California Expands $10K Buyer Tax Credit

On March 25, 2010 a new law, AB 183, was signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as a 2010 Tax Credit for new home / first time buyers; the law allocates $200 million to be used for tax credit incentives to homebuyers for homes purchased between May 1, 2010 and August 1, 2011. That’s twice the [...]

Ten Days of Modern Love in Palm Springs

Billed as 10 Days of Modern Love in Palm Springs, the fifth annual Modernism Week begins this Friday, the 12th (with a preview party on Thursday night) and runs through the February 21st. The Festival has grown steadily each year and has recently been featured in such publications as TIME.com, LATimes.com, Forbes, the Wall Street [...]

Sports Illustrated Models Come to Palm Springs

Hey everybody, the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is out and much in the news. This year Palm Springs shines in having hosted a shoot with two of the models featured in the issue. The setting is the Palm Springs Air Museum. It’s no accident that this location was chosen; our Air Museum has one [...]

Rainfall Above Average in 2010

It was reported yesterday in the Desert Sun that rainfall in the Coachella Valley was already above average at 6.29 inches this season. That was yesterday. Today it is gently raining again. Our annual average is just above five inches, so we can be sure that this added rainfall will benefit our aquifers. We are [...]

A Rare 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, [...]