Archive for May, 2007
Finding Rentals the RSS Way
May 29, 2007
A couple of folks have asked me recently if I could help them find a rental. My brokerage doesn’t really do rentals, so it’s not something I have a lot of experience with. I do have an e-mail I send out to folks who ask me about this, and it talks a bit about finding rentals on-line. Many people from out of the area think they will see rentals on the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) – but we don’t really do that here. I think maybe in San Francisco they do it that way, and probably in some other large metropolitan areas, but not so much here in Santa Cruz.
We have two main sources for finding rentals on-line here. One is the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and the other is Craig’s List. In the e-mail I send out to folks, I give out the URLs for both and say “have at it.” That solution works pretty well for someone (a parent, say, of a UCSC student) who is interested in spot-checking the market to see what rental prices are. However, if you are actively looking for a rental here in town, it’s kind of a pain to constantly check those web pages, do your search all over again, etc.
I happened to notice that both the Santa Cruz Sentinel and Craig’s List offer RSS feeds of their search results. This is an awesome tool. If you have an RSS news reader (some web browsers, such as Apple’s Safari, have them built in), then it’s easy to track new rental opportunities.
To begin, load up the Santa Cruz Sentinel on-line Classifieds, or Craig’s List. Here are the URLs:
Santa Cruz Sentinel:
http://santacruz.careercast.com/properties/search/searchForm.php?qTerms=rent&qSearchTab=rent
Craig’s List:
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/apa/
Next, you should do a search for the kind of rentals you are looking for. Specify things such as price range, location, number of bedrooms, etc. Here are some URLs for some searches I just did:
Santa Cruz Sentinel – 3 BR, within 10 miles of Santa Cruz, under $2,000
Craig’s List – 3 BR, in Santa Cruz, under $2,000
When you look at the search results, you should notice that there are some icons or links to “RSS”. When you click on that link, your RSS News Reader program should launch and automatically add the link to its database of RSS “feeds.” Here, for example, are the two RSS URLs:
Santa Cruz Sentinel – Search Results as RSS
Craig’s List – Search Results as RSS
If, when you click on the RSS link, your RSS reader does not automatically open, you may need to right-click on the link to Copy the URL, and then paste that URL into your RSS News Reader program.
What’s nice is about having your property searches saved as RSS feeds is that your RSS news reader will periodically update the results. This means you don’t have to manually do a search via your web browser – you will see all the latest rental listings automatically and conveniently updated in your RSS news reader.
Posted by Administrator at 9:06pm
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New Lending Regulations – Good News for California
May 25, 2007
The U.S. House of Representatives Passes H.R. 1427 – GSE Reform Bill
On Tuesday, May 22 the U.S. House of Representatives, by a vote of 313-104 (15 did not vote) passed the “Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2007, H.R. 1427.” The legislation passed by the House: overhauls the regulatory oversight of the government sponsored enterprises (GSE) of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks, and creates a new, independent regulator with broad powers analogous to current banking regulators. In addition, the new regulator will have the authority to increase the conforming loan limit in high-cost areas — a high priority for California.
The bill, which largely follows the contours of REALTOR(r) supported GSE Reform legislation passed in the 109th Congress, now moves on to the U. S. Senate and has the support of the Department of the Treasury.
California Members of Congress who votes YES on H.R. 1427 are: Baca, Becerra, Berman, Bono, Calvert, Capps, Cardoza, Costa, Davis, Doolittle, Eshoo, Farr, Filner, Harmon, Lantos, Lofgren, Matsui, McNerney, Gary Miller, George Miller, Napolitano, Roybal-Allard, Linda Sanchez, Loretta Sanchez, Schiff, Sherman, Solis, Stark, Tauscher, Thompson, Watson, and Waxman.
Posted by Administrator at 2:32pm
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Dream House Raffle
May 15, 2007
A couple of friends of mine told me about this the other day – it took me a while to get it up here on my blog, but check this out:
It seems that the Mount Madonna School is raffling off a house on West Cliff Drive! Well, I’m not quite sure where it is, they don’t say – but it’s right around there, somewhere. They say it has an appraised value of $1.8 million – and I believe them!
Tickets cost $150 apiece, and they are only selling 32,000 of them. Instead of the house, you can opt to just take $1.5 million in cash. You might want to just take the cash – the IRS is likely to hand you a whopping tax bill if you win, and it might be good to have the cash handy. 🙂
Posted by Administrator at 9:12pm
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