[schema type="organization" orgtype="LocalBusiness" url="http://4salebydonna.com" name="Real Estate Agent Donna Baker" description="Real Estate Agent showing homes for sale and available real estate in Monrovia, Pasadena, Arcadia the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California." city="Monrovia" state="Ca" postalcode="91016" email="donna@4salebydonna.com " phone="(626) 408-7766 "]

What 3 Questions Help You Size Up a New Neighborhood?

 When your next home is going to be in an unfamiliar town—whether in Monrovia or somewhere else— learning as much as you can about your choice of neighborhoods is a practical starting point. It won’t be long before you’ll find yourself immersed in finding the perfect house—but it can’t be perfect if winds up being in a neighborhood that’s a poor fit for your family.

You can get a general idea of the likeliest areas by doing some online tire-kicking. In addition to querying the obvious places like Facebook and Google, sites like City-Data and NextDoor can supplement your initial research. After you’ve gathered some general impressions from those sources, you’ll be able to make the most for your first on-site visits. Once showings begin, you’ll also be better prepared to mine a rich resource that house hunters sometimes overlook: the neighbors!

Striking up casual conversations in local supermarket checkout lines or at coffee shop counters are some of the best ways to turn up valuable local lore—and to give you a realistic feel for the community. Three local topics most of your neighbors-to-be will enjoy chatting about are:

  1. Schools: which ones do parents prefer—and why?
  2. Security: Is there a Neighborhood Watch? Is crime much of a local issue?
  3. Events: What events and activities are drawing the biggest crowds lately?

 Those questions aren’t just relevant quality-of-life indicators—they are also conversation openers to other topics that will help fill out your impressions. Talk to a half dozen people, and you’ll start to get a feel for how welcoming the area is likely to be and how comfortable you’ll be living there. If you like what you’re hearing, it’s also a good sign that others would have the same take-away—in turn, a good sign for property values in the future.

When I’m your Monrovia agent, I’ll be delighted to get you started with a wide array of local information—not to mention the latest scoop on Monrovia neighborhood trends. Call me for more!

 

6 Clever Tips Lighten Monrovia Home Sales Prep

 

If you’ve been living in your Monrovia home for more than a few years, you know that there are some corners that don’t get regular cleaning attention because they’re (let’s be honest) too grungy to deal with. They’re beyond the scope of what anybody wants to face as a regular housekeeping chore.

If you’re beginning to consider listing your Monrovia place, you know you’ll have to get around to dealing with some long passed-over details. But that’s not something to look forward to. In fact, putting these messy details off is a leading cause of SREP—Serial Real Estate Procrastination!

Into the breach comes Houselogic. As part of their “Most Annoying Household Problems Solved” series, the NAR’s website Houselogic really outdid themselves this time. Here are six new tips I’d never seen before. A few are so clever they made me smile:

  1. Stove Burners. The fused layers of deeply incinerated debris (aka “that gunky mess”) encrusting the burners won’t come off by normal dish detergent soaking. Houselogic’s no-scrubbing solution: soak them one-by-one in a plastic bag containing ¼ cup of ammonia. Overnight, job done!
  2. Carpet Stains. For splotches set into the carpet, squirt one part vinegar to three parts water on the stain, lay a cotton cloth on top, then set your iron to the hottest steam setting and run it over the cloth for 10 seconds. If the stain isn’t dyed in, it will transfer up onto the cloth.
  3. Range Hood Vent Filters. Boil each in a large pan, slowly adding ½ cup of baking soda. It should take about 5 minutes on each half (they’re too big to do in one submersion). Be cautious about dumping the water, though: you don’t want the grease to clog your drain.
  4. Tub Grunge. This is an awkward (sometimes, backbreaking) job that’s solved with a self-described “genius idea.” Just attach a scrubbing tool to your hand drill. You can make one yourself using a kitchen scrubby—or buy any commercial drill attachment that guarantees it won’t scratch surfaces.  
  5. Metal Floor Grates. Run aluminum or steel grates through the dishwasher’s water-only cycle.
  6. Clogged Showerheads. (This one sounded vaguely familiar). Tie or tape a baggie of vinegar over the showerhead. Leave it overnight, being sure the little holes are all submerged.

“Deep cleaning” is on every Monrovia home sales preparation punch list—an important part of prepping your house to get a top-of-the-market reception. For a wide-ranging home sales strategy chat, give me a call anytime!

    

Today’s Monrovia House Hunting

Everyone still calls active would-be Monrovia home buyers “house hunters.” The term hasn’t changed; the goal hasn’t, either—but today the activity it conjures up is very different from that it did just a short while ago.

For instance, for Monrovia house hunters whose last hunt was in, say,1990, their memory of “house hunting” is probably that of thumbing through stacks of black-and-white listing sheets provided by the real estate agent. Those may have been a little hard to read, especially if they’d been sent to their oh-so-slow home fax machine. If any of the sheets looked worth pursuing, the next step might have “beeping” the agent’s pager—whereupon the agent would have then contacted the seller’s agent (usually through their answering machine) to set up a showing. House hunting just a couple of decades ago was loaded with those new-fangled electronics—most of which can now be found only in boxes in the attic.

Today, when you say “Monrovia house hunting” it evokes a quite different set of activities. Technology has caused such an explosion in how accessible information is that the home buying process is virtually unrecognizable. As media commentator Dave Ramsey recalls, “Even up to 2005, a buyer would look through real estate publications and try to connect with an agent that specialized in a specific neighborhood…who would select 10-20 homes for that buyer to view.”

Today’s Monrovia house hunters would have a hard time relating. At home in their easy chair, they zip through screen after screen of professional color images of properties that meet qualifications they have set—then just send a list to their agent to schedule showings. The information is so readily at hand, today’s Monrovia house hunters are more like zoo visitors than safari trekkers.

Although today’s newly evolved house hunting may sound as if it has all but eliminated the need to recruit a real estate agent, it’s actually true only for the first steps in the process. Ramsey is clear about that: “Even if you think you’ve found your dream home in an online search, your agent will help you nail down all the facts about that home and the neighborhood you’ll live in.” Locating suitable properties has gotten much more efficient, but as for all the rest of the home-buying process, he points out, “things are more complicated these days.”

True enough—and why I hope you’ll call me. My in-depth knowledge of our Monrovia market means you will hear about all the factors you won’t find online—which could wind up introducing you to a home you might not consider from just browsing online pictures!    

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