AFG Realty Blog

We all want to get the best “deal” we can when we purchase anything let alone a big purchase like a home. Many of us have read or seen the infomercials where they teach you to make an offer 25% below the list price, make the number an odd number, make the closing date short, [...]

This statement reminds me of something my Father would always say to me when I needed money. He would claim the “Golden Rule”. In his case he was referring to “the one with the gold, rules!” I was just reading an article in the Wall Street Journal today about a recent survey conducted by [...]

Well here it is! Almost a year since we started this Blog and the market is still bad for the Seller and great for the Buyer. I was reading through my market forecast for 2009 and all I could see was things have gotten worse for the Sellers. Let me give you an idea of [...]

The California Association of Realtors (CAR) has released their annual housing market report. The Report has several items worth discussion. Most notably are:
1) As of October 2009, sales in California were 28.9 percent ahead of last year for the first 10 months of the year, and have been above 500,000 for 14 consecutive months since [...]

I received an email that has me very concerned for my clients and investors. I thought I would share it with you. First let me set how we got to the email. It’s a little long but stick with me.
A client and I viewed 16 properties one Saturday. In today’s market a good business tool [...]

My strong recommendation for the coming year for both Homeowner/Buyers and Investor/Buyers is GET OFF THE SIDE LINES AND INTO THE GAME! For several reasons that I will outline below now is the time to buy and invest. Let’s look at why I feel so strongly about this recommendation:
1) At this time, until April, the [...]

Wow! Time does fly. I apologize. I did not realize that we had not updated the blog for some time. I will try to get back on track. I thought I would focus on the last three months in this week’s post. Next post I will make some market forecast for the winter/spring season. Let [...]

It appears that my “Summer Market Forecast” was a bit optimistic! New statistics came out this week for the month of July 2009 which shows much slower sales in our area than I believed would happen. I thought I would bring us up to date on the information included in the reports published by the [...]

What a great question! I have read articles and visited web sites that constantly interchange these two items, often to erroneous results. The short answer is really easy. Assessed Value is the value your property taxes are based on and Appraised Value is the value of your property on the day and time the appraisal [...]

This is one of the most frequently asked questions in our office. In the past, in our area, vacant land tumbled as the housing market fell. It was not uncommon in the late 90’s to have people offering to sell their land on the cheap to raise much needed cash. Today’s market has been very [...]