Can you believe that the holidays are already upon us? As the year quickly comes to a close (and we all reflect on the things we are thankful for) we here at Lifestyle Real Estate Services wanted to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving… and what better way to bring in the holidays than with some Thanksgiving-themed factoids to pester your friends and family! A Thanksgiving-themed mishap resulted in the first TV Dinners: In 1953, the Swanson food company placed… read more →
There’s something that very few people know about me: I hate it when my hands are dirty. I think a lot of it comes from the way I was raised. My parents were very traditional, conservative, blue-collar people. “Salt of the earth”, some people might say. When they were just teenagers, they got married, uprooted from Kansas, and made the westward journey to California. My dad had joined the Navy and was stationed here in the Bay Area. He then… read more →
A little while ago, a homeowner reached out to us who has a house in the Hayward Hills. He was having trouble getting rent from his tenant, and that was a problem because he lives in Virginia. We assisted him through the long process of getting the tenant out, and then assessing the damage that had come from years of neglect in the owner’s absence. Initially, we had thought about helping this homeowner rehab the home, but he has decided… read more →
If you live in Northern California, it’s probably no surprise to hear that Bay Area home prices continue to climb, seemingly with no end in sight. For homeowners, that’s great news, but for prospective buyers, that means the search for their next Bay Area home is often an overwhelming journey… but not only because of prices. Thanks to the fact that fewer homes are being sold, there’s less inventory and more competition between buyers. So why is it that when… read more →
There’s been a lot of talk lately about fraud of all kinds. We now have chips in our credit cards, two-step authentication to make sure our accounts aren’t hacked, and lately my email has been blowing up with notices about a new kind of fraud that’s been happening in real estate transactions — wire fraud. Here’s what’s happening: criminals are hacking email accounts and finding out the individual is involved in a real estate transaction. They then send emails that… read more →
