Our new listing at 435 Del Sol Avenue in Pleasanton represents a fantastic opportunity for any contractor, handyman, or anyone who’s been binge-watching HGTV® shows and wants to try their hand at the “house flipping” craze. It’s a three-bedroom, two-bath house, built in 1975 in a quiet Pleasanton neighborhood. According to public record, the house is 1,514 square feet sitting on a 6,507 square foot lot. The house itself seems pretty solid (our termite inspection shows approximately $7,700 in Section… read more →
When I was told that I would be running the staging and marketing of 3692 Calafia Avenue by myself, I was certain that I would grow tired of being in one of our for-sale properties relatively quickly. Staging a home before putting it on the market can be stressful — at least for me, that is, since I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to the details — but this house ended up being one of my favorite… read more →
207 Seaview Drive is our most recently rehabilitated property listing. This 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath is located just up the hill from the Brickyard Cove Marina and the Richmond Yacht Club and Sailing School. The location provides commuters and explorers access to the entirety of the Bay Area —- the Richmond Terminal for the San Francisco Bay Ferry goes directly to The City, the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to the North Bay, and Interstates 80 and 580 to everywhere else. A… read more →
From June 2nd until June 8th of 2019, a massive group of more than 2,300 cyclists will ride their way from San Francisco to Los Angeles, California. With the help of over 650 volunteers (also known as “roadies”) in 2018 these individuals raised a record $16.6 million for the AIDS/LifeCycle organization which provides critical HIV/AIDS services provided by both the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center. Last year, Marquis Kish (our marketing manager) participated in his… read more →
As Bay Area real estate prices continue to climb, prospective real estate investors continue to widen their search for the perfect property. In fact, according to a recent report, a quarter of Bay Area buyers shifted their search to Sacramento, where housing prices are still 2 to 3 times more affordable than in counties like Alameda and San Mateo. And there’s a good chance that if you’re reading this, you’re among those people. But for some, what began as a… read more →
Often times, homeowners ask a specific question when selling a home: “Should we stage it?” And more often than not, the answer to staging a home is “no” or “only if we think it’ll be hard to sell.” In fact, fewer than 2 out of 5 agents regularly stage the homes they list. So does that mean that staging is just… window dressing? An unnecessary service that the homeowner might pay thousands of dollars for prior to selling a home?… read more →
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 →
This Saturday, September 17th, the fifth annual Splatter Wine & Art Festival will be held at Emerald Glen Park here in Lifestyle Real Estate Services’ own back yard — Emerald Glen Park (4201 Central Parkway, here in Dublin, California). For those who aren’t familiar with the Splatter Festival, this festival produced by the City of Dublin’s Parks & Community Services Department (with sponsorship support from local businesses) is a celebration of the final days of summer, with an abundance of… read more →
What makes Bay Area homes “tick”? Countless factors influence housing prices: Interior elements like upgrades, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and staging; exterior factors like location, inventory, and buyer demand. In fact, there are so many variables that it’s overwhelming to think about how they can make every sale different. That’s why, when Lifestyle Real Estate Services began a summer marketing plan for a home on Del Oro Circle in Antioch, we were excited to discover that several identical homes… read more →
Now here’s a familiar trend in the Bay Area real estate market: Prices are up, while sales and inventory are down, down, down. And amidst a dwindling supply of homes for sale, many parts of the Bay Area have yet to feel the chill of a cool down in local housing prices. We here at Lifestyle Real Estate Services felt that market “heat” when we were given the opportunity to sell several homes in Antioch this year. The moral of… read more →
If you’ve lived in the Bay Area for any length of time, you might have noticed that the roads are getting busier, the homes are getting taller, and the demand for real estate is higher than ever. So when we got the chance to work on 2370 Scout—a beautiful home tucked away in the verdant Oakland Hills — and proudly present it to homebuyers just like yourself, we were more than a little excited. 2370 Scout Road is a lot… read more →
Every now and then we get the opportunity to breathe new life into a home, using our combined knowledge and visions to transform it into something truly special. The update of 715 Slater is one such example. The Design and Property Marketing Team at Lifestyle Real Estate Services was able to pull out all of the stops for a top-to-bottom (or rather “roof to tile”) makeover, culminating in some of our best work to date…and we’re confident you’ll feel the… read more →
The Design and Staging team at Lifestyle Real Estate Services is proud to announce that beginning this month, custom furniture by the talented artists at “Yours & Mine Design” will be included in select Lifestyle staging projects. Comprised of expert craftsmen Mikael Estrada and Kevin Dickson, “Yours & Mine Design” is the marriage of two distinctly creative aesthetics: Estrada’s rustic and industrial medium is tempered by Dickson’s elegantly modern approach, resulting in one-of-a-kind pieces that are not only tailored to… read more →
The search for Bay Area homes is pushing further into the suburbs—that’s according to a recent news report examining burgeoning buyer interest in “bedroom communities”. From homes in Castro Valley to plots in Sonoma County, the growing attention for commuter towns stems from soaring prices and shrinking inventories closer to work. The result might be a “warm” winter for inland real estate. But do the numbers support this? For the sake of argument, we’ve taken a closer look at homes… read more →
As we approach the holiday season, we watch the market and ask ourselves: Could Dublin Ranch homes be cooling off? It began with an intense summer performance where Dublin homebuyers bridged a $100,000 gap between asking and closing prices and drove the average home value to nearly $970,000. Calling the record-high figures “impressive” was something of an understatement. They were phenomenal. Yet every summer is accompanied by a fall and a winter (even if the thermometer disagrees), and these cooler… read more →
Livermore homes may continue to benefit from the Bay Area’s housing market in the near future — regardless of which direction prices go. Depending on who you ask, the Bay Area real estate market is either going strong or beginning to cool. That’s according to differing data recently collected by real estate researchers Redfin and Zillow, and it’s something that has caught the attention of everyone from housing economists to the star of Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing, San Francisco”. In… read more →
