I'm not much for ripping off and publishing press releases in there entirety, but as far as press releases go, this one is pretty interesting... good facts and most of the information is actually useful...
the release included several nice graphs, two of which are below... i'll get the others up through out the day...
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Roost, the most comprehensive search engine for homes, today released its ‘Real Estate Speak’ Study (http://blog.roost.com/), an analysis of the most popular words brokers use to describe homes for sale. Roost analyzed data for over 250,000 home listings across nine major metropolitan cities to find the top ten adjectives used to describe homes – and discover how they vary by city and price range.
The nine major metropolitan areas covered by the study are: Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C., Dallas, Miami, Orange County, San Francisco, San Jose and St. Louis. ‘New’ is the most popular adjective across all cities. ‘Nice’ is predominantly used to describe homes under $250,000, while ‘gourmet’ is only used in homes above $1 million. ‘Beautiful’ is the most commonly-used subjective term, with more homes in Miami being described as ‘beautiful’ than in any other city.
Additional searches revealed the top 20 most frequently used subjective words (‘perfect’, ‘gorgeous’, ‘wonderful’ and ‘lovely’ topped the list) and the top 20 most quirky adjectives (such as ‘wow’, ‘cool’, ‘savvy’ and ‘fussiest’).
Roost’s study also reveals which cities have been most affected by sliding house prices. The company’s analysis shows the number of listings featuring the terms ‘reduced’ or ‘reduction’ – indicating a price reduction – in their descriptions. Washington D.C. fared worst, followed by Orange County, CA.
“This study provides a fascinating insight into real estate trends around the country,” said Alex Chang, CEO of Roost. “Just by examining the words used to describe homes, we can get a sense of the tastes and styles in each area and the challenges of each housing market. Buyers and sellers alike can learn which features and characteristics are most marketed in their city and within their price range – and make decisions accordingly.”
Roost offers homebuyers the most complete and up-to-date homes for sale content on the Web in 23 regional markets. Roost partners with the local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and local brokers to provide a search engine that provides consumers access to all publicly available homes for sale data via a network of individual broker sites accessed via the Roost.com search engine. By doing this, Roost ensures consumers receive a single, consistent experience for searching comprehensive property listings. Roost also provides homebuyers access to For Sale by Owner listings and New Construction listings in order to ensure a truly comprehensive experience.
Methodology for ‘Real Estate Speak’ Study rankings
Roost has the most comprehensive homes for sale data, with approximately 1.5 million listings in total. The Real Estate Speak Study was conducted by analyzing all words used across all property listings for the nine target metropolitan areas and calculating their frequency of use. Headline results can be found below and a full report is available at http://www.roost.com.
The good folks at roost.com today released the results of some surveying they did (see previous post)... i'm usually the first to point out how useless the information is, but in this case I not only found it interesting but useful..
I’m just back from my almost weekly meeting with the power brokers of San Francisco real estate, and here’s what I’m hearing...
It’s been a pretty typical summer...Homes are going into contract, but “people are taking their time.” “There’s a lot to choose from and even for those buying on the higher end it’s now a bigger decision.”
Buyers looking in the four-to-five million dollar range are described as cautious due to stock market concerns and general uncertainty about the economy...That translates into slower decisions about buying homes.
Clients looking at homes for under one million are taking their time... There are a lot of homes on the market in that range... But they are cautious too and don’t feel pressure to buy.
On the North side of the City business is still good for sellers who price appropriately.
People selling their homes have to: they are moving for work, they aren’t looking to trade up, so they have to price fairly.
Most agents expect a huge inventory boom in September...
Here are two sales worth mentioning:
In a private sale Malin Giddings closed the penthouse at 974 Green Street for $5,000,000
Another nice sale this week, 299 5th street.... Bought two years ago for $1.7 and in the books for $2,050,000...
credit to Monica Pauli
Best of all no improvements still yield a nice return
Earlier this week I wrote about a website that worked to connect folks who wanted to swap homes rather than sell their homes... it seems a few more sites have come out of the woodwork since then...
so, for those of you still willing to throw the equity you have in your home to the wind, a few new options for you...
DANNY BRAGG and his wife, Danika, who own a modern, four-bedroom home in San Bernardino County, are thinking of moving. They're just not yet exactly sure where.
He would like to go back to Texas, specifically to the Woodlands, a town less than 30 miles north of Houston and close to where he lived before moving to California 11 years ago.
Danika, 40, a California native and executive assistant at a civil engineering company, is less keen on Texas. She would prefer somewhere within 50 to 80 miles of where they are now, still close to her mom and work but on the coast.
Danny, 37, a home-based regional insurance sales manager, also loves the beach and sees coastal California, like small-town Texas, as a great place to one day raise kids.
How the couple resolves the issue could depend partly on the emerging practice of home swapping. Through the website Pad4Pad.com, they are hoping to find someone in Texas or California willing to trade for their 1,600-square-foot, four-bedroom home in a gated community in Highland.
For years people have been swapping homes for vacations. Today, the idea of permanent exchanges is gaining support among disillusioned property owners struggling to sell in a glacial real estate market.
Just Listed in time for July 4th! This highly coveted condo located in one of the best neighborhoods in the city, Nob Hill, has so much to offer! It’s sophisticated, elegant and offers amazing views spanning the Bay. The condo comes with Viking electric stove, Toto toilets, Perrin & Rowe plumb, Sub Zero, Wenge countertops, double pane windows. Includes a 24 hour doorman, elevators and an assigned parking spot. What more could you ask for?! Check out the awesome view of the Bay – a great place to watch a fireworks show!
Click here for the complete listing...
This is a brilliant story that looks at another site of the foreclose issue here in California. This time from the side of the law enforcement, along with the story there's a video ride along with a sheriff's deputy who seems to spend the bulk of his day dealing with the fall out of the housing market.
There was a time when all that Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy Mark Habecker knew about mortgages was his own monthly payment. He had never heard of subprime loans or the term "cash for keys." The deputy could count on one hand the times he'd evicted homeowners.
Then came the housing crisis.
Now, Habecker converses smartly about adjustable-rate mortgages. He knows all about home values. And while most of his evictions still involve landlord-tenant disputes, he has new layers of paper in his stack of eviction notices. They're from banks taking back houses.
On a recent Monday, it's only 9:45 a.m., but Habecker, 46, is already pulling into the driveway of a Del Paso Heights home repossessed by a bank. The 78-year-old house was foreclosed in February. But its troubles continue.
I recently told a friend buying a condo in the City, the only acceptable floor to live on was the top... he quickly explained he couldn't afford it... while i understood the problem, the bigger issue is the reality of having people live above you, especially those with children...
so for those of you considering anything other than the top floor, this one is for you....
APARTMENT dwellers in New York City have long endured the trauma of jackhammers, Manolo Blahniks, recycling trucks, sirens, canines and air-conditioning systems.
But, perhaps because the population of children in the city is increasing, the sound of little feet is a complaint being voiced with increasing frequency. And, for reasons ranging from a sense of entitlement to the impossibility of teaching a 3-year-old to glide to the potty like a supermodel, the parents of those little feet are not happy to hear that their children are driving you crazy.
Many, in fact, have heard just about enough of it. They complain that they are being forced to choose between being good neighbors and good parents. “It’s nerve-racking to be constantly shushing my kids and not letting them be normal kids in the morning,” said Janeen Thompson, who lives in a postwar rental building in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Her two young sons — ages 5 and 2 ½ — have elicited multiple noise complaints from their downstairs neighbor, a 25-year-old woman with no children.
I'm never sure what to believe anymore... One week real estate is in the tank, the next things seem to be coming around... the one thing I know I've never heard till today was that real estate in the Silicon Valley was business as usual... but the folks at Business Week seem to know better....
Mountain Home Road in Silicon Valley's Woodside community is a pleasant, tree-lined street. At first glance it might seem like any other upscale suburb, until it becomes apparent that few of the homes are visible from the road. That's because this, and streets like it all over California's San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, are where Silicon Valley's most powerful people live—and they like their privacy.
Silicon Valley's technology titans also try to keep a low profile when they put their mansions up for sale—especially when the prices equal the value of many of the area's startups. The most expensive properties in America's technology capital are often sold privately and without the help of the multiple listing service.
But many of the homes themselves are decidedly high-profile. Take, for instance, Oracle (ORCL) Chief Executive Larry Ellison's 23-acre estate in Woodside, which he bought in 1995 for $12 million before spending more than $200 million to remake it into a 16th-century Japanese palace, complete with an authentic tea house and strolling garden.
Wondering what you get for $45 million in Silicon Valley?
30,000 square, 7.5 acres, 7 bedrooms and 7 baths... Best of all a free look around just by click on the link below... I have to be honest with ya, the pool is a disappointment...
Either way the good folks at Business Week are offering up a photo tour of the most expensive homes in Silicon Valley...
John Cook's Venture Blog
venture capitalstartupsinvestmententrepreneursSeattle
Estately expands real estate search in San Francisco.
Continuing its rapid West Coast expansion, Seattle online real estate startup Estately has expanded service to the San Francisco Bay Area.
That follows the introduction of the service, which allows people to search for homes and find qualified real estate agents, in Portland and San Diego earlier this year.
With San Francisco in the fold, Estately adds more than 40,000 homes and condos for sale from four Bay Area real estate companies.
Estately founder Galen Ward said that the site allows users to search for homes in relation to schools or transportation lines, including CalTrain and BART.
Ward also noted that additional cities will be added in the coming months and said there are some new features "in the pipeline" that he declined to disclose.
More on Estately after it raised $450,000 in angel financing earlier this year.
Forbes magazine has released one of their many lists today... this time it's their top ten cities for investing in real estate... if all else fails to convince a client it's a good time to buy, maybe the folks from Forbes can help....
1. NY
2. Washington D.C.
3. L.A.
4. San Francisco
5. Seattle
6. Boston
7. Chicago
8. Las Vegas
9. Phoenix
10. Orlando
If you're interested in more of the details, as always, click here
Located in the Crocker Amazon, this tri-level Single-Family Home just got listed! Includes two bedrooms, one bath, formal dining room, sunken living room, hardwood flooring, garden, garage AND it’s close to both freeways as well as public transportation! Also short distance from Mt. Davidson Park and City College of San Francisco!
It’s tough being a driver these days. Even with gasoline prices at $4 or more a gallon, parking costs are also climbing steadily. According to a parking rate survey by Boston-based real estate research firm Colliers International, parking costs have risen nationwide for the fifth year in a row and they aren’t expected to change much in the near term. The median monthly parking rate in the U.S. is $153.79, a 0.9% rise from 2007. (See sortable chart below for city-by-city comparison.)
According to Colliers, the rise in rates is due mostly to buoyant office occupancy rates. “As businesses occupy more office space, parking inventory in CBDs [central business districts] nationwide is increasingly tight,” says Ross Moore, director of market and economic research at Colliers, in a statement. In a recent article, however, the WSJ reported that companies are taking less office space across the nation amid the economic slowdown.
New York City’s midtown Manhattan topped the list of most expensive parking areas within the U.S. The median cost to park a car in midtown Manhattan is $585 a month – or $7,020 a year – close to the sticker price of a Nissan Logan, which costs $7,000 to $10,800. Parking rates in midtown Manhattan can go as high as $750 a month.
Other expensive parking districts in the U.S. include New York City’s downtown area, with median cost at $462 a month; Boston, at $460 a month, and San Francisco at $350 a month. click here for the complete story...
ZipRealty.com Unveils "Price Me Now" Real Estate Prediction Game
Players Predict the Final Sales Price for MLS-Listed Homes in Boston, San Francisco and Seattle.
ZipRealty.com launched the online real estate game "Price Me Now" this week, awarding players an IQ score based on predicted sale prices of for-sale homes in Boston, Seattle and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Free to play at, "Price Me Now" players are shown for-sale homes and asked to enter their prediction of the final sales price based on each property's current list price, comparable neighborhood sales and other details. Players earn a Property IQ score ranging from 0 to 200 once a prediction is submitted. Registered players' IQ scores are updated every 15 minutes as more predictions are made. A player's Property IQ is based on a number of factors, including the accuracy of the player's prediction of the final sales price, once a home has sold.
Thousands of for-sale homes in Boston, Seattle and the San Francisco Bay Area are included in the ZipRealty.com "Price Me Now" game. Before entering a prediction, players are encouraged to review all photos and home details available through the game.
"With the market changing daily, everyone seems to have an opinion of the value of listed homes, and we're excited to engage the growing ZipRealty.com community with this real estate prediction game," explains Patrick Lashinsky, ZipRealty's President and CEO. "This game also introduces players to ZipRealty.com features and tools to help them with their real world real estate decisions."
"Price Me Now," developed by the gaming company Realius, is both an easy-to-use real estate game and a prediction market for residential real estate. Players who register at http://predict.ziprealty.com have their IQ score saved and continuously updated compared to other players. Names of individual players who make ten or more predictions will be listed on the ZipRealty.com leaderboard for the community to review.
"We're excited to introduce the 'Price Me Now' game for members of the ZipRealty.com community to help predict home prices in their local markets," said Realius founder and CEO Chuck Teller. "Thousands of real estate enthusiasts, buyers and sellers can test their market knowledge and have fun predicting home prices, comparing their skills to other players and unleashing the collective wisdom of the crowd."
To play "Price Me Now," visit http://predict.ziprealty.com. "Price Me Now" is a trademark of Realius. The price prediction, including the home value prediction, is not a representation or warranty of a home's value, nor ZipRealty's opinion regarding the value of the home. All values and price predictions are merely part of the "Price Me Now" game and are not intended as an assessment of a home's value, and should not be relied upon as such.
Starting Tuesday there's a new broker in town... they offer a real service and charge no commission to list... it's an idea whose day has come... it's calledGottapark
here's how they describe their service...
"Welcome to GottaPark!
GottaPark will help you find and reserve parking. We are reaching out to private residences, commercial businesses and other organizations interested in posting their parking for rent through our site. You can then use GottaPark to search through the available parking spaces and reserve and pay for the ones you want.
GottaPark is a privately held company with headquarters in San Francisco, California. Our goals are to reduce parking congestion and to simplify the process of finding parking. To reach these goals, we provide a simple online tool for individuals and organizations to rent out their parking spots, and for the general public to reserve and pay for them."
If you're a big fan of lists, and who isn't?
One of my very favorite lists came out today... Money Magazine's annual ranking of the best places to live in America... The folks at Money Magazine give plenty of insight into the selection process, but never explain how a top ten selection like Mill Valley suddenly falls off the chart... What's a list without a little bit of controversy...
For those of you who didn't see the Wall Street Journal's piece titled, "How to Sell a House, When You Have to Sell It Now" it touched out a round of calls from agents looking for advice. One of my 22 daily jobs is helping agents build out and understand social networking. In the Journal article it makes reference to the must have sites for getting your home sold...
The Journal referenced Trulia, Zillow, Cyberhomes, Eppraisal and Realtor.com
Seems that more than a few clients were disappointed to find out their homes weren't on those sites after reading the story. Needless to say it was a long time of helping agents get their listings online.
Enough said...
Seven tips for homeowners who can't wait until the market turns around
By DAVID CROOK
So you say you're selling your house?
Hey, it could be worse. You could be selling a Hummer.
If you've been waiting for a good offer to come through, this probably isn't exactly big news to you: This is the worst home-selling market since Herbert Hoover was president. In much of the country, prices are already way down and probably heading even further south. Houses are sitting on the market for months longer than sellers expected.
And don't think this is just a momentary lull, a short slowdown before the market recovers and then takes off again. What you see today is the market you have, for now and, quite possibly, for a long time to come.
"At best, I think we're a year away from the bottom," says Sally Bodmer, who has sold Tampa-area real estate for 31 years and has never seen a worse selling climate. She operates mainly in the newer suburbs on the far eastern edge of the metropolitan area. It was a super-hot area in 2005, when developers couldn't build houses fast enough. "Now," she says, "you can't give them away."
Back when I was a kid we use to say sex sells.... now it appears it's food that sells
the idea of offering chocolate chip cookies or sodas at an open house is not original, but agents in Seattle are convinced it's getting clients in the door...
A piece of paper taped to Lake Real Estate agent Kirk Griswold's open house sign promised cold lemonade one Sunday when Seattle's temperature hit 92 degrees.
"I've never offered lemonade before, but it's so hot," Griswold said during the June open house in Greenwood.
Another motivation was Seattle's cooling real estate scene, he said. "We're trying a little harder in a slower market."
Sellers and their agents are trying harder these days, through food, financial incentives, gimmicky sales offers and personal letters.
The motivation is clear: The number of homes on the market in King County was up 29 percent in June from a year earlier, while sales were down 32 percent, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
June actually had the smallest inventory increase since February 2007; most recent months have been up by 50 percent to well over 60 percent.
The seller of a Bothell home is holding a "reverse auction," where he's promising to drop the price each week until it sells.
Other sellers are offering furniture, cars, special financing and cash bonuses.
BALTIMORE — When Barbara Terry fell behind on her mortgage payments earlier this year, she did the previously unthinkable. Through a local housing organization, she and her daughter, Imani, 9, rented part of their single-family house to a stranger.
“I had to do something,” said Miss Terry, 46, who helps formerly homeless people move into new housing. “I said, I am not going to lose this house. Thinking about having a stranger was not a pleasant thought. I have a daughter. But the positive part was that I needed extra help, and I wanted to help someone.”
With residential mortgage foreclosures still on the rise, more homeowners nationwide are considering Miss Terry’s choice: whether to take in a boarder to keep their homes. Modest but growing numbers are turning to agencies nationwide like the St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center Homesharing Program in Baltimore, which screen boarders to find appropriate matches and relieve some of the fear of strangers.
If you’ve ever wondered what a well produced listing video looks like... I offer up Chris Lim’s listing at 1 Clarence place in San Francisco... 2 bedrooms, 2 baths at $1,250,000.
In most markets, home buyers have the upper hand these days. That often means they have greater negotiating power when it comes to price or the ability to squeeze out extra perks from sellers.
But on occasion, they will ask a seller for even more, a request that will help get to know the home better. They will ask to sleep over.
As reality programs such as TLC's "Date My House" and HGTV's "Sleep On It" show buyers spending a considerable amount of time -- and sometimes an entire night -- in homes they are considering, some buyers in the real world are getting the chance to do the same.
It isn't something being agreed to by droves of sellers, but it is a new tactic that some are considering, said Pat Skiffington of Keller Williams Classic Realty in Orlando, Fla. He is arranging for a prospective buyer to stay overnight in a downtown Orlando condo.
Mr. Skiffington wouldn't recommend it for every home. The Orlando condo is a good candidate because the prospective buyers don't live in the area, and experiencing what the downtown is like at night might sway them to make an offer, he said.
I realize we don't live in LA, but sometimes it's a nice reminder things aren't that bad... Homes prices in the LA area drop nearly 30 percent compared to the same time last year... I didn't say anyone was complaining, but just be grateful you don't sell homes in LA...
Southern California home values keep spiraling down, but sales volume is picking up in the Inland Empire and other areas where bargain hunters are snapping up foreclosed properties at steep discounts.
Home prices plunged 29.3% last month from a year earlier, to a median of $355,000 in six Southern California counties, a real estate information service reported Wednesday. That's about where prices were in 2004.
The number of homes sold in June was down 13.6% from a year earlier. But Riverside County posted an 11.8% jump in sales, thanks to repossessed homes being sold at fire-sale prices, according to DataQuick Information Systems.
Low prices are luring both first-time buyers and full-time real estate investors such as Kurtis and Cindy Squyres of La Quinta.
The couple have been buying two to four houses a month, most of them foreclosures in the Coachella Valley and Inland Empire. They look for the cheapest properties they can find, aiming to buy and quickly resell for a modest profit of perhaps $10,000.
"That's the new market," Kurtis Squyres said of foreclosures, which made up 62% of all home sales in Riverside County last month.
After a record burst of activity between March and April, Bay Area home sales eased a bit last month to the slowest pace for a May in over 20 years. Sales were weakest in many higher-end coastal markets but rose well above year-ago levels in some inland areas where foreclosures and deep discounts lured bargain hunters.
A total of 6,216 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in the nine-county Bay Area in May. That was down 1.5 percent from 6,310 in April, and down 23.1 percent from 8,080 in May 2007, DataQuick Information Systems reported.
Last month was the slowest May in DataQuick's statistics, which go back to 1988.
April had broken a seven-month string of record-low months that began after the credit crunch hit last August, where each month had the lowest sales for that particular month since 1988. April saw a record month-to-month sales increase of 28.8 percent from March. However, it appears at least a portion of the April gain was the result of escrows taking longer to close this year. Some sales that would normally have closed in March, seasonally a strong month, likely spilled into April.
In May, post-foreclosure homes continued to play a big role in the market. Across the nine-county region, 25.6 percent of the homes that resold had been foreclosed on at some point in the prior 12 months, down from 26 percent in April but up from 3.3 percent a year ago.
The impact was greatest in inland counties: Solano County's foreclosure resales were 57.6 percent of the resale market; in Contra Costa they were 43.3 percent and in Sonoma 26.6 percent. It was much different on the coast, where foreclosures resales were just 5.8 percent of the resale market in San Francisco and 4.5 percent in Marin County.
The median price paid for a Bay Area home was $517,000 last month, down 0.2 percent from $518,000 in April, and down a record 21.7 percent from $660,000 in May last year. May's median was 22.3 percent lower than the peak $665,000 median in June and July last year. The last time the median was lower than last month's $517,000 was back in September 2004, when it was $510,000.
Just listed in Twin Peaks! This amazing condo comes with new hardwood floors, 3 upgraded bedrooms, 2 baths, kitchen and living area, gas fire place, private deck area and 1 car parking with storage. Who could ask for a bigger, better space?! Also includes amazing views of Transamerica Building, Bay Bridge, SoMa, East and South Bay. Just listed at $859,000.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle the Board of Supervisors are considering doubling the real estate transfer tax in an effort to close the City's budget short fall. Personally I'm not surprised by how little thought goes into these ideas. If the real estate business was still going growing like crazy, probably not such a big deal, but kicking a business while it's down has never made sense. Nor do the Board of Supervisors.
I'll count on the good sense of citizens of San Francisco to vote the idea down.
What about doubling the taxes on the salary of Supervisors?
Downtown businesses, law firms and wealthy property owners in San Francisco could be forced to pay more in taxes - in some case tens of thousands of dollars more - under proposals being debated today at City Hall.
But the measure could give a break to small businesses, exempting them from city payroll taxes if they pay employees a total of $250,000 or less each year.
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin wants voters to decide this fall whether the city should double its real estate transfer tax on properties valued at more than $5 million. Under the measure, someone selling a $5.1 million property, for example, would pay $76,500 in transfer taxes, or 1.5 percent of the sale price.
As the technology columnist for Real Estate Executive magazine I have the pleasure of explaining every month the joy of technology to real estate agents. So when I find one of the most powerful tech blogs and it’s editor Michael Arrington on board with one of my ideas, I’m only to happy to share it.
Earlier this month, TechCrunch, Michael Arrington’s blog declared voicemail dead. And to be honest it couldn’t have happened soon enough.
Unless you’re a Baby Boomer or a not terribly tech savvy member of Generation X, the idea of voice mail gives you the chills.
Voice mail takes forever to retrieve, writing down the message is a pain or the message you’re listening to came via cell phone and is so garbled you can’t understand what the caller was saying.
So like tens of millions of members of Generation Y, the next big set of home buyers you’ll be working with, it’s time to move on to a texting and email only society. It just makes more sense.
But rather than go on in endless detail, may I suggest you read Arrington’s Death of Voicemail manifesto.
Voicemail is dead. Please tell everyone so they’ll stop using it.
When I first started out in the real world in the mid-nineties voicemail was an important productivity tool. I remember people talking about the pros and cons of various enterprise voicemail systems - which had the best forwarding and group messaging, which allowed for archiving, and how many messages could be stored and for how long. Even though email was around, people were still unsure how to use it. Letters went on letterhead and were formal. Voicemail was informal and common. Email etiquette was still being developed. It was good for mass-forwarding jokes and moving Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files around, but it took a while for email to take over as older generations moved out of the workplace or got with the program.
But now an increasing number of people are just plain avoiding voicemail (for my impromptu and unscientific survey, see the comments here, which are predominantly anti-voicemail). It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it. And voicemail is usually outside of our typical workflow, making it hard to forward or reply to easily.
Typical voicemail messages today include things like “Please don’t leave me a voicemail, I rarely listen to them. Please just email me at xxxx@xxxx.com” Many people don’t bother setting up their voicemail accounts at all. Then there’s my favorite method, the one I use personally - let the message box get full and then don’t empty it. Caller ID still tells me who called, and I can simply call them back.
How many times have you called someone back and said “I saw that you called but didn’t listen to the voicemail yet, Is it anything urgent?
In the last year a number of websites have popped up offering criminal information about neighborhoods. The best known is the state run site that allows you to look for sex offenders in your neighborhood, but just this past week a new crime site came online. It's called Criminal Searches and it offers to look up the criminal records of anyone you might know or crimes committed in the neighborhood. For now it's free, and a lot of fun...
I did check on myself and I came up clean... and just between you and me, I did a search on the wife too... she also came up clean...
So feel free check on your spouse, the person sitting next to you or your ex...
For those of you who haven't spent a lot of time following the problems of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, let me summarize it this way; things are starting to get ugly. Rates for mortgage have hit a five year high, and jumbos are out of control. It was only six months ago everyone was talking about the rush to refinance as congress passed a six month window where it was thought that conventional and jumbo mortgage rates would equalize.
For those of you who haven't looked at the rate for 30 year jumbos lately, its 7.48%...
source:bankrate.com
If you're looking to catch up on the Fannie & Freddie soap opera, the NY Times has as always a brilliant article making sense of the whole mess...
Mortgage rates are rising because of the troubles at the loan finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, threatening to deal another blow to the faltering housing market.
Even as policy makers rushed to support the two companies, home loan rates approached their highest levels in five years.
The average interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages rose to 6.71 percent on Tuesday, from 6.44 percent on Friday, according to HSH Associates, a publisher of consumer rates. The average rate for so-called jumbo loans, which cannot be sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was 7.8 percent, the highest since December 2000.
Loan rates are rising because of concern in the financial markets about the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which own or guarantee nearly half of the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market. The federal government has proposed a rescue, and has urged Congress to approve it quickly.
But bond investors, worried that the companies may not be as big a support to the market as they have been, are driving up interest rates on securities backed by home loans. That added cost is being passed on to consumers through the mortgage markets. For a $400,000 loan, the increase in 30-year rates in the last few days would add $71 to a monthly bill, or $852 a year.
The rise in rates is of greatest concern for homeowners whose mortgages required them to pay only the interest on their loans for the first few years. If such borrowers are unable to refinance into lower-cost loans, many of them will face the prospect of having to pay both interest and principal at higher, adjustable rates.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The number of homes lost to foreclosure in California soared to a 20-year high in the second quarter and mortgage default notices jumped to a record as well, underscoring the depth of the state's housing downturn, a DataQuick Information Systems report released on Tuesday said.
Foreclosures in California in the second quarter totaled 63,061, marking their highest level since the real estate information service began tracking them in 1998. This represents an increase of 33.5 percent from the prior quarter and 261.0 percent from a year earlier, the report said, taking note of the increasing share of the resale home market claimed by foreclosures.
"Foreclosure resales have emerged as a significant market factor, accounting for 40.0 percent of all California resale activity last quarter. A year ago it was 5.4 percent," the report said.
Defaults notices on mortgages jumped by nearly 125 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, notching a record high as more and more home owners with risky home loans stepped toward foreclosure, DataQuick's report added.
Pointing to "declining home values and the rampant spoilage of a batch of especially risky home loans made in late 2005 and 2006," the report by the real estate information service said mortgage servicers recorded 121,341 notices of default from April through June period, up 6.6 percent from the prior quarter and 124.9 percent from a year earlier.
I'm sure there's a good reason to pay nearly $2,900 a square foot for a condo, but I can't think of one right now... but congratulations to the agent that put the deal together...
The top two floors of a Century City residential tower still under construction have been sold for a record $47 million to Candy Spelling, the widow of TV mogul Aaron Spelling.
A $47-million price tag may seem like an enormous sum, but this is all about downshifting in the fast lane.
After all, the 62-year-old heiress with a reputation for embracing opulence will be moving out of Los Angeles County's largest home -- a 123-room, 56,500-square-foot mansion on six acres in the Holmby Hills neighborhood off Sunset Boulevard.
Her new home will be less than a third the size of the old one -- just 16,500 square feet -- but with a killer 360-degree view spanning the horizon from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Catalina Island. The condominium building called the Century is going up next door to the Century Plaza Hotel on Avenue of the Stars and will be completed in late 2009.
Existing-home sales – including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – fell 2.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate1 of 4.86 million units in June from a pace of 4.99 million in May, and are 15.5 percent lower than the 5.75 million-unit rate in June 2007.
NAR President Richard F. Gaylord, a broker with RE/MAX Real Estate Specialists in Long Beach, Calif., said there is something of a quandary in the current market. “A recent online survey of Realtors® shows nearly a quarter of potential home buyers are waiting on the sidelines,” he said. “However, timing the market can be very tricky, which is why home buyers should always have a long-term view to build wealth.”
Total housing inventory at the end of June rose 0.2 percent to 4.49 million existing homes available for sale, which represents an 11.1.-month supply2 at the current sales pace, up from a 10.8-month supply in May.
Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said first-time home buyers are critical to the health of the housing market. “About four in 10 homes are purchased by first-time buyers, which frees existing owners to trade up,” Yun said. “With many potential first-time home buyers on the sidelines, a first-time buyer tax credit would have a significant positive impact on both housing and the economy. Combined with permanent increases to mortgage loan limits and enhancing the FHA loan program, the housing stimulus package working its way through Congress would go a long way toward helping consumers and boosting the overall economy.”
The national median existing-home price3 for all housing types was $215,100 in June, down 6.1 percent from a year ago when the median was $229,000.
Yun said there is a downward distortion in the price data. “With short sales and foreclosures accounting for approximately one-third of transactions, it’s hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison with a year ago when they were only a minor portion of the market,” he said.
Despite the overall sales decline, unpublished snapshot data shows existing-home sales rising significantly from a year ago in Bakersfield, Calif.; Fort Myers, Fla.; and Las Vegas.
“Sales are now beginning to pick up in Orlando, Fla., Phoenix, and Oakland, Calif.,” Yun said. “Interestingly, sales fell in Atlanta, Houston, and Kansas City, Mo., despite affordable home prices and solid local employment conditions.”
According to Freddie Mac, the national average commitment rate for a 30-year, conventional, fixed-rate mortgage rose to 6.32 percent in June from 6.04 percent in May; the rate was 6.66 percent in June 2007.
Single-family home sales declined 3.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.27 million in June from 4.41 million in May, and are 14.8 percent below the 5.01 million-unit pace in June 2007. The median existing single-family home price was $213,800 in June, which is down 6.7 percent from a year ago.
Existing condominium and co-op sales rose 1.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 590,000 units in June from 580,000 in May, but are 19.7 percent below the 735,000-unit level a year ago. The median existing condo price4 was $224,200 in June, which is 2.2 percent lower than June 2007.
Regionally, existing-home sales in the West rose 1.0 percent in June to a pace of 1.03 million but are 6.4 percent lower than a year ago. The median price in the West was $288,400, which is 17.2 percent below June 2007.
In the South, existing-home sales fell 3.1 percent to an annual rate of 1.85 million in June, and are 18.1 percent below June 2007. The median price in the South was $185,300, down 2.4 percent from a year ago.
Existing-home sales in the Midwest declined 3.4 percent to an annual pace of 1.12 million in June, and are 17.6 percent below a year ago. The median price in the Midwest was $175,300, up 2.8 percent from June 2007.
In the Northeast, existing-home sales fell 6.6 percent to an annual rate of 850,000 in June, and are 15.8 percent below June 2007. The median price in the Northeast was $256,700, down 12.6 percent from June 2007.
Home prices continued to fall in May across the country, a private group said on Tuesday, a sign that the housing slump may get worse.
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The decline in the last year is the steepest annual drop since the Case-Shiller index began two decades ago, according to Standard & Poor’s, which releases the index. Case-Shil
