Tag archives: homes
Well, it’s just about the start of summer, or almost. Solstice is next week and don’t even get me started about the May gray and the June gloom, oops, too late. But on a sunnier note, let’s start with Montecito Real Estate stats, about as good a place to start as any. As I reported […]
In 1953, a woman named Polly Adler published a book which became a best seller and also gave new dimensions to two familiar words, “house” and “home.” Her book was called A House Is Not a Home, and, in this context, the “House” was a New York house of prostitution, which she had owned and […]
“Los Angeles in Three Great Houses” continues from last week. This week’s installment looks at the house of a man for whom the California dream came true: The Doheny Mansion He had been a drifter, mule driver, fruit packer, and failed prospector – not the résumé you’d expect for the future richest man in America. […]
Los Angeles has always been an incubator for magnetic religious personalities, and in the 1920s no one could touch evangelist, faith healer, and media celebrity, Aimee Semple McPherson. At her pioneer megachurch, Angelus Temple, she preached the “old-fashioned gospel” for a packed house of more than 5,000 people three times every Sunday. “Sister Aimee” livened […]
Cities and civilizations leave enduring footprints. Think of Egypt’s Pyramids, the rows of statues on Easter Island, the white columns of the Parthenon in Athens. But Los Angeles has an unhappy habit of knocking down its past, its iconic buildings and houses – paving paradise to put up a parking lot and leaving no trace […]
Every year my wife, Merry, and I drive Interstate 40 from Southern California to New Mexico. The route is scenic, but the Arizona part has long stretches of nothing but miles and miles of miles and miles. I always think of a favorite cartoon: An automobile is starting a trip across a dull, featureless desert, […]
At the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors hearing on Tuesday, the Board was briefed on the Housing Element Update, a draft of which was recently submitted to the State’s Housing and Community Development Department. The Housing Element process occurs every eight years, and requires that local governments must adopt plans and systems that provide […]
If you are looking for a significant estate in Montecito and are willing and comfortable paying over $10,000,000 to get it, I would in normal years have 25 or 30 homes to show you, most of them in the $10 to $20 range… million that is. However, in the aftermath of the estate rush that […]
The Montecito real estate market is still defined by high prices and low inventory. By the time this article hits the newsstands or your screen, it may indeed be Winter already, technically by the calendar anyway. However, it’s been cold like winter for a while now. Glad to have rain and weather. Local residents (and […]
Montecito has long had its eye on style and recently Summerland is becoming a hotbed for finding the design, décor, and items that adorn your bed and interior spaces. Here is a roundup of the designers and stores in the area that help make our homes feel like home. Marc Normand Gelinas Interior Design Marc […]
At last week’s Montecito Association (MA) meeting, the Board discussed what has become a hot topic in many communities across the country: fractional home ownership via Pacaso, a Bay Area-based company that buys homes and then sells fractional interests in them to second-home buyers. After the sale – in which the company makes a profit […]
The seasons are changing, and so is the Real Estate market… at least that’s the way the numbers are rolling out here, nearly halfway through 2022, with most months being down in sales volume from the month before. Now I know, many will say it’s because of low inventory, and that’s true, or partly true. […]
The warmer than winter weather and the longer days of sunshine make April an especially lovely time of year in Montecito. Falling after the colder and shorter winter months and coming usually before the May Gray or dreaded June Gloom (fog), April is often a mix of all the seasons in one month. Freezing nights […]
A tony triumvirate of uber salesmen from Douglas Elliman, America’s third largest real estate company, have banded together to form a sales colossus. Local realtor Adam McKaig, who has been selling property for 23 years and founded Adam’s Angels in 2020 to help the homeless, has teamed with Malibu-based Sean Landon, son of the late […]
Lovely warm days mixed with overcast mornings and a couple of very chilly nights tells us that we are heading into winter (more rain please). Daylight saving time has kicked in, which is great for the early birds and surfers, bringing light before 6 am. That said, I’m still getting used to darkness in the […]
This is it, a run-up in the market the likes we have never seen. I’m not talking about Wall Street or the stock market, which is also up, so maybe that’s what is funding and fueling this buying craze here in Montecito, where we are seeing a phenomenon, of sorts. I am talking again about […]
Considering there are fewer homes in the Multiple Listing Service (the MLS, which feeds Realtor.com, Zillow, and others) than at any other time in the past 20 years, I feel it’s an interesting time to pause and ask (as others often ask me), what’s next in our real estate market? Will the buyers who find […]
We will likely start February off much as we started January, with very few homes available for sale in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) in Montecito. As of January 23, there were only 76 homes and condos on the market in all of Montecito and the entire 93108 zip code, when normally there would be […]
Montecito actor Rob Lowe who sold his 10,000 sq. ft. Picacho Road estate for $46 million has lost no time in spending the money, having purchased three new residential properties in Southern California since the sale just three months ago. Having spent $13 million on a new 6,000 sq, ft. five-bedroom, six-bath estate, Stonehedge, on […]
As he approaches retirement, Bruce Giffin, one of Santa Barbara’s top developers, ponders his legacy Construction is known for being a tough business. Competition is high, margins are low, cash flow swings in both directions and a shortage of skilled workers makes the industry all the more precarious. As he approaches his 35th anniversary in the […]
