Palos Verdes Real Estate

July Newsletter — sorry posting here a little late

Dear Neighbor:

I know the real estate market isn’t the first thing you think about, but don’t worry because it is for me.  For the last few years, really starting with covid in early 2021, the market has favored sellers to one degree or another.  I have discussed that in previous newsletters.  That pendulum (at least in PV) has now swung back to about an even balance between buyers and sellers, receiving a big shove this past Spring when the largest number of new listings that I can recall in my 40 years in the business hit the market.  This gave buyers many more choices.

Whether you’re a buyer or seller, and as mundane as this may sound, one of the newer developments we’ll have to deal with is insurance, which has been increasingly hard to get in recent years.  The first thing that happened a few years ago was that the California Insurance Commissioner, apparently wanting to be a hero, put severe limits on premium increases and rates in general.  I’m sure it came as a shock to him when many insurance companies, in business to make money, simply stopped doing business in California, thereby reducing competition.  Then there were the fires, making some areas of California less attractive to insurers, and causing steep premium increases among those carriers still operating in California.  If you are selling or buying a house with a wood roof, it’s just tons of fun for the buyer to get insurance.  I can remember when the PV Art Jury would only allow wood or Spanish tile roofs because they didn’t like the look of some of the early synthetic roof material.  We used to joke that they didn’t care if the house burned down as long as it looked good in the process.  Well, no joke now – wood roofs are anathema to the insurance companies, and since the lenders require insurance to make the buyer’s loan, unless the buyer is paying cash, no insurance, no sale.  I’ve got a couple of work-arounds.  Buying or selling, it’s important to have a Realtor who’s been thru this and pretty much anything else you can think of which, in 40 years, I have.

And speaking of the Art Jury, I know people have liked to bad-mouth them for as long as I can remember, but I have to say that their interface with the public has never been as lousy as it is now.  Used to be that you could just walk in during business hours and take care of whatever business you had with them, but not now – you either stand in line between 9 and 10 am or you make an appointment.  One of the services I always provided my clients was to look at the plans for your house so we know what to expect.  They now charge $350 for that – not to take them, not to get them copied, but just to stand at the counter and look at them!  There used to be a report called Completion and Compliance, where they would visit the property and note any discrepancies between the plans and what they observed, so the buyer would know.  Took about 10 days and local agents nearly always included it (out of area agents rarely knew about it).  It can now take 6 months and is almost never obtained — by the time it’s received your escrow has closed and the thing is moot.  From here, it appears that the Bean Counters have taken over and have retreated to the Ivory Tower.  If you own property in PVE, remember this next time there are elections for the PV Homes Association.

So onward and upward.  Give me a call at 310 613-1076 and/or visit my website (DanaGraham.com) for the latest.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2025 at 8:38 am and is filed under Buyers, Everything I've Written, Newsletters, Palos Verdes Information, Real Estate General Info, Sellers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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