Welcome! Don and Leslie have been full time Realtors in Ventura County for over 30 years. It's been fun watching as "little" Victoria Avenue (and many other streets) have morphed into what they are today.
Just as our local communities have evolved, we've seriously considered for the past several years how we could someday "give back" and "finish well" - expressions that can mean a lot of things to different people.
As part of our research into opportunities for service, in early 2013 we contacted a Peace Corps recruiter who helped us start our journey. But our new path wasn't going to be as straight and easy as we thought! And so we began a transition into something completely different from the routines we've known for the past 30 years - and have begun a path that's leading into the exciting unknown. This will be our story!
By Don | November 7, 2008
The stats are in for single family homes and condos that have gone into escrow for October. In past months we’ve repeatedly said that Oxnard is white hot and the October pendings continue to show very strong sales activity.
By Leslie | November 6, 2008
September and October have seen a huge drop in foreclosure filings. The first step in the process is the filing of a Notice of Default (NOD) and these past 2 months have seen a 2/3 or more drop in filings. The first column is for the NOD, the second is for the Notice of Trustee Sale (when the auction is scheduled), and the last column is after it’s gone to sale (bank REO). There’s a huge political drive at the State and Federal level to stop foreclosures, and these numbers bear it out.
These numbers come from ForeclosureListService.com
| January, 2008 | 727 | 431 | 294 |
| February | 748 | 272 | 312 |
| March | 795 | 498 | 240 |
| April | 847 | 567 | 338 |
| May | 783 | 639 | 378 |
| June | 805 | 682 | 448 |
| July | 712 | 705 | 459 |
| August | 749 | 676 | 538 |
| September | 273 | 337 | 461 |
| October | 263 | 411 | 251 |
By Don | November 6, 2008
Governor Schwarzenegger proposed yesterday a 90 day freeze for homeowners who have had a Notice of Default filed on their mortgage. Read the rest of this article »
By Don | November 4, 2008
Leslie and I attended a workshop yesterday afternoon at City Hall concerning the City of Ventura’s new, proposed “Rental Housing Preservation Program”. Some of the provisions are: 1) A landlord must now have a City issued rental permit (and pay the annual fees of course!); 2) Must include that permit number in all advertising for your rentals; 3) and if you don’t have a permit, violations will “constitute a misdemeanor punishable in the manner provided for by Division 1 of this Code”. Read the rest of this article »
By Don | November 3, 2008
On Saturday I did a visual agent inspection at a home our clients are buying. Normally, Leslie does the agent visual inspection, but she was a bit under the weather, so I did it. Standing in the shower (where I do a lot of my thinking!) this morning, I reflected it’s good for potential home buyers to understand what a home inspection is all about and the ramifications about stuff an inspector finds (and trust me, they do).
So, what’s a home inspection, why do Leslie and I always insist our buyers pay $ for it, how does a home inspection fit into the big scheme of buying a home, does the seller have to fix all the discovered issues, etc? Read the rest of this article »