PORTOLA HILLS LIVING by Kelly Turbeville

As a  Realtor  in Portola Hills, I believe it is important to understand the complete real estate market.  I work with many investor owners in the area who have been long term landlords as well new investors who are looking to expand their real estate portfolio.  In addition, tenant's who have become future homeowners. When I work with any client, my goal is to always understand their long term vision.   Often times, rentals are an aspect of the business many agents do not like to handle.     I view Rentals much differently.   If I want to be your trusted Realtor for life, then that means I handle the majority of your real estate needs, even the ones that "seem to be a lot of work"  Otherwise.. how can I truly be your Real Estate Adviser.  If you research, you don't read much on the rental market in various neighborhoods. So starting this month... we will begin writing a rental spotlight of the areas we focus in, i.e. Portola Hills, Foothill Ranch, Trabuco Cany

As we enter into the first month of January it's important to look at how the overall Portola Hills market ended.   As noted in my previous blog post, Portola Hills real estate closed transactions in December ended the month with a home value increase of 6%.  This is very consistent with the entire Orange County Real Estate market. Below is a quick look at the complete year.  The highest priced home sold for $1.1 Million and the lowest priced condo sold for $270k. Portola Hills 2015 Real Estate Sales Summary The number of closed sales (Volume) was up 7% from 2014.  Looking at the mix of properties the median price per home was up approximately 17%.   Of course, I always like to note this is a summary of all transactions. Each property type, have different levels of appreciation.   See our year end summary which includes each property type here Portola Hills 2014 Real Estate Sales Summary So what is on the horizon for 2016.   Looking at the current low inventory

Can you believe it, 2015 is over.  I admit I am a bit shocked how fast the year went by.   December wasn't just busy with holiday events it was very busy in the real estate world as well.  Many question, if winter is the time to list your home, well these home sellers decided to and guess what they received approximately a 6% increase in their sales price from 2014.   In addition to what homes officially sold, 7 properties went into escrow in December, leaving only 5 active properties available at the time of writing. Below is a quick look at what homes sold in Portola Hills in December 2015.   Portola Hills December 2015 Home Sales The overall number of sales has been greater this year in Portola Hills.  Both volume and sales prices are up.  It is nice to see our clients and neighbors recover from the downturn.  There still are some residual affects from the downturn, as we had one distressed sell in the neighborhood this past month.  Good news for that new homeow