Leaves are starting to change color, nights are getting cooler and pumpkins are appearing on porches of Santa Cruz homes.  All signs that fall is here.

That means it’s time to do fall preventative maintenance on all Santa Cruz homes.  To help you get started, here’s a quick checklist: 
• Have a professional heating contractor inspect your Santa Cruz home’s heating system.  An annual furnace inspection ensures that your heating system is operating at peak efficiency and most importantly that it is running safely.

• Replace your furnace filter.  Furnace filters need to be replaced frequently to allow your heating system to operate properly.

• Hire a certified chimney sweep clean.  Have him inspect your wood burning stove or fireplace and clean the…

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Searching for the right home takes time and patience. Before you start looking at Santa Cruz homes on the market, you need to know exactly what you want in your new home.

Create a list of the features you want in your new home, so you make the most of your time by looking only at Santa Cruz homes that meet your criteria. Here is a quick guide to help you create a checklist:

1. Must Have. These are deal breakers; features that you cannot live without. Do you need a certain number of bedrooms? Do you work from home and need an office, or maybe even an outside entrance to your home office? Perhaps you have small children or large dogs and need a fenced yard. Decide now what you must have in your new home.

2. Like to Have. Features you would “like to…

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Buying a new home takes a lot of preparation. Without knowing what you are walking in to, you are bound to run into road blocks. A good Santa Cruz real estate agent can help you understand the intricacies involved in purchasing your new home. Some of the most common problems that buyers run into are avoidable.

Buying the Best is Nice… but

If you’re looking at the most expensive house in the neighborhood, in the city or in the state, you’re asking for problems.  The chance that it will go down in value, be difficult to make payments on if anything changes in your lifestyle, or be hard to sell in the event of a foreclosure is high, which makes it tough to get a mortgage.

If you must have the most expensive home, pay the most you can as a down payment. …

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The biggest barriers to selling your home are often those you create yourself by wanting a quick sale or not learning all there is to know about presenting your house to its best advantage.

When you first begin to think about selling your Santa Cruz home it seems easy. Put a sign on the lawn and list it. Once the shine wears off of the desire to do it all yourself, you might need some tips to help sell your home:

Clean It Up

That's the first and foremost advice. Nothing deters a real estate sale faster than a messy house. Living in your home while trying to sell it makes it difficult to keep it clean, but if you're serious about wanting to sell your home, it's worth the extra effort.  You may want to learn how to clean your home fast for those times…

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The national and Santa Cruz real estate markets are constantly fluctuating, falling somewhere between more inventory and lower prices and less inventory and higher prices. People are often frightened when the home inventory rises, but a declining real estate market may just be the perfect time to find your next home.

Here are 4 reasons why you should consider buying Santa Cruz real estate in a down market.

1. Inventory. When the market is down, more homes are for sale. This means you have more homes to choose from, which makes it easier to find a home in your dream neighborhood or closer to work or school.

2. Negotiation. There’s a reason down markets are called “buyers’ markets.” Sellers want to sell their homes, and they are often willing to do…

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De-cluttering your Santa Cruz home is an important part of preparing it for sale. Buyers want to be able to imagine themselves and their belongings inside your home. However, this idea isn’t limited to the inside of your home. It also applies to your garage.

Cluttered, over-crowded garages turn buyers away. Fortunately, sprucing up your garage is easier than you think. Here are some tips to get you started.

1. Start with a list. If you’re like most people, you probably don’t even know what’s inside your garage. Take a pencil and paper and walk through your garage, writing down everything you see. You don’t need a detailed list. For example, screws, bolts, and nails can be listed together as hardware.

2. Reduce the list. Cleaning your garage means…

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Many real estate agents say, “Stage your Santa Cruz homes for sale!” If you have no idea what that means, you might Google it, read a few articles and get the idea that you throw a little rented furniture into your home and call it done. If you read a little bit more, you might add a mirror or potted plant here and there. However, if you really dig into it, you’ll find that staging Santa Cruz homes for sale take a whole lot more than that.

Test Your Knowledge
Did you know…

• Smaller furniture in small areas makes the space appear bigger.
• Carefully arranged plants bring warmth to a living area.
• Rugs and artwork add depth and dimension to a room.
• Sunlight shining through a window makes a room feel warm and inviting.
• A staged bedroom is as important as…

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With the many auctions here and throughout the U.S., you may be wondering if it’s worth buying Santa Cruz real estate this way. Auctions let you bid at a public sale.  Some property is being sold by the owner, but most properties are foreclosures being sold by banks.

Like any endeavor, there are pros and cons in buying Santa Cruz real estate at an auction. For instance, a pro for auctions might be the price; you can often get great discounts on nice homes through an auction. However, you may get caught up in the fervor of the bidding process and pay more for a home than you ever intended.

The Condition of the Home may be Questionable 
When you work with a real estate agent to buy a home in the traditional manner, you go through the home inspection…

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Trying to sell your Santa Cruz real estate in a slow market can be frustrating. You may find that it takes longer to sell and you can’t get as much money as you could during a booming market. However, you can’t believe all the hype about a sluggish real estate market. Do your research and separate the facts from the fiction. 

Here are 3 myths and the facts behind the fiction:

1. You won’t get a decent price. Your Santa Cruz real estate will sell for whatever a buyer is willing to pay. A comparative market analysis shows you what other buyers spent on property like yours. Of course, if you bought your home when values were up, you may not get the return on your investment you’d hoped for. However, most sellers get a fair price and even make a profit in a…

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Setting the asking price for their Santa Cruz homes for sale is one of the most important decisions homeowners have to make in the selling process.  Why is it so important?

• You only get one chance to make a good first impression.  With so many competing Santa Cruz homes for sale, yours has to pop out immediately as a good value or buyers will move on, unlikely to return. You get one stab at your home's debut, and it's easy to blow it.

• Set the price too high and you could hurt your chances of selling your home.  The amount of traffic a home gets in the first week on the market is about 5 times what it gets the following weeks.  The traffic continues to decrease every week. You might say, “Well, I’ll just lower my price.”  This hurts almost as much…

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