4th of July in Newport Beach

Hello,

4th of July on Balboa Island has to be one of the busiest weekends of the year. I moved to Balboa Island a couple of months ago. I decided I was going to park my car on Friday and not use my car all weekend until Tuesday. If you leave your parking space.....it is nearly impossible to find another one. Sunday, a couple friends and I decided to walk to Woody's for brunch. It wasn't too bad of a walk. We were there early so we had a table next to the window. As the restaurant became busy, we hopped on a Duffy that one of my friends own. We headed over to the American Legion......one of my favorite places in Newport Beach.....for the rest of the afternoon. It was great listening to music and watching boats cruise the marina.

Monday, my office manager at McMonigle Group and me, decided the American Legion was so fun that we went back for breakfast. We were hoping to receive a call during breakfast for an invite to go on one my friends boat.....a 70 footer. We didn't receive it so we went walking on the boardwalk. What a crazy place. I was glad we were walking as it was difficult for the bikes to get through the crowds. As we were shopping we did receive a call that the Don Juan was going to be going out on the water. We walked over to the Balboa Bay Club and joined our friends on the Don Juan. What an incredible day on the water. I ended the night by walking to the end of my street on Balboa Island with my dog Sam to watch fireworks. What a great weekend!

This weekend I will be back to work holding an open house at my foreclosure listing in Ladera Ranch. I am hoping the weather will cooperate and there will be many people out looking for homes. The market hasn't picked up as much as we anticipated for summer. I still believe the best buys will be later this fall. BUT, now is the time to list if you need to sell.

Sincerely,

Lisa

www.PropertiesInTheOC.com

Foreclosures

So many things have happened in the last couple of months that have kept me from blogging. I am going to try to keep up on it better in the future. This year I started working with ING Bank foreclosures. I have 3 listings currently with them...one is in escrow. It is an interesting process that I will update my blog with as new experiences happen. Out of the 3, there was only one situation that wasn't fun. There were tenants in a home that the owner quit making payments on a long time ago. I have doubts that the tenant had made rent payments, so we needed them to move. There is a program that offers tenants or owners cash for their keys.......called Cash for Keys. The tenant was so sure the bank would come back and sue them.......so they didn't take the cash. Very sad as the bank was willing to pay them $3,000. One of the other foreclosures had owners living there. As soon as we made contact, he agreed to the cash for keys and he was gone in a couple of weeks. The third foreclosure, the owners moved out months before......so very easy to take ownership. The house was very neglected. All three homes were left in great shape. I was going to list a foreclosure home about 3 years ago.....and the owners had trashed the place so bad you couldn't tell where the master bathroom was. Everything including the toilet were removed. I don't know the whole story, but to trash a home that bad.....is difficult to understand. I didn't take the listing as the previous owner's were starting to harass me. After seeing what they did to the house.....I wanted to stay away from that listing.

My next post I will post about a home I just closed on in Leisure World. I also address why I left HOM Real Estate to work for McMonigle Group.

Hope you are enjoying your day.

Sincerely,
Lisa