Clayton Living & Real Estate

When Clayton Oakhurst residents ask me the value of their homes, it’s usually a test to see if I know what I’m talking about or them wanting a professional to confirm the value they already calculated. Most residents in this area know the value of their home within 5%. Why do they have such insight? In general, they’re an educated bunch who really care about their homes. But there is more to it.

Retirement: Primary residences are now playing a huge part in their retirement fund. So many have lost confidence in company retirement plans, stocks and other traditionaly attractive long term plans. They want something more tangible, controllable (maintenance & improvements, not market), and something they can use today while it appreciates. If their house changes in value, it directly affects the quality of life in retirement years.
Comparison: Keeping up with the Jones’ is evident in our neighborhood too. Even if houses within 2 blocks of each home are no more than 15% different in value, we still like to know where we stand.
Cash Source: The past few years have trained us to see our aggressively appreciating homes as “bank accounts” where we can draw money as long as we leave around 20% equity in the home to avoid unattractive loan conditions. Those of us that have relied on this source of money for improvements or living expenses are not going to enjoy the flattening market in 2006.

Whatever the reason for their insight, it only makes my job easier. Market educated residents that are interested in the industry keep me on my toes but also require me to do a lot less convincing when it comes time to choosing a sales price for their home.

Over the past year I have had about 50 buyers request a single story home in the Oakhurst area of Clayton. There were none on the market at the time, and when one did come on, it was gone quickly after a small bidding war. They were rare because only 15% of the homes are single story, but more importantly, about 80% of single story residents are retired or soon-to-retire folks. That means they are staying and it’s most likely their last house (one resident told me it was his “final resting place”). As of today, there are 6 beautiful single story homes for sale in the Oakhurst area. I have never seen this before, but we may be seeing more of it in 2006. In the past, these homes would get an extra $75,000 just because they were single story. Today, there is no premium for them and in some cases, they can be less desireable to some buyers due to their larger footprint resulting in a smaller yard. If you want one, now is the time.

We’re at about half the normal volume of home sales for this past month. Just another indication that we’re slowing down. What is very interesting is the fact that there were no sales in the Indianhead / Black Diamond area and multiple sales in Peacock Creek. Normally, most of the sales happen in the more affordable Indianhead neighborhood. Take a look at last month’s map where you’ll see 5 closed sales in that area alone.

I differ in opinion from the real estate agent community in the effectiveness of two types of advertising. The first are ads in the Open House section of the Contra Costa Times. Not the big ad with the fancy picture, I’m talking about the smaller ad with the vital stats about Sunday open houses. In Clayton, I get an average of 15 parties (about 35 people) per open house. I also do open houses on Thursday, Saturday and Sundays for new listings. In all my research over the past 6 months, I have had only one person reveal that they were visiting because of that ad. I still advertise there because my sellers expect me to, but you also never know where that buyer is going to come from.

My favorite advertisements are my directional signs I put up before open houses. These are the “A” frame signs you see on the streets usually on Sundays. I call them my “temporary billboards” because that’s how effective they are, especially in our area, where billboards are not permitted. I try to put out as many as possible for my target neighborhoods to see and I put them up an hour before and take them down an hour after other agents. My neighborhoods recognize that I’m working hard at selling properties and they know I’m an area expert. I also get more brand exposure, become more familiar to them and believe it or not, they end up trusting me more. Interesting. But the biggest perk is that I can put them up for free anytime.

We really believe that online video is a seriously underutilized technology in real estate, and we are going to do our best to bring entertaining and useful content to our readers and viewers. How cool would it be to start off your open-house hunting weekend with a ipod loaded up with video preview tours of properties in the areas you are interested in? Well the technology is here TODAY, and to us it represents an enormous opportunity to help buyers and sellers. Buyers appreciate the ability to get much more information about a property than can be gleaned from just photos and numbers, and sellers are attracted by the power of video to present their home in a much more immediate and compelling way.

Our two new videos are of 374 blue oak lane and 391 blue oak lane. please leave a comment, drop us an email, or give us a call and let us know what you think. And DEFINITELY get ahold of us if you have a home you think we should see, we will come by with the camera and do a walkthrough of your place! do it now, while we’re still doing it for free!