David Blockhus's (dblockhus) Blog

The long tail theory in real estate has been extensively written about in the blogosphere.  Jim Cronin has a good article on his highly enjoyable blog The Real Estate Tomato.  another excellent article, "Long tail, short tail and coat tail searches" can be found on rsspieces.com.   Another good a...

family and I decided to go to downtown Los Altos for a nice relaxing dinner.   My daughter wanted to eat at her favorite Japanese restaurant, Akane.  My son wanted a sandwich at LeBoulanger.  My wife didn't have a preference and I had a craving for Mexican food.  We decided that we would go to Ca...

As we all rush out to get those last minute gifts for family and friends (only 5 more shopping days until Christmas!), lets take one last look at the year end sales figures for one of my favorite areas of Mountain View - Area 209.  Not to be confused with Area 51 in the Nevada Desert (see photo t...

We have all heard the real estate horror stories about mold and water intrusion.  Stories describing people forced out of their homes because the amount of mold in the home made it unsafe for habitation.  Stories written about those who have allergies and the devastating health effects that black...

While looking at property, I was asked by one of my clients  "When do you think the real estate market will hit bottom?"  My immediate thought was, "let me look into my crystal ball....Ah ha, there's the answer....The real estate market will bottom out on Tuesday March 21st 10:18 a.m. PST 2008." ...

I recently was skimming the LA times web site and found an interesting headline: A New Selling Tactic: The Pre-listing Inspection.  My head did the old spin-a-roo.  A new selling tactic?  Maybe for Los Angeles, but definitely not around here.  If my memory serves me right, I recall several Realto...

It appears from recent and not so recent articles, that buying a home in the market today is not for the faint of heart.  A recent article from the Wall Street Journal discusses how the Mortgage Banker's Association's chief economist believes that the real estate slump will continue through 2009....

Awhile back I wrote about an investor friend of mine who was having problems at one of his properties.  Well, the fun continues...The same unit (we'll call it unit 13) where the shooting took place finally was rented to a nice couple with three small children.  One evening the mother was preparin...