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Sheri’s Palm Springs Area Blog

Whether it be real estate updates, restaurant reviews, events, or highlights of unique homes in Palm Springs, follow Sheri as she covers all that Palm Springs and the surrounding area has to offer.

Resale Home Sales Continue To Be A Great Value

Resale Home Sales Continue To Be A Great Value

Waterfront condos at PGA West in La Quinta

It may surprise you that of the 4,800 homes sold during the first five months of 2011 in the Coachella Valley, only 160 were new construction homes. Do you think price and value had anything to do with these stats?

There are a few communities we identified where new homes are still a good value. Some developers are still able to compete with resale prices and I’m happy to share that information with you. But, in general, we continue to find resale homes and condos to be a better value than newly constructed homes in today’s real estate market.

New Homes Usually Optioned To The Max

In a resale home what you see is usually what you get. All the options and upgrades that the original buyer invested in are usually included. In contrast, new model homes are often optioned to the max and many features are considered extras and not included in the base price of the newly built homes. So, If you choose a new home, you’ll want to be sure that all options and potential extras are spelled out in writing and broken down line by line. My team and I have helped buyers in a number of new home communities at no charge since the seller handles our service fee.

Helping You Discover A Great Home Value

Consider myself and my team as part real estate guide, part number cruncher and part negotiator. We combine these skills on a daily basis to help our buyers discover great values. My team and I view hundreds of homes in dozens of golf and country club communities and non-golf communities every year and we stay up to date on changing home and condo inventory throughout the desert. In short, our job is to help you discover a great value.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me when the time is right – even if you have a simple real estate question.

Hot Buy Suggestions: 30% Off At Palmilla La Quinta

2,894 Square Feet / 3 bedrooms & 4 baths on the water.
Previously sold for $1,000,000. Now Offered at $719,900

This waterfront contemporary home at Palmilla in La Quinta was purchased in '07 for $1 million. Offered today at $719,900 this home was just listed today. Please call for details.

Short Sale Listing courtesy of REO Sales & Associates. Short sale subject to prior sale and bank approval.

Dining Around The Desert: La Brasserie, La Quinta


Chef/Owner Emmanuel Janin & his family

Brasserie, the French term for brewery, refers to an unpretentious restaurant that serves drinks and classic Parisian bistro food. Newly opened this year, La Brasserie is a welcome addition to the La Quinta restaurant scene. Chef owner Emmanuel Janin and his wife Kara have succeeded in bringing a traditional French bistro to La Quinta and offer friendly service, reasonable prices and tasty food.

While my husband Bill and I find a few of the French dishes on the heavy side, we enjoyed some of the lighter fare over the course of our three visits. The Graved Lax from the appetizer menu is worth a repeat visit as is the Artisanal cheese platter with fig compote, honeycomb and seasonal garnish.

Bill enjoyed the six-hour brine pork chop with Chipotle mashed potato, grilled asparagus and Coachella Valley date chutney. That said, Bill still rates Lavender Bistro in La Quinta as serving the best pork chop in the valley to date.

The La Brasserie menu offers a good selection of meat, fish and poultry as well as several wonderful salad choices. Their Seafood Bar offers a selection of oysters and shellfish with a variety of sauces. We found the extensive wine list to offer reasonably priced selections, as well.

> View ALL Desert Dining Suggestions Here

La Brasserie Bistro & Bar is open year round and is located at 78-477 Highway 111 in La Quinta at the corner of Washington Street and Highway 111 and adjacent to the Beer Hunter. (760) 771-4400

Update on 2011-10-22 20:51 by Sheri Dettman

Two return visits this month to La Brasserie. And now that the weather has cooled a bit we enjoyed dining on the patio which featured a pianist on the nights we visited.

Selling Your Home: How To Maximize Your Selling Price

Selling Your Home: How To Maximize Your Selling Price

When most sellers interview real estate agents about selling their home, many get caught up in the process of choosing a sales price. The thought of receiving additional money for your home is a no brainer. Unfortunately many uniformed sellers often choose the listing agent who suggests the highest listing price. Realtors call this scenario ‘buying the listing’. These agents are hoping to sign the listing and then worry about getting the price reduced to the actual market value over the coming months when the seller doesn’t receive an offer.

Establishing The Right Value For Your Property

Truth is, the person whose opinion matters most is the buyer who makes an offer to purchase your property. Properties priced to high receive no offers. Properties priced a little to low generally receive multiple offers thereby driving the price up by receiving offers up to the real market value. There is little danger in pricing a home too low. The danger lies in over pricing and selecting your selling agent solely on their opinion of a higher value.

An agent’s job is to price the home competitively based on the most recent sales comps. Pricing a home is part science, part art and a whole lot of local market experience. It involves a combination of comparing similar properties, tracking the most recent market movement, evaluating current inventory and making adjustments for any differences between comparable properties.

Some Agents Specialize In Expired Listings

Hundreds of agents here in the Palm Springs area real estate market actually make their living by contacting the sellers of expired listings and then relisting these properties at market value. This process is called ‘re-packaging’ an overpriced property. Don’t let this happen to you. Don’t be the owner of an expired listing.

WestJet Adds Winnipeg Service To Palm Springs

WestJet Adds Winnipeg Service To Palm Springs

WestJet announced this week that it will begin additional service to Palm Springs International Airport from Winnipeg, Canada. My thinking is that this is a great public service that should help to warm Canadian’s up during the coming winter.

The new flights are in addition to seasonal flights already flying from Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto.


Not The Palm Springs Airport!

Service from Winnipeg will start December 15th with fares from $219. Flights to WestJet’s hub in Calgary will be increased to two daily round-trips during the peak tourist season.

In the Palm Springs market alone WestJet has seen the number of passengers it serves rise to 120,205 in the first six months of 2011.

Will keep the sunscreen out for you!

Coachella Valley Sales Best State & National Numbers Again

DataQuick Information Systems reported on May 24th that sales of resale homes here in the Coachella Valley fell 0.5% during April compared to April 2010. Here’s how our local Palm Springs area real estate market did compared to the national and state numbers for the month of April:

April 2011 versus April 2010 Re-sales:

Coachella Valley: -0.5%

California state-wide: -6.1%

Nationwide: -12.9%

Palm Springs Modern Home Sells at $4.9 million

In Palm Springs modern real estate news, the 7,000 square foot residence originally designed for Dinah Shore in 1963 has sold for $4.9 million. This iconic Donald Wexler design is located in the Old Las Palmas neighborhood of Palm Springs. The home was built in 1965 and features six bedrooms, eight baths, two guesthouses, a tennis court, pool and spa on 1.3 acres of land.

According to our Desert Area MLS the home was extensively remodeled. The home is considered an important and architecturally significant estate. Jerry Herman who is known for the stage hits of Mame and Hello Dolly also once owned the home.

City of Palms Springs Luxury Real Estate Update
23 homes within the city of Palms Springs have sold for over $1,000,000 to date in 2011. This compares to 23 million plus sales during the same period in the prior year. Average selling prices for luxury homes in the city of Palm Springs have remained fairly stable from last year. $1,503,738 was the average in 2010 versus $1,485,620 year to date in 2011.

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