043  The tip came from Brian Long of Eureka! Quotes, whos company hosts an Internet directory of moving compan...

The Keep Your Home California Initiative of the California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA), about which I've written before (California Wants You to Keep Your Home, Keep Your Home Program Delayed and You Can (finally) Keep Your Home (maybe)), is finally fully implemented on all four of its homeow...

Did you know that at the beginning of the 20th century only 4% to 7% of people in their sixties had at least one parent still living? Today, nearly 50% do. And, as recently as 1990, only 25% of young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 lived with their parents. By 2000, the number had grown to 5...

I've written before about programs to help fund or repay the costs of making home energy efficiency improvements (Do you think we should replace the windows? and New Loan Program for Home Energy Improvements) and now there is another California program recently announced. A coalition of energy pl...

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has produced an excellent three-part video series targeting home buyers, especially first-time buyers, covering the basics of shopping for a home, shopping for a loan and what's involved in closing a deal. These videos are excellent. They...

In a recent study, the Chicago Booth/Kellogg School Financial Trust Index found that a full 36% of Americans would consider "strategic default"-another term for walking away from your mortgage-if they were underwater (owed more on their home than what it was worth). Now that more than one in four...

"There might finally be some good news this year about the nation's dismal housing market. Or, at least, the bad news could stop." That's the opening sentence of a recent Wall Street Journal article titled Why 2011 May Be the End of the Housing Crash arguing that the housing crash could be at its...

The March 2011 edition of my Santa Clara County Real Estate Market Trends Report covering San Jose and surrounding communities is now available.  This report covers the state of the real estate market in February 2011, and is a wealth of practical and statistical information about the current sta...

San Jose! That's right. A study by Forbes magazine and CareerBliss.com (an online career web site), gave San Jose top billing as the happiest city to work in within the United States. San Francisco was right behind in second place. Principle reasons given in the study are that both cities have te...

Have you talked with a lender? That's one of the first questions I ask homebuyers looking around in San Jose and Santa Clara County, and it's probably the most important. Are you preapproved for a loan? Do you know where the money for your down payment is coming from? These all fall under one ove...