Entries Tagged 'Real Estate' ↓

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Love him or hate him, Donald Trump knows how to make headlines in the real estate market. He is in the news today for going to contract on his mansion in Palm Beach that he purchased in 2004 for 41 million dollars. After 25 million more in upgrades The Donald has sold it for the 100 million dollar price tag.

The master showman was in the headlines a couple of months with this property threatening to turn it into a hotel. Nothing for the marketplace but it did get headlines then.

And nearly a year ago he turned down a 90 million dollar offer on the Palm Beach Mansion which he made very public. At the time I said this, “My advice to the Donald would have had my real estate agent talk to Schwarzman before the offer was made and tell him to make it 101 million. Then Donald could offer to buy Schwarzman’s old cigar case for 11 million dollars. The difference in capital gains Trump would pay would be quickly washed away in the millions of dollars of free publicity of selling the most expensive home in America.”

Do you think Donald Trump took my advice and offered a rebate at closing to make headlines? It would not surprise me.

The unnamed buyer is considering tearing down the recently remodeled mansion and possibly subdividing the property, according to sources. Although bulldozing an 80,000-square-foot luxury estate might seem bizarre for the average homeowner, it’s nothing new for ultra-rich buyers willing to pay huge sums for precious oceanfront property.

Trump paid the fire-sale price of $41.35 million for the estate in 2004. He bought it from bankrupt Abe Gosman, a former health-care magnate and Palm Beach philanthropist, then poured $25 million into a renovation overseen by Kendra Todd, winner of the third season of Trump’s TV show The Apprentice. The redo resulted in a 62,000-square- foot mansion with nine bedrooms, a ballroom, a conservatory and a 48-car garage.

But as proof that even the super-rich are not completely immune to the whims of the market, Trump did have to come down from his original asking price of $125 million. via the Palm Beach Post

Sorry for the misleading and shocking headline, especially if you have come over from Google or any other search engine, but sometimes you need it to get attention to things that will attract a buyer.

(Tenerife Blue Tit)

But the title is dead on accurate.

When selling a home these days pictures tell the story. Not to mention a nice headline will bring people in. So say you have a yard that has a great collection of birds that come and visit every day. Take some pictures and put them in your marketing material, it may be the thing that gets a bird lover to come look at it.

Remember people are searching the internet all the time for homes when they are ready to buy. In the past the Realtor steered you to the homes that were on the market, now it is the buyer asking to see specific homes. So make your marketing material appealing to smaller niches that people will get excited over.

And another thing, don’t get stuck in we only use pictures you have taken. Ask the owners if they have some great pictures of the home from the past that shows it off. Especially in the era of digital cameras they may have some excellent shots that will help you greatly.

Anything that helps sell the house ethically is in both yours and your clients best interests.

One of the great problems that is affecting foreclosures in Arizona, California, and Florida is what happens to the pools after the homeowners leave. These pools turn into a breeding ground for mosquitos that have the potential to carry disease and make neighborhoods unsafe for all who live there.

Enter the mosquito fish, or it’s technical term, Gambusia affinis. The fish is perfect to be dropped in these pools and then eat the larvae and juvenile mosquitos before they can develop into a nuisance. Town officials can put them into an abandoned pool and these wonderful creatures will do the rest saving the cities from spraying pesticides in these neighborhoods. 

How cool is that.

The mosquito fish is well suited for a prolonged housing slump. Hardy creatures with big appetites, they can survive in oxygen-depleted swimming pools for many months, eating up to 500 larvae a day and giving birth to 60 fry a month. That can save environmental crews from having to repeatedly spray pesticides in the pools while the houses grind through the foreclosure process.
Some local agencies, increasingly worried about mosquito-borne diseases like the West Nile Virus, are taking to the air to find problem swimming pools. The Turlock Abatement District, near Modesto, Calif., last month hired a plane to fly over 55 square miles, snapping pictures of pools from about 5,000 feet. On the ground, mosquito-control crews cross-referenced properties that had greenish-brown pools with a street map and a database of local foreclosed homes.
A significant threat to public health can be resolved through the use of a biological intervention. Learn more about the fish that eats mosquito larvae to reduce the threat of the west nile virus. WSJ’s Michael Corkery reports. (May
In the Turlock district alone, about 475 stagnant pools were identified on the flyover. Many of those will be filled with mosquito fish. via WSJ.com.

Michael Jackson, world famous singer and one of the worlds most bizarre individuals, was given a reprieve when Colony Capital purchased his 23.5 million dollar mortgage that was in foreclosure. The company says it is re negotiating the lease while they also search for buyers. The Neverland Ranch is famous for it’s collection of roller coasters, amusement rides, and zoo that Michael Jackson had to entertain his guests.

Reportedly there are celebrities looking to buy the home such as soccer star David Beckham.

Michael Jackson avoided foreclosure on his spectacular Neverland Ranch Sunday when a new bank took over the mortgage on the property.
The 2,700-acre spread, complete with amusement park and menagerie, had been expected to be auctioned off this week after Jacko defaulted on payments.
But Colony Capital, a real estate investment firm, bought the $23.5 million mortgage and said it was negotiating a new payment plan. via NY Daily News.

Luke Mullins at US News has more on the Neverland Ranch mortgage sale.

Want to keep marriages lasting longer? Keep the housing slump going.

According to experts, the housing slowdown is causing the divorce rate to drop as homeowners are unable to sell their homes. Essentially, couples can not afford to be separated.

There is the good and the bad in this situation. Those marriages that just need work may get the time to sort things out. The flip side is the marriages that have gone completely upside down may cause worse tensions to arise in the household.

But either way the long term drop in the divorce rate is one benefit coming out of the housing slowdown.

For many homeowners, a sluggish real estate market just means a delay in making a move. But for a married couple no longer getting along, it is much more than an inconvenience.
Divorce lawyers and therapists report that the shift in real estate is making breaking up harder to do.
“They are trapped. They’re trapped! It’s like putting a cat and a dog in a cage and say, here get along!” said Suzi Mohn, individual, couple and family therapist.
Mohn says that divorce is strongly tied to economics. Today, some couples are forced to live under the same roof because they can’t afford to move until their home is sold. via  KING5.com

So you were reading online that to rank for your hometown and real estate is important on this internet thing. Someone even told you that there were buyers that did not pick up the glossy magazine and searched for homes online. So after some research looking over another Realtors shoulder at the Starbucks while you were having your latte you decided to start one of those blog things.

You heard how they were owning East Podunk by blogging on it. Your business is in West Podunk and by golly since the newspaper ad you have run since 1988 has not brought in a buyer in 2 years. And we will not mention that traffic generator, Podunk Real Estate Monthly has brought you 2 buyers and 1 potential listing in the last year. It must be better than what I am doing now.

So you called the 14 year old down the street and for the price of a dinner at the local steakhouse he set you up “The West Podunk Real Estate Blog”. It even looks pretty with a picture across the top of the historic row of smokestacks from the closed buggy whip factory. Check it out…

But now how will you get people to come see this thing called a blog?

My answer, 2 things. First you need some content. And you know what, you have loads of content. Since you have been a real estate agent for a few years you have written more content than you can shake a stick at.

Content for the blog can come in many forms. Pictures always work with well written titles that have the towns name in it. Is there anything happening in the town that people would be interested in, write about it.

How about all those emails that you wrote back and forth with Mary Smith about why West Podunk was a great place to put her fabric company? You poured your heart into convincing her that this was the town and you had her dream house just waiting for her (and she is still loving 4 years later). Could you repurpose some of those 83 emails into blog posts on why West Podunk is the place to live and work? Sure you can.

You have spent the last 23 years writing first on a typewriter, then on the computer telling folks why people should live here. It is time to go through all that great information and turn them into blog posts.

Also, read your local papers and see what is happening. Turn some of these into a blog post. Of course, do not copy what they wrote, that is stealing or what we call plagiarism, and besides being wrong something that will get you in trouble. But re-write it and show up to some of the events and take some pictures. People love pictures.

And then you will want to start reading others in the community of bloggers.

Community of Bloggers? What is that? Think of all the real estate agents and others writing in blogs across the country. Some of them focus on their town, some like myself on national issues, and some even on how to teach others the tricks on how to blog. We will go into it in much greater details in a later post, but lets just say it is another amazing resource that will help you every step of the way and also work towards getting these magical things called links. 

When you have some posts up and are reading some of the other bloggers, it will be time to concentrate on links.

What are links and why are they important to bloggers?

We will have a third post talking about links and how to get your West Podunk Real Estate Weblog high in the Google rankings. And when you end up high in the Google rankings is when buyers start to find you. How cool is that, for your time and effort, folks will be calling you to learn about real estate in West Podunk. Sure beats the 500 dollars the magazine was charging each month for that little ad! And what is cool is that links are the currency of the internet.

Getting high in the rankings is not hard, but it will take some work. But again, the resources are all on the web for you. There are some amazing people that concentrate on just that called Search Engine Optimizers who freely share this information. I may ask a couple of them to come over and give me a hand in a later post on this theme.

So you ask, this blogging thing is all fun and games? Nope…

Blogging is work, no doubt about it, but it is also fun and very rewarding. If done correctly blogging about your city or region can bring you a bunch of business in a slow market. You’ve been watching many of the people in your office around the water cooler complaining about how slow things are. Well, use some of the slow time to learn an important new skill that will make you the top producer in West Podunk.

If you commit to it you will not be disappointed.

If you do not follow the show Extreme Home Makeover it is one of the most heartwarming things on television. A family in financial trouble and living typically in squalor has the ABC crew come in and work with thousands of volunteers to build a home in one week.

That is why it is so tough to see that one of the recipients of the communities largess put their home on the market albeit if it was only for one day. The homeowner was given 60,000 dollars to cover the maintenance costs of the home when they got the keys but says the money is all gone.

Unfortunately this is not too surprising. Basic money skills are not that common for folks living on the edge. The producers of ABC should use some of the power of the show to send these folks to school to learn to handle money instead of a trip to Disney World when they build them the house.

As you often see with pro athletes who are broke in only a few years after getting the monster contract, managing ones resources is hard. Education for these families can help avoid the poor publicity Extreme Home Makeover is getting from episodes like this.

Victor Marrero, the owner of the 3,000-square-foot, four-bedroom house pulled it off the market a day after it was listed by a real estate agent on the Multiple Listing Service, or MLS. On Tuesday, Zip Realty removed a lockbox from the home and temporarily suspended the listing, also at Marrero’s request.

Even if the house were still on the market, prospective buyers would have to line up behind Urban Promise Ministries, which has right of first refusal on the property at 3723 Federal St.

During a televised interview, Marrero said he tried to sell the home because it was too costly to maintain. He also said the nearly $60,000 worth of donations the family received during the Extreme Makeover build was gone. via Asbury Park Press.

Zip Realty, the discount real estate brokerage, announced a loss of 7.3 million dollars for the first quarter of 2008. The company’s shares were up after the announcement as the market was expecting a larger loss.

With the ultra competitive sellers market we are facing it is amazing that ZipRealty is still in the game to this extent. The need to properly market and sell a home with a full service push is needed in this market where procuring buyers is difficult.

On the other hand it is good to see they are still in the fight. As real estate changes all different forms of marketing and brokerage concepts need to be tested to determine what will be most effective for buyers and sellers.

Emeryville-based ZipRealty Inc. reported a larger loss and shrinking revenues for its first quarter of 2008 that ended March 31. The online realty brokerage lost $7.3 million, or 31 cents a share, on revenues of $20.6 million. ZipRealty’s losses were more than twice the $3.1 million the company lost a year ago. Revenues were down 12 percent from the first quarter of 2007. via Inside Bay Area.

There are some out there who are hoping for a new depression to come out of the housing slowdown. Well kids, after reading the tea leaves, things are not going to be so bad. When all the experts were stating we were in a recession, the economy grew .6 percent.

So it is a rosy time? No. But with a Republican President leaving office the media always talks down the economy to boost the chances of the Democrats. Not trying to be political but the press corp is about 85 percent Democratic and they do have a dog in the fight so the newsrooms are full of people talking about how bad the economy is and how the only thing that will save us is a Democratic landslide in the next election. Needless to say, the bad mouthing of the economy will end in November with rosy projections coming later.

Gerald Baker captured some of these feelings in a editorial in the London Times today.

I don’t know about you but I feel a bit cheated. There we all were, led to believe by so many commentators that the sub-prime crisis was going to force the United States into a new era of dust bowls and breadlines, a slump that would call into question the very functioning of the capitalist system in the world’s largest economy. Carried away on the surging wave of their own economically dubious verbosity, the pundits even speculated that this unavoidable calamity might presage some 1930s-style global political cataclysm to match.
Well, it’s early days, to be fair, but so far the Great Depression 2008 is shaping up to be a Great Disappointment. Not so much The Grapes of Wrath as Raisins of Mild Inconvenience. Last week the Commerce Department reported that the US economy – battered by the credit crunch, pummelled by a housing market collapse and generally devastated by the wild stampede of animal spirits – actually grew in the first three months of the year.  via Times Online

Congratulations to all who got behind the effort to alert Congress and the Army about the deplorable conditions at Fort Bragg. The Army launched a worldwide investigation into all barracks in the system to discover the level of housing issues our soldiers face.

Great job and this should make the homecomings easier for America’s heroes.

Brig. Gen. Dennis Rogers, who is responsible for maintaining barracks throughout the Army, told reporters at the Pentagon that most inspections were done last weekend but he had not seen final results.

While not providing specifics about problems discovered during the weekend inspections, Rogers indicated some deficiencies were corrected. In cases where extensive repairs are deemed necessary, the soldiers in that housing would be moved elsewhere until the fixes are completed, he added.

Rogers said it was too soon to know whether the Fort Bragg problem was an isolated incident. He acknowledged the revelations from a video shot by the father of an 82nd Airborne Division soldier showing poor conditions such as mold inside the barracks, peeling interior paint and a bathroom drain plugged with sewage. via  Yahoo! News.