Nicely remodeled, 4 bedroom, 2 bath single story home only minutes downtown Walnut Creek. custom paint, new moldings, hardwood floors, new carpets, dual pane windows, updated bathroom with granite tile, front deck and rear patio with new pavers.
Please visit 377 Shady Glen for more information and photos.
COMPLETELY UPDATED 2 story townhouse in the h ighly desirable Skywest complex in Walnut Creek. New carpet, new paint, new floor tile, new granite counters and new stainless steel appliances in the kitchen. New washer and dryer. Updated bathrooms with granite counter tops, new shower stall, tile floors. The attached 2 car garage is unusual in this price range!
The main floor has a family room with sliding glass doors to the front patio, the kitchen and living and dining rooms with additional sliding glass doors to the rear patio, large back yard and a VIEW! No back yard neighbors! The second floor has two very large bedrooms with two shower / vanity areas.
Updated 2,172 s.f. home located in a well-maintained neighborhood bordering Walnut Creek. Large master suite with 3 additional sizeable bedrooms, The light and bright kitchen has a full-sized eating area in addition to the dining room. The home is graced with crown molding, hardwood floors, new carpets, a fireplace with a heatilator, and french doors from the master suite and the family room to the rear yard patio and pool.
Additional amenities include paved RV/Boat parking in the side-yard, auto-chlorinated pool, automated sprinkler system, a storage shed and an additional outbuilding. The home is located within 1.1 +/- miles of DeLasalle and Carondolet High Schools.
The spacious entryway introduces you to the living room with soaring ceilings, hardwood floors, a fireplace and two-story windows filling the room with light. The European-style kitchen is flanked by the dining and the family room with a second fireplace. Both rooms have sliding doors to the back yard patios and pools. The circular flow of open floor plan is perfect for entertaining. The main floor bedroom and adjacent bathroom are ideal for a guest room, in-law unit or home office.
Retreat from the activities to the sanctuary of the large Master suite and 3 additional bedrooms on the second floor.
Only minutes from the Walnut Creek financial district, shopping and restaurants, this custom home has a Tahoe setting in the exclusive, gated, Mockingbird Hill community. Fantastic, panoramic views of Carquinez, city lights and Mt. Diablo from the home's 2.18 acres. New, multi-level decks are great for entertaining.
Formal living and dining rooms, family room, kitchen, 2 home offices and the spacious Master Suite are located on the main floor. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (one with a sauna), an additional family room and the wine cellar are located on the lower level.
Having spent nearly 25 years on Wall Street, most notably with Goldman Sachs and Robertson Stephens, i would like to occasionally offer up some relatively low risk and carefully conceived investment thoughts. I will not use the term advice since i have become sufficiently jaded by many highly successful fund managers from my personal investing experience.
There is a well written article in the December 10th issue of Forbes Magazine that i would like to suggest to each of you. The title of the article is, "Shock Absorber Funds." It lists six funds that are all no load (meaning no up front sales charge), run with reasonable annual expenses and each share two more noteworthy characteristics.
Each one of them has more than doubled the S&P's return over the past 10 years. And they have done it with less risk as measured by beta and Sharpe ratios. Hey, i know that some of this stuff gets a little technical but-- go have a look and then BUYER BEWARE-- THE PAST PERFORMANCE OF THESE FUNDS IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE PERFORMANCE.
It is my opinion that many of us are so busy we do not scour the financial markets for good stocks (a very risky strategy) or even good mutual funds. So, maybe i can help... slowly and carefully.
The Title and Escrow Guy - Brad Andersohn has done it again. He assisted me in setting up my own personal blog and i am feeling enthused and empowered. This blog site, Bay Area Luxury Homes, will allow me to offer all my clients a site with capability far beyond my more static and conventional web site.
Once i have loaded all the widgets and transposed my previously written blogs from Active Rainand other blog sites, i will have more flexibility to link between my other business based blogs, my personal blog and my real estate blog. This is exciting as i believe there is more to the blogging world than capturing the entertaining and helpful ideas i get on Active Rain.
Somewhere out there i hope to pull prospective clients into my blogs and link enough material from my other blogs to my real estate blog. Oh boy, where will it all end? All i know is that i refuse to be relying on newsprint technology from yesteryear as the world is flying by. You might just want to check out Brad's archive of previous blogs if you need guidance in setting up your own new marketing platform.
It will take some time to get my Bay Area Luxury Homes blog to get some traction but for now, i simply intend to enjoy the ride.
It's been 18 months now that you can, through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, trade futures based on house price indexes for each of the top ten largest US cities. You can sell futures, buy puts or sell calls all designed to hedge losses that might be occurring on the value of your home.
Each of these futures contracts are trading on an ongoing basis-- for example, the house price index in Los Angeles is trading with the underlying assumption of an 11.5% drop over the next two years. With that index trading at $57,000, one could hedge the price drop of a $3.0 million home there by selling 52 contracts. You would put up approx. $120,000 on that hedge. The contracts would not cover the full 11.5% drop if it occurred, but would help the participant avoid the full loss.
Please be sure that you and your clients understand that these strategies can go against you such that you can lose money by being half right-- for example, if the LA markedt only dropped 5% in the two year period, it would end up costing more than if you never tried to hedge the dropping home value.
This strategy is detailed in the December 10th, 2007 Forbes Magazine, p. 154, Protect Your Home.
As professional Realtors it is important for all of us, or some of us, to be aware of these financing alternatives and to be able to discuss them when the topic comes up... just be careful.
I recently gathered several bids for some work for a listing that i hope to have on the market in January. On the floor coverings bid, as with the other contractors on other jobs, i previewed approximate costs on the phone and got the ballpark figures i was looking for. The floor guy come out, we met at the house, he did some measuring and said he would get back to me. Per his phone converstation ballpark quote, i expected the job to cost $1650 so yes, i was rather disappointed and surprised when the bid came in at $3777.
What happened? Although i asked for the fully installed price during my phone interview, i did not specifically ask about floor prep work... My bad? (as my son would say). Is it fair to get hit with this major discrepancy even when i ask for the full cost, installation included? "Oh, i thought you knew that there would be an additional charge to remove the old flooring and ..."
Ouch-- it hurts even more than usual because i had called the owner and told him the ballpark numbers i expected for the repairs-- double ouch...
So, Be careful out there-- take a lesson from this post and don't get beat up by the contractors.
In case you missed the 7:30 am (PST) broadcast, Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, described in a fair amount of detail a mortgage bail out plan for those ARMs that are causing so many foreclosures and financial unrest. The proposed solution will not impact those that are handling their payments but will be addressed to those that will be able to show that they will not be financially capable to handle increased payments.
Please look for the deails on www.cnbc.com for this story and related houseing market information.
It is difficult to surmise whether this will be the key to fixing our ailing mortgage problems, but the fact that serious attention and high level proposals are being offered is a good sign.
douglas moore
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