Homes With Heart by Heather Coombs-Perez
Homes With Heart – Heather Coombs-Perez
In today’s market, where many property values are depressed, and short sales and bank-owned foreclosures are commonplace, a fair appraisal is critical to ensuring you garner fair market value for your home when selling or refinancing. By definition, a real estate appraisal, property valuation, or land valuation is the process undertaken to assess the property’s market value, which is the [...]
Homes With Heart – Heather Coombs-Perez
If your home could make New Year’s resolutions, what would they be? Every year my friends and I always seem to make the same resolutions to lose weight, get out of debt, volunteer more, get fit and learn something new. I recently read an article in Houselogic that renamed these resolutions in “house-speak”. Let me explain… • Lose weight—aka cut your energy use Many homes in [...]
Homes With Heart – Heather Coombs-Perez
Being an adult now, I can relate to my parents blasé attitude towards the holidays. After running here and there, spending money I may or may not actually have, and trying to fit all the commitments, parties and activities into an already jam-packed schedule, I’m beat. Sometimes, I’d just love to sit back and take it all in. I’d like to be as blissful and in the moment as my children are [...]
Homes With Heart- Heather Coombs-Perez
It’s Veteran’s Day today, and I am thankful for the wonderful men and women who serve our country. Being a licensed Realtor since 1993, you may find it shocking that I just closed my first Veteran’s Affairs (VA) loan last month. Even more shocking is that the seller's agent, a prominent realtor licensed for over two decades, had never participated in a VA loan negotiation either. At the [...]
Homes with Heart – Heather Coombs-Perez
My front lawn was literally turned upside down over the past two weeks due to the addition of a fantastic new retaining wall. I’m excited when I look out my front window now and see a beautifully flat lawn, with decorative lighting and new grass. It looks amazing. Besides increasing the curb-appeal of our home, the main benefit of our retaining wall is the removal of the steeply sloped yard [...]
Homes with Heart – Heather Coombs-Perez
As the economy continues to hold almost steady and markets see-saw up and down, it should come as no surprise that there is both good and bad news when it comes to real estate. According to Fannie Mae’s August National Housing Survey, 78 percent of Americans say the economy is on the wrong track and 27 percent think housing prices will go down over the next year. This is the greatest degree of [...]
Homes With Heart – Heather Coombs-Perez
Freddie Mac released the results of the Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) for the past week and once again, mortgage rates have attained all-time record lows, surpassing the previous record lows seen in August 2011. 30-year fixed-rate mortgages (FRM) averaged 4.12 percent with an average 0.7 point for the week ending September 8, 2011, down from last week when it averaged 4.22 percent. Last [...]
Homes with Heart – Heather Coombs-Perez
It’s always amazing to me how quickly the summer seems to fly by. For readers with kids, the arrival of Labor Day brings a return to the familiar routine of school, work, extracurricular activities and family time. As always, a fair bit of organizing (and scrambling!) goes into this last week before school starts. Books and pencils need to be bought, lunch snacks anticipated, alarm clocks need [...]
Homes With Heart – Heather Coombs-Perez
Can you believe it’s almost time to go back to school? I don’t know where the time has gone. When I was a child summer seemed to go on forever. They really were lazy, hazy days. Now summer seems to pass me by in the blink of an eye and I never get as much done as I feel I should. Summer also seems to be the top time to tackle remodeling projects. However, according to Remodeling Magazine’s [...]
Homes With Heart – Heather Coombs-Perez
In real estate and banking circles, there has been much talk about the decrease in the conforming and FHA high balance loan limits set to take place on October 1, 2011. This decrease from $729,750 to $625,500 for single family homes will result in greater numbers of buyers requiring “jumbo” mortgages in order to purchase modest homes in a metropolis such as Los Angeles. A jumbo mortgage is a [...]
