Dani Blain Real Estate Team

Gratitude and Giving

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The season of giving and gratitude is upon us! At Dani Blain Real Estate (DBRE), we have a heart for the specific needs in our community and we believe we are blessed so that we can bless others. This is something that Dani and her late husband Kevin started doing together before DBRE – so now that this Brokerage has grown, so has our giving. We are very pleased and proud to be able to serve our community every month and we are hoping with the holidays just around the corner, you will join us in our upcoming endeavors. 

We are better together! 

One of our most favorite giving opportunities has been our annual pumpkin pie giveaway. Well, this year it is expanding because we are partnering with V1st Church, Grocery Outlet, The Blake Shawn Team, Justin Hite Real Estate Team, Home Warranty of America, and Spirit 88.9 to feed 250 families this Thanksgiving. 

We feel very strongly that everyone deserves a family meal on Thanksgiving. Our very own Justin Hite Real Estate Team is providing all the turkeys, our partner team and volunteers have covered the sides, and as always we will have our pumpkin pies to make a full dinner! If you or someone you know could use a good, wholesome meal this Thanksgiving, please follow this link to receive one, click here.

#FeedOurFamilies 

You can help us feed our families in our Central Valley community with FoodLink of Tulare County  who is working hard to ensure everyone in need of a warm meal throughout the holiday season, receives one. We are very excited to kick off this local effort with $1,000 – where $1 provides 4 meals! To learn more about this or to donate, please click here. Anything you can do to help our local families would make a huge difference – you can help through December 31st. 

Coats & Cookies

This holiday season we are partnering with the Lighthouse Rescue Mission to provide new or gently used coats to those in need. Our plan is to make things a bit more sweet for those receiving the coats, so when we deliver them there will be plenty of delicious cookies to ring in the holidays. Will you join us in helping accomplish our goal of collecting as many women’s, men’s, teens and kids coats as we can? You can drop off coat donations at the Dani Blain Real Estate Office in Visalia now through December 17th. 

We find great joy in not only serving and giving back to our community, but to also raise awareness about the local needs in our community while highlighting the non-profits that serve them. This allows for more individuals and businesses to come together and help. This has been an especially difficult year for a great deal of Americans, and some of our own Central Valley families. We are hopeful that by spreading awareness, expressing some specific needs, and actionable items that some of the people in our network can help. If you are someone that is able, please consider helping us make someone’s holiday season a little brighter. Thank you and may God bless you and yours this season of giving. 

The Right Real Estate Team

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Real estate deals are tough, choosing your team shouldn’t be

Buying or selling a home has numerous steps and so many layers of things that need to be figured out – that it can seem like an overwhelming process to even know where to begin. The best way to determine what the next steps are for the position you are in, is to connect with a real estate professional. That step alone, can feel daunting – there are so many agents and brokerages out there, how do you make sure you end up with the right team? Well, we may be a little biased, but – we feel confident that Dani Blain Real Estate is the clear choice for all of your buying or selling needs. 

Dani Blain Real Estate opened its doors in September of 2019, but the group of professionals we opened with was already an established team. We were ready to venture into new territory so that we could expand our focus on giving back to the Central Valley Community we had all been serving for many years, as well as grow our agents to better help them achieve their goals. This brokerage was based on a straight forward vision of putting people and relationships over the numbers, serving our team and our clients well, and making sure we always do what we say we are going to do.

The process of buying or selling needs to not only be driven by someone who knows and understands real estate and the entire process, but also someone who knows and understands that this is a personal and emotional process for every single one of our clients. We pride ourselves on having a team of agents that understand that when we are meeting your specific needs and helping you succeed, that makes us succeed.

Our agents are the core of what we do. We bring agents on to our team that will fit well within our culture and they are all people who can get behind and truly embody our core values. We encourage you to meet our team and learn a bit more about our agents – you will see that they all have one thing in common: they all live in and care deeply about our Valley community. 

We believe we are blessed so that we can bless others. We built this brokerage on a foundation of finding ways to give back to this community in the specific ways it needs. We give monthly to align groups or individuals who help make our community a better place. Some of the causes we love and give support to are; Lighthouse Women’s Shelter, AMVETS, Visalia First, Young Life, and many more. You can read more about some of the causes we support here.  

Whether you are a first time buyer looking for the perfect starter home, an investor looking to grow, a newly retired couple looking to downsize, or somewhere in between, we have got you covered. Specializing in every county here in the Valley we can make your real estate dreams a reality. We want to connect with you and work hard for you. We look forward to hearing from you soon!

5 Reasons the Central Valley is the BEST Place to buy a home

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If you are at a stage in your life where you are looking to buy a home, then listen up! You already know California is a great place to live, but determining where you purchase your first home or your next home is a big decision. There are so many options and so many things to consider before you even begin to look at home listings, it can feel daunting right out of the gate. We’ve done some of the heavy lifting for you… go ahead cross everything off the list, except the Central Valley. With the beautiful Pacific Coast to the west, the Sierras to the east, the Cascade Range to our north and the Tehachapi Mountains to the south, the Central Valley is a 450 mile stretch of flat land right up the middle of our great state and should be where you call home, sweet home. 

5 Reasons the Central Valley is the BEST Place to Buy a Home

1. Location, Location, Location

Being centered between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the Central Valley is a quick drive to the beach, the mountains, or the big city. Living in the Central Valley affords quick access to the postcard-esque backdrops of Yosemite, Mammoth, Kings Canyon, the beautiful beaches along the Pacific Coast, and the Sequoia National Forest. While it is a nature-lovers dream, being close to the epicenter of entertainment in the south and the home of big tech to our north – the close proximity to essentially everything, has got to be the number one selling point of this incredible little slice of California.

2. Laid Back Pace

Without the hustle and bustle of a big city, we are able to have a slower pace of life that really sets us apart from the rest of the state. Sandwiched right in between the fast paced lifestyles of LA and the Bay Area, we see that kind of pace to come along with more stress, less time at home, and you guessed it… more traffic. When we make the trek to our southern and northern counterparts, we are reminded yet again why we love our valley home. We have the perk of having quick access to big city appeal, without having to live there and only having to endure that traffic when we travel outside of the valley.

3. Eat Local Everyday

Our warm summer days, coupled with the cool, dry winters gives us the perfect Mediterrean climate that makes the Central Valley’s ag lands more productive than almost any on Earth. With agriculture being one of the main industries in this area, we are blessed with the literal fruits of our farmers labor. The farm-to-fork movement in California is abundantly clear in the Central Valley. On your drive home from work you can stop at any local roadside farm stand and have a side dish on your plate for dinner that was picked the same day. Producing more than half of the fruit, nuts, and vegetables in the United States, the Central Valley is the crown jewel of our nation’s agriculture. This climate can leave us boiling hot in the summers, but that’s what air-conditioning is for, right?

4. Small Town Feel and Sense of Community

From Kern to Fresno, there is a perfect little neighborhood with a house just for you, waiting to make it home. The Valley consists of many small towns that have incredible residents that not only show up and root for the hometown football team, but will also greet you by name when they run into you at the grocery store. We see our hard working, salt of the Earth locals, as being the real backbone of our communities. The sense of strong core values and a warm community-first feel, is evident all across this region and it is one of the things we love most. 

5. More “Bang for Your Buck”

The Golden State is one of the most sought after places to live in the country and along with it comes a hefty price tag. Your dollar will stretch further across the Central Valley, in the counties we specialize in, compared to other parts of the state. Purchasing a home is typically a low-risk investment, purchasing a home in California has proven to be an even lower risk investment. With its affordability, the Valley can make home ownership a reality for many families who may have never thought possible and is one of the main reasons we can tell you that this is the right place to plant your roots. 

The Central Valley is home to Dani Blain Real Estate, our entire team lives right here, in the heartland of California and directly to the west on our central coast. We specialize in selling homes in the counties of Fresno, Tulare, Kings, Kern and San Luis Obispo. Our agents are ready to connect with you and walk you through the next steps and the entire process of purchasing the perfect home. We know that you will love the Central Valley and all it has to offer. If you are still on the fence or want to know more about what each county or town may be like to live in, we are here for you and can tell you more. Stay tuned to our blog where we will continue to highlight the counties and towns we specialize in, or you can reach out to us directly. At Dani Blain Real Estate, we are proud to buy and sell properties and serve the communities we work in… we are on a mission to grow our clients one property at a time and look forward to working with you soon.

Summer of 2020: How You Can Make the Most of It

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When we look back at 2020, years and years from now, what are the things you think we will remember? Good, bad or otherwise, there will be things that leave a lasting impression with us. Hopefully the things that will sink deep into our memories are things that made us feel good, things that made us feel connected, and things that made us feel like we were contributing to the greater good. In our last blog post, we talked about ways to help our Central Valley community through this time, but today we want to talk about ways you can create some intentional experiences for you and your family that will become a part of your forever memory bank. Things that you and your kids will be talking about decades from now with the next generations of your family when you recall these times.

As adults, it is easier for us to kind-of-know, while in the moment, the things that are going to be impactful and we have a pretty good gauge on what we will take away from an experience while we are in the midst of it. But what about our kids? Are they going to look back at this time with memories of toilet paper shortages, news briefings, and people wearing masks? Maybe… but hopefully that’s not all. Hopefully when they look back at this time they are going to remember some of the experiences you have already created for them. Maybe it’s playing board games as a family every night after dinner or putting on talent shows for their parents? Have you tried sleepovers in siblings bedrooms, having them mow a neighbor’s lawn, or leaving motivational quotes in sidewalk chalk on a local walking trail for all to see? As parents, we have the opportunity to create experiences for them that can steer their memories in a positive direction.

For the first few months of this Pandemic, most of us were in survival mode. Between adjusting to working from home or being faced with unemployment, kids transitioning to distance learning, and more Zoom calls and meetings than any of us want to think about – finding time to make these meaningful memories may have taken a back seat. But did you know that our brains are hardwired to prioritize memories with emotional content?

No doubt, this season we are in right now has created plenty of emotion filled moments. We will all remember the first time we went to the grocery store and were met with empty shelves and grief stricken looks on shopper’s faces, but we really want to focus on ways to help create positive emotion based memories so we can fondly look back at this time as well. (To read more about the way our brain may process this time, read this article.) Especially now that the kids are out of school for the summer.  We are all ready to add some “real life” fun on top of the virtual world we have been somewhat trapped in since March.

Below, check out our list of things you can add to your adventure ‘to-do’ list and join us in committing to finding ways to keep ourselves busy with a good mix of things to do at home. If you see anything missing from our ideas below, please share with us on social media!

Go Rafting!

Sunshine Rafting Adventures runs trips along the Stanislaus river and began their season on June 6th. They have outlined new procedures to ensure safe physical distancing and sanitization. Or you can try out Fresno Rafting to take a trip down the San Joaquin River. If you want to check out the Kings River, there are a number of Rafting Outfitters you can view here.

Cool Off at Wild Water Adventure Park in Clovis

With a scheduled opening of June 20th and great Season Pass deals, you may be able to make this a regular part of your 2020 adventures. Be sure to check out the new COVID-19 considerations that include required reservations and assigned picnic sites for each group to maintain safe physical distancing. For season pass info, click here.

Visit the Incredible Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno

In the early 1900s Balsassare Forestiere settled in Fresno with dreams of becoming a citrus farmer. He spent 40 years of his life excavating and over 10 acres of citrus trees all underground. This summer be sure to make a reservation for a guided tour (and bring a face mask) to see this incredible historical landmark.

Take a Float Trip Down St. John’s River

Some Visalia locals have been doing this for years… but others may have no idea how to prepare for a float down St. John’s. Read this article for some tips from a pro to plan an afternoon adventure right here in our backyard!

Buy a House!

Hahaha! No… but really, you should buy a new house and make it a home this summer! We have a ton of great homes on the market and we know the right one is waiting for you. If you decide to make 2020 the year you not only survived a Global Pandemic, but also buy a new home, our team of agents at Dani Blain Real Estate is ready to work with you. Contact us today!