- Tom Brezsny

Real Estate is Hard and Getting Harder

June 26, 2026Continuing the conversation...about aging and downsizing and how they are increasingly occupying center stage in the real estate market. Here’s part of the backstory… Selling or buying a home is rarely just about selling or buying a home! Nobody in their right mind enters the kind of market we have on a lark or a whim. It’s a huge commitment to go through the preparation of selling and who willingly chooses to be a buyer in this crazy, multiple-offer market? Real estate is hard and...

- Natasha Mingay

The Story of a Soquel Vineyard – Legacy Rooted in Passion

June 23, 2026In the early 1970s, while on a family outing to cut Christmas trees up Rodeo Gulch Road, Angelo Raffaelli saw a simple “For Sale” sign posted along a dusty trail in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It marked a raw, untouched, five-and-a-half-acre parcel — once part of an old cattle ranch, scattered with forgotten fence posts, rusted horseshoes, and the occasional bone fragment. There was nothing around for miles. But Angelo saw something more. What he envisioned was a slice of Tuscany—his homeland—right here in the...

- Tom Brezsny

Real Estate Has Really Changed!

June 19, 2026Real estate works a lot differently than it used to when I first got my license back in 1990. Most things today’s buyers, sellers and agents take for granted or consider “normal” weren’t even on the radar back then. Given the speed of the process these days, it’s hard to imagine anyone who bought or sold a home twenty or thirty years ago, feeling comfortable wading into the deep end of the market without some significant reorientation and guidance.   Here’s what’s changed: Extensive remodeling? Doing...

- Dax Nollenberger

Dax’s Data: The Remarkable Consistency of Santa Cruz County Home Prices

June 16, 2026One of the advantages of producing Dax's Data every week is that over time you stop looking at individual data points and start noticing patterns. Recently, I found myself thinking about how often the weekly median sale price seems to return to the same handful of numbers. In particular, $1.25M appears so frequently that I began wondering whether the data would support that observation. So I went back and analyzed every weekly median sale price in Santa Cruz County since the beginning of 2023, a...

- Tom Brezsny

Helping Your Aging Parents Move

June 12, 2026We’re talking about the growing number of adult children who are trying to help their aging parents move out of the home they’ve lived in for thirty or forty years. Where to start? It goes without saying, leaving a longtime home is a daunting task. Even more so, when folks are in their 80s and 90s and wrestling with the entire spectrum of worries that come along with aging. For them, moving most often feels like an existential threat. Things are frequently in crisis mode...

- Tom Brezsny

It’s Not a Market Until Something Sells

June 5, 2026Continuing the conversation...After a recent column about the changing market, a reader was kind enough to share a phrase he’d learned in the wholesale produce business: “It’s not a market until something sells.”   That’s a brilliant observation and one that offers helpful insight into the vagaries of our current marketplace. Here’s what I mean:  While it’s clear that a market shift is occurring, it’s also true (albeit a little confusing) that SOME properties are still selling very quickly and for full price. Each of those...