Archive for August, 2007

What Celebrity Would You Want as a Neighbor?

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!ERA Real Estate polled a thousand 50 and over homeowners in their annual home ownership survey and one of the questions they asked was which celebrity they would like as a neighbor.
The winner was golfer Tiger Woods coming […]

27Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Tough Credit Market Forces Changes to the Home Depot Supply Deal

The lack of credit available presently almost scuttled the Home Depot Supply Deal to Bain Capital, Carlyle Group and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. The fear of losing the deal led to a prolonged negotiating session with the Home Depot Board of Directors finally accepting 18 percent less than was initially negotiated in June.
The real […]

27Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Love The Mont Blanc Feel Without The Mont Blanc Price?

As a real estate professional, note taking and contract signing is a way of life. The Mont Blanc pens are renowned for their style and feel as ink meets paper. Well, if you are like me, the 200 dollar price tag of a Mont Blanc is beyond what I will pay for a pen.
However […]

26Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 2 comments | Continued

Conley Wolfswinkel - People aren’t too willing to give you a loan when you owe $2 billion.

The story of Conley Wolfswinkel is an interesting one. The developer who was a focal point of the 1980’s Savings and Loan Scandal that cost the taxpayers hundreds of billions and left him a convicted felon and owing 2 billion dollars in restitution has now made a comeback. Wolfswinkel is fairly unknown outside of Arizona, […]

26Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 0 comments | Continued

Malibu’s Polaroid Beach Party Homes Make Neighbors Irate

Imagine buying a multi-million dollar home on the beach in Malibu. Then you find out next door is a home being rented to Polaroid who is using it to host over 20 celebrity parties that last through the night. Paparazzi, valets, and illegally parked cars are everywhere and the noise is constant. Whats worse, every […]

26Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 2 comments | Continued

Real Estate Funds Gain Sea Legs and Have a Great Week

After a roller coaster few weeks, the combination of the Federal Reserves activity (lowering the bank rate and infusing capital into the lending market) and the banks continuing to lend, real estate funds had an outstanding week.

CBRE Realty Finance up 34.06%,
Crystal River Capital up 16.94%,
Gramercy Capital Corp/New York up 15.52%
American Financial […]

25Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

The Economist’s Top 10 Cities For Livability World Wide

The Economist does a yearly survey of the most livable cities in the world. They take into account “low crime, little threat from instability or terrorism and a highly developed transport and communications infrastructure” as the key criteria. Larger cities that have the risk of terrorism and high traffic density tend to fair worse off […]

25Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 2 comments | Continued

A Little More Good News - Home Sales In July Up Over Previous Month

While the numbers are not large, there was an uptick in home sales for the month of July over June’s numbers by 2.8 percent. If you factor in the sales that probably got blown out by a failure to finance the numbers would have been better. (I know, woulda, coulda, shoulda) Overall, sales were down […]

24Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 0 comments | Continued

Top Performing Stock in S&P 500 For July - A Mortgage Company

We have been just as guilty as the other guys in reporting the gloom and doom, but there are some shining lights in the real estate world right now. The top performing stock for July, 2007 on the S&P 500 was a mortgage company. Hudson City Bancorp was up 21 percent for the month while […]

24Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Yesterday, Bankruptcy seemed so far away…

This was sent to me by a reader named Ralph, another funny adaptation on the present real estate situation. Goes right along with The Day The Subprime Died.

Yesterday
by Jesse F. yesterdaycamesuddenly@hotmail.com
Yesterday, Bankruptcy seemed so far away, Now it looks as though it’s here to stay, Oh, I believe in yesterday.
Suddenly, I’m half the […]

23Aug2007 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued