Maureen Kennedy, Piedmont CA Broker

Ten homes sold in the first three months of 2009 in Piedmont in an average 65 days, compared to 16 last quarter and 11 in the first quarter of 2008 (see details at the page bottom).  The average price of a home was $1.867 million ($570/sf), a dramatic rise from last quarter's figure of just over ...

Ten days ago, the Treasury Department announced two housing programs for households having difficulty paying their mortgages.  The programs target two different groups: --those who could handle payments if only they could refinance to today's low interest rates, but can't because their first mort...

Here's a list of lists from Realtor magazine, based on input from industry and trends specialists: Rehab Must-Dos--      -Universal bath design--roll-in showers and decorative grab bars;     -A storage-rich kitchen island;     -A sealed shower with multiple shower heads;     -Stainless steel appl...

Check out this month-by-month list of home-maintenance items from Real Simple magazine.  They have two different lists of lists here and here including a cute Periodic Table for household cleaning.

A nice little reminder of new credits (including the first-time homebuyer tax credit) and tax-saving opportunities is at this IRS site---  

  Their web geeks developed this cool, if thought-provoking and intimidating, graphic to convey the trends in 20 metropolitan housing markets. Take a look and click through the cities.

While the Piedmont market has weathered the national real estate bust remarkably well, we're not immune from the pressures swirling about us, as recent data illustrate.  Through 2008, the average price of a Piedmont home settled in at $1.575 million ($583/sf), down about 3 percent from $1.62 mill...

It's that time of year again--the Cost vs. Value report is out.  Each year Realtor and Remodeling magazines jointly pull together a metro area-by-metro area analysis of the cost of various improvements (add a deck, upscale kitchen renovation, basic bath renovation, etc.) and their relative worth ...

Our own Patty Brown once again gets in right in a Travel section cover story in the Sunday Times on Sea Ranch.  Read it here, and contact me if you're interested in linking up with a great realtor up there (or in other area 2nd home destinations---).  

Let me start out by saying that it's VERY hard to draw hard conclusions from the nine transactions that have closed since the first of October.  Some good news--No major banks have failed in the last few weeks.  Several of the largest lenders have recently implemented foreclosure moratoria (maybe...