Stavrosgroup

Most Amazing Homes | 56 N La Senda

Andy is joined by Jennifer Farrell, host of Most Amazing Homes, to show off the breathtaking, bluff-top property at 56 N La Senda.

JENNIFER FARRELL: We’re in Laguna Beach, California in a newly constructed modern masterpiece, where you’re not just looking at the ocean you’re in it. Let’s take a look!

JENNIFER FARRELL: So we’re here in Laguna Beach and we are at an ‘in the ocean’ home – tell me about this home.

ANDY STAVROS: So the house sits in the Three Arch Bay private gated community of just under 500 homes of brand new construction. The architect was Mark Singer – very well known here in Laguna Beach. [This home] was his last design unfortunately before he passed, but again just a warm contemporary feel that you’ll see once we get inside.

JENNIFER FARREL: This is a multi-level home overlooking/overhanging the ocean… How many bedrooms and bathrooms, and how big is this house?

ANDY STAVROS: The house is just over 5,000 square feet with five bedrooms and seven bathrooms, three levels, an elevator that takes you to all levels including the master… It really is one of those turnkey, lock and go homes.

JENNIFER FARRELL: Well I can feel the ocean breeze behind me, I’m dying to see the ocean view. Lead away!

ANDY STAVROS: All right, let’s go.

JENNIFER FARREL: Wow, we’re not looking at the ocean we’re standing over the ocean. This is unbelievable, it’s a view that I think few people have ever seen.

ANDY STAVROS: Yeah, it feels like you’re on a boat when you walk in… This is the time in a tour where I just stop talking, because everybody’s gravitated towards the view on the deck. I just allow people to take that all in, because it is breathtaking once you walk into this room.

JENNIFER FARREL: You know you’re right, it is like being on a yacht. Even the railings for the balconies are a horizontal metal, so it actually feels like we’re on an ocean liner. I love all of the contemporary beautiful lines here – it’s a very clean color palette, very open space, without crazy high ceilings. Because the ceilings are not overwhelmingly high, you still get a feeling of coziness and intimacy in this house.

ANDY STAVROS: Right you do get the coziness. Because of height restrictions and view obstruction, you occasionally have to compromise high ceilings, but you still get a sense of openness to the house with the colors, the design and the finishes throughout.

JENNIFER FARREL: I happen to love this portico that’s in the middle of the room. It’s such an interesting way to create an indoor veranda space, so you feel like you’re outside in an outdoor covered patio area, and yet you’re right in the middle of the house.

ANDY STAVROS: Right absolutely, and you’ll see a blend of the industrial look with the beams exposed but painted. I’m sure you can tell this house sits on bedrock, so much steel, it’s not going anywhere, and here’s just evidence to prove that it’s a solid house with a solid foundation that was just recently built.

JENNIFER FARREL: Well this home may not be going anywhere, but we are going somewhere – I’m dying to go in that kitchen.

ANDY STAVROS: All right, let’s go.

JENNIFER FARREL: Although I would love to say I’d be doing a lot of dishes here, I may just stand here staring out at the view.

ANDY STAVROS: There is a little bit of a distraction. You might burn your food as you’re cooking here, because you just want to gaze outside.

JENNIFER FARREL: That is true, although there’s a lot to see in this kitchen itself. These counter tops are actually porcelain slabs, which means they’re as durable as a tile, but have the gorgeous look of marble. I also think that the surrounding caesar stone behind us makes a great counterbalance. The materials here are really nicely laid out.

ANDY STAVROS: Right, you’ll see the beautiful contrast with the wood grade finishes, the vertically opening white cabinetry, all the high-end appliances – gagging out melee, sub-zero refrigerators, etc. It’s a very functional chef’s kitchen.

JENNIFER FARREL: We have glass surrounding us. We have beautiful artistic touches, like that porcelain faux marble slab again and unique lighting which I’ve never seen.

ANDY STAVROS: Yeah, throughout the house the light fixtures are all unique, but complement each other. You can also see some of the same materials from the kitchen used here on the fireplace.

JENNIFER FARREL: Well this one’s definitely unique, because you have this frameless glass wet room that becomes part of the bedroom. It’s a very resort feel here.

ANDY STAVROS: Right, it gives you an open feel and who wouldn’t want to wake up every morning staring up the coast – from Thousand Steps Beach all the way down to Palos Verdes, Catalina Island, etc.

JENNIFER FARREL: The view here could not be more spectacular. I’d love to see the outdoor space.

ANDY STAVROS: You get 270 degree views in this home, with every room positioned differently.

JENNIFER FARREL: I can’t believe we have a yard here!

ANDY STAVROS: Grass on the bluff front is rare to find! Today you can hear the waves crashing against the rocks. Out here there are multiple entertainment spaces, if you didn’t have enough upstairs; a spa, barbecue area, wet bar, more cooking space, etc. it’s a great level to be on.

ANDY STAVROS: In total the home is 5,041 square feet – five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, elevator, three-car garage, laundry on the ground level… It’s a really fantastic home for somebody that’s looking for a house that’s ready to go with no blood, sweat, or tears. Zero maintenance with a 15 year design and build process, priced just under 20 million.

JENNIFER FARREL: In this area that’s actually a deal.

ANDY STAVROS: We also dropped the price five million dollars, so it’s on discount.

JENNIFER FARREL: This is an amazing home and an unbelievable once in a lifetime property. Thank you so much, Andy.

If are considering buying or selling a home in the Orange County area, connect with us. See how our local, experienced and well-connected team can exceed your expectations. Let’s talk strategy!

10 Major Benefits of Virtual Home Tours in Orange County

About 81% of marketers agree that interactive content is better at grabbing an audience’s attention. Instead of focusing on a hard sell, interactive content combines authenticity and quality content to help you stand out from other homeowners trying to sell.

In fact, offering virtual home tours is one of the best forms of interactive content you can utilize when selling your property.

With COVID-19 quarantines still underway, virtual tours can help you to reach buyers while they remain safe inside.

Meanwhile, virtual house tours can attract more potential buyers and give you an advantage in the marketplace. Still on the fence? Here are 10 benefits you can experience by offering house tours online.

Keep reading to learn more about how offering virtual home tours can get you ahead of the curve.

1. Generate More Interest

Over 50% of home buyers find their new homes through the internet. Many of these online homebuyers look for virtual house tours before voicing their interest. Virtual tours are most important to buyers who fall within the 52 to 71 age range.

By creating virtual home tours, you can reach more potential buyers.

With people staying at home in response to COVID-19, you can’t wait for people to schedule an in-person tour. Instead, you need to attract more people to your property. Adding virtual real estate tours to your listing can help you expand your reach.

As more people stay home, buyers are relying on the internet to research real estate properties. Using virtual tours will help you market your property even while buyers stay at home.

Appeal to Your Target Audience

In fact, providing visuals of the property is a better way to appeal to buyers. Virtual tours offer more details than simple sketches. By providing buyers with online home tours, you can add details that are bound to make an impact.

At the same time, you’re providing home buyers with helpful information that will help them make an informed decision.

Virtual house tours can help you reach your target audience, too. You can integrate customized features based on your audience’s expectations. Using a customized approach will increase your chance of closing a sale.

At the same time, you’re making customers feel special and valued. As a result, they’ll turn toward your property instead of another.

As you attract more visitors to your listing, you’re also increasing your property’s search engine ranking. Once you reach the top of a search page, you can earn more visitors than competing sellers. A higher ranking will also build brand trust, your credibility, and boost awareness!

2. Save Valuable Time

Listing a new property for sale by conventional means can result in hundreds of phone calls from potential buyers. You’ll need to complete in-person tours that may or may not result in a sale. Meeting each of these potential buyers in person can waste your valuable time and energy.

In many cases, some of these buyers are simply curious.

Often enough, curious buyers are only touring different homes. They don’t have the intention of making a reach purchase.

Virtual home tours allow buyers to determine their interest. They can explore a property straight from their phones or laptops. If they’re genuinely interested in the property, they can contact you for more information.

Encouraging prospective buyers to explore your online house tours first will help you determine the true buyers. Then, you can focus your time and attention on closing those sales.

3. Encourage Interactions

In addition to helping you attract more site visitors, virtual home tours can also increase your clickthrough rate. A higher clickthrough rate will increase your listing’s ranking on search engines like Google.

Virtual house tours encourage people to click around and interact with your content.

Visitors will click around to navigate their way through your virtual real estate tours. Meanwhile, they can also leave comments on your posts and ask questions about aspects of each property. For example, a prospective buyer can ask about the flooring and countertop materials.

Then, you or your real estate agent can easily respond in real-time.

These instantaneous interactions will help you discover prospective buyers. At the same time, you’re increasing the listing’s search engine ranking, allowing you to reach even more buyers.

4. Reduce Bounces

A high bounce rate can have a negative impact on your listing’s search engine ranking. The bounce rate indicates how many people leave the listing and how quickly.

Adding virtual tours to your listing can boost engagement and the clickthrough rate, which will decrease the bounce rate.

Search engines like Google will recognize that the listing is keeping visitors engaged and on the page. Google will prioritize your listing over ones with a low clickthrough rate and a high bounce rate.

Most virtual home tours take about a minute. That’s an additional minute you can keep people occupied on your listing. As each visitor’s dwell time increases, your bounce rate will drop.

Remember, the higher you rank on search engines, the more people will visit your listing.

5. Stand Out From Competitors

Many real estate agents aren’t aware of the benefits of virtual tours. Offering these tours before other sellers do will give you an advantage in the marketplace.

As one of the few people offering virtual tours in your target area, you can stand out from the crowd. You’ll attract the attention of prospective buyers before others can.

Your target audience will recognize the convenience you’re offering them. They’ll choose to explore your online home tours instead of touring another property in person. Then, you can get ahead of other sellers in your area by maintaining that advantage.

Failing to offer remote tours, on the other hand, can cause you to fall behind the curve. As your competitors recognize these benefits, they’ll start offering online tours themselves.

Get ahead of the curve and start attracting buyers to your property listing before your competitors can.

6. Increase Shares

Once your real estate agent posts your home online, you’ll want to generate as much traffic to your listing as possible.

Virtual house tours are eye-catching, engaging, and worth sharing. As more people share your online home tours, you’ll receive a backlink to your listing.

At the same time, you’ll improve your listing’s authority, which can further improve your search engine ranking.

The more backlinks you generate, the better for your ranking. Then, you can attract more visitors to your listing and generate more interest!

7. Get Social

You can also generate more interest by sharing your virtual tours on social media. A high-quality virtual tour can even go viral. The more people you impress with your house tour, the more likely they’ll share the tours with their friends.

Search engines like Google also use social media signals when determining search rankings. You can ensure your listing goes viral by creating unique, quality content.

You can also encourage social sharing by using emails. As you share your virtual home tours over email, people will send the email to others. As a result, you’re also extending your reach and marketing your property to other buyers!

8. Offer Ease

Cleaning and staging virtual house tours can take time and energy. You’ll want to make sure the entire house is in pristine condition before scheduling an in-person tour. With virtual home tours, however, you won’t have to waste valuable time.

Instead, you’ll have the convenience of providing buyers with a tour regardless of the property’s actual state.

In fact, virtual tours are one of the best ways to present any property. The listing will look attractive and explorable, even online. You can highlight different spaces, allowing buyers to navigate between one room and the next on their own.

At the same time, you’re creating a permanent open house by providing potential buyers with 24/7 hour access to the property. As a result, people will also see you’re reliable and ready to offer the information they need.

9. Highlight Key Features

The time homebuyers spend looking for the perfect home has decreased by three days year-over-year. That means you have a short window to make a strong first impression.

Decades ago, static newspaper and magazine listings were enough to grab a homebuyer’s attention. Now, agencies need to use photography, videos, and walk-throughs to attract buyers.

Today, you can use virtual real estate tours to provide buyers with all the visual information they could possibly need.

You can also customize these tours to highlight specific features for each listing. For example, if you can show off the latest home improvements you’ve made. Buyers can zoom in, examine details, and explore your properties day or night!

10. Improve Your ROI

Virtual house tours can increase your sales and boost your return on investment (ROI). Instead of wasting time and money with in-person tours, you can use virtual tours to pinpoint prospective buyers. You can focus on increasing the value of your home, too!

These tours can help you reveal key selling points for each property, increasing your chance of a sale!

Take a Tour: 10 Major Benefits of Virtual Home Tours

Want to sell your home as soon as possible? Experience these benefits of virtual home tours for yourself! By creating a virtual tour, you can attract buyers and sell your property in no time.

We’re here to help. Connect with our team today to sell your property using virtual tours!

Mortgage Rates Hit All-Time Low

Last week, mortgage rates hit an all-time low. Maybe you’ve heard, it’s big news. On March 5th, 2020, the national average interest rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage clocked in at 3.29%. That’s the lowest recorded rate in the almost 50 years since Freddie Mac began keeping track in 1971. It’s a momentous occasion—historic, even.

Of course, there’s other, bigger, more somber news these days. The risk of global pandemic is wreaking economic havoc and pushing rates even lower. It goes without saying that these record-low rates aren’t exactly cause for celebration. Like the rate cuts that followed the Great Recession, today’s boon for borrowers follows another worldwide emergency. The novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, dominates the headlines. It’s impossible to avoid, and for good reason: in times like these, it’s best to stay informed.

In that vein, we thought we’d take a look at how the spring real estate market is shaping up. While we can’t predict the future, we are informed by indicators like historically low mortgage rates and the current state of the market.

Record-Low Mortgage Rates

Here’s the good news: When rates are low, both buyers and sellers win. Before reaching the current low, mortgage rates began to fall during the global economic crisis of 2007-2008. Rates started 2007 well above 6% and averaged about 5% in 2008. By November 2012, they reached the previous historic low of 3.31%. After bumping back up to mid-3 and 4% in subsequent years, rates again began to drop in 2019. In a nutshell, buyers shopping for a mortgage have had it good for quite a while now.

Today’s all-time low average mortgage rates mean buyers can spend more on the principal of their loan instead of the interest. They can be approved for a larger loan, enabling them to buy “more house” with the same savings and income. Additionally, some would-be buyers who couldn’t afford to buy an Orange County home may finally get the chance they’ve been waiting for.

$500,000 loan at 4.29%
- Total cost of mortgage: $889,712
- Monthly payments: $2,471

$500,000 loan at 3.29%
- Total cost of mortgage: $787,328
- Monthly payments: $2,187

As you can see, mortgage rates greatly impact both monthly payments and the total cost of a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.

The benefits of today’s all-time low mortgage rates extend to existing homeowners and sellers as well. When more buyers are shopping with more money to spend, listings receive more interest and competition. That means better outcomes for sellers. Existing homeowners can win by refinancing. Analytics firm Black Knight recommends refinancing on any loan that’s at least 0.75% higher than the current average. There are some associated costs, but you’ll save thousands more if you can refinance to a significantly lower rate.

In a vacuum, reaching the historical low mortgage rate could be considered great for everyone. It benefits buyers, sellers and existing homeowners. But, unfortunately, there are extenuating circumstances to consider.

Enter Coronavirus: Disease and Unease

Unlike low mortgage rates, the effects of a possible global pandemic on Orange County real estate are a bit harder to guess. What we do know is that COVID-19 is very likely to spread further throughout the country. Fears will heighten, schools may shut. The ultimate toll that the virus might take on our country’s populace is unknown, but it is expected to be significant. The economy will also take a hit, and it already has.

Around the world, stock markets are plunging as business has crawled to a halt in some regions and industries. Despite lower rates, buyers whose down payments or reserves are in stock may actually have less buying power. If the virus spreads widely throughout the United States, the Orange County real estate industry may also slow. Open house events at Orange County homes for sale will be less populated during a pandemic. On the other hand, foreign investors are reportedly eyeing US real estate as an even safer investment than before the virus broke out. Call it a silver lining to a particularly grey cloud.

We also know that the Orange County real estate market has been largely unaffected so far. Buyers and sellers who are motivated by external circumstance (ie. a new marriage, new baby, new job, death divorce, etc.) are still participating in business as usual. The most affluent sellers or those who are in no real rush may elect to wait. If the disease fades away, things may stay the same. If the situation gets worse, they may change.

For now, Orange County real estate is still chugging along. Homeowners, buyers and sellers alike can take advantage of historically low mortgage rates. For those with an externally-motivated reason to buy or sell, that motivation hasn’t changed. Those are good things. If you’re interested in buying or selling an Orange County home, or if you need a recommendation for a trusted Orange County lender, let us know. We’re happy to help. Most importantly, follow the CDC’s guidelines for disease prevention, and take good care of yourself.