Brian Brady will highlight the salient facts about VA Home Loans in a webinar he will give on Wednesday, March 11th between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. Pacific Time. I, for one, will be sure to attend. Imagine: "one in ten Californians between the ages of 21 and 55 are eligible for a VA Home Loan"! We need to learn how we can assist our veterans who have served our country valiently in fulfilling their American dream of home ownership.

I do know that the University Town Center in Irvine, CA,  for instance, is one of the villages in which VA Home Loans have been approved. The following neighborhoods within the University Town Center are included: Cambridge Court, Columbia Square, Princeton Townhomes, and Oxford Court. I look forward to compiling a complete list of VA approved neighborhoods within the city of Irvine, CA and broadcasting it so that our veterans can avail themselves of  these home loans. 

Ivy Wreath is a unique community within the village of Quail Hill, Irvine, CA. The appeal of this particular neighborhood is that of an urban, edgy feel. While there are 2-story models, some of the floor plans in Ivy Wreath are multi/3-story homes-a bit more unconventional than most of the floor plans you might find in other Irvine neighborhoods.

Built by D.R. Horton starting in 2003, the neighborhood of Ivy Wreath consists of 162 detached condominiums with six distinctive floor plans of between 1600 and 1800 square feet of interior living space.

The neighborhood of Ivy Wreath is set against the backdrop of acres of permanent open space. The charm of the community and the desirability of Quail Hill rests in the convenience of being close to a major employment center (e.g., Kaiser Permanente), easy access to freeways (i.e., 405, 73, 133), entertainment, shopping, and fine dining areas (the Irvine Spectrum is close by). A multiplicity of neighborhood parks are located throughout the village of Quail Hill with access to a wide variety of community amenities including  association pools & spas (the closest of which is Knollcrest Park), sport courts, and fitness center (the Commons at Quail Hill).

If you love to bike, jog, or take a stroll, you will find an amazing array of trails to explore and enjoy in the serene open space of Quail Hills' natural surroundings.  The nearby 700-acre Quail Hill Preserve will ultimately connect thousands of acres of dedicated open space.

The upscale Quail Hill Shopping Center is conveniently located within a few blocks of the Ivy Wreath neighborhood in which you will find a wonderful sushi restaurant (Mitsui) in addition to other fine and casual dining fare.

You may want to check out the following unique view property:

337 Tall Oak, Irvine, CA 92603       

Photo Courtesy of Tim Larson of Grey Clad Mystery

We all search for perfection in the real world. We look for the perfect person with whom we can bond. We look for the perfect culinary or wine-tasting experience. We look to catch the perfect wave.  We look to achieve the perfect SAT scores; well, you get the picture. We all strive toward that elusive dream of perfection in whatever it is that we deem important in our lives. 

Fast forward to the way in which buyers/consumers search for the perfect place to call home versus the way in which real estate web developers construct a real estate site. In his funny and illuminating article entitled Rethink Real Estate Search,  in Inman News, Marc Davison, of 1000 Watt Consulting points out that real estate internet sites are engineered by programmers-"guys and gals with 180 IQ's-guided by folks who get their kicks from Excel."

A programmer might construct a search by zip code, or create an application that includes home-value estimates that "can never be accurate, no matter how many Ph.D.s are thrown at them;" or create searches that are "cluttered by advertising;" or provide maps that are either "hybrid," "satellite" or "list" views ("humans don't search from space"), instead of speaking to what real people are looking for when they search for the perfect place to live.

And while it is true that statistical data has demonstrated that over 80% of buyers/consumers begin their search for the perfect home online, their home search continues off line, on the ground, and at the local level in conjunction with a real estate professional.

A real person-a "human," if you will, pursues their search for a home by actually driving through neighborhoods, by talking with neighbors, by "test-driving" the commute from work to a prospective home, by asking about the neighborhood schools and test performance, by checking the proximity of schools  to the home under consideration; real people ask about whether the home or condo has a yard large enough for a pet or a garden, whether the house has a home office, a main floor bedroom, a hobby room, a media room, a living room in addition to a family room, a master suite downstairs, a chef's kitchen, a finished garage; whether the garage is attached or detached, a two or three car garage, where the neighborhood shopping centers, parks, fitness center, bike paths, movie theatres, restaurants, local pharmacy, cleaners, barber shop are located-you get the picture: the things/stuff/features that make a home the fulfillment of a buyer/consumer's dream home and a neighborhood that is a perfect fit for their lifestyle.

The buyer/consumer wants to have a dialogue, a conversation, with their real estate agent about what the buyer considers to be the most important features in their search for the perfect home. This then, as Marc Davison suggests, can be formatted in an innovative way by programmers who would create a "natural search paradigm" that would describe homes in a manner that reflects how people really think.

And by the way, buyers/consumers want to see pictures, lots of them, and not crummy, blurry pictures, and not three pictures of toilet bowls with the seat raised, as Lynne Pope illustrated in her recent post. Imagine buyers finding an unlimited number of pictures, say 50 photos-more than enough to capture the essence of the room's space and with descriptions that stir the imagination and paint a picture of what it would be like to live the lifestyle that this home evokes.

And what about creating and sharing a video of the neighborhood amenities-a journey into the heart of the community, highlighting the nearby pools, spas, tennis/sports courts, parks, restaurants, shopping centers, and schools.

Now I'm sure that you get the picture-in focus, evocative, and enlightening-and so will the buyers if you dialogue with them about what they would like to see in their search for the perfect home. And maybe the conversation will inspire change-moving the discourse toward a more perfect home-buying experience on-line through a human centric search algorithm, and off-line, through the human contact with your local real estate professional.

Originallly published on August 24, 2008 in IrvineRealEstateBlogger.com

Is there a place for Open Houses in a real estate agent's marketing strategy these days? Elaine Carlson, of PalosVerdesSource.com, exploses this issue in her article entitled "Is the Jig Up on Open Houses? There is no short answer.

Open Houses can be a viable, valuable marketing tool under certain circumstances and in particular niche markets.  Real estate is after all local, and buyers often like to check out neighborhoods and houses up close and in person without having to commit to using the services of a real estate agents in the beginning stages of their search.

Just as many buyers prefer to view homes first online, anonymously, and educate themselves before actually making contact with a real estate professional, buyers also utilize Open Houses as a way to familiarize themselves with those particular communities in which they may ultimately have an interest in purchasing a home or condo.  To Continue reading ‘Do Open Houses Sell Houses?', originally published on June 13th, 2008 in http://IrvineRealEstateBlogger.com

I decided to play the interviewer at my Open House last Sunday. Yes, I am one of those real estate agents who believe in holding Open Houses as one way to market and expose a home to potential buyers, and to answer questions swirling around in the minds of buyers and sellers in the Irvine neighborhoods in which we market and sell homes. Yes, It's real life, real-time interacting with your potential home buying/selling community; "pressing the flesh," so to speak. And to be quite honest we have actually sold quite a few of our listings and/or our collegues listings through the contacts we have made holding Open Houses.  However, on this particular day, I decided to ask John and Jane Doe, and Mary Q. Public the following questions:

1. On which sites do you search for properties, and 

2. If you could make one change that would enhance your online home searching experience, what would that change be?  And the answers were enlightening:

Click Here to read the article in its entirety, originally published in IrvineRealEstateBlogger.com on August 14, 2008

Everyone has his/her own reason for moving from one place to another. Over the past century we have become an increasingly mobile people. We uproot ourselves and our families seeking a better life, reinventing ourselves.

We move for a job relocation. We move to improve the quality of our lives and of those of our children or grandchildren. We are looking for a vacation or second home. We are looking for a retirement community. We are looking to move near excellent schools for our children or future families. We are seeking to move close to a university environment. We are looking to move from a colder to a milder climate. We are looking to move from a large single family home into a condo, town home or high-rise. We are seeking to move from a condo or town home into a larger single family home. We are looking to move to a golf course community. We are seeking to move to a coastal or a beach community. We are looking to move to a safer environment. We are looking for cultural enrichment.

In short, welcome to Irvine, CA whose everyday motto is "another day in paradise." Irvine, CA has a dynamic and healthy business environment. Irvine, CA has real estate catering to the taste of one and all: homes, properties, condos, high rise and low rise town homes, second homes, vacation properties, golf course communities, beach communities, and retirement communities.

Welcome, home to Irvine, CA where lifestyle and real estate meet and fulfill the wants and needs of people of all ages in which one and all find their very own piece of paradise.

(First published by Robin4Homes on March 31, 2008 at http://irvinerealestateblogger.com/page/2/ and updated on August 10, 2008)