I’m super excited about our new listing at 6421 W Olympic! We have videos and pictures of the house entirely down to the studs before it was built new! The family room at the back is an addition and the garage is a legal ADU. There’s new stucco, drywall, hardwood floors, plumbing, sewer, electric panel + wiring, roof, 5 ton Goodman HVAC unit inside & dual zone minisplit outside, recessed lighting throughout, all new Milgard Trinsic V300 series windows with Milgard warranty, and fire sprinklers in both the house and ADU. The kitchen is huge and beautiful with custom quartersawn oak cabinetry, an oversized island, Aella marble counters, Thermador appliances. There are 2.5 new bathrooms inside + 1 outside in the ADU. The primary bedroom suite & the ADU overlook the new grassy lawn with sprinklers. The front lawn is hedged, the driveway can fit 5 cars, and the Carthay Square location is super central! With a full price offer, the house can also come with a new pool in the backyard (as per the RTI permit in place!) We’re open today from 2-5 and Tuesday from 11-2 and I’m excited for someone to move into this brand new open concept home!
I’m super excited about our new off-market listing that’s in escrow! The house is in a prime location, it’s 3229 sq ft, 2 stories high, and it has 4 beds + 4 baths + pool + garage. Houses that are complete fixers are an opportunity for buyers who don’t want to build a house from scratch, and they want a house that’s new from being taken down to the studs while still retaining the character and charm from when it was built in 1926. I like this house because it’s so large, the formal rooms are spacious, the 4 bedrooms upstairs can be en-suite, and the kitchen is at the back of the house overlooking the backyard. I’m excited for our buyers to make it spectacular and I can’t wait to see the transformation!
We’re talking to four sellers at the moment who are leaving California and moving to a state with less taxes. Sellers who lived in their home as their primary residence for at least 2 of the 5 years preceding their sale, and are a married couple filing jointly, can exclude up to 500,000 of the gain from their sale (single filers can deduct 250,000.) All of these sellers who are moving plan to sell their homes immediately.
We often meet sellers who move and want to rent first while they try out their new living spot. They actually have less than 3 years to rent the house out because on the date the sale closes, they need to have lived in the house as their primary residence for 2 of the 5 years preceding the sale, and it takes some time to prepare and to sell the house. Last year, we encountered sellers who didn’t get the timing right, and they missed the limit for the 500,000 exclusion by a small period of time. This last week we encountered it a second time. The 500,000 gain is attractive and it makes sense to plan for it carefully. From our experiences, if a seller is intent on preserving the $500,000 federal exclusion on the sale of their California home, it seems cleanest + smartest + least risky to sell the house immediately upon moving, instead of waiting and risking not being able to take that exclusion down the road. The people who move away mostly have large gains from the appreciation of their California home, and they seem sad when they miss the exclusion. (We get it. It’s often hard to part with the California home…)
When a house doesn’t sell immediately, we often hear prospective buyers comment that the house must not be worth the list price because if it was, someone would have bought it. That assumption often incorrectly assumes that an offer was not ever received based on a second assumption that the seller would have accepted an offer if it was received. We recently sold 157 N Poinsettia, representing the buyer. Our buyer paid $2,450,000 for the house. An agent on our team wrote an offer on 157 N Poinsettia for 2,575,000 months before, and the owner turned it down! Some sellers are attached to their homes, and it takes time on the market for them to part with it, even if they get a super strong offer that comes super quick before they’re ready to let go! It makes sense to gather true facts, both based on the house being considered and also on the market and other houses that compare. The best buyers are educated and informed, (both independently and by smart agents) and they are guided by data vs assumptions.
I love working with past + repeat clients!!!! And people I’ve been wanting to work with for a long time! We just leased 2050 Edgemont immediately for $14,500 and we represented the house when it was purchased in 2011 (and friends and family many times since)! We have 110 S Fuller in escrow and we represented the owners who moved from this house and bought their new house in 2013 (and we represented 110 Fuller for lease many times since)! We have a new lease listing coming where we represented the owners when they bought it in 2011 (and we represented the owners buying their new house last year).  We have a new listing coming on a property we represented for lease since 2015. And a new listing that belongs to the sweetest, loveliest seller who we’ve been in touch with since February 2022 – we’ve been looking forward to working with this seller and her house for over 3 years! Our very favorite part of real estate is getting to work with the uber special people we absolutely love to represent (for many years to come)!
We’re heading into summer, which means all the kids have vacation, and it’s visiting day for Grandma and Grandpa!!! Chaim is turning 3 this summer and we can’t wait to be at the celebrations!!  Gavriel and Grandma have lofty dreams of going up in the sky in a hot air balloon (we haven’t pinned down the details on that yet).  Eliyahu and Nechama are planning a cross-country move in August, and we’re counting down the seconds to all the local hugs and kisses!!! Eliyahu plans for the first thing to do when he lands is to pick up his bike from Grandma and Grandpa’s garage, pull off the training wheels, and zip down the street. We’re putting air in our tires so we’re ready to zip too!! Can’t wait for August!!!
Wishing all an awesome rest of the Fourth of July weekend!
Xoxoxo,
Sheri
