Entries from April 2007 ↓

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I get that question fairly often. Mainly I am an information junkie and this allows me to feed my habit while making a little bit of money. Hopefully I can share the information I find in such a way that you enjoy it, find it useful, and come back on occasion.

I did see an interesting interview Guy Kawasaki did with Marketing Voices Jennifer Jones on his entry and success with blogging that I would like to share with you. He gives his impressions on blogging and they align very closely with mine.

 He also is a big hockey fan and the analogy with keeping score is something that I can well relate to. The video, which in itself is a great example of adding quality video to a blog, is about 15 minutes and while it will not change your world, it may answer some of the questions on “Why The Heck Do You Want To Blog?”

Move Inc. the website company behind realtor.com and other real estate sites has just announced that David Lereah is joining the company as Executive Vice President in charge of a yet to be named division that will be rolled out in the 3rd quarter, 2007.

I can not find in the press release whether he will relinquish his duties as chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, does anyone know the answer to this?

Mike Long, chief executive officer of Move, Inc., said, “After serving as the spokesperson for NAR for the past seven years, David brings vast real estate savvy and knowledge to the company that will help guide us in our next phase of growth and expansion with new ventures.”
“Having David partner with me on this new venture will ensure that consumers and the industry will benefit from his unparalleled knowledge of financial issues and the real estate marketplace,” said Dalton. via PR Newswire

Actor Nick Cage has bought a landmark New Orleans French Quarter property right up the street from the new home of Brad Pitt and Angela Jolie according to the website Big Time Listings. The Lalaurie House in New Orleans has had a checkered past and according to Wikopedia is considered the most haunted property in all of New Orleans.

And now Nicolas Cage is the proud owner of it through his Hancock Park Real Estate Company that has bought other properties in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The Lalaurie Mansion is reported to be the sight of sadistic acts committed upon their household servants and slaves by Delphine LaLaurie in the 1830’s. These spirits have been haunting the property over the past 100 years according to local reports, so we wish Nicolas Cage all the best when he is visiting. Of course, that may have been the attraction for him as he has previously bought another New Orleans property in the Garden District from noted horror writer Anne Rice.

But do they sell houses?

See many more at Sam’s Mailbox Picture Collection

Well, you can buy the home of Bob the Builder creator’s home in the town of Putney in England. The home was bought with the royalties from the hit show that Keith Chapman created. While the home has been extensively refurbished, it does not come with the characters Bob, Wendy, and Scoop.

The 5 bedroom home is listed for 2.25 million pounds or a bit over  4 million dollars US.

Except for the dining room, the walls are white or pale cream, so new owners could easily make their mark. The Chapmans’ style is bright and colourful with lots of flowers - whether real ones in vases, patterned roses on the red curtains and blinds in the kitchen toning with the red and pinky tiles over the range, on the bedroom curtains or in large cheerful paintings on the walls.

They’ve put a new pale oak floor in the hall and kept the original oak floor in the dining room. On the top floor they have three bedrooms and a large bathroom put in when they arrived, and they’ve just added an en-suite bathroom to the main bedroom on the first floor.

The Chapmans reckon they spent up to £350,000 renovating and decorating the house.

West Hill Road is lined with homes in a mix of styles including a Sixties apartment block, 1930s villas and, at the far end, a line of houses like the Chapmans’, all with views over London from the top floors.

Parts of South Carolina’s “Low Country” are being discovered. The region has been a sleepy and rural area, but as the opportunity to live near the ocean is being bought up, growth and development is coming to this part of the old south. Instead of lining up with hat in hand to monetize every square inch of its land, the leaders of Jasper county have taken the approach of quality growth. That means tight zoning of land, developers paying for the improvements, and lots of greenbelts and open areas.

And boy will that make a difference in the quality of life 10 years down the road. Instead of congestion that will squander the beauty, they will have quality and organized development.

I have has the opportunity to live in a smart growth community. Our county has insisted on 5 acre lots in most of the county and the towns and cities tend to have very organized and restrictive housing criteria with lots of greenbelts and open spaces. And it is wonderful.

Some may dislike this approach but watching the rest of Metro Atlanta explode and have a hodgepodge of housing built around it makes me see the logic and appreciate the housing appreciation that goes along with it.

Longtime residents and local officials who want to guide growth, but not hinder it, say they believe that Jasper will benefit from developing later than other parts of the South. Having watched their neighbors, particularly Beaufort County, become overwhelmed by growth that spilled over from Hilton Head, Jasper officials say, they saw what was coming and got together to set some ground rules.
“In areas like ours, where people are starved for development, they’re willing to give away the farm,” said Kevin Griffin, assistant city manager of Hardeeville, who has an advanced degree in urban planning. “But we’ve really tried to get ahead of the growth, rather than being five years behind and having to catch up.”
More than two years ago, local leaders from Hardeeville and Ridgeland got together with county officials to collaborate on a shared growth plan. A five-mile radius was drawn around Ridgeland, and another five-mile radius was set around Hardeeville, delineating where development could occur according to local zoning laws.
Any landowners who fall outside of each town’s boundary and want to build have to petition to be annexed, and if approved, pay for the installation of sewers, water, and roads. After extensive research, the joint planning committee determined that every new residential unit costs about $6,200 in services.
“People talk about smart growth, but this is more like fiscal growth,” Mr. Griffin said. “We don’t say you can’t develop here; it’s a pay-to-play environment. Suddenly, that cheap land doesn’t seem so cheap anymore. But the good developers, the ones who want to be stewards of the land, they are the ones who can adjust their plans and create a quality product.”

‘Smart Growth’ in South Carolina - New York Times.

The Commerce Department’s report Friday showed how the slumping residential real estate market is affecting the national economy. The combination of slower sales and tighter lending led to the economy rising only 1.3 percent in the first quarter of 2007. Businesses are pulling back in the face of the slowdown as they do not want to be overextended if the economy as a whole slows down.

“The economy went through a very soggy period,’’ said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Bank of America’s Investment Strategies Group. “The biggest risk to the economy is if the housing market doesn’t stabilize. That could force consumers and businesses to cut back sharply in spending. Those risks seem to be limited at this juncture,’’ she said.

Even though the economy slowed in the first quarter, inflation picked up. That could complicate the Fed’s work of keeping the economy and inflation on an even keel. “This is a knife’s edge scenario,’’ observed John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Economics Group.

An inflation gauge tied to the GDP report and closely watched by the Fed showed that core prices — excluding food and energy — rose at a rate of 2.2 percent in the first quarter, up from 1.8 percent in the fourth quarter. via Pantagraph.com

Morgan Stanley and Inland Western Retail Real Estate Trust are teaming together to form a billion dollar fund to invest in shopping centers across the country. The REIT is aimed at upscale retail centers that are experiencing increasing rents and valuations. The open air shopping centers are some of the best performing real estate in the United States.

The group will acquire and manage high-quality neighborhood, community and outdoor shopping centers, Oak Brook-based Inland Western said in a statement.
Inland Western will contribute properties valued at up to $500 million to start the venture and the partners will spend another $500 million to buy and redevelop properties. An unidentified pension fund client of Morgan Stanley’s will provide 80 percent of the equity capital and Inland Western the remaining 20 percent. via Daily Herald

If you were looking for good news out of the residential construction world, today is the day to go out and play golf. Quarterly results for some of the major homebuilders were released today and they were down right ugly. Take a look:

• Beazer: Net loss for the three months ended March 31 was $43.1 million, or $1.12 a share, compared with a net income of $104.4 million, or $2.35, a year earlier, the Atlanta-based company said today in a statement. Revenue slid 35 percent to $826.3 million.

  The company recorded $86.9 million in pretax expenses to walk away from land-option contracts and to write down the value of land.

• Meritage: reported a drop in profit in the first quarter and also said it was seeing signs of a rebound in demand. Scottsdale, Arizona-based Meritage, the 13th largest homebuilder, said its first quarter profit plunged 81 percent to $15.1 million, or 57 cents a share, from $79.7 million, or $2.86, a year ago.

  The company forecast earnings of $2 to $2.50 a share for 2007. Six analysts in a Bloomberg survey project earnings of $1.73 a share, excluding items, on average.

• Pulte: reported a first-quarter net loss of $85.7 million, or 33 cents a share, compared with a profit of $262.6 million, or $1.01, a year earlier. Revenue fell 37 percent to $1.87 billion, the Bloomfield Hills, Michigan-based company said yesterday in a statement.

• Ryland:  said yesterday after the close of regular trading its net loss in the three months ended March 31 was $24.4 million, or 58 cents a share. That compared with a profit of $90 million, or $1.86, a year earlier.

  First-quarter revenue fell 34 percent to $706.4 million, the Calabasas, California-based company said in a statement. New orders in the quarter plunged 26 percent to 2,989. The company had forecast earnings in January of $3.75 to $4.25 a share for 2007.

But there is some good news. In the corporate world, when the proverbial sh#t hits the fan, companies have learned to clear the decks. Remember that piece of land that Jim bought from his cousin that has a canyon running through it, write it off. And all of the other blunders that have been sitting on the balance sheet disappear fairly quickly.

What is nice is when the market turns around the companies have gotten rid of the weak parts of their business and are ready to be aggressive.

Information for this post came from Bloomberg.

Bank of America is purchasing Seattle Mortgage Co. from Seattle Financial Group for an undisclosed amount. Seattle Mortgage had been doing business as Reverse Mortgage of America since 1995 having written over 40,000 reverse mortgages and over 4 billion in outstanding balances.

Is this another example of the big boys moving in during a slowdown, or is it a market that Bank of America thinks is ripe as the baby boomers gray?

Bank of America Corp. has agreed to buy the reverse-mortgage business of Seattle Mortgage Co., a subsidiary of Seattle Financial Group Inc. Seattle Mortgage markets its reverse mortgages under the name Reverse Mortgage of America.

Charlotte-based BofA (NYSE:BAC) has been piloting reverse-mortgage products with customers in Arizona since November. “Seattle Mortgage has been a pioneer in developing mortgage products and services that address the senior population’s growing need for greater financial liquidity,” says Floyd Robinson, president of BofA consumer real estate. “This is in line with Bank of America’s desire to grow its consumer real estate business by utilizing our significant advantages in size and scale.” via the  Charlotte Business Journal: