The house next to President Obama's home in Chicago is up for sale. The Obamas spend most of their time at the White House these days so people moving in next door to the First Family's Chicago home may not see much of them. However, the pitch President Obama's neighbor is making that the house is is the "safest place in the city" is a pretty good one. It will be safe, but the heightened security could get annoying when the Obamas are in town. The real estate agent says they are anticipating an "Obama premium" on the sale of the home, but they don't know how much that will be yet. Take a look:
Zillow blog reports that a townhouse for sale in New York City is very skinny. The 1873 townhome is just 9.5 feet wide.
For $2.75 million, you can have a piece of New York history, although, who knows if your furniture will fit. This 9 1/2 feet wide Dutch-style townhome, built in 1873, is located in Manhattan's West Village at 75 Bedford St, New York, NY 10014.
According to the New York Post, this home is the skinniest house in New York City. To put the width of this home into perspective, it is just about 2.5 feet narrower than the length of a standard Mini Cooper (12 feet, 1.6 inches).
The property listing says it is the narrowest home in New York City. It does have seven rooms on 3 floors. The listing price is $2,750,000.
Reuters reports that Deutsche Bank is predicting that nearly half (48%) of U.S. mortgages will be underwater by 2011. Underwater means they owe more than their home is worth.
Home price declines will have their biggest impact on prime "conforming" loans that meet underwriting and size guidelines of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bank said in a report. Prime conforming loans make up two-thirds of mortgages, and are typically less risky because of stringent requirements.
"We project the next phase of the housing decline will have a far greater impact on prime borrowers," Deutsche analysts Karen Weaver and Ying Shen said in the report.
Of prime conforming loans, 41 percent will be "underwater" by the first quarter of 2011, up from 16 percent at the end of the first quarter 2009, it said. Forty-six percent of prime jumbo loans will be larger than their properties' value, up from 29 percent, it said.
"The impact of this is significant given that these markets have the largest share of the total mortgage market outstanding," the analysts said. Prime jumbo loans make up 13 percent of the total market.
Bloomberg writes that the report listed several areas where 90% of borrowers may be underwater.
Seven markets in states with the fastest appreciation during the five-year housing boom -- including Fort Lauderdale and Miami, Florida; Merced and Modesto, California; and Las Vegas -- may find 90 percent of borrowers underwater, according to the report.
Buying a home was billed as a wise investment during the last couple decades. Deutsche Bank analysts say, "For many, the home has morphed from piggy bank to albatross."
The Wall Street Journal has an article here that shows the currently percentages of mortgages underwater for each state. Nevada has the dubious honor of being in the lead - 40% of homeowners there are underwater.
There was some good housing news for a change. The Wall Street Journalreports that sales of single-family homes increased by 11.0% 11% in June 2009 compared to May 2009.
The increase was the fourth in six months, as buyers take advantage of falling prices. It appears new-home sales reached a bottom in January, at a level of 329,000, and that the market is beginning to recover slowly. The level of 384,000 in June was the highest since 390,000 last November.
Home construction unexpectedly rose in June, the government said July 17. Housing starts increased 3.6% to a seasonally adjusted 582,000 annual rate compared to the prior month. The starts data also showed building permits surged, and single-family starts made their biggest climb in four years.
May new-home sales rose 2.4% to an annual rate to 346,000, Monday's data showed. Originally, the government said May sales fell, sliding 0.6% to 342,000. April sales climbed 1.8%.
The June 2009 figures were better than the May 2009 figures but new home sales for June 2009 were still 21.3% lower than June 2008. At least the month-to-month comparison was positive.
A townhome at 400 West St., designed by Sixx design, contains an indoor basketball court that can also be used for viewing movies. It's almost as cool as having an indoor lap pool like this apartment has. The 7,180 luxury apartment at 400 West has 5 bedrooms and great views. It retails for $25 million. You can see a listing for the townhome here on Trulia. Here's a walkthrough of 400 West by New York Magazine. Take a look:
Bloomberg reports that U.S. mortgage applications fell by 19% last week. It was the steepest drop since February and a sign the eeconomy is not recovering. Bloomberg says the drop comes as the Obama administration has been trying to revive the housing market.
The Mortgage Bankers Association's index of applications to purchase a home or refinance a loan dropped 19 percent to 444.8 in the week ended June 26 from 548.2 the prior week. The group's refinancing gauge declined 30 percent to the lowest in seven months, while the index of purchases fell 4.5 percent.
Unemployment, which touched a 26-year high in May, and rising borrowing costs discouraged homeowners from refinancing, while a growing number of foreclosures sidelined potential buyers waiting for house prices to stop tumbling. Pending home sales showing contracts signed in May rose 0.1 percent, compared with a gain of 6.7 percent in April, the National Realtors Association said today.
"The run-up in mortgage rates is exacting a toll in terms of depressing mortgage applications," Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts, said in an interview. "The economy is in a phase of attempting to find a bottom. Anything that comes in the way of that, like higher rates, is going to mean it takes longer."
The evidence is starting to mount that this would be a long recession and not a short one. If layoffs continue to mount in the third quarter than the holiday season could be another bleak one for retailers.
Transumers prefer to rent instead of buy. They don't just rent apartments but products too - everything from designer handbags to electronics. Reinier Evers of Trendwatching told the AP that the transumer lifestyle is "less about treasure and more about pleasure." Cassandra Smith is a transumer. She spends $800 a month renting designer handbags. Take a look:
Reuters reports that Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House is to be sold. The Ennis House Foundation will be selling the 6,000-square-foot Los Angeles estate. The asking price is said to be $15 million.
The 6,000-square-foot Los Angeles estate is being sold by the Ennis House Foundation, which recently completed the initial phase of a stabilization and restoration project following years of decay and damage from earthquakes and torrential rains. In March 2005, it was placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's most-endangered list.
"Our goal has always been to be a good steward of the house," said the foundation's president, James DeMeo.
"We've made a lot of progress, but at this point a private owner with the right vision and sufficient resources can better preserve the house than we can as a small nonprofit," he said, explaining the decision to place the historic home on the market.
Perched atop a hill in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles just south of Griffith Park, the Mayan-inspired estate built in 1924 from some 27,000 16-inch concrete blocks is one of only four of the legendary American architect's "textile block" homes.
The Ennis House has been used in films and tv shows including Blade Runner, Rush Hour, Twin Peaks and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Ennis House Foundation has posted a statement on its website.
An L.A. Timesarticle says Eric Lloyd Wright, the architect's grandson, believes private ownership is the best way to save the house and honor his grandfather's intentions in today's tough economy.
New York Magazine tours the inside of 9,200 square foot condo in Tribeca that is listed at $24 million. The luxury Manhattan condo has its own lap pool and sauna room. You can see the listing for 60 Collister here.
RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosure properties, released its May 2009 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. The report says foreclosure filings -- default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions -- were reported on 321,480 U.S. properties during the month. This is a drop of 6% from April but an increase of nearly 18 percent from May 2008. The report also shows that one in every 398 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing in May.
"May foreclosure activity was the third highest month on record, and marked the third straight month where the total number of properties with foreclosure filings exceeded 300,000 -- a first in the history of our report," said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. "While defaults and scheduled foreclosure auctions were both down from the previous month, bank repossessions, or REOs, were up 2 percent thanks largely to substantial increases in several states, including Michigan, Arizona, Washington, Nevada, Oregon and New York. We expect REO activity to spike in the coming months as foreclosure delays and moratoria implemented by various state laws come to an end."
Reuters reports that Home Depot beconomic indicators signal that the worst of the U.S. housing correction is over. They see a revival of the home improvement market ahead.
The company said it plans to step up efforts to improve its distribution network by introducing more "rapid deployment centers" and more marketing campaigns targeting Hispanic communities. Home Depot said its supply chain was not the best and had more room for improvement.
"We are playing a bit of catch-up," a company executive told the analyst meeting.
From appointing more bilingual staff to making items easier to locate in aisles, Home Depot plans a renewed focus on customer service at its stores.
Home Depot said its strategic initiatives and a revival of the home improvement market will allow it to achieve an operating margin of about 10 percent and a return on invested capital of about 15 percent.
A revival of the housing market would benefit many other retailers in addition to Home Depot. However, as long as the country continues to lose jobs it is hard to imagine the housing market rebounding.
Reuters reports that data from the Zillow.com real estate website shows that declining home values left 21.9% of American homeowners with negative equity by the end of the first quarter of 2009. Home values have also plunged 21.8% since the market's peak.
U.S. home values posted a year-over-year decline of 14.2 percent to a Zillow Home Value Index of $182,378, resulting in a total 21.8 percent drop since the market peaked in 2006, according to Zillow's first-quarter Real Estate Market Reports, which encompass 161 metropolitan areas and cover the value changes in all homes, not just homes that have recently sold.
U.S. homes lost $704 billion in value during the first quarter and have depreciated $3.8 trillion in the past 12 months, according to analysis of the reports.
Declining home values left 21.9 percent of all American homeowners with negative equity by the end of the first quarter, Zillow said.
By comparison, 17.6 percent of all homeowners owed more on their mortgage than their property was worth in the fourth quarter of 2008, and 14.3 percent were underwater in the third quarter of last year, the reports showed.
Dr. Stan Humphries, Zillow vice president of data and analytics, said it may be a while before we see much of a recovery. Humpries says, "By our calculations, this could translate into as many as 20 million homes that could seep into the market as prices stabilize, maintaining a constant stream of supply that far outpaces demand, thus keeping prices flat. I'm doubtful that we'll see the bottom until 2010, and thereafter it's increasingly clear that we're likely to have a long bottom before we see meaningful recovery in home values."
You can read Dr. Stan Humpries blog post about the potential for a housing recovery here.
The National Association of Realtors said existing home sales in the United States fell 3% in March to a lannual rate of 4.57 million units. Reuters says this was much lower that economists had been expecting.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast home resales to slip to a 4.70 million-unit pace from a revised 4.71 million for February, which was initially reported as 4.72 million.
The inventory of existing homes for sale fell to 3.74 million from the 3.80 million overstock reported for February. The median national home price rose 4.2 percent to $175,200 from February, boosted by seasonal factors. However, prices fell 12.4 percent compared to the same period a year ago.
Jobless claims were also higher than expected putting a damper on some economist's hopes for a recovery. There is some good news. Although the economy is still getting worse, it isn't get worse as quickly as it was. The AP quotes Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, as saying, "The economic downturn remains intense, but it is no longer intensifying. We are still falling, but we are no longer crashing."
Newspapers are teaming up with Zillow for real estate search.
The Tampa Tribune, owned by Media General Inc., and 100 newspapers published by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. are scheduled to add the Zillow search engine and other site content to their Web sites' real estate sections beginning Wednesday, Zillow said.
Once visitors enter a city, address or similar search term into the Zillow search box, their Web browser will connect them to a version of the Zillow site - co-branded with the newspaper - where they can comb through their search results, find local market data and other real estate content.
In all, 180 newspapers, including the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Winston-Salem Journal, plan to update their Web sites over the next few months to include the real estate search features, Zillow said.
Zillow provides a database of home data and for sale real listings - they had over 3 million for sale listings as of November, 2008. Zillow lists over 88 million homes.
The Spelling manor is going up for sale with a $150 million price tag. Candy Spelling is putting the 4.6 acre estate on the market.
The French chateau-style mansion has 56,500 square feet of space on more than 4.6 acres and is the largest home in Los Angeles County. Among the neighbors are the Los Angeles Country Club and, not too far away, the Playboy Mansion.
Spelling's late husband produced hit shows such as "Charlie's Angels," "Dynasty" and "Beverly Hills 90210." He died in 2006.
"Everything there is glamorous, and is luxurious and it's really great scale," said Sally Forster Jones, an agent with Coldwell Banker Previews International in Los Angeles, which is co-listing the property. "There really is nothing to compare it to."
The mansion is said to include a bowling alley, wine cellar, gift-wrapping room, silver and china rooms, theater, barber shop and rooftop garden. The mansion has 123 rooms in all.
Here's a video of the manor from a CBS clip from last year. Take a look:
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