Buyer Tips

“That’s it. It’s over. From today onwards, there will be no more single-family houses allowed in California.” Well, that’s not exactly true. There was Senate Bill 9, specifically, signed by Gavin Newsom just a couple of days ago. And this bill severely changed the distinction between what you can and can’t do on a single-family zone lot here in California. So, today, we will talk about Senate Bills 8, 9, and 10 that Gavin Newsom recently signed into law. We will also talk about what it means for our market broadly in California and also here locally. So let’s get into this thing.

You are here on blog number three of my “What the Money Bought” series. Today, we’re talking about what you can get in a house in Alameda at the $2,000,000 price point.

What can you buy with $1.5 million in a house in Alameda? Well, let’s continue with our series of “What the Money Bought.”

What do you actually get for a million dollars in a house in Alameda? Let’s find out.

Due diligence. Boring, right? Wrong!

Today, I want to share some tips, tricks, and a bit of a checklist for you to do due diligence on your real estate transaction here in the Bay Area. For a fact, I can tell you that it is very different here than in every other market. It is because we transact as is, and I will get into that and what that means.

It’s something that gets thrown out a lot in the news, media, social media, all over the internet. However, frankly, no one ever talks about what it is specifically, so today we’re talking about the seller’s market.

So you got your license, and now you’re wondering, “Where should I hang it?” Hopefully, you got a laugh out of that because you didn’t just hang it on your wall. What I mean by that is you should hang your license with a real estate brokerage.

“This looks absolutely nothing like it looked online! Real estate photography is a scam!” When people walk into the house, a lot of the time, they’d realize it’s not exactly the same as what they saw online. There’s a reason for that, and you should know what you’re looking at before showing up so you can set your expectations. So today, we’re going to talk about one of my favorite topics—real estate photography. The reason why it’s my favorite? Because it’s what I do all day. I look at photos of houses, take photos, try and get them to tell a story or present the house in the best light.

Can I buy a house for less than 20% down payment? Today, I want to cover a couple of things when it comes to how much cash you need as down payment when buying a house. The first one is what you can do nationally. The other is what is potentially available to you as a home buyer or an investor versus what will actually succeed in this Bay Area market. Because these two are very different things, I think it’s really important to pay attention to these when you consider what you should do and what you can do here in this market.