Press

There's a white McLaren 750S that keeps showing up on Via Del Cielo in Rancho Santa Fe. I've seen it three times now. Every time I drive past it I slow down a little. Can't help it. The 750S is a weird car in the best way. McLaren doesn't do the flashy badge thing the way some other brands do. You could park one next to a generic sports car and half the people at the valet wouldn't know what they're looking at. But the people who know, they really know. 740 horsepower, a twin-turbo V8 that sits right behind your head, and a design language that looks like it was pulled out of a wind tunnel (because it was). It's engineered before it's decorated. That's what makes it interesting to me. I think about this a lot because I see parallels in how people shop for homes out here. Rancho Santa Fe is full of properties that don't scream from the street. The gates are understated. The driveways curve so you can't see the house from the road. A $12M estate might sit behind a hedge that looks like every other hedge on the Covenant. The flex isn't loud. It's architectural, it's in the materials, it's in the land itself. Some of these lots are 4, 5, 6 acres. That kind of space in coastal San Diego is the real flex. Del Mar and La Jolla have a different energy. More visible. A house on Camino De La Costa basically performs for the ocean. Everyone sees it. That's its own kind of statement and there's nothing wrong with it. But here's where I'll push back on something I hear from buyers a lot. People say they want "understated luxury" and then get nervous when a listing doesn't photograph like a magazine cover. Understated doesn't mean it'll pop on your Instagram grid. It means you might have to walk the property. Feel the ceilings. Stand in the courtyard for a minute. Same way you have to hear a McLaren's turbos spool up before you get it. Some things don't translate through a screen. That's not a flaw. That's the whole point. So next time you're scrolling listings and something looks a little quiet from the front, maybe click through anyway.

Last month I walked a buyer through a home on Dolphin Place in La Jolla. Ocean views, killer floor plan, priced right for the street. And the first thing out of his mouth when we stepped into the primary suite was, "what is going on with that wall." It was painted a deep eggplant purple. Like, committed-to-it purple. The sellers loved it. They'd picked it out with their designer. And I get it, personal expression, your house your rules. But here's the thing. It wasn't their house anymore. It was a product on the market at $4.8M, and that wall was doing damage. I see this constantly with luxury listings. Sellers will spend $30K on staging the living room and then leave one room untouched because they "love the color" or it's "their vibe." Staging isn't about making a home boring. It's about removing the things that make a buyer's brain work harder than it needs to. Purple walls, hyper-specific wallpaper, that trendy dark green everyone's doing right now. They all force the buyer to do mental math. Can I live with this? How much would it cost to redo? Do I even want to deal with it? And in a market like La Jolla where you've got 15 properties competing in the same price band, you don't want to give someone a reason to move on. Here's where I'll disagree with a lot of agents. I don't think you need to go full white box. That's lazy advice. Warm neutrals, soft tones, even a muted sage in the right room can actually make a space feel more intentional. The goal isn't to strip all personality. It's to make sure the personality belongs to the architecture and the light, not to one person's Pinterest board. That Dolphin Place listing? The sellers eventually repainted. Took a weekend. Cost maybe $800. The home went under contract 11 days later. I'm not saying the purple wall was the only issue, but I watched three separate buyers pause in that room and lose momentum. That's not a coincidence. So if you're prepping a home to list, walk through it with fresh eyes. Better yet, walk through it with someone who'll be honest. What's the one room where your taste might be louder than the house?

There's a stretch of Camino De La Costa in La Jolla where almost every home does the same thing. Floor to ceiling glass, sliding or pocketing, opening the living space directly onto a terrace or courtyard. It's not accidental. It's the single most important architectural detail in this market and I'll tell you why. Coastal San Diego gives you 260+ days of sunshine a year. If your main living area doesn't dissolve into the outdoors, you're wasting the best thing about living here. I've walked buyers through homes priced north of $10M that had gorgeous kitchens, beautiful stone work, all the finishes you'd expect. But the indoor outdoor transition felt like an afterthought. Small sliders. A step down that breaks the visual line. A patio that faces the wrong direction. Those homes sit longer. The ones that move? They get the flow right. A La Jolla Farms property I showed earlier this spring had a 24 foot multi-slide door system that pocketed completely into the wall. No track bump on the floor. The pool deck, the living room, and the ocean view all became one space. You felt it the second you walked in. That's what buyers are paying a premium for. Some agents will tell you kitchens and primary suites sell homes. I disagree, at least in this price range. Kitchens can be redone. A primary suite can be reimagined. But the bones of how a home connects to the outside, the orientation, the sight lines, the structural openings, that's expensive and complicated to change after the fact. You're talking about load bearing walls, engineering, permits. It's a six figure decision minimum. So here's how I want you to think about it if you're shopping in La Jolla, Del Mar, or Rancho Santa Fe. Walk into the main living area. Stand still for a second. Does the outside pull you forward or does it feel like it's behind glass in a museum? That gut reaction tells you more than the spec sheet ever will. If the answer is museum, keep looking. There are too many homes here that get it right to settle for one that doesn't.

Industry professionals can access an official commercial real estate lending data download to review trends.