Entries from June 2006 ↓

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Manhattan is getting a new project that will be over the Lincoln Tunnel. Hudson Mews will have over 800 apartments and be built at a cost of 450 million dollars. When people talk about the high cost of real estate in New York there is a good reason for it. The area where Hudson Mews is going was in the heart of Hells Kitchen, one of the poorest and worst parts of Manhattan. Now the region will be filled with luxury apartments. There is no space left in Manhattan and all parts will gentrify shortly.

The Port Authority Board of Commissioners voted to approve a transaction with the Dermot Co. Inc. and Equity Residential to develop two apartment buildings in the Hudson Yards area. The estimated cost is more than $450 million.
The firms will also develop the approach ramps on Dyer Avenue between 36th and 38th streets. The development will involve construction of platforms over the Lincoln Tunnel entrance and exit ramps. The two 18-story rental apartment buildings will be on top of the platforms.

The 650,000-gross-sf complex will contain 800 rental apartments, street level retail space, a garage, 10,000 sf of community space, and 25,000 sf of public open space. Construction on what is preliminarily named Hudson Mews is expected to begin in mid-2007. The JV is expected to apply for financing under the New York State Housing Finance Agency’s 80/20 tax-exempt bond program which would require 20% of the units to be designated as affordable housing.

via the Globest

Imagine spending two years building your dream home, being 30 days away from move in and a bolt of lightning destroys the home. Now think that much of the interior work was custom made to your specifications and the home is over 10 thousand square feet.

This is what happened to a Winter Haven, Florida Home Tuesday night. How amazingly frustrating for the homeowners. Fire officials are saying that the home most likely will have to be completely torn down. 

The Fire Marshal was on the scene late Wednesday morning. He said the damage was so severe, no one other than firefighters would be allowed to go inside until structural engineers can figure out how to best deal with the collapsed roof.

We don’t know what’s salvageable yet. So we’re all pretty shell-shocked,” said builder Hal George. For those who have walked inside the multi-million dollar home Windsong, a luxury community in Winter Park, it’s hard to believe it may have to be torn down. “Like watching a piece of art go down in flames. It’s a one-of-a-kind house,” George said.

Tuesday night, the house was struck by lightning. It had been under construction for more than two years and was within 30 days of completion. There was no furniture inside, but the fire caused extensive structural damage. “It’s devastating just to see all that much work and heart and soul go into a project and have it come to this point,” George said.

George is the builder and is friends with the owner. He said the house had marble floors, custom-made cabinetry and extensive, and very expensive, plaster work throughout all the walls and ceilings. “They handmade the molds and did a phenomenal job of recreating that old European ornate look,” George said. via WFTV.com

Face it, if you are reading this site you have a passion for real estate. Now, with the internet making so much information available, you can find out all of the information on what is happening in your neighborhood by doing a property search online. Many newspapers and real estate agents also put this information out there.

So when you are looking to see who bought the Jone’s house up the block, it is there on the internet. Check the local property tax web site. Check the towns newspapers site. Typically they will have all the information on the sale. Nancy Shohert West of the Boston Globe has an interesting article on her own voyeuristic habits online. Funny article as it is very true. I have been caught in this trap before.

‘So your next-door neighbors moved across town, and a couple from Westford bought their house!” I say to my friend Lisa, having not seen her for a few weeks. “How great for them that they received their asking price. Have you met the new people yet?”

Lisa looks understandably confused. “I didn’t know you knew my next-door neighbors.”Oops, busted again. Here’s my dirty little secret: I compulsively read real estate transfers.

When people catch me at this — any time I accidentally let comments like the one above slip out — they look appalled. The assumption is that I’m just a busybody who wants to know how much everyone has paid for their house. But it’s really not about the dollar amount. Reading the real estate transfers gives me all kinds of intriguing information about the people around me. I find out that a retired couple my parents used to play tennis with have bought a condo in Acton, and the brother of my best friend’s seventh-grade boyfriend just moved with his wife to Littleton. via The Boston Globe.

The new designs of the Freedom Tower to replace the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan were announced today. It looks spectacular visually, but I am wondering if it will be useful also.

The great thing about the World Trade Center was that it was functional.  The full World Trade Center will be rebuilt in 2012 and that should make a statement to the world.

Symbolic of the Declaration of Independence, the reworked 1,776-foot (541-meter) centerpiece of the World Trade Center site unveiled by architect David Childs will have a 186-foot tall (57 meter) base sheathed with rolled, heat-treated glass over concrete.
The tower is planned as a symbol of New York’s revitalization after the September 11 attacks in 2001, which claimed more than 2,700 lives at the World Trade Center.
Rebuilding has been dogged by almost five years of acrimony over designs, security, insurance and control of the 16-acre (6.5-hectare) site at Ground Zero.
Developer Larry Silverstein, who leased the World Trade Center shortly before September 11, told reporters that if everything now goes according to plan, “By 2012 we should have a completely rebuilt World Trade Center more magnificent, more spectacular than it ever was.”
The new Freedom Tower design uses a high-tech laminated safety glass, which if attacked by a truck bomb would shatter into falling pebbles, not break into flying shards. via Yahoo! News.

Mortgage applications fell 6.7 percent last week and hit a four year low as rising interest rates and slowing home sales have put a double whammy on the mortgage marketplace. The anticipation that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates this week is fortelling that the mortgage industry is going to see a very slow period.

Applications for mortgage loans at U.S. banks dropped by 6.7% last week to the lowest level seen on a seasonally adjusted basis since May 2002, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday. The number of mortgage applications was down 31% compared with a year ago.

Applications for mortgages to purchase homes fell a seasonally adjusted 6.2%, hitting the lowest level since November 2003. Purchase applications are down 19% in the past year. The MBA’s purchase index is expected to decline another 20% or so, said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics. Applications for refinancing loans fell 7.5% on a seasonally adjusted basis. Refinance applications are down about 47% in the past year.

The decline in purchase applications has been much steeper than the recent drop in U.S. home sales. New-home sales have sunk about 6% in the past year, while sales of existing homes are down about 7%. The slowdown in home sales “has the potential to translate into a hard landing for the economy because the housing sector has played a major role in the current expansion,” said Asha Bangalore, an economist for Northern Trust.  via MarketWatch.

This is a great sign, unless you are a conservationist, as the economy is doing well and the Ranchers are getting a great payout on their properties in Aspen. The opportunity to own land that appreciates greatly so that your family will have security for the future is a wonderful blessing and a reward for all of the hard work that the Rancher put in. Some will call it being pushed out, but I would refer to it as the ranchers cashing out and moving to new pastures.

Of course there are those that demand the land be conserved in its natural state, and that is not a bad thing. The only demand that the community needs to fulfill is that they purchase the land at market prices. If eminent domain is used to pay the ranchers less than market prices, that is stealing and I hope that the community will not stand for that.

More than 11,000 acres of ranchland sold in the valley in the last year, and most of that land sold to development firms, according to Martha Cochran, director of the Aspen Valley Land Trust, a leading conservation organization.

“The core of the ranching community is getting pushed out,” said Cochran, whose group is battling to preserve some of the last remaining large tracts on the valley floor.

The ongoing real estate frenzy that shattered sales volume records for the past two years and is on a record pace this year is also giving the valley a facelift by urbanizing the remaining rural corners. Cochran said only a handful of ranches larger than 1,000 acres remain between Aspen and Glenwood Springs.

“It’s gone. Other than Capitol Creek, it’s gone,” she said. via Aspen Times News

The quartly PMI numbers have come in measuring mortgage risk across the country and it is not looking good for the West Coast, Boston,  and Long Island. These regions are carrying the highest risk and greatest chance that mortgages could be in trouble. The range in ratio’s vary from the Top at San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA  with a score of 599 to the bottom Indianapolis-Carmel, IN and Pittsburgh, PA at 57.

The Top 10 (Most Dangerous) on the PMI index:

• San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA              599    
• Nassau-Suffolk, NY  (MSAD)                         589   
• Boston-Quincy, MA  (MSAD)                         588   
• Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, CA                        588
• Sacramento-Arden-Arcade- Roseville, CA       585
• Riverside-San Bernardino- Ontario, CA            583
• Oakland-Fremont-Hayward, CA                      582
• Los Angeles-Long Beach- Glendale, CA           575
• Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA    568
• San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City, CA  560

Average was 278 for the Country.

And the Bottom (Safest) Ten Markets:

Continue reading →

The National Association of Realtors released the existing home sales report and it showed a drop of 1.2 percent in May. The majority of the housing slowdown occurred in the Northeast (4.2 percent) and the Midwest (3.8 percent). The South and the West showed modest gains.

David Lereah, chief economist for the NAR, says that the market is showing the classic pattern for a soft landing. Considering the huge run up that was experienced in the Northeast the last 5 years it is my opinion that the region is doing very well presently and if it can hold the majority of its gains people will be doing very well.  

Of course, the real estate market is entering a period where it will be very sensitive to how the Federal Reserve handles interest rates over the coming few months. If they continue to raise the rates, there will be much more pressure on those holding ARMs and other variable loans and can create a much more volatile environment for the housing sector.

The National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday that sales of previously owned homes dropped by 1.2 percent in May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.67 million units.
The median price of the homes sold in May rose to $230,000 in May, up 6 percent from the same month a year ago. That represented a slowdown from huge double-digit price gains last year at the peak of the housing boom.

By region of the country, sales fell by the largest amount in the Northeast, a drop of 4.2 percent. Sales were down 3.8 percent in the Midwest.

Sales of existing homes managed to post small gains of 0.7 percent in the West and 0.4 percent in the South.

Analysts said this is a classic pattern for a cooling housing market with sales starting to lag under the impact of rising mortgage rates.

David Lereah, chief economist for the Realtors, said he expected sales to fall by 6.8 percent from last year’s record pace. Sales had surged to record levels for five consecutive years as buyers responded to the lowest mortgage rates in four decades.

But with mortgage rates climbing steadily under the impact of credit tightening by the Federal Reserve, analysts look for housing to slow this year but not to crash. via Chippewa.com

Danielle DiMartino of the the Dallas Morning News asked that question in a very good editorial this morning. The increase in housing sales was not an organic event but instead due to the incentives that new homesellers are showering on potential buyers as they look for new homes in the region.

I have clipped an excerpt of the article but take the time to read the whole of it. The whole article is a  very well thought out piece.

Another way to look at how brisk activity remains is through the prism of mortgage equity withdrawal, or MEW, which captures proceeds from cash-out refinancing activity, home equity borrowing, and proceeds resulting from sales. After peaking above a $1 trillion annualized rate in the second and third quarters of last year, it dropped back to a $903 billion rate in the fourth quarter.

But then MEW made an unexpected turn, picking back up to $930 billion. An important detail is that all of the increase fell under the category of turnover or, as Goldman Sachs calls it, “inactive MEW.” Refinancing and home equity borrowing, or “active MEW,” declined as opportunities dried up and home price gains slowed.Goldman predicts active MEW will plummet over the next two years, as home price inflation slows sharply. This will result in a negative multiplier effect on home price gains – a vicious payback for refinancing activity goosing prices in recent years.

Still, the overall rise in first-quarter MEW is indicative of the speculative fervor that has characterized this real estate cycle as no other. It’s no wonder the Federal Reserve is adamant about not pulling back on interest rate hikes.

Read the rest at the Dallas Morning News

Growing up in the 80’s makes me still think of Beirut as a war zone, but for Ivana Trump it is an opportunity to develop a new tower working with the Damac Properties group. The luxury tower will cost 150 million to build and be a show place in the country that has been devestated over the years by internal discord.

Ivana Trump, ex-wife of U.S. tycoon Donald Trump, will add her design touches to a luxury residential tower which will be built by a Dubai-based real estate developing company in downtown Beirut. Hussein Sajwani, president of the board at Damac Properties, held a press conference in Beirut Monday to announce the $150 million “La Residence” tower which will be built at the intersection of Omar Daouk and Fakhreddine streets at the heart of the capital.

“This investment is proof of our faith in Lebanon and its people. Beirut is the number one tourism capital of the Arab world,” Sajwani said at the conference held at the Phoenicia hotel. Construction of the 27-floor high rise is expected to start at the end of 2006 and last for three years.

Trump, former vice-president of interior design for the Trump Organization, has been selected to do the interior design work on the tower’s apartments, duplexes and penthouses. “We are honored to be endorsed by Ivana Trump, a world-renowned celebrity who is considered a symbol of style, glamour and class,” said Peter Riddoch, CEO of Damac speaking in Dubai. via Naharnet Newsdesk