Category Archives: Visit WineCountry

Title Insurance: a Scam?

When you buy a home and use a mortgage you pay for at least 3 insurance policies: Home Owners Insurance, Home Owners Title Insurance and Lenders Title Insurance. For an average home in Sonoma County, Title Insurance is around $1,800 … Continue reading

Posted in Buyers, Disclosures, Economy, Investing in Real Estate, Sellers, Short Sale, Sonoma County info, Visit WineCountry, Wine Tasting | Leave a comment

Sonoma County from a Dutch perspective…

This week I had the honor to meet with Anthony Ebright, a lender who works for Wells Fargo. Anthony is not only specialized in FHA/VA loan products but is also a fervent blogger and integrator of social media. After brainstorming … Continue reading

Posted in Buyers, Sonoma County info, Visit WineCountry, Wine | 1 Comment

Short Sales and every changing guidelines

This week there were 2 interesting updates: BofA is going to announce a major change in the way they work with agents. They are changing their systems to approve short sales within 2 weeks of an offer. Currently I am … Continue reading

Posted in Foreclosure, HAFA, Making Home Affordable, Sellers, Short Sale, Visit WineCountry, Wine Tasting | 1 Comment

Foreclosures… How is our market?

Only articles with spectacular-read bad news- titles sell. Quite often the perception is that every home sold is a foreclosure or a shortsale.  Our MLS keeps track of this and guess what??? In 2010 in Sonoma County,  about 50% of … Continue reading

Posted in Buyers, Economy, Foreclosure, Sellers, Short Sale, Sonoma County info, Visit WineCountry | 1 Comment

Reverse Mortgage – a way to foreclosure proof your house.

A few days ago I had coffee with David Carter, he is a reverse mortgage specialist at BofA. When I initially heard about reverse mortgage I thought is was some sort of a scam… I was wrong. As with any … Continue reading

Posted in Aging in Place, Foreclosure, Mortgage, Retirement, Reversed Mortgage, Sonoma County info, Visit WineCountry, Wine Tasting, Winery with picnic place | 10 Comments

Your credit score, how do you improve it?

We all live our lives and don’t think to much about our credit score, however it is important to have a good credit score and it is important to keep track of it for many reasons: when you want to … Continue reading

Posted in Buyers, Economy, Sellers, Sonoma County info, Visit WineCountry | Leave a comment

Open House!

It used to be that doing an open house wasn’t that effective for selling a home. A few years ago the numbers showed that less than 0.5% of the houses was sold as result of an open house. But the … Continue reading

Posted in Buyers, Sellers, Visit WineCountry, Windsor, Wine Tasting, Winery with picnic place | 10 Comments

New website for Windsor Schools

Windsor schools have unveiled their new website : www.wusd.org. Great website, easy to navigate,  allows you link to the different schools in Windsor,  to pay fees online and  coming soon will also allow parent access to individual student records. Windsor … Continue reading

Posted in Sonoma County info, Visit WineCountry, Windsor, Wine | Leave a comment

Are we at the bottom?

Earlier this week I had the privilege to be at a financial seminar organized by Wachovia Securities. Senior Portfolio Manager Margaret Patel was the first speaker and besides a lot of valuable information she expects the real estate market to … Continue reading

Posted in Economy, RE by the numbers, Sonoma County info, Visit WineCountry, Wine, Wine Tasting | 3 Comments

Green living in Sonoma County

Did you see the new homes at Bridge Trail at the North Village ? It’s developed by Hugh Futrell, a great developer who does unusual projects. He also build The Burbank on seventh street in Santa Rosa. Both developments have … Continue reading

Posted in Buyers, RE Investing, Sonoma County info, Visit WineCountry, Wine, Winery with picnic place | Leave a comment