Trust sale · Inherited home · Fremont (Mission San Jose) · Closed October 2, 2025
42226 Camino Santa Barbara, Fremont: listed as-is at $2,388,000, sold for $2,500,000 with multiple offers in the first week
The children had inherited their parents' home and, by their own account, had no idea what to do with it. They hired me on reputation — for straight, realistic advice without a sales pitch — and the first thing I gave them was not a listing agreement but three options with the numbers behind each.
The three options
A. Keep it: one child moves in as a primary residence inside Prop 19's one-year window and preserves the low property-tax base. B. Fully renovate and sell for top-of-market. C. Make only the repairs that pay, and sell as-is into a hot market.
What we chose, and why
The market was strong enough that a full renovation would not have returned its cost — buyers were going to pay for the location, not the finishes. So we went with C: a short list of repairs, including converting the house back from three bedrooms to the four it was built as, then an as-is listing.
The result
Listed as-is at $2,388,000. Multiple offers within one week of going live. Closed October 2, 2025 at $2,500,000 — 4.7% over the list price, without the renovation budget option B would have spent.
Why it matters to you: an inherited home is a keep / rent / sell decision before it is a listing. Compare the paths, and run the deadlines from the date of death.
Downsizing after 55 · Prep funded at closing · San Jose (Willow Glen) · Listed July 23, 2026
1341 Settle Avenue, San Jose: the home of twenty-plus years, prepped on a pay-at-close loan, sold in five days for $2,300,000
A couple over 55 were ready to downsize out of the house they had lived in for more than two decades. Two things had to be solved before the listing could work: the house needed real preparation to show at its best, and the sellers needed to be out of it — so it could be vacant and staged — before it sold.
The prep
New floors, paint inside and out, landscaping, and a set of minor repairs. All of it funded through the team's pay-at-closing loan program, so the sellers wrote no checks up front — the cost settled out of the proceeds at close. How that program works.
The sequencing
A two-month bridge loan let them buy first: they moved into a smaller property in the Aptos area while the Settle Avenue house was emptied, repaired and staged. For a 55+ seller, buying first changes the Prop 19 thresholds, so the order has to be priced in rather than assumed.
The result
Listed July 23, 2026 at $2,195,000. Sold in five days for $2,300,000 — 4.8% over list — with the sellers already settled in Aptos.
Why it matters to you: the money for prep and the timing of the move are usually the two things that stall a downsizing sale. Both have solutions. The Downsizing Roadmap walks through the sequencing; the calculator shows what buy-first versus sell-first does to your tax base.
Inherited townhouse · Keep, rent or sell · Santa Cruz · Listed April 22, 2026 · Sold May 3, 2026
1720 Ocean Street, Santa Cruz: an inherited townhouse the heirs almost kept, listed at an aggressive $880,000 and sold for full asking in eleven days
About a year after inheriting the townhouse, the children still hadn't settled what to do with it. The two live options were moving in or keeping it as a rental. We ran the market analysis on every path — what it would rent for and what it would be reassessed at as a rental, what moving in would mean, and what a sale would net — and the sale came out ahead.
The prep
A light refresh only, then professional staging and photography. No renovation: the analysis said the return wasn't there for this property type.
The pricing call
$880,000 was aggressive — the top of the market for a townhouse of that kind. We priced there deliberately, confident that the staging, the photographs and the marketing would get it, rather than listing low and hoping for a bidding war.
The result
On the market April 22, 2026. Sold May 3, 2026 for full asking price — eleven days from listing to contract.
Why it matters to you: since Prop 19, an inherited home held as a rental is reassessed at full market value, which changes the keep-it math for most families. How I run these sales, and the trustee & heir playbook.
Sale prices and dates are from the closed transactions. Percentages are computed from list and sale price. I don't publish a client's net proceeds or tax figures, and I don't publish statistics I can't source.