Is it really that difficult to sell your home by yourself?  It depends.  Do you like to market, negotiate and fill out legal documents?  If yes, you may prefer to sell your home without the help of a Santa Cruz real estate agent.

Before you make your decision, consider these three disadvantages of selling your home as a For Sale By Owner (FSBO):

1. You may under-price or over-price your home.  If you’ve overpriced your home, you won’t get many interested buyers.  When you drop the price of your home a few weeks later, you’ll have missed the “new on the market” window of opportunity that brings in a lot of potential buyers.  If you under-price your home, buyers will wonder what’s wrong with it, and if it sells, you’ll be leaving money on the table.

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In today’s environment, do you think buying Santa Cruz real estate has become less popular than renting?  If so, you’ll probably be surprised to learn that 81% of American adults still think that buying a home is the best investment a person can make. 

In comparison, two decades ago, a CBS News/New York Times survey found that 84% of American adults thought buying a home was the best investment a person could make.  That’s only a 3% decline in 20 years.

The new information is based on two nationwide studies performed this year by the Pew Research Center and Trulia, a real estate website.  The Pew Research Center’s survey sample included 2,142 adults.  Fifty-seven percent of the people who answered the survey own a home, 30% rent and the remainder have…

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Why would you want to bring more natural light into your Santa Cruz home? Any time you don’t need to turn on a light switch, it saves energy and money. It discourages mold and mildew. It’s cheering and feels expansive. Even if your power goes out, you can see and possibly even read by natural light. Here are some ways to do it:

• Paint it bright. You may be amazed at how much brighter a room becomes when the walls are a lighter color. Try it.

• Use mirrors. Hanging a mirror on the wall opposite a window will not only make the room seem bigger, it will bounce the light around and banish dark corners.

• Install a skylight. This is a good solution if your Santa Cruz home is wide and light from windows can’t reach the interior. 

• Install a tubular…

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I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the estimated Santa Cruz real estate values provided by online sources, so I thought I’d answer a few of the most frequently asked questions here today.

Why is the price you think my home can sell for different than the estimated home values provided by online real estate sources?

Because computer programs set those prices.  Here’s how it works in general.  A computer pulls the description of your Santa Cruz real estate from public records.   Using that extremely basic information, such as square footage and number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the computer comes up with a price for your home.

Computer programs cannot personally visit your home and other homes in your neighborhood to see the differences and…

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Yes, it’s still a buyer’s market, and there doesn’t appear to be a change coming any time soon.  What makes this a buyers’ market?  There are more homes for sale than people who want to buy them.  That means it takes longer for homes to sell, and buyers can be pickier.

If you want or need to sell your Santa Cruz home, here are four tips to help you do that in today’s real estate market:

1. Be choosy about the real estate agent you hire.  Interview at least three agents.  Ask questions about how they’d market your Santa Cruz home.  You want someone who markets aggressively and uses both online and offline marketing techniques.  Find out how many homes they’ve sold in your neighborhood within the last six months.  You want an agent who has recently sold…

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