A Rainy Day in Palm Springs

Well, it’s here – our rainy season, when we’ll probably get our three to six inches of rain for the entire year. These rare grey days really emphasize to us how lucky we are with abundant sunshine almost every day of the year. The surrounding mountains whose views we so enjoy are today shrouded in [...]

Warm days and cool nights in Palm Springs

TV weather coverage of the colder states seems as if they are showing us another planet. Today and all this coming week, the highs in Palm Springs will be in the low seventies. What does this mean? Oh, people can still walk around in their shorts and tee shirts, play tennis, catch a few rays, [...]

Good News on the First Time Home Credit

This week in quick succession, the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, on Wednesday and Thursday respectively, voted to extend the home credit in a new $24 billion economic stimulus bill, and today President Obama signed it into law. The bill extends tax incentives to prospective homebuyers; it also includes additional benefits to those [...]

Don’t Wait Too Long to Buy

If you are a pre-qualified buyer with a lender ready to go, my advice is – don’t wait too long to pull the trigger on your loan. You may be waiting for that perfect time to buy because you think that prices are still coming down, and maybe you are right. Prices may still come [...]

Tracking Price Trends

Are homes going to get much cheaper? In a recent article at CNN Money.com entitled Homes about to get much cheaper, the author stated: If you thought home prices were bottoming out, you may be wrong. They’re expected to head a lot lower. The author goes on to say that the national median price is [...]

From Palm Springs to Vegas

We low desert dwellers occasionally find a reason to go up to Las Vegas. This time we were going to attend a wedding at Graceland Chapel. For our drive, we chose a different route; rather than jumping into Friday afternoon traffic toward LA, then going north past Victorville, we went by way of Yucca Valley, [...]

Time to Invest

We’re having a feeding frenzy! If you haven’t been following the real estate market lately, you might have just missed a market bottom go by, here in Palm Springs. If you are a potential investor, don’t wait! I get the impression that if we haven’t hit bottom for properties at the low end of this [...]

Canyons, Palms, and Water

Last week some of our family from the East Coast came for their annual summer visit. They find our desert home with closeup mountain views and our pool, spa, palms, and other flora all rather exotic. Sunny days, along with our mister cooling system, invite them out to swim and read all day. They’re amazed [...]

From Trickle to Torrent

Lender owned properties are dominating our market
A year ago, on July 9, 2008, I blogged about investors entering the Palm Springs real estate market. Spurred on by an increasing number of foreclosures, that market trend presented low prices and thus a good opportunity for investors. With our economy in turmoil and foreclosures on the rise, [...]

Discoveries

When you buy a house, they can’t tell you everything. Some things you just discover over time. In our case, that extra something was the endless entertainment in watching our hummingbirds. They keep very busy feeding right up until dark. Our dominant bird often stations himself near his preferred food source, a bed of red [...]