Beware of hair dryer murders and check your GFCI outlets in Today's real estate update

In today’s real estate market update, we dive into the often-overlooked hazards lurking in your home—specifically, the life-saving role of GFCI outlets. GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter) outlets are designed to prevent deadly electric shocks, especially in areas like bathrooms and kitchens, where water exposure is common. But did you know a malfunctioning GFCI could lead to tragic accidents, including the so-called hair dryer murders? In this episode, we’ll cover:

• What are GFCI Outlets? Why it’s critical to have them in specific areas of your home.
• Testing Your GFCI: Step-by-step instructions to ensure your outlets are functioning and prevent potential electrical disasters.
• Hair Dryer Danger Zones: How bathrooms with faulty outlets become high-risk areas.
• Importance for Buyers and Sellers: Why ensuring GFCI outlets work properly could make or break your next home inspection.

Plus, we'll be updating you on real estate trends in the Santa Clarita Valley and surrounding areas, focusing on the key market indicators:

• Price movements, new listings, and market fluctuations
• Best practices for home inspections during purchase or sale
• How staying on top of maintenance can boost home value

If you're a homeowner, real estate agent, or someone in the market to buy or sell, this episode is packed with must-know tips for keeping your home safe and maintaining property value.

• GFCI outlet safety tips
• Hair dryer electrical dangers
• Home electrical safety
• Santa Clarita real estate update
• Real estate market trends 2020
• Home inspections for buyers and sellers

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From first responder to real estate expert, Connor with Honor brings honesty and integrity to your Santa Clarita home buying or selling journey. Subscribe to my YouTube channel for valuable tips, local market trends, and a glimpse into the Santa Clarita lifestyle.

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Transcript

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two hundred and seventieth day of the year today is gonna be of course the 26th of September I've been doing some numbers compiling some data from what's going on in real estate to try to give you the best information currently in Santa Clarita Valley 12 coming soon listings 55 new that's placed over the past seven days 73 properties have other price changes 24 have gone back on the market 29 have gone under contract 47 have gone deeper under contract from basically backup offer depending status that's typically used by those agents out there and the sellers that don't want any additional inquiries or backup offers on their property kind of takes them completely off the table 57 properties of clothes 6 of expired 11 cancelled 12 been put on hold for been withdrawn from the market not selling one of the things let me point out this here as I'm doing the daily numbers so I I get all the numbers I glean them from the multiple listing service then I create files and I convert those files depending on the large language model or the GPT that I'm using or the AI I will then pull the information maybe transfer that into a text file it's just gonna depend on how it can chew on the data and sometimes when I'm pulling out full files I get erroneous information because it's not taking into account the actual titles of the file so it's creating issues by not correlated to the data so I have to go through several times but the information that it gleads is quite impressive and that definitely does help understand more about the dynamics in the market at least what's happening currently now on the other side of that there are some um folks out there that are touting to be some kind of experts in this field this is so absolutely cutting edge there really is nothing about being experts it's about getting into the information looking at it what I did is I put a couple of things in the blog post for today I had chat you on pulling out some graphic graphical information and in doing so it came up with his graph kind giving an idea on what's happening in the various cities as far as properties that correspond to price per square foot so you can see in most of these areas Valencia is definitely priced higher than most of the other cities out here there wasn't enough information and sold properties for Stevenson Ranch just basically because that there aren't very many houses there for sale there haven't been for quite a while Valencia is a larger area with more residences it's not if Stevens and Ranch had the same amount of houses in Valencia we would definitely have a different story to give you but it doesn't there's a lot less residential real estate in Stevenson Ranch 9 1 3 8 1 when compared to both Valencia and that's 9 1 3 5 4 9 1 3 5 5 so that's the data looking at what's happened here in the last seven days the market snapshot nothing exciting nothing new we do have the interest rate that is slowly coming down we are now high fives low sixes but it's gonna depend on your ability to finance on what's going on with your own credit history looking at the sales and the numbers from Castaic I had Castaic Real Estate pulled to give us some market trends and I had that chewed on by various large language models various AIs to have them give us some information I did include that on our blog post here or blog at SantaClaritaOpenhouses com so you can go there you can get that information but what I did in doing so is I did put together this data so you can find out what's happening in the real estate market now both sellers and buyers there's some concerns on the buyer standpoint they don't wanna overpay for anything but in some cases they'll come back later requesting additional information more so than what's actually required for the repair if that makes sense real estate sellers very excited they believe okay th the buyer we're gonna be starting this process and that being the case as they get closer to closing there usually comes in some kind of a request for repairs and that's gonna depend on the time frame the contractual time that you have been given as a real estate buyer to be able to do all your investigations and inspections part of that process is then providing some kind of a request to the seller with reference to repairs or just having the repairs completed and done outright that's not a time that you're want to renegotiate the sales price of the residents and this happens more often than it potentially should and maybe because buyers aren't prepared for this part of the process now I don't blame somebody going out and trying to ask for everything they can possibly get but if and has happened frequently if you're a real estate buyer going into a residence and you get through the inspections and the best the inspector has is some light TLC some tender loving care should be taken with a house and maybe let's just throw this out there and I saw this recently 2 GFCI the Ground Fault Interruption outlets those ones outlets that have the buttons on them that are close to water sources like sinks yeah by kitchen and bathrooms by bathtubs those sorts of things those outlets are protected and what's supposed to happen is if you have a large draw IE you're taking a bath and there happens to be one of those fancy outlets next to the bathtub maybe next to some water source or sink and your better half is blowing their hair dry with a hair dryer and they decide to throw it into the bathtub because you're in there usually that outlet if it's plugged into GFCI it's going to stop you from getting electrocuted cause the outlet's gonna pop that's what's supposed to happen so while the situation of needing that kind of an outlet usually isn't as dramatic as the Hollywood scene painted by a distraught's spouse taking you know hair dry and seeing you in the bathtub and wanting to end you um having outlets not in working order is a good thing to get taken care of it depends on that previous negotiation if you're gonna ask for it but asking for thousands of dollars in credit in lieu of repairs because of two GFCI outlets that are not functioning properly is really overdoing it thousands of dollars it does not cost to replace two of the GFC outlets so going into that and understanding that process is really going to be helpful from also a buyers at a seller standpoint at some point you as a buyer probably going to be a seller I would guess and that's gonna happen probably sooner than you've bet on a lot of people that are buying real estate or under the presumption this is our forever home we're gonna finish here I can't tell you how many people I've gotten calls from a few years after the forever home has been purchased wanting to sell and buy another forever home that being the case when you're working out this process and going back and forth you might be in the sellers position so just give it a moment and think about it instead of maybe asking for $10,000 credit because there's two outlets that are not working and I'll kind of an idea the outlets themselves 20 30 40 dollars just for the outlet to have a qualified electrician put the outlet in the wall or replace the broken GFCI or the non updated outlet to a GFCI that's gonna cost whatever an electrician would cost to come out to the property for a service call the item itself is relatively inexpensive more than likely depending on the work done you're probably gonna pay more in labor but not to the tune of thousands of dollars I would say 100 150 dollars maybe to have the cat roll out the electrician and to put in the outlets as long as like when get there they don't see that the wires have been burned in the wall or it's made of some kind of the the box or they upgrade the issues and say well it's not only these two GFCIs but there's aluminum wiring or something else that could cause a major fire hazard now we're getting into thousands of dollars because typically wiring has to be replaced or new wiring needs to be put in and the box or the outside electrical panel might need to be updated changing all those little breakers inside that now we're talking a lot of money and that has occurred as well so typically that request for repairs it's gonna be a lot more than you know the 40 50 or two or $300 for two or three GFCI outlets the point is this don't use that as a way to negotiate the price the negotiate of the price needs to be done up front now of course you're trying to get the property you're trying to show the seller you're on your best foot the seller really wants to work with you and you should really be the only offer in town in essence that's great and you're gonna maybe be competing with other buyers just make your offer solid when you get into the process let your agent be your guide if there is thousands of dollars worth of damage these be taken care of more than likely the sellers gonna wanna do that anyway even if their house doesn't sell to you maybe the sellers gonna say well I'm not gonna sell it to you because I don't like the way you're asking so if you're gonna let an emotional component get involved in a business transaction fine my suggestions may be pulled back from that stance and not be so hard about it even if the buyer agreed to at the very beginning of the process as we try to for our sellers get the buyers to agree to that they're the sellers not going to entertain any future requests for anything but the buyer could still make it the seller then at that point is faced with having to either deny it fulfill it or maybe meet them halfway or at least make some kind of a comment but at that point if the buyer decides the seller isn't doing enough the buyer has a choice whether the buyer gets their deposit back or not that's gonna depend on time frame and what documents the buyer has signed in that process to either reduce or increase particular time frames if they have removed contingencies let's say and they choose to then cancel the transaction because the seller is decided not to do something that they have a choice in doing or not and they decide to cancel a lot sometimes that deposit will be forfeited and become property of the seller knowing where you are in the process is incredibly important and you should know that every step of the way throughout real estate through with your guide whether you're buying or selling on either side this has been your real estate update for today we are closing out this week we're almost to October folks that's gonna be next week Tuesday so we're September 2024 there have been some changes in the commission structure at least the publicly shown commission numbers and it's just not shown anymore so you're not seeing that show up the data is still present inside and I was doing a concession concessions search morning to kind of get as to what kind of money is being paid out and you have different averages the biggest thing that's being paid for currently is a rate buy down so basically somebody has the 6% interest rate but for two to three years the buyers actually able via the seller to have the seller maybe offer credit or maybe from the buyers end of it but a credit to be given with that can be used to buy down that interest rate at least for a short period of time typically that action does not preclude or prevent the buyer from ref financing if that rate happens to drop to where that rate the current rate is as far as their buy down or something lower than that so usually that's something that's offered is that kind of expense worth it this is 15 $20,000 folks for three quarters of a million or higher it's just gonna depend and those numbers are a bit not commit all just for the fact that it's gonna depend on that particular situation what that's going to cost your lender the interest rate your credit worthiness and so on but before you do that that's a real good conversation to have with your professional to find out if in fact that makes sense to have these you know 15 into the deal to your lender in order by down an interest rate where that rate might actually come down to that point in the next several months again opinions are like *** you know what everybody has one some people don't use them properly I'm Connor with honor thank you for watching we'll talk to you in the next one please share if you have anybody out there that you know could use my services and please go to WWW dot Santa Clarita openhouses.com for more information will be back tomorrow thanks for watching I'm Connor with honor over and out a chat that I had put together earlier with some data may be having some kind of closing cost credit a buyer has a right to ask