More listings please!

We need some listing inventory please!

It may be a good time to consider selling your home if you have been on the sidelines waiting for the market to change. After a brutal four or so years, the real estate market in San Francisco is doing really well. The market turned on a dime in February as a result of more buyers in the marketplace and fewer listings; prices have gone up and competition is fierce. To get you thinking about it, here are a few things you can do to prepare your home for the market:
• First and foremost contact a real estate professional such as myself. We will give you an idea as to the value and market for your property and specific things that will yield you the most in your sale. Do not undertake any remodeling or paint selections without talking to your real estate agent first-looking at the whole picture may yield more economical or effective projects.
• Make a list of what attracted you to your home in the first place and what the positive attributes are now.
• Go to open houses. What attracted you to a specific property? What turned you off about another property? Does your home have attributes of either? What can be done to highlight the positives and downplay the negatives of your home?
• Get rid of clutter and things you no longer need. Donate to charities. Have a garage sale. This could take awhile, so get started now.
• Pre-move. Pack things you want to keep, but don’t need. Consider outside storage to keep the garage, closets and storage areas looking like they are ample with plenty of room for a new buyer’s stuff; this includes reducing furniture. Most homes could have a third to half as much furniture-removing the surplus makes rooms feel more spacious.
• First impressions are everything. The key is for the home to not look like it needs remodeling right now. What does if feel like to walk up to the front door? Does the property need to be painted? Does it need new or cleaned up landscaping?
• Make your property look livable and not too personal. Religious, political artifacts, personal photos and knickknacks should be put away so as not to distract a potential buyer.
• Valuables should be locked up and out of sight. Jewelry, cameras and easy to pick up items, etc… should be put away. Don’t tempt open house attendees.
• Make sure all light bulbs work.
• Painting interior and exterior surfaces in combination with heavy cleaning (including windows and mirrors) is the most basic and cheapest of preparations. This will yield the most bang for the buck. Have your realtor help you select neutral, pleasing colors.
• New and/or neutral window coverings.
• Deal with odors such as those created by pets and smoking. Odors have a negative affect on the perception of how well a home is maintained and correspondingly, it’s value. This may mean carpet and furniture has to be removed, rooms painted and deep cleaning of every surface. In this case, moving out and staging the property may be the easiest and more complete solution.
• Have household projects completed, such as: dripping faucets, slow drains, sticky doors and drawers, light fixtures and switches, caulk and grout repairs and tightening loose door knobs and hardware.
• Is it possible to put your home on the market without doing a thing? Sure. I’ve seen lots of those. They sell slowly, for less than the seller wants, or don’t sell at all. Preparation is still critically important, even in a hot market.

There’s a cool website where you can be notified in advance of a burdening on the system so you can take action, turning down the power usage to help avoid the rolling black outs.

Go to FYPower.org to sign up for feeds AND get information on energy saving programs, appliances and rebates.

Perhaps you’ve gotten lucky and not been towed and impounded after having parked for more than 3 days.  This is generally because DPT doesn’t always enforce it unless the car stands out in some way; being stripped, burned, or stolen.  A disgruntled neighbor can also report the car, so be careful not to block those driveways!

If you are going to leave your car for more than three days in a row, make sure you park it off street, or have a friend watch out for it and/or move it to avoid that nasty surprize!

Here’s a cool app from SF Park that will give you a map of SF Park Garages, prices and availability.  It’s available by text message as well as mapping on your smart phone, either iPhone or Android.

The app gives real-time information on available parking places and rates.  Here’s where to find out more.

Rather than wait til it comes on the news, you can find out in advance by signing up for Spare the Air Alerts via email or phone.

Go to SparetheAir.org  to sign up and find out when not to use fireplaces, when your car should be left at home. Winter Spare the Air season runs from Nov. 1 to the end of February, although, occasionally, a Spare the Air event can occur outside those dates.

The best solution is to be thoughtful about air polluting activities everyday, by cutting down on car trips, carpooling, taking public transit and reducing the use of fireplaces.

This one happens to be a SF Bus from 1969. But hurry. Only a day left.

The link to eBay.

With the City of San Francisco ramping up their efforts to raise capital by increasing their presence to write parking tickets, this news is particularly interesting.  Have you received a parking ticket for not curbing your wheels?  Seems that you can’t (or aren’t supposed to) get a ticket for streets that are a three percent grade or less.  How do you find out what the grade is?  Go to the surveyed streets of San Francisco at the DPW website.

For other tips, or to sign up for the monthly tip, visit Finding the Sweet Spot.  It’s a great resource.

Decide.com home screen

You can also vote for new upcoming categories.  It will let you know whether you should buy now, if prices are going up, or whether not to, if a new model is coming out soon.  Check it out, it’s pretty neat.

As for the crime statistics, they pull that from the San Francisco Police Department, so it is updated whenever the police department does it.  Each map looks a little different.  The Trulia map is pretty well done on a citywide level-set up like a heat map that you can click on and drill down into specific areas.  The other two, CrimeMapping and CrimeReports give information based on your input of an address onto the site.  And then there is Megan’s Law where you can see if your neighbors are offenders.

Here are some sites to check out crime statistics;

www.trulia.com/crime

www.crimemapping.com/map/ca/sanfrancisco

www.crimereports.com

www.meganslaw.ca.gov