Where there’s smoke…

In a previous post, I talked about how blessed I was to be writing about the pristine Tahoe summer time weather. I’m still awfully blessed, but that post also talked about the chance of thunder showers. Those thunder clouds sparked the lightning caused fires that have plagued California since. The Yuba-Complex fires as I believe they’re being called are just to the west of the Pacific Crest from us, and each afternoon they have ushered in a thick, smokey haze that has really been stepping on my buzz. Just a couple of hours west of here thousands upon thousands are currently evacuated from their homes in the Town of Paradise. They get to deal with the smoke while sleeping on a cot in a high school gymnasium. So with that, I’ll quit complaining and deal with my little air pollution problem. That’s the thing about our problems, isn’t it? Our problems usually pale in comparison to someone else’s. Such is the case with real estate here. The market is slow. People in some instances are having to “short-sale” their homes, and others have lost them in foreclosure. But generally, our market has held strong. Sure, we’ve lost some of the great gains that we saw over the last 5 years, but compared to some other places, we’re doing okay. If you’re a buyer, and you’ve been waiting for the bottom, a bump in interest rates could erase a further decrease in prices. You may have already missed the bottom. Really. If you’d like to talk about what you could get in Truckee or Tahoe, give me a call or send me an email. I’ll be honest about real estate, and then we can co-miserate about the weather somewhere. Until then, God Bless those who stand in harms way on the fire lines and those who have lost their homes and everything they owned in these fires.

Amazing Summer Days.

It seems like I’m the last guy in real estate to get a blog.  Well, drop a few hundred bucks with your web design people, and…bingo, my favorite chubby realtor has a blog.  Not so sure about how to act, what to say, or if anyone even cares.  But dog-gone-it if I’m not back on the cutting edge.

Now…what critical piece of information could I impart on my first post?  After all, the first one’s got to be good doesn’t it?  What seriously comes to mind on a Saturday morning like this is the realization the I am beyond blessed to wake up in Truckee on a day like today.  It’s days like this, that schlumps like me shovel snow all winter for.  Just so you can take my word for it, the forecast is for the upper 70’s as a high, and we began the day in the low 40’s.  Right now there’s neither a cloud in the sky, or a whisper of wind.  A thunder shower this afternoon would be a welcome reprieve from the pine pollen though.  Not to belabour the point, but summer is an amazing time in the high Sierra.  I’m well aware that the majority of the free world waits anxiously for the return of Tahoe’s glorious powder days of mid-winter, but for a lifelong resident like me…Summer is where it’s at.  At risk of being smug…You should be this lucky. 

Now for the Realtor part.  You could be this lucky!  There are a ton of great values on the market in Truckee and North Lake Tahoe right now.  Times are tough and some people really need to sell.  If rates continue to creep up as they’re expected to do, you could already have missed the “bottom” of this downturn in terms of purchasing power.  If you’ve considered getting your own place up here, you should seriously take advantage of the opportunity that this market presents.

Enough of that.  Come to the mountains…soon.  Summer is an amazing time in Tahoe.

Welcome to Bret Churchman’s Blog

Here you will find all news and information related to Truckee and surrounding area real estate.