On Saturday December 6th, the City of San Clemente and the San Clemente Junior Woman’s Club will be hosting the San Clemente Candy Cane Carnival. There will be arts and crafts, a magic show, and a toddler’s snow hill. Children will get to visit with Santa and there will be a countdown to light the community Christmas Tree. You can receive more information by contacting the San Clemente recreation division -
At San Clemente Coastal Living, part of our mission is giving back to our community. During this time of year around Thanksgiving, one of our favorite events to participate in is the Dana Point Turkey Trot as all proceeds from this event benefit the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County. Dana Point, just north of the San Clemente real estate market, hosts this event every year with a 5K and 10K run throughout Dana Point Harbor and Doheny State Beach. This is the the nation’s second largest Thanksgiving race with over 10,000 participants on average per year. You can be a runner for a fee of $28 or you can donate to the cause without having to run. For more information on this wonderful Thanksgiving Day event, call
According to this article in the Orange County Register, the San Clemente City Council approved a plan to build a 2,100-foot-long connection linking the Forster Ranch Ridgeline Trail to a recently-built trail in San Juan Capistrano. This connection will allows San Clemente residents easy access to the variety of trails throughout San Juan Capistrano and into Cleveland National Forest. As one of the interviewees in the article happily stated, “It’s going to be the Mountains to the Sea Trail.” The City Council is allocating $20,000 to pay for the connection, and a completion timeframe has yet to be determined.
One of the primary assets to living in San Clemente is being in the middle of a beautiful natural setting, and outdoor junkies have a nice pick of hiking, biking and walking trails throughout San Clemente. This move by the City Council is great news for outdoor enthusiasts and San Clemente residents, as they will now have easier access to the many trails of San Juan Capistrano along with a path to Cleveland National Forest. The San Clemente City Council rightfully recognizes the amount of interest outdoor activities garner from its residents and consistently seek to improve the options, from building new parks to its support of the Coastal Trail in North Beach and this new trail connection. If you have any interest in outdoor activities, you will find fewer places in Southern California to match the scope of all that South Orange County, including San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano, has to offer.
Coming as no surprise following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, SunCal’s biggest backer of the Marblehead Coastal real estate development, SunCal has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this past Thursday on this community according to the Los Angeles Times. This 313 home planned coastal community in San Clemente represents just one of 23 SunCal housing projects in various stages of Chapter 11 due to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. SunCal will need to make quick decisions on which communities to sell off and liquidate and which ones to keep in order to ride out the real estate storm. SunCal, nevertheless, has indicated it has no plans to sell off Marblehead Coastal.
SunCal has indicated that it has “alternative sources” of financing to maintain the wetlands at Marblehead Coastal, some of the 125 acre open space to remain on this piece of land. Hopefully the other communities that SunCal sells off will help to raise the capital to build this highly anticipated community once the real estate market settles and supports this type of development. In the meantime, this 243 acre development sitting on an ocean front plateau will continue to be delayed and remain vacant. Hopefully some good news will arise from this soon. (Marblehead Coastal is the yellow box at the bottom of the picture)
For more information on Marblehead Coastal real estate or to request updates from our team as they arise, please contact us.
In a recent article in the OC Register, the author compares the seller’s market of a couple of years ago to today’s market when speaking about pricing one’s home for sale. In a seller’s market, it was easy for the homeowner to list their San Clemente real estate above the current value, because prices were continually rising due to low market inventory and constant bidding wars. Now that we are in a buyer’s market, it is crucial for the owner to sell the home quickly in order to receive the best value. As the article illustrates, San Clemente homes that sold within 30 days of listing in 2007 received a minimal 3% discount from their asking price, while homes that were on the market longer than 30 days received an average 10% discount from the listed price.
While you should not completely devalue your home just to get it sold quickly, it is very important to be reasonable when it comes to setting the listing price. It is human nature to feel that something you own is worth more than it actually is, and in these erratic economic times, people are looking for ways to make the extra buck. However, it is crucial not to price your home out of the market during a buyer’s market, because the home will just sit there, forcing you to lower the price on a consistent basis. This plays right into the psyche of buyers in this type of market, so you need to find the most competitive ways to create urgency with your home sale. First, the initial listing price is crucial; if your home is overpriced, buyers will not waste their time until the inevitable price drop comes. Your agent should provide you with a CMA (Comparative Market Analysis), showing you current comparable San Clemente homes for sale, pending sales, recent expired listings and home sales from the past 6 to 12 months. The article makes a great suggestion - once you have this list in front of you, pretend that you are a buyer and have your agent take you on tours of the current comparable listings. A visual comparison of your home to others will go a long way in helping you set the listing price.
Another arena that is vital to a quick home sale is reaching a wide array of potential buyers through creative and aggressive marketing of your San Clemente property. In a buyer’s market, simply placing a sign on your front lawn and an ad in the local paper will not create the buzz you need to sell your home. Today’s buyers are a lot more savvy in their real estate search, with many turning to the internet for guidance. Studies have shown that between 75-80% of homebuyers begin their real estate search online, making an internet presence for your listing crucial if you want a lot of buyers to see the place. The first two weeks your property is on the market are the most important, because this is the timeframe when you will get the most traffic in your home, both from buyers and real estate agents. To ensure a high volume of traffic (which will aid in reaching the goal of selling the home within 30 days of listing), you need to be aggressive with your marketing. Find out from the potential listing agents how they plan on marketing your home: print ads, online or both. If they propose advertising online, find out the websites and do a little research on them to see the amount of hits they receive and where they are ranked on internet search engines (Yahoo, Google, etc.). You will want your listing to be seen by as many people as possible, so make sure your agent plans on being creative and hitting as many arenas as possible. This is something that is a specialty of San Clemente Coastal Living - we are a top-ranked website in a variety of keyword searches that promises front-page placement on our website. While we cannot guarantee that this will sell your home, we give you a better chance by utilizing the popularity of our website along with a variety of innovative online and print marketing tools.
When it is finally time to set the price, use all of the above methods to set a competitive value for your home, and you will have a good chance of seeing a sale in a short period of time. For more information on tips to selling your home quickly and how San Clemente Coastal Living can assist in this process, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Having dealt with various investors (second home / vacation home clients), San Clemente Coastal Living thought it would be appropriate to address some 1031 Exchange basics. First, as an investor, you must realize that in order to do a 1031 exchange it cannot be done on your principal residence. Please note, however, you do not have to pay capital gains tax on a $250,000 gain if single or $500,000 gain if married on your principal residence based on IRS guidelines. In order to successfully do 1031 exchanges, including into your eventual dream home, you need to understand the basics.
First, to qualify for a 1031 exchange, the San Clemente real estate that you plan to sell or purchase must meet four basic rules:
Beyond these basics, you should note that it’s possible to do a 1031 exchange on a second home or vacation home. In order to do so, you must own the property for at least two years, rent the property during each year for a minimum of 14 days at fair market value, and not use the property for your own personal use for more than 14 days. If you have met these criteria for two years, now you can do a 1031 exchange into any other piece of real estate that qualifies.
On the other hand, if you are an investor working towards your San Clemente dream home (i.e San Clemente ocean view home or condo), there are ways to do it through 1031 exchanges, however, pay special attention to the rules. First, you must rent out your home for at least 14 days during the year and not use it for more than 14 days either. At the end of the two years, you can now convert your San Clemente home into your principle residence. In the meantime, if you have not taken any cash from your 1031 exchanges, you have deferred all tax on your gains (i.e. equity) to buy into your new home. This beats taking money out of the stock market to purchase that home as it would be subject to capital gains tax. Also, don’t forget that when you sell your principle residence to get into this home, you don’t have to pay tax on the first $250,000 gain if single or $500,000 if married.
If you are an investor that has done 1031 exchanges over the years and are ready to sell, don’t forget that capital gains tax is still at 15% and there is a strong possibility that this will be raised in the near term to 20-25%.
For more information on 1031 exchanges or San Clemente real estate, including a second home and/or vacation rental, please contact us for a free consultation.
As of early November, San Clemente real estate for sale included approximately 97 total foreclosures and short-sales, representing 17.5% of the current properties for sale. The total number of San Clemente foreclosures as of November represents a decrease of about 7.5% as compared to our previous update in September. This is good news as this decrease represents another indicator we are working towards the bottom of the cycle. As we near the bottom of the cycle, price declines begin to slow before bottoming out and the great deals may begin to dissapear.
San Clemente foreclosures currently range in price from $189,900 for a 560 square foot condo in Rancho San Clemente to $1,730,000 for a 5,633 square foot estate in Viscaya Talega. The average price for a foreclosure is currently $653,763 with an average price per square foot of $306. In our last analysis of the foreclosure and short-sale market, the average price per square foot was $308 or 0.6% higher. For Talega real estate, the newest development of San Clemente, the average price for a foreclosure is $754,415 with an average square footage of 2,667. This results in an average price per square foot of $282 for Talega foreclosures or short-sales.
In terms of the concentration of San Clemente foreclosures, Talega has the most at 34 or approximately 35% of the foreclosure and short-sale market. Other areas of high concentration include North San Clemente and Rancho San Clemente with 19% and 18% of the San Clemente foreclosure and short-sale market respectively. Foreclosures west of Interstate 5 closer to the coast represent 9.3% of the total foreclosures while east of the 5 represents 90.7%.
For more information on San Clemente foreclosures, please explore our website or contact us for a free consultation.
Today is the day for San Clemente residents to let their voices be heard in one of the most important and historic general elections in U.S. history. Today’s article in the OC Register outlines the measures San Clemente will be voting on, Measures V and W, both of which concern San Clemente real estate development. Measure V would change city codes to require voter approval anytime a landowner wants to rezone open space for development not allowed in the open-space zone; Measure W concerns the proposed development of a retail/restaurant center on 2.74 acres of city-owned land in North Beach. Along with these two measures, San Clemente residents will vote for two new City Council members out of nine candidates.
For more information on polling places and hours, please visit OC Registrar of Voters website.
For the month of October, San Clemente real estate continues to show improved signs we are working through the glut of inventory to bring supply and demand back into balance, the key for prices to stabilize. New listings on the market continue to show a large decrease from prior year and homes sold and under contract continue to improve month-over-month. In addition, San Clemente average sales price continues to demonstrate its strenth relative to the rest of Orange County and California.
New listings year-to-date are down 22.6% from the same period prior year, representing approximately 300 less homes coming on the market. Sales, on the other hand, are up 20.5% from prior month with 53 homes sold in the month of October compared with 44 for September. This brings the total year-to-date sales up to 510 homes as compared with 566 proior year, which is only a 9.9% decrease as compared with an 11.5% decrease prior month year-to-date. Homes under contract at the end of the month were 40 as compared with 24 prior year-to-date, representing a 66.7% increase. This may be an early indication of good news to come for November sales. Lastly, the average days on market for the month of October dropped to 80 days as compared to 98 days for October 2007, representing an 18.4% decrease. While days on market are still 10% higher than prior year-to-date, October’s significant decrease indicates we are working back to historical averages. The decrease in new listings and the average days on market coupled with the increase in homes sold and under contract are all positive indicators that the San Clemente real estate market is working through its inventory in order for prices to stabilize.
The average sales price year-to-date is $868,704 as compared with $991,835 for the same period prior year, representing a 12.4% decrease. San Clemente real estate continues to hold on 2.5 to 3.0 times stronger than Orange County and California real estate respectively. These sales prices on a year-to-date average are 86.6% of the original listing price and 94.1% of the final listing price before entering into contract.
For more information on San Clemente real estate, please explore our website or contact us for a free consultation.
You are currently browsing the San Clemente Coastal Living: Real Estate and Lifestyle blog archives for November, 2008.
