Orange County Real Estate Blog

Many potential new homebuyers find themselves unable to secure a loan, confined to a smaller home ? or at least to a smaller loan ? because they don't understand the ins and outs of their credit score. First of all, your FICO (Fair Isaac Corporation...

You saved up your money and survived the rigors of mortgage underwriting, packed up your apartment, loaded the truck and moved into your new home. After several urgent days of unpacking, rearranging furniture and filling cupboards, you settle into ...

As we slip into autumn, many homeowners take their homes off the market, believing that their home will not sell in the fall or winter. While it is true that selling heats up in spring and early summer, people buy homes every day of the year. Hist...

We don't think about our heating bill much in the summer, but this is the time to make some upgrades to your home that will see you through the winter, such as adding insulation, changing out windows for double or triple panes with low U-factors an...

Visions of lush green lawns, English gardens bursting with color and a sparkling fountain filling the air with the tinkling of thousands of water drops may float through your head when dreaming of your ideal home. But, you're responsible, so you've p...

If you put your home on the market in the Spring, and it hasn't sold, you're probably thinking about taking it off the market until next year. Conventional wisdom says that Spring and early Summer are the only times to sell a home. But, even though f...

You've found the perfect home at the perfect price and made an offer that the sellers accepted. But, the appraisal came back lower than your offer. BUMMER! What do you do now? Any home financed through a bank or mortgage lender requires an appra...

Isn't that sacrilegious or something? Despite evidence to the contrary, new homebuyers continue to believe that buying a home is the same type of investment as stocks, bonds, CDs and their 401K. If the housing boom taught us anything, it is that t...

Take a lesson from that old real estate adage "location, location, location." Many seasoned homeowners will tell you that the size of your home and the amount of space you have—including extra living rooms, game rooms, or even acreage — becomes...

When it comes to basketball, we only have 64 teams to narrow down into our Final Four to fill our brackets. When it comes to buying our first home, we have thousands of options and dozens of choices to consider, but when it all comes down to it, th...