Clovis, CA

If you’re thinking about selling your Clovis home, you first need to know it’s value. There are 4 common ways to determine your home’s value, but only one method is considered accurate. This article overviews all 4 options and explains how to choose the right option to make sure your Clovis home sells fast and for the highest possible price.

Value of Your Clovis Home

Four common ways to determine your home’s value are:

1. CMAs – Comparative Market Analysis Commonly referred to as “Comparative Market Analysis”, CMA’s are a professional estimate of your Clovis home’s value. The term, “CMA” is Clovis Realtor-speak for searching similar Clovis homes for sale with those that have sold recently and then comparing those homes to yours using a sophisticated market analysis. Read More

Clovis Unified School District

There’s a little known Californian law (Employment Based Residence Law, CA Ed Code 48204) that parents and guardians who work within the boundaries of Clovis Unified should know about. Clovis business owners and their employees can register their children in the Clovis Unified School District (CUSD) if their employment address lies within the 198-square-mile boundary of Clovis Unified.

CUSD Enrollment

To enroll your child in CUSD you’ll need to present a current Clovis paycheck stub or business license to the District’s Student Services and School Attendance (SSSA) Office at: Read More

Murphy’s law is alive and well in today’s tough real estate market. If anything can go wrong, it probably will. So what happens after you finally find a buyer for your Clovis home, but find out a few weeks later that your home didn’t appraise high enough? Now that the bank won’t finance the agreed upon purchase price – your buyer wants to walk. What do you do? We have the answer: appeal it!

Low Clovis Home Appraisals Many Clovis buyers and sellers are finding out that in today’s Clovis real estate market market, that homes aren’t worth what they thought they were. At least not in the eyes of appraisers who are hired by lenders to calculate the value of the seller’s home. It used to be that the value of a home was what a “ready, willing and able buyer” would pay for it. While that’s still true, things are more complicated now and home appraisals are not an exact science.

So what do you do if your home appraises lower than you think it should be? Appeal the appraisal to your lender. But there’s a catch. To appeal an appraisal, you first need to find out whether yours is a “full-blown” appraisal or an electronic one. Some lenders use automated valuations to speed up the process and cut costs but these types of appraisals are notoriously inaccurate. The same is true of “drive-by appraisals” where the appraiser simply drives by a Clovis home and never goes inside to do the valuation.

If your lender is relying on an electronic or a drive-by, ask to have your home valued by someone who makes an appointment to view your home and then compares it with others in the neighborhood. In most cases, lenders will agree to do another appraisal — especially if you’re willing to pay $200-$300 to cover the cost. However, if an appraiser actually came to your Clovis home and performed a full-blown appraisal, your appeal becomes a little more problematic and challenging. You can still appeal it, but how you do that matters — a lot. Read the rest of this article.

Everyone seems to be asking the same question these days, “Will Clovis home prices increase or decrease this Fall?” According to, LPS, Applied Analytics, a real-estate research firm, it depends on how many more Clovis foreclosures come onto the market. We’ll give you our take and tell what this means to Clovis home buyers and sellers. Clovis Foreclosures According to its website, LPS “is the nation’s leading provider of mortgage processing services, settlement services, mortgage performance analytics and default solutions.” In other words, LPS are a recongized source of information about loans and lending in America. LPSs latest report looked at the link between sales of bank-owned foreclosures (known as REO, for real-estate owned) and the rate of home price declines. In Michigan, for example, REOs accounted for 64% of sales in the first half of 2009. Home prices declined by 47% over that time, however, the decline is just 26% when REO homes are excluded. In California, 50% of all home sales were foreclosures (see chart below). As of today, there are 46 Clovis foreclosures on the market. Read the rest of this article.