Blog

Imagine if you will, you've been looking long and hard for a house and you finally find a place you love.

It’s $800,000 and in today's market, seems like a good deal. You draw up paperwork with the owner and put down a deposit, all seems good. Then suddenly, you wake up in cold sweat wondering: how do we really know it's really his house? How do you know that he has the legal right to sell it to you? Are there liens on it? Are the taxes paid?

Don't worry, there's a tool to protect you: it's called title insurance.

Title means ... read more >>

Imagine, if you will. You spent the last month getting this property ready for the new tenants. Not after much work and expense, it’s ready to rent.  To your surprise, you get served to go to small claim's court. But, your old tenants trashed the property, and now want to take you in front of the judge trying to get their security deposit back. Well, you know how they left the property, so you're happy to go talk to the judge. To your surprise, you lose!

Often, the most contentious part of the landlord-tenant relationship is the return of the security deposit.<... read more >>

Imagine, if you will: you have a building with over a hundred units, all independently owned. How do you operate that building? Who decides when it gets painted, in what color? Who decides what temperature to have the pool? Some people might want it cold to save money. While some people, who use it more, might want it warmer. Everybody has a different agenda.

So, how can you ever operate a community full of people with similar but different priorities? Simple, it's called the homeowner's association.

What Is a Homeowner's Association or an HOA?

In real estate, we have everyday situations of granting access to properties with various potential buyers, tenants (some may or may not have agents), and vendors. You need to accommodate different, conflicting times. It can often be too much to meet them all in person every time. Plus, your property is a home that you have entrusted us to take care of.

Luckily, there are tools for that: they are called lockboxes. That’s how the pros handle it.

In real estate, a lockbox is essentially a locked container or a box that has a key inside that gets you to access a property.

Imagine, if you will: you're offered $500,000 for a piece of property. You accepted the deal, and then, you told the buyer: "give me the $500,000, and I'll sign over the property." Then, you said: "how about this, you sign over the property, and I'll give you $500,000."

Well, we might be in a standoff, so that's where escrow comes in.

Mike Explains: Escrow

So, what is an escrow? That's a question a lot of people are afraid to ask. You hear that a property is under escrow or fell out of it. Or, it's at the close o... read more >>

Let's picture this: Sunday evening, end of a relaxing weekend... And, you get a phone call. Turns out, there's a fire at your rental property.

The good news is: the tenants are OK. You agreed to accommodate them in a hotel. What's not resolved is: who pays for their accommodation for the next six weeks? After all, they just paid for this month's rent.

Most of their furniture and personal belongings have been damaged. There's also the issue of what was the cause of the fire. If the tenants don’t have renter’s insurance it is a huge mess that could ... read more >>

Hi, this is Mike Dunfee with the Mike Dunfee Group and in honor of Valentine's Day, we would like to share with you some of the things that we love.

I love my wife Shayla and our daughter Berkeley. I also love living in the beautiful city of Long Beach!

Kevin Dever loves his fiancée and filling vacancies!

Flori Parham loves the Mike Dunfee Group’s buyers and sellers. She also loves art and music!

Humberto Armenta adores coffee and donuts - they’re his favorite.

Jeanette Beltran loves being a part of the Long Beach community!

Gabriel... read more >>

Long Beach, January 27^th, 2020 - The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) announced that Long Beach’s Dunfee Real Estate Services, INC., dba Mike Dunfee Group is a winner of the 2020 Inner City 100 (IC100) award which recognizes the 100 fastest-growing firms in under-resourced communities across America. The winners were picked based on revenue growth and job creation during the four-year period from 2015 to 2019.

Winners were revealed at the 2020 ICIC National Conference held virtually on Dec... read more >>

Let me paint you a picture: you’ve got these tenants - you know, the ones that you’ve been getting the complaints on from the neighbors, the ones where the cops keep coming out to the property - those tenants. They’re no longer paying you rent and maybe because of AB-3088 or whatever reason you go by the property to see what’s happening because you haven’t heard from anybody. You snoop around a little bit on Facebook and you see, oh… they’re up skiing in Mammoth, they’re in Cabo or wherever it may be. You get upset - understandably upset. No ... read more >>

Hi, this is Mike Dunfee. I'd like to take you for a walk along the Ocean Corridor. I'd like to show you some of the most important and interesting buildings along the way. And today we're going to start with the HarborPlace Tower located at 525 Seaside Way. Built in 1990 and 22 stories high, there's 220 residential units and they range in size from 625 to almost 2,700 square feet. Plus there is one commercial unit in the building. So there's two lobbies here at HarborPlace Tower. The main lobby here on Seaside Way and the secondary one up here on Ocean Boulevard. There&#... read more >>