Mary Pope-Handy's Silicon Valley Real Estate Commentary

List Prices and Trends in Almaden Valley, Cambrian Park, Willow Glen and West San Jose

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 18:31:49 -0500

Prices are getting pushed down in virtually all parts of Silicon Valley and in San Jose particularly. Even so, the downward pressure is not uniform among all home types and price points. The San Jose real estate scene is varied by region, home type, condition, school district, and many more factors, including the number of nearby foreclosures and short sales.

The four areas studied appear to be doing better than the city as a whole. For instance, here's the graph of list prices for all of San Jose (which has about a million residents spread over many districts):

What is fairly consistent throughout San Jose, and Santa Clara County too, is that the highest priced properties are suffering much less than the lowest priced ones. The above graph makes that very apparent.

To get a better idea of how pricing is faring among condos and single family homes in Almaden Valley, Cambrian Park, Willow Glen and West San Jose, please visit the Valley of Hearts Delight blog post,
Comparing Real Estate List Prices in Four San Jose Districts.

Please contact me for all your Silicon Valley real estate needs!

Mary Pope-Handy, Realtor, CRS, ABR, e-PRO, SRES, ASP, RECS, CNHS, ACRE
Helping Nice Folks to Buy & Sell Homes Since 1993
Co-Author: "Get The Best Deal When Selling Your Home In Silicon Valley"
877 397-5391 (Direct/Toll-Free/Fax);   408 204-7673 (Cell)
www.DelightHomes.com     (PopeHandy.com)
emailto: Mary@PopeHandy.com
Blog: www.LiveInLosGatos.com & www.ValleyOfHeartsDelight.com

The Blossom Manor neighborhood of Los Gatos

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 16:42:57 -0500

One of the most sought-after areas among first time Los Gatos homebuyers is Blossom Hill Manor, also known as Blossom Manor or simply The Manor. What's the draw? Often it's the award winning Los Gatos schools, two of which are within a mile: the newly remodeled and renovated Blossom Hill School and Fisher Middle School. Also highly valued is the proximity to grocery stores, banks, coffee shops, and much more - many so close that a car is not needed to reach them. More reasons for the enduring popularity - a good proximity to parks & freeway access points and a quick 2 miles to downtown Los Gatos.

Most of the neighborhood consists of single family homes with prices that range from a low of about $1.1 million to a high of about $2.2 million. A few duplexes line the outside of the neighborhood, though, on Blossom Hill Road, Camelia Terrace and Los Gatos-Almaden Road.

For more information, please view my lengthy and detailed post on the Live in Los Gatos blog. There you'll find a map of the neighborhood, photos and a slideshow, plus information on things to investigate if purchasing in the area. Meet the Blossom Manor Neighborhood of Los Gatos.

For more information on buying homes in Los Gatos, please visit the Los Gatos Homebuyer Starting kit page - nothing to download and loads of information available there.

Please contact me for all your Los Gatos and nearby Silicon Valley real estate needs!

Mary Pope-Handy, Realtor, CRS, ABR, e-PRO, SRES, ASP, RECS, CNHS, ACRE
Helping Nice Folks to Buy & Sell Homes Since 1993
Co-Author: "Get The Best Deal When Selling Your Home In Silicon Valley"
877 397-5391 (Direct/Toll-Free/Fax); 408 204-7673 (Cell)
www.DelightHomes.com (PopeHandy.com)
emailto: Mary@PopeHandy.com
Blog: www.LiveInLosGatos.com & www.ValleyOfHeartsDelight.com

Does Your Brokerage Make It Easy For The Public To Find You?

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:09:59 -0500

Are you easy to find? Does your company help?

In recent months, I've been noticing either website makeovers on established brokerages or new firms emerging with websites that have a surprising trend: many real estate firms are making it harder for people to find you. Now, I do not really blame these companies. It is good for the brokerages. If they can intercept the public directly accessing you, if they can "capture the leads" and then sell them to an agent for a referral fee, they have just increased their profit. They have created a new "revenue stream".

But is it good for you?

Here's my challenge to you, agent colleague: first, make a list for yourself of the 3-5 "big" real estate firms in your area. You know, the ones that have (or claim to have) the most production, the most production per agent, or whatever way one might describe a lot of business.

Next, go to each of those real estate websites for the companies on your list. Put yourself in a buyer or seller's shoes. How easy or difficult is it to locate the "search for an agent" or "find an agent" button?

What do you see? How many of the firms make it easy for the agents to be found? How is YOUR brokerage in that regard?

I don't want to "name names" and put any particular companies into an unfavorable spotlight, but I do think that we need to understand what is happening on the playing field. And we need to know if our real estate brokerages are helping us, or possibly hurting us, with the way they are marketing themselves on the web.

Finally, Google yourself. Are you easy to find? Can buyers and sellers quickly find your contact information on page 1 of Google? If not, you need to work on your Active Rain profile and your Linked In profile so that you ARE easy to find, whether your brokerage is a help or not. (You may not be able to change your real estate company's website, but you can improve your own "findability".) For people with common names, find a consistent way of branding your name so that your clients know how to locate you when searching. That may mean using a middle initial, a tag line, or a town or city name, whatever makes you distinct.

My background is in theology and I remember a saintly older priest at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley once saying, simply, "God WANTS to be found". It's simple, isn't it?

So do we "want to be found".

Haunted Real Estate

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 03:29:41 -0600

Do you like ghost stories?

Do you have ghost stories of your own?

If you're a real estate professional, perhaps you've noticed that homes sometimes give off an energy of being happy or sad - and you can almost "get" the sense of what happened there from what the house exudes. Have you also ever been in homes where you thought you weren't alone, but you could not actually see that anyone else was there?

Know what I'm talking about?

Alright, I guess I'm pretty much out of the closet with this: I'm a Realtor and I collect ghost stories. I have a web page on one of my realty sites dedicated to homes with ghosts: http://www.hauntedrealestate.com/. I've been found out. The good folks at http://www.realtown.com/ asked if I'd write an article on this topic, and I did, and today it was published.

And you know what? A whole lot of people (some I have known and some not) wrote to me today with THEIR ghost stories. Which proves what I say early on in my article: people won't tell you their ghost stories unless they believe that you believe.

OK so take a peek at the article and also at my website. The article is on http://www.realtown.com/ (direct link ishttp://www.realtown.com/articles/haunted-real-estate-a-primer-for-real-estate-agents ). The website is www.HauntedRealEstate.com .

I welcome your feedback, real estate professionals!

And even more, please tell me: what is the disclosure requirement in YOUR STATE regarding the sale of haunted (or stigmatized) properties?

Source for Images to use on the Web?

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 16:00:31 -0500

Confessions of newer blogger: I have no idea where you all get the great graphics you use in your posts.

My blogs tend to look like the white pages of the phone book - all words. That is, unless I happened to take the picture myself.

Yesterday I was at Office Depot for supplies and I saw a CD with clip art, including web graphics, for about $30. "Cool" I was thinking. "That should do it."

But my 17 year old in-house-tech-support and son, Brian, read the fine print and told me that it was "not for commercial use". <unprintable> The software is now by the door in the Office Depot bag, waiting to get returned. At least I didn't open it first.

So I am just going to ask: how do you do it? Where or what is the fountain of web graphics? I am happy to pay for the license if that's how it works. I respect trademarks and copyrights and would not just lift some pic and plunk it in my blog. All these great images have to come from somewhere.

Do you have a favorite source that you would not mind sharing?

How did the Los Gatos Real Estate Market Fare in October?

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:40:45 -0600

For many homesellers in Los Gatos (and Silicon Valley generally), and for their Realtors, the real estate market is extremely challenging right now. Buyers have been wary for many months already, but now they're concerned about a recession and job losses, not just the possibility of a real estate sales price that won't hold its value later. It is a deepening buyers market overall, but especially within the market for single family homes.

Read more at Closed Sales of Homes in Los Gatos: Yes, The Numbers Are Down (includes the absorption rates of single family homes and condos in Los Gatos in 2008).

Mary Pope-Handy, Realtor, CRS, ABR, e-PRO, SRES, ASP, RECS, CNHS, ACRE
Helping Nice Folks to Buy & Sell Homes Since 1993
Co-Author: "Get The Best Deal When Selling Your Home In Silicon Valley"
877 397-5391 (Direct/Toll-Free/Fax); 408 204-7673 (Cell)
www.DelightHomes.com (PopeHandy.com) & www.ValleyOfHeartsDelight.com
emailto: Mary@PopeHandy.com
Blog: www.LiveInLosGatos.com

AIG Partied Hardy After Bailout - Have You Read This?

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:51:07 -0500

Did you read about this?

"Days after federal officials agreed to an $85 billion bailout of American International Group, the insurance firm spent more than $440,000 for a corporate retreat"

The article is found at The Smoking Gun, and you can read about it here:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/1007083aig1.html

This is why America is disgusted. We watch as equity in homes is eroded, the value of any savings in stocks, bonds and mutual funds declines in value, and we see our nation going deeper into trouble, no doubt a recession now. These types of abuses on the way out the door or just after the bailout need to be viewed as criminal.

Get to Know the Oak Canyon Neighborhood

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:50:27 -0500

The Oak Canyon neighborhood of the Almaden Valley district in San Jose is an upscale area with good-sized homes and lots on well kept, meandering streets near the base of the coastal foothills. It's near to Los Gatos and Cambrian Park, so is a very convenient area for commuters.

Additionally, Oak Canyon has a great nearby elementary school, Guadalupe School, which features high scores.

To learn more about this great area, please read Meet the Oak Canyon Neighborhood of Almaden Valley in San Jose on the Valley of Hearts Delight blog.

Please contact me for all your Almaden Valley or Silicon Valley real estate needs!

Mary Pope-Handy, Realtor, CRS, ABR, e-PRO, SRES, ASP, RECS, CNHS, ACRE
Helping Nice Folks to Buy & Sell Homes Since 1993
Co-Author: "Get The Best Deal When Selling Your Home In Silicon Valley"
877 397-5391 (Direct/Toll-Free/Fax); 408 204-7673 (Cell)
www.DelightHomes.com (PopeHandy.com)
emailto: Mary@PopeHandy.com
Blog: www.LiveInLosGatos.com & www.ValleyOfHeartsDelight.com

Surrey Farms Neighborhood Spotlight (Los Gatos, CA)

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Thu, 24 May 2007 23:08:27 -0500

There are a few neighborhoods so inviting that I always keep my eye on them, "just in case" some affordable home were to come on the market. One of them is Surrey Farms in Los Gatos, CA. It is a sprawling enclave (gated, but the gate never closes) of low-key but spacious homes on large, half-acre lots. It is a charming area because it is so unpretentious.

I wrote about Surrey Farms in my Live in Los Gatos blog just recently. I invite you to see some pictures and get to know this "close to town" area better by visiting my site.

Los Gatos, CA: spotlight on Belwood and Belgatos Park

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 11:36:56 -0500

Los Gatos (Spanish for "The Cats") snuggles into the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains, also called "The Coastal Range" since it separates the Santa Clara Valley from the area along the coast. On the other side of "the hill", as locals call it, lies the unconventional city of Santa Cruz (famous for being the first place in the continental US where surfing was introduced and for the odd college mascot of The Banana Slug at UCSC), the beach, and the exquisite Monterey Bay.

Inland is Silicon Valley, the high-tech magnet, which is centered around San Jose, the self-appointed Capital of Silicon Valley.

Right in between, but on the valley side, lies my scenic town, Los Gatos. It enjoys the best of both worlds, with lots of great open space (prized in the land of infill) and also a bustling and vibrant downtown, featuring a disproportionate amount of great shopping and nightlife.

Today I want to spotlight the Belwood (and Belgatos and Surmont) neighborhoods on the eastern corner of town and showcase the town's park there, Belgatos Park. My family and I live in Belwood and visit the park daily. In fact, after becoming deeply inamored with Belgatos Park and its myriad of trails that connect to Peninsula Open Space Preserve Trails, my husband, Jim Handy, began to write "Trail Notes" for our neighborhood quarterly paper, The Bellringer. And soon he was recruited to be a volunteer Parks Commissioner for the Town of Los Gatos. Jim loves the hikes, the views, the peace and quiet. Other folks make use of the trails for mountain bikes, exercize strollers, or to exercize their horses. As for me, I like to go armed with a camera!

The park features a great playground for kids, a decent parking lot which isn't far from the equipment, benches and picnic tables and a very helpful public restroom located near the main entrance and play areas. It's a huge park with trails for people, mountain bikes, and equestrians, and they connect to other parks and open space preserves as well. The trails provide a great opportunity to be almost "in town" and yet feel very remote.

The view to the left is from a landing in the trail close to the top of Harwood Road in Belgatos Park. It's peaceful and serene and on a clear day you can see not just San Jose, but San Francisco - and even to Mount Tam in the north bay with good conditions!

Homes at the base of this park are generally in the east Los Gatos area. The three closest neighborhoods are Belwood, Belgatos, and Surmont, and together they comprise about 500 homes.

If you would like more information on this great neighborhood, please visit my site for this part of town at http://www.belwoodoflosgatos.com/.

Mary

Mary Pope-Handy, Realtor, CRS, ABR, e-PRO, SRES, ASP, RECS, CNHS
Helping Nice Folks to Buy & Sell Homes Since 1993
Co-Author: "Get The Best Deal When Selling Your Home In Silicon Valley"
408 204-7673 (Cell);
www.PopeHandy.com (www.DelightHomes.com); www.ValleyOfHeartsDelight.com

emailto: Mary@PopeHandy.com

Welcome to the Surrey Farms Neighborhood of Los Gatos

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 17:34:38 -0500

Surrey Farms is a highly sought after neighborhood in the Kennedy Road area of east Los Gatos. A comforably sprawling enclave (gated, but the gate never closes) of low-key but spacious ranch style homes reside on large, half-acre lots.

The area once did have horses and a large stable, but those days are now long gone. It is a charming area because it is so unpretentious.

Homes in this area have become far more affordable recently, with some now in the mid 1 millions (appx 1.5 mil).

You can read much more about Surrey Farms over at the Live in Los Gatos blog. I invite you to see some pictures and get to know this "close to town" area better by reading Great Neighborhood: Surrey Farms in Los Gatos

Please contact me for all your Los Gatos real estate and nearby Silicon Valley real estate needs:

Mary Pope-Handy, Realtor, CRS, ABR, e-PRO, SRES, ASP, RECS, CNHS, ACRE
Helping Nice Folks to Buy & Sell Homes Since 1993
Co-Author: "Get The Best Deal When Selling Your Home In Silicon Valley"
877 397-5391 (Direct/Toll-Free/Fax); 408 204-7673 (Cell)
www.DelightHomes.com (PopeHandy.com)
emailto: Mary@PopeHandy.com
Blog: www.LiveInLosGatos.com & www.ValleyOfHeartsDelight.com

More Neat Photo Effects You Can Do With Picnik

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:18:26 -0500

I only started working with Picnik a couple of weeks ago, so I have the enthusiasm of a new convert. I hope you will find a few of these tricks new and helpful.

The first point I want to make is that it's easier to morph one photo than to take a dozen. So I love it when I can use a picture I've taken and make it feel rehabbed or "like new". Let's use a pumpkin photo for example.

Last year I took a shot of a pile of pumpkins. Here's a cropped version of it (to left).

It's just a simple bunch of pumpkins.

But take that same photo to a photo editing site like Picnik, and all of a sudden, you can do some nifty things with that same picture.

One thing is to make it appear to be in a polaroid photo and write a greeting on the bottom, as I did in the version to the left. This is nice if you want to take a holiday photo and wish someone Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Birthday, or anything else.

But wait, there's more!

There are also a zillion ways to tinker with the image in terms of brightness, saturation, contrast, highlights, and shadows.

This kind of thing can suddenly take the same image and make it look sophisticated and formal or surreal and dream-like.

Or frame it and make it look like it should be hung on a wall!

Have a look at the same photo again, but with a few more effects:

Here's the same photo but zoomed in a little (vignette effect) and then faded on the outskirts - the matte effect. It takes on a surreal feeling due to the whitish edges and faded effect.

And finally, here's the same cropped image after applying the vignette effect and then had the saturation level turned up, and then, finally, framing added. Again, it's a very different look due to the editing and tweaking! It's actually pretty amazing what can be done with a plain photo if a little effort and creativity is applied.

Creating Simple Graphics for Your Blogs - An Easy "How To"

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:51:20 -0500

When I started blogging a couple of years ago, my #1 concern was where to get images and graphics. How on earth did people find them without violating copyright????

One simple way is to make them yourself. Frances Flynn Thorsen opened my eyes to the easy, simple and amazing things that can be done with Microsoft Paint. It's not enough by itself, but it becomes awesome when combined with Picnik.

Let's say you want to make a button. For our example, it will be a "contact me now" button.

Go to Paint.

First decide what shape your button will be. For our purposes, let's choose the rectangular shape with rounded corners. Pull the mouse across the field to form the basic shape of your button. It does not have to be exact.
Then, click on the icon that indicates a paint bucket pouring out its paint.
Now you can choose a color. The palette will show up at the bottom of the screen (if the basic colors aren't enough, go to the toolbar above and click on "Colors" and then "Edit Colors" and there will be more choices).
After selecting the color, move your mouse into the rectangle and click the button. The color you chose should fill up the space. (If you don't like the color, just go to "edit" and "undo" and try again.)
Now save your colored shape. Go to "file" then "save as" and choose the type of file you want it to be. Jpg is easy. Put it somewhere in your pictures file where you can remember it.
Close paint.

Go to Picnik.com.

On your browser, go to www.Picnik.com
Click on the upper right corner, "start picniking".
Upload your colored shape. It will have a LOT of white space, but don't worry - we'll crop that out next.
After uploading, go to the "edit" tab and chose the "crop" button. Drag your mouse so that the cropping screen covers what you want to work with, and then click ok.
Now you have your basic colored rectangle without all the extra white space around it. Almost done!
Click on the tab that says "create".
Click on the sub tab that says "text".
Now you can select your words, then font, then the color and size of the font. What is good about this (as opposed to paint) is that the words slip over the color as if transparent. If you did this in paint, you'd have a large white space all around your text. Very ugly!
More? You can then click on the sub tab for "shapes" and add stuff. Since it's almost Halloween, I'll add a few graphics for the season....
Lastly, click on the "save & share" button. It's intuitive from here!

Creating a Landing Page - Your Feedback is Appreciated!

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:12:24 -0500

Do you use landing pages in your business? If you haven't heard of them, they are pages on your site or blog to which you drive targeted visitors.

For instance, you could want to get first time homebuyer leads in your town or city, so you could create a page intended for that group. It could be any niche or target, from a type of buyer or seller (first time, luxury, move up) or property (view homes, condos, REOs).

I decided that I want to find more Los Gatos home buyers so set out to create a landing page for that purpose. In an effort to make it effective, I've been reading up on how to do it right, listening to webinars, and utilizing some of the techniques I've learned from blogging. There are some things that I read that I should not do, but am doing anyway (putting the page on an interior pages that has links to other sections of the site - the gurus seem to prefer a stand alone page without the usual navigation stuff).

This is a new area for me, but I'm hoping it'll be effective. One of the marketing gurus I have paid attention to is Jennifer Cummings (Potato Chip Marketing) and I have tried to implement her approach, even if it's not really my style. (It will be my style if it works!)

See what you think - I appreciate your feedback.

Buy a Los Gatos Home!

The Economic Meltdown and Los Gatos Home Sales

Mary Pope-Handy, ABR, CRS, ePRO, SRES, ASP (Sereno Group Real Estate) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 23:17:01 -0500

With all the grim news on Wall Street lately, the question arises as to whether or not home sales are being adversely affected. My clients all seem to have gone into a holding pattern of wanting things to calm down first.

My seller clients are either waiting to regain some equity or simply waiting until they feel like they won't be getting so beat up in the market. My buyer clients are now unsure about the basics like job security with a looming recession.

Perhaps there will be less insecurity after the election.

Meanwhile, though, are sales in Los Gatos this month adversely impacted by the economic crisis? To see the answer, please read on at my Live in Los Gatos blog: Is The Economic Crisis Impacting Los Gatos Home Sales?