Entries from March 2006 ↓
March 31st, 2006 — Mortgage
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The Ohio House of Representatives passed new legislation to combat mortgage fraud yesterday, and now the bill will go to a conference committee with the Senate to work through some of the minor details.
The law will look at predatory lending and provide a much needed framework to protect consumers from unscrupulous lenders.
Reacting to Ohio’s dismal foreclosure rate and media reports highlighting the state’s lax oversight of the industry, lawmakers for the first time would submit brokers and non-bank lenders to the Consumer Sales Practices Act. Ohio is one of only two states that completely exempt the industry from such protection, which is enforced by the attorney general and through private lawsuits.
But the House and Senate chose different ways to go after deceptive mortgage brokers and lenders.
The Senate unanimously voted not to concur with the House changes, sending the measure to a conference committee that will meet when lawmakers return in May.
Some senators, including Joy Padgett, a Coshocton Republican and sponsor of the bill, said they need time to digest all the changes. Sen. Robert L. Schuler, R-Cincinnati, said last night he already was sent a warning from a congressional subcommittee that the bill could halt real estate lending because the state would be out of compliance with federal law.
Among the concerns being raised by some senators is how the bill defines predatory lending — whether the industry could skirt the rules, or continue to rip people off as long as they do more disclosure.
Both House Democrats and Republicans spoke highly of the bill and the rare bipartisan process used to craft it. via The Columbus Dispatch
March 31st, 2006 — Aging In Place, Senior Housing
If they move at all.
Information coming from AARP shows that seniors tend not to move,but if they do they relocate to a smaller city that resembles the city they came from, just a more accessible version. My parents relocated to coastal Carolina as it allowed them the same amenities of the region they left with the access to a college town, beaches, and year round golf.
“That’s the national myth. The reality is … most people don’t move,” she said. “Community is incredibly important to our older citizens. They feel connected to their community.”
A quieter part of a major metropolitan area anchored by a large city, often in a warmer climate, is a popular relocating-retiree choice.
“Generally, people are moving from metropolitan counties where there are dense populations to other metropolitan counties that are less dense,” said Ron Manheimer, director of the University of North Carolina’s Center for Creative Retirement in Asheville, N.C.
Seventy-one percent of people age 60 and over who have relocated to another state in the five years leading up to the 2000 Census settled in metropolitan counties, Manheimer said, citing statistics from a forthcoming book that he edited: the second edition of “Retirement Migration in America,” by Charles Longino.
These days, the county’s top county for new retirees is Maricopa County, Ariz., which includes Phoenix. In that five-year period, almost 69,000 people 60 and over settled there.
“People want all the amenities of the big city; they just don’t want to live in it,” Manheimer said, noting that the availability of shopping, major airports, cultural attractions and medical services figure into the decision on where to relocate.
Read the rest at the Real Estate Journal .
March 30th, 2006 — East, Mortgage, North, Real Estate, Real Estate Fraud
The Hull, Massachusetts home of John F. Kennedy’s grandfather sold at auction at a steep discount Tuesday for the price of $950,000. The home had been fraudulently purchased by Jamie Edelkind who was sentenced for 5 years in jail. He was convicted of using phony mortgage and payroll documents. The assessors office appraised the land for tax valuation at 1.3 million dollars.
Ernesto Caparrotta was the winning bidder for the eight-bedroom, 7,163-square foot mansion on in Hull, once owned by two-term Boston Mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, two agents said. Caparrotta, who is building 16 luxury condos on Hull’s waterfront, did not return a call to comment on his plans, but he told WBZ-TV he hopes to “restore it and then decide what to do with it.”
Bidding started at $750,000. The auction was held in the driveway of the Nantasket Avenue property and lasted just three minutes.
“Everybody was surprised that they let it go for $950,000,” said Tom Grimshaw, a partner at Century 21 Homes by Heritage in Weymouth. “Usually if they don’t get the price they want, they don’t sell it.” A federal judge ordered the landmark property be sold after sentencing homeowner Jamie Edelkind to five years in prison.
Edelkind was convicted last year of using phony mortgage and payroll documents to borrow $3.3 million to buy the house in 2000. He later defaulted on the loan. Lehman Brothers subsidiary Aurora Loan Services of Colorado was owed $2.3 million, and could have rejected bids it deemed too low. via Boston.com.
More information on Edelkins Fraud at the Patriot Ledger.
March 30th, 2006 — Real Estate
The Top 10 Counties in the United States by Millionaires
Rank County No. of millionaire households
1 Los Angeles County, CA 262,800
2 Cook County, IL 167,873
3 Orange County, CA 113,299
4 Maricopa County, AZ 106,210
5 San Diego County, CA 100,030
6 Harris County, TX 96,593
7 Nassau County, NY 78,816
8 Santa Clara County, CA 75,371
9 Palm Beach County, FL 69,871
10 Middlesex County, MA 67,552
via CNN/Money Magazine
March 29th, 2006 — Commercial Real Estate
Starbucks in not satisfied being on every street corner of America, it now needs more corporate space to manage the thousands of stores around the country. The coffee chain is expanding into 2 tracts in Seattles Pioneer Square and has the potential to build out one property with a 7 story building.
The properties are owned by a limited liability company led by manager Mickey Smith and other principals from Martin Smith Inc., a Seattle-based real estate investment, development and property management firm. “This is a strategic acquisition to accommodate continued growth of the Starbucks headquarters operation and invest in our hometown and in a special neighborhood, Pioneer Square,” Kulthol said.
The 505 First Ave. S. property is 36,171 square feet in size and has a master use permit available for development of a seven-story, 203,000-square-foot building on the site. Currently the tract contains a surface parking lot, a parking garage and the one-story, 6,500-square-foot Duncan building, which is fully occupied. It does not include the Triangle Pub property on the remainder of the block.
The 204,504-square-foot 83 King Street building next door is about 96 percent occupied. Kulthol said 200 Starbucks employees from Starbucks Store Development Design and Pacific Northwest Region Store Development teams occupy about 45,000 square feet of space in the building. Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) has been a tenant there for more than a year.
The building was built in 1904 and renovated in 1984 and again in 2000. Starbucks currently occupies about 30 percent of the space. via the Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle)
March 29th, 2006 — Investment
So posting will be very light as I put all this information together for Uncle Sam.
Wish me luck.
But if you are looking to read great stuff, take a look at my favorites:
March 28th, 2006 — Real Estate
The ABC Good Morning segment on what your real estate agent will not tell you is an amusing and tongue in cheek (meaning fairly accurate) poke at real estate agent speak. We see these types of things in singles magazines all the time, what is said and what it really means, and now the spotlight is aimed at real estate agents.
Decoding Broker Lingo When You’re a Buyer
“New to the market” usually means overpriced.
“The price is negotiable” means make a low offer.
“A great family location” usually means it’s noisy.
An “up and coming neighborhood” means it’s a risky location.
What the Broker Might Not Tell the Seller
“My commission is negotiable.”
“Your open house is really a meet and greet for me.”
“We won’t share your listing for the first 24 hours.”
“There’s no traffic on our Web site.” via ABC
What is even more fun to watch is the reaction of the head of the National Association of Realtors as they try to rebut the story.
The segment, which aired March 24 under the title, “Tricks of the Trade: Confessions of a REALTOR®,” claims consumers shouldn’t trust everything practitioners say.
The segment “gave a very inaccurate, grossly misleading and unfair depiction of the nation’s REALTORS®,” says Stevens. “Several of the allegations made by the guest described practices that violate the REALTOR® Code of Ethics, such as intentionally misrepresenting a property and could be grounds for suspension of membership. Because of the Code, all REALTORS® know such behavior is wrong.” via Realtor.org
C’mon folks, it is time to take a deep breath. This was a humorous poke at the industry. We all know that there is a ton of fluff that goes into selling a home, and that buzz words turn into code for the real estate agents to read between the lines. If you were on top of it you would have tweaked it and come out with the code of Good Morning America that reporters use. Turn it around, but do not come out whining about it. It is not becoming and tells everyone you got cut to the bone on this story.
And to be honest, I probably would not be writing about it if you did not come out with this press release. So you have turned a fluff story into a news story… Yikes…
March 27th, 2006 — Real Estate, South, Southeast
As with anything in this world, the new KIA Plant in West Point, Georgia that we have followed so closely has been approved by the state, but some local residents are unhappy with the new plant being placed in their neighborhood. I can understand as living in a rural area is important to folks, and their quiet location will be disturbed.
However, this is not going to change the outcome, and the folks there will most likely get fair market or higher for their homes as other homeowners or developers will want to purchase the property to provide housing and commercial opportunities to the community as it grows.
A standing-room-only crowd packed the Gray Hill Community Center Friday evening seeking answers to questions that have arisen since Kia’s March 13 announcement to build a $1.2 billion automobile manufacturing and assembly center on Webb Road near I-85.
Commission Chairman Tim Duffey and Commissioner Ken Smith fielded questions ranging from whether property taxes would be going up for Gray Hill residents, to where the new interchange would be built on the Interstate, whether they could be annexed by the city of West Point and even if new development could cause their wells to run dry.
Almost everyone there shared a common concern that the way of life they’d known for a long time was about to change and to change in a big way.
Gabbettville Road resident Jim Gilmore said that the Kia announcement had been widely treated as good news but that there was another side to that story and “We haven’t been heard from yet.”
Gilmore said he’d left such crowded places as Houston and Atlanta in search of a place that offered the nice, quiet way of life that can be found in the Gabbettville community today. With the Kia plant coming that way of living is going to change. In search of what those changes could be, Gilmore said he’d gotten on the phone and called the Georgia Department of Transportation in Atlanta. He said that the people he talked to had been very nice and did their best to answer the questions he asked. via the Valley Times.
March 27th, 2006 — Real Estate
Massachusetts has a new law on the books to that will require Carbon Monoxide (CO) Detectors installed in all residential establishments in the state by March 31st, 2006. Carbon Monoxide is lethal and you never know that it is in the house until it starts to do damage. When my wife was a young girl, she lost her dog to CO poisoning and since we have been married we have always had a detector in the house. It has gone off once when an old truck of mine was left running in the garage, but overall we have never had a problem.
I am not a big fan of government regulation but if we are going to have mandatory smoke alarms it is good we also have mandatory CO alarm.
In the human bloodstream, CO crowds oxygen out of hemoglobin and can cause nausea, dizziness, blinding headaches, disorientation, unconsciousness, brain damage and death.
Hence Nicole’s Law, named after 7-year-old Nicole Garofalo, who died in January 2005 of CO poisoning after snow blocked furnace vents in her Plymouth home. The legislation requires all residential buildings in the state to install CO detectors by March 31.
The law applies to almost all houses, apartments, condominiums and multifamily dwellings - any residential building with an attached garage or that burns fossil fuels like natural gas, gasoline, wood, coal, propane, kerosene and charcoal.
In general, buildings will need to have a detector on every floor that contains living space. They must be placed within 10 feet of any bedroom door. via Cape Cod Times.
To learn more about CO Poisoning, here is a good primer.
If you are looking to buy a CO Detector, click here
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March 26th, 2006 — Condos, Investment, Mortgage, Real Estate Sales
The Boston condo market has hit its peak this past fall, and now is accumulating a huge inventory of million dollar condos. My question is why do the builders keep creating the inventory when the market has turned.
There is now a 7.5-to-12-month supply of high-end condos priced at $2 million and above in the Boston, Brookline and Cambridge markets, according to Northeast Apartment Advisors.
That compares to a less than four-month supply for condos under $500,000, the firm found in its Boston Condominium Research Report.
Still, prices remain at sky-high levels, with the average listing price of a Back Bay condo now at $1,061,000, and a median price of $741,575. Cambridge condo prices are less than half that - averaging $465,000.
“We found that the Boston, Brookline and Cambridge condo market (as a whole) peaked in the third quarter of 2005 - but still remains healthy,” writes Thomas Meagher of Northeast Apartment Advisors.
BostonHerald.com - Real Estate News: Luxury condos sitting for sale.
