The Leasing Team at Foundation Rentals and Relocation just LEASED another property in Novato for $3,000. Thanks to everyone for a great transaction.  For any questions about Novato property management or buying or selling investment properties in Novato, call Broker Christopher Barrow at (415) 637-8934! 11/28/2017

The Leasing Team at Foundation Rentals and Relocation just LEASED another property in NOVATO for $5,750. Thanks to everyone for a great transaction.  For any questions about NOVATO property management or buying or selling investment properties in NOVATO, call Broker Christopher Barrow at (415) 637-8934! 11/14/2017

The Leasing Team at Foundation Rentals and Relocation just LEASED another property in Novato for $4,085.  Thanks to everyone for a great transaction.  For any questions about Novato property management or buying or selling investment properties in Novato, call Broker Christopher Barrow at (415) 637-8934! 10/30/2017

The Leasing Team at Foundation Rentals and Relocation just LEASED another property in NOVATO for $3,750.  Thanks to everyone for a great transaction.  For any questions about NOVATO property management or buying or selling investment properties in NOVATO, call Broker Christopher Barrow at (415) 637-8934! 10/24/2017

Most of us favor a high degree of predictability when it comes to things like the interest rates on mortgages. In that realm, “poised” is a bad word. When anything is poised, it means it’s about to do something different: change. For those who like predictability, change is unwelcome.But this week should provide both good and bad news when it comes to change and Marin mortgage rates. For once, a change in the immediate future is pretty nearly a sure thing. Although rates are poised, they’re poised for a comfortingly predictable change.What happens after that is a different story.Up until very recently, the mortgage interest rates offered to Marin home buyers has been an island of calm in a sea of…well, less calm, if the year’s turbulent election cycle is any example. Predictability has ... 12/12/2016

The idea of “fake news” and how to tell it from the real thing has gotten scads of attention lately, so Novato web users are entitled to be more skeptical than usual of news items. Last week, there was one of those “come hither” headlines you run across on the web—but with a byline from The Washington Post, it looked like it would contain actual news.Sure enough, this one was for real: “How to Spot a Housing Rental Scam.” Housing rental scams aren’t totally unknown in California—so dispatches about how to spot any new kind of Novato housing rental funny business figured to be worth checking into. It turns out that the article originated in the Washington Post for a good reason: it centered on a surge in housing rental rip-offs being attempted right now in the nation’s capital.It seems t... 12/12/2016

Some breakthrough good news has come to light. It deals with first-time home buyers.Across the U.S., first-time home buyers have been staging a disappearing act for a worrisome long time. The causes were pretty universal across much of the country: a sluggish economic recovery and tight labor market contributed to the national phenomenon. Rises in Corte Madera residential prices haven’t helped those seeking to become new homeowners locally.For Corte Madera homeowners who follow such things, the phenomenon was slowly becoming a worrisome fact—one that didn’t look like it was going away anytime soon. When you own a home, its value as collateral and at sale depends on a healthy real estate market—one that supports sustainable activity.That means that new buyers should appear in numbers at ... 12/12/2016

Real estate articles that are really just lists are now being called “listicles”—and there are certainly plenty of them around. The other day one appeared that just had to be read: Bankrate’s “7 things that could turn off homebuyers.”The actual listicle may not have been the product of much real research into houses for sale, but it was amusing. In the best social media tradition, I’d like to add a few thoughts in order to come up with a modified/improved “7 things” (for starters, there are 9):9 Things Bound to Offend Nicasio Homebuyers       Monkeys.       All right, that first requires an explanation. It headed up the Bankrate list, with a picture of a rhesus macaque clinging to a balcony railing. I’d have to agree that monkeys freewheeling around a Nicasio house for sale might drive ... 12/08/2016

You don’t have to be beyond your 40s to begin plotting a direction for your retirement years. Most younger Novato residents know this full well but (truth be told) do precious little about it. For most of us, we’re all so busy tending to career and daily living concerns that most of the time it seems like self-indulgent wool-gathering to go daydreaming about retirement plans. Besides—who has extra cash to be doing more than the bare minimum about financing retirement? It’s so far off in the future…That may be the 21st-century reality for most Novato adults who aren’t close to retirement age, but in fact, some of the real estate decisions we make early on can set the stage for satisfaction in later years. That’s one of the takeaways from the brains at Age Wave, a think tank who consult o... 12/08/2016

If you listen to the Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poors-Dow Jones, the nation’s housing market has reached an important milestone—one likely to be appreciated by real estate holders—Stinson Beach homeowners and investors included.The gentleman in the spotlight is David Blitzer, who is the head man when it comes to the S&P Case-Shiller Index, the most widely-respected measure of housing activity.Mr. Blitzer’s comments were aimed at the latest report, released last Tuesday. It covered three-month price averages for the quarter ending in September. They notched a 5.5% higher average residential price over the previous year.Now at this point, Stinson Beach real estate observers might wonder what is so newsworthy about yet another appreciation in residential real estate pric... 12/08/2016

If you were one of the brave Nicasio real estate investors who decided a few years back that the real estate meltdown was an awfully good buying opportunity, congratulations on being able to resist any naysayers. The fact that real estate has always lived up to its name (“real”) is easy to forget when prices have hit the basement—especially when the surrounding economic news is dire.Those were days when Nicasio fixer-upper opportunities were available for shockingly low asking prices—and before long, the shockingly low asking prices began to look normal and reasonable. “Bank owned homes” became a hugely popular search term as foreclosure numbers skyrocketed. It’s hard to recall the way it really felt, but any buying into that real estate market seemed like a swashbuckling act of raw cou... 11/17/2016

If you weren’t among those who were surprised by last week’s election outcome, you were among very few. Opinion leaders in every corner of the media are still scrambling to explain why their prognostications had been so wide of the mark. When your job is to help people understand the fine points of current events, it’s just plain embarrassing when you get the big picture 180 degrees wrong!For both Novato homeowners who will be considering putting up a ‘For Sale’ sign within the next year or so—as well as for potential Novato  real estate buyers they will need to attract—any shift in the currents in Washington are very likely to affect the market conditions they’ll encounter. There are three areas that can have profound impacts on the strength or weakness of residential home sales:      ... 11/17/2016

 Diana Olick is a well-known industry writer. Anyone with an interest in Marin County real estate can usually find something of value when she comes up with a new entry in her CNBC column (the one with the pun-worthy title, “Realty Check”). This month she commented on the rising housing market across the nation and its repercussions in terms of homeowner equity.The piece points out that in the U.S., home equity has doubled over the last five years!It’s hardly news that home values have been steadily on the rise—that’s been a trend long seen in the asking prices in California and our Marin County listings. But the idea of homeowner equity actually doubling could be hard to believe.That’s a claim that sounds a like quite an exaggeration…until you stop to think about what is actually being... 11/17/2016

The Leasing Team at Foundation Rentals and Relocation just LEASED another property in Novato  for $4,500.  Thanks to everyone for a great transaction.  For any questions about Novato  property management or buying or selling investment properties in Novato , call Broker Christopher Barrow at (415) 637-8934! 08/04/2016

The Leasing Team at Foundation Rentals and Relocation just LEASED another property inNovato for $5,895. Thanks to everyone for a great transaction. Forany questions about Novato property management or buying or selling investmentproperties in Novato , call Broker Christopher Barrow at (415) 637­8934! 07/06/2016

Any idea that’s worth a darn can stand up to scrutiny, so when the real estate industry’s leading periodical, Realtor.com, first posted the “I Hate the Open-Plan Kitchen” article, it wouldn’t have been a dereliction of duty for home design aficionados to go ahead and read it. That’s true even if (like me­­­ and the majority of Marin home buyers) you appreciate open-plan kitchens for all the entertaining and family-gathering features they foster.You may not be head-over-heels in love with open-plan kitchens­­­--but hating them? It made the article definitely worth a read… The author, Audrey Brashich, explained the origin of her enmity. It all bubbled up as she contemplated the remodel of a hopelessly out-of-style (“think yellow oak cabinets paired with linoleum countertops”) kitchen. Her... 06/27/2016

If you’ve been house hunting for the Marin County home you know is out there—the one that will fit your needs, is situated in a suitable neighborhood, and fits your budget—when you home in on a likely candidate, try not to fall in love with it (at least not right away). House hunting is a nesting exercise: part logic, part emotion. Nothing will change that. But problems can result when emotions take over early on in the process. It’s human nature to rush past what seem to be pesky little details as you near the finish line. If, later, “pesky” turns into “horrendous,” it can usually be traced to a rush to judgement born of emotion. The most productive attitude is one of patience—energized by optimism but tempered with cool judgement. When you have faith that you will find what you’ve bee... 06/13/2016

A mega-proportion of serious Marin County house hunters ultimately decide it makes the most sense to team up with a real estate professional to get the job done. Marin County buyers may begin the process of finding and buying their next home on their own, checking through the online listings or driving target neighborhoods to check out the “For Sale” signs—but the NAR® reports that 9 out of 10 of U.S. buyers will eventually use a real estate agent in their search process.The most obvious motivation for that is because the buyer’s agent’s fee is paid from the seller’s proceeds. That alone could explain a 90% level of popularity. When you can benefit from a professional’s services at no cost to yourself, Marin County house hunters would have to think long and hard to come up with what the... 06/06/2016

When you set about selling your Marin County house, it’s good to adopt the kind of determined mindset that’s served you well in other pursuits. That’s all well and fine, so long as you keep in mind that when it comes to selling a house, in addition to being a serious business undertaking, it is one that also weighs in with a significant emotional component. Not just for the prospective buyers—but also for you, the seller. And that reality is at the basis of the first of these five major No-Nos that can foul up otherwise flawless efforts toward selling a house in Novato:            Getting emotionally over-involved. Since almost everyone who is selling a house that they have lived in for years is somewhat tied to the place, you can’t expect to be robotically disconnected from its sale. B... 05/30/2016

Thoughtful Novato investors find themselves in an increasingly uncertain environment. Although the official cost of living numbers indicate that inflation isn’t much of an issue, few Marin residents who mind the family budget are convinced. Even if that were currently the case, even fewer think it a situation that will last indefinitely. At the same time, dollars banked in savings accounts earn next to nothing. And at this point, many feel that trusting in the stock market requires nerves of steel. Last week, The Wall Street Journal was reporting that even the biggest hedge fund managers, convened in Las Vegas for their annual SALT get-together, were displaying “decided pessimism.” Unnerved by their inability to guarantee future value to their clients caused a “mood that was anything bu... 05/16/2016