On Sunday, we had a great open house at our listing at 1895 Saint Norbert Drive in Danville.

Over 25 groups came through in the afternoon; many of them ready to purchase a home. It’s good to see the real estate market picking up. We have noticed over the last couple of weeks an increased interest in real estate. We are currently working with several preapproved buyers and several sellers getting ready to put their home on the market.

The recent increase of the conforming loan limits for the Bay Area is definitely helping the buyers getting qualified easier.

The home on Saint Norbert Drive is beautifully updated and has amazing landscaping; the location is superb on a quiet court with great neighbors and close to shops, I-680 and award winning schools. 

The HarperMees Team represents many buyers and sellers in the Greenbrook neighborhood; on Sunday I met with several neighbors during the open house to discuss their real estate needs. I recommend buyers letting us know when they are planning to make a move to Danville and especially Greenbrook.

We know many neighbors that are planning of selling their home in the near future. I therefore always advise buyers to keep in touch with us because we might be able to inform them about opportunities before homes get listed on the market.

Interested Greenbrook neighborhood buyers can register themselves on our websites www.HarperMees.com or check out our neighborhood website www.GreenbrookNeighbors.com

This article – Homeowners Trash Their Homes Before Handing Over the Keys -from the Real Estate Journal really hits a nerve with me.

A while back, we had a short sale in contract. Going through a short sale is no picnic – for the seller, the buyer or the agents. The deal is never done until the ink is dry.

In this situation, the holder of the second would not sign off on the deal – and they waited to the last possible second to say so. This in spite of all the national media spin they are spinning telling the public how they are bending over backwards to help homeowners in trouble.

The homeowner was so enraged that they removed many items from the remodel they were doing on the house including French doors, cannister lights and the new furnace.

The whole situation went from a bad situation to a neighborhood nightmare.

If you are considering purchasing a home through a short sale or a foreclosure – work with an agent, the anxiety and frustration you save yourself will be priceless.

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My fellow team members all reported that this weekend’s garage sale event in Greenbrook and Shadow Hills was a huge success. The rain held off so the band was able to set up and play outside while the garage sale sellers could set up their tables outside.

Jane, my “garage sale fever,” friend, had a blast selling her items at the Meeses’ house on Alicante Place.

I’m writing this at Peet’s in Crow Canyon Commons where Heather Marchman, a local therapist,  came up and introduced herself. She spotted me with my billboard computer.

Heather was one of the garage sale participants in Shadow Hills. She reported $500 worth of sales and was appreciative of the neighborhood participation. Heather is fairly new in the area and is openning her private practice office. She, also, loved the networking aspect of the garage sale – meeting all the people from around the neighborhood and the local communities.

Heather also has an interest in building a web presence for her practice and we talked quite a bit about how to do that. We have agreed to meet to explore her professional situation more.

I love it when people stop to chat over an espresso!

What is it about garage sales?

We’ve had 22 homes in the Greenbrook & Shadow Hills neighborhoods of Danville, CA sign up for today’s big garage sale event. I was delivering maps, signs and pricing stickers yesterday to all the participants and had a couple of fun moments.

I caught the husband of one of the homes that had signed up. He was completely surprised that they were holding a garage sale. He was okay with it, but commented he would be up late to help with preparations and to ensure that nothing was being sold that he still wanted.

How often it is that the husbands are the last to know what is going on in the house!

My girlfriend, Jane, decided to unclutter the patio and yard. She emptied and cleaned up a bunch of terracotta pots and took them over to the Meeses. She sold $80 of them yesterday to neighbors making a preemptive strike.

She has now caught “garage sale” fever and was up late packing the car with stuff that just yesterday she couldn’t live without!

Here’s hoping the weather is dry from 8 to noon.

I just updated this week’s MLS trends for some of the markets we cover.

The charts seem to indicate that San Ramon and Dublin are seeing the most improvement or stability lately. The active listings in Dublin have fallen dramatically in the last few months and the pending sales have bumped up and are holding steady. In San Ramon, the increase in Spring inventory has not been too dramatic and pending sales are climbing sharply.

Looking at the chart, Walnut Creek seems to be the community with the numbers working against it – sharply increasing inventory and flat pending sales. Pleasanton, CA looks to be in about the same situation as Walnut Creek while Danville is in the middle of the pack.

If you’re thinking of buying new home construction in the TriValley area, here is a note of interest from the Associated Press:

For Lennar, the average sales price of homes delivered dropped to $278,000, down from $303,000 in the year-ago period, partly due to higher sales incentives offered to homebuyers. The company averaged $48,000 in incentives per home delivered in the first quarter, compared to $45,500 per home delivered in the first quarter of 2007.

As you may recall, at the end of last summer, homebuilders were trying to  reduce incentives as the market gave a slight hiccup of improvement. That attempt didn’t last long and after the end of a dismal year, the incentives have returned. New home buyers with a down payment and good credit remain in the driver’s seat with negotiating a good deal on a new home.

A real estate agent with experience in new home sales (like Tracey) can be invaluable for buyers looking at new construction. Talk to any former new home sales agent and they will confirm the value. They certainly won’t do this while they are working for a builder because the common misconception on the part of buyers is that cutting out the agent will save them even more money. The reality is totally the opposite with an experienced agent.

Move-up buyers also remain in positions of negotiating power as they did last fall and for the same reasons. The big change here is that sellers are becoming more realistic on pricing and inventory has shrunk so there aren’t as many choices. Interest rates remain historically favorable.

Don’t expect the prices to drop much more. Most agree, that our local housing markets (except for the foreclosure pockets) are stabilizing and that any further price reductions in the overall market may be negated by rising interst rates.

All-in-all it looks like it’s a great time to buy. The sellers have gone through their cycle of suffering. The group now in the batter’s box are real estate agents. The significant decline in transactions means there are not enough to feed all the hungry mouths.

The California Association of Realtors is expecting a significant drop in the number of practicing Realtors this year. Be sure to select an agent that you feel will survive the shakeout.