Former Playboy centerfold Barbi Benton and her husband, the sartorially daring real estate developer George Gradow, currently have their longtime Bel Air, Calif. home listed for $11.95M. Benton, who spent quite a few of her early years living with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, has been splitting her time between Bel Air and Aspen, Colo., where she and Gradow own a spectacular hillside structure. Gradow, who made much of his money through investment in mobile home parks, recently spent a few years in the federal pen, courtesy of a conviction for tax fraud. Soon after his release in 2008, the couple listed this sprawling, 11,600-square-foot mansion for $17.5M, but after a series of price chops (and one price hike) the price is down to a lowly $11.95M. The house looks like it could be a product of the '70s, but was actually built in 1990, and sits on 2.75 acres with views over the nearby hilltops to the city.
· Barbi Benton Lists Los Angeles Dream House [The Real Estalker]
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Celebrity Real Estate: Busty Brunette Barbi Benton Lists Her Bel Air Dream House
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Living In A Dream World
The Desert Sun reports from California. “California’s middle class has been pinched harder by the Great Recession than workers in the rest of the country. By last year, less than half of families in the state, 47.9 percent, were earning middle-class incomes, between $44,000 and $155,000 annually. In 1980, nearly two-thirds of California families, 60 percent, were firmly middle-class. Palm Springs resident Shelly Saunders’ is one middle-class worker who fell from one bracket to another. Pre-bust, she and her husband owned a construction business, feeding the nearly insatiable demand for new houses.”
“They were earning $20,000 a month, living in their dream home, about to send two kids to college. When the housing bubble burst, they lost the business, the house and their marriage. ‘We were living in a dream world,’ said 55-year-old Saunders.”
“Once considering retirement at age 50, she’s working at Palm Desert Door and Hardware, making $45,000 a year, renting a two-bedroom condo. The kids are close to graduation after putting themselves through school with part-time jobs and student loans. Saunders says the fall from upper middle class to lower middle class has shaken her and her similarly situated friends.”
“‘When we went out to dinner before, it was nothing for someone to pick up the tab,’ Saunders said. ‘Nobody’s picking up the tabs anymore. We’re all scared. Our golden years are gone, baby.’”
The Mercury News. “Gayla Newsome was never part of the elite ‘1 percent,’ but she thought she was doing pretty well for herself, with a good job as the executive director of a nonprofit organization and a home in West Oakland she bought 15 years ago. But in July, she lost that Adeline Street property and for the past several months has been trying to reclaim it. ‘I’m a resident who has decided I’m not going to take this anymore,’ said Newsome, who said she fell behind on a secondary mortgage after she lost her job, sent her two oldest daughters to college and was without work from 2007 to 2009.”
“Newsome joined dozens of others in Oakland on Tuesday for rallies and marches as part of ‘Occupy Our Homes’ day. Similar actions were held in Oakley and other cities throughout the nation as the Occupy movement turned its attention to the foreclosure crisis.”
“Linda Loston said she and her husband, Jerome, sold their home in Hercules and put down a $250,000 payment on a retirement property in Alamo. It took a month before the Lostons realized the bank loan was not what they thought. Their interest rate and principle immediately began to increase instead of decreasing with their payment. Their bank broker told them to ‘ride it out,’ Jerome Loston said. ‘Our story is just one of many,’ he said.”
The San Gabriel Valley News. “Dennis F. Paulaha, who holds a Ph.D in economics from the University of Washington in Seattle, has a plan. It’s a sweeping strategy he says will put more Americans in homes, create more jobs and eliminate the federal debt. The core of Paulaha’s ‘trickle up’ plan would allow the government to offer every U.S. citizen a 30-year mortgage at a 1 percent fixed rate of interest, with interest-only payments for the first two years. That would allow every financially qualified person - not just those in immediate danger of default - to finance a new or existing home, with a $500,000 lifetime limit.”
“‘Instead of a bailout for the banks, this would be a bailout for mortgage holders,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been able to get very far with anyone in Washington. I’ve sent out emails and faxes … and gotten nothing. We’re living in a time when I’m not sure anyone is looking for ideas.’”
“James Joseph, owner of Century 21 Ambassador and Coldwell Banker Ambassador in Whittier, is firmly behind Paulaha’s plan. ‘America has a long history of using the tax code and the American system to help people get in and stay in their homes,’ he said. ‘This is an idea that’s as old as ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ This would be good for the country and good for the economy. This is the best idea I’ve heard.’”
“Marty Rodriguez, one of the nation’s top Realtors for Century 21, had a polar opposite view. ‘I think it’s ludicrous,’ said Rodriguez, who owns her own real estate agency in Glendora. ‘We’ve already got people in homes that haven’t made payments in two or three years. So let’s give them more money at 1 percent interest … I’m sorry but I’m just not buying into this. This isn’t what America is made of.’”
“Rodriguez said banks already handed out stated-income loans to people who could ill afford the homes they signed on to buy. ‘We’ve already done this once and you saw what happened,’ she said. ‘People who bought these homes thought they wouldn’t have to go to work and would get everything for free.’”
“When work began on the Grove Station development in eastern downtown in 2007, city leaders envisioned a mini-community where young families, entrepreneurs and retirees could live and work. But hopes were nearly dashed when the housing bubble burst and the project fell into bankruptcy. Later, it was discovered that the sewer system had not been properly installed, causing further delays.”
“Now, more than four years after the project’s groundbreaking, a significantly smaller Grove Station is nearly finished. Most of the residential units will be sold at market rate, but the city’s redevelopment agency has purchased four of them for use as affordable housing. The affordable units, which are being offered for $243,000, have two bedrooms, a den, two bathrooms and an attached two-car garage.”
“Despite these requirements and several others that can be found in the application packet, Mayor Curt Morris said ‘a huge number of people’ have added their names to interest lists. But many of those people signed up for the homes nearly a year ago, so the city is once again advertising the homes and reaching out to those who have previously expressed interest. ‘The recession really hit a lot of people,’ said Diana Kasuyama, housing programs manager for San Dimas. ‘Some of those people who were on the list have changed their plans.’”
The Sacramento Bee. “With sales of new homes near historic lows, Sacramento builders remain in survival mode, but a few say they expect to see demand slowly pick up next year. Sacramento’s five-year housing bust has toppled some of the biggest names in the industry – firms that were once a backbone of the region’s economy. According to DataQuick, builders in the Sacramento area sold just 2,363 new homes in 2010, an 85 percent decline from the 16,000 homes a year the industry produced during the 2004-2006 boom years.”
“Sacramento’s 2010 new-home sales figures are probably the lowest for the region since the early 1950s, said Greg Paquin, a Folsom-based housing industry consultant. ‘I don’t think things will get worse than last year,’ he said.”
The Victorville Daily Press. “Although the San Bernardino County population is growing at a faster rate than the rest of the state, local growth remains much more subdued than before the recession. However, the growth comes primarily from a natural increase — a higher number of births than deaths — rather than people moving to the state. ‘Traditionally, a good portion of California’s growth had been coming from immigration,’ Chief Economist John Husing of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership said. ‘What happened was the recession. People are pretty much staying wherever they are.’”
“San Bernardino and Riverside counties are seeing about one-tenth of the growth the Inland Empire saw during the boom years of the last decade, according to Husing. He said the Inland Empire had previously prospered because of the rapid population growth that brought in more income and consumers.”
“‘What has stopped is exactly that,’ Husing said, adding that it’s partly a result of the housing market collapse. ‘A lot of people can afford to buy a house, but they don’t because they are simply afraid to move. … Essentially, we are in a period of pause.’”
“But Husing remains positive, though he said the growth won’t happen anytime soon. ‘Once the housing crisis is over and fear has been removed from the marketplace, we will see people moving to places like the High Desert,’ he said. ‘They’ll come back because of the affordable housing.’”
The Santa Maria Times. “There used to be a saying in certain regions of the state, and it went something like this: Welcome to California. Now, go home. The phrase was so popular, someone put it on a bumper sticker. Rather unfriendly, but somehow amusing.”
“Not so much anymore. California is in the midst of redefining itself, based on changing demographics. The 2010 census revealed that the previous decade was the first 10-year period in more than a century during which the majority of Californians were actually born here.”
“We still have that climate, and the beaches, and the mountains. What’s becoming increasingly scarce are good jobs and affordable housing — a reality not lost on tens of thousands of Californians who have flown the coop in the past decade. Since 2005, more residents have left California than arrived here from other states.”
From CBS News. “As a freelance photographer Duane Conder knows his way around a camera. That’s come in handy now that he’s selling a lot of what he owns on eBay. He’s getting ready to move. Duane and his family have lived in their home near San Diego for 11 years. ‘It was like someone turned off a spigot. Where did the work go? It was like literally you woke up one day - and there was no work,’ Duane said.”
“The dot-com boom drew them from Texas to California, and now the prolonged job bust is forcing them out. California’s unemployment rate is 11.7 percent. Duane can’t find work and last week the bank foreclosed on his family’s home. ‘I feel like it’s the land we need to get out of very fast,’ Duane said of California.”
“The Conders are moving back to Texas where unemployment is lower, at 8.4 percent. In 2010, Texas gained nearly 75,000 new residents, while California lost nearly 130,000. The biggest state to state shift in the country was people leaving the Golden State and heading to the Lone Star state. Jobs are just one reason for the migration. Housing is another. A somewhat typical 3-bedroom home in Los Angeles just sold for more than $1 million, yet in a suburb of Austin, Texas, a somewhat typical 4-bedroom home sold for $380,000. The people who bought it moved from California.”
“Bill Gaiennie moved his family and his computer consulting business from California to Austin. They traded in a 1-bedroom apartment for their 4-bedroom home. ‘If we would have stayed in California, in order for us to make it in an area where we would want to live, we would need to be a two income family,’ Bill said. With the lower cost of living and no personal income tax in Texas, Bill’s wife Jessica now stays home with their daughter. ‘We go to gym we go to swimming lessons we do it all and if we lived in California we couldn’t do that,’ Jessica said.”
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Contests: Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Architect Barbie's New Dream House
Click to expand!
Finally, there's a roof over Architect Barbie's poor head! Since the stork dropped her into this world in February, the stylish wisp of a thing has essentially been homeless, rescued only by an American Institute of architects contest that asked AIA members to design her next Dream House. The winners? Ting Li and Maja Paklar, young, NYC-based grads of the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s M.Arch program. In a joint statement, Li and Paklar said, "Barbie was both of ours’ favorite doll growing up in China and Croatia. [...] We hope to encourage more young female architects to flex their design muscles and just to have fun with architecture.”
Now, a bit about this house, shall we? Situated in Malibu "on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean," the pink, modern abode "reflects exactly who Barbie is in her new profession. She has pledged to build an environmentally sustainable home using the principals set forth by USGBC [U.S. Green Building Council] as well as to stay true to all the needs of a classic California girl!" A floor-by-floor analysis:
"[...] entertaining space and chef’s open kitchen on the first floor, along with an office / library / meeting space. There is also a terrace on the second floor. The third and fourth floors are Barbie® doll’s private enclave, her bedroom and her inspiration room respectively. The roof has a green house and a landscaped garden for her domestic pets. The design elements include solar panels, landscaped rooftop and irrigation system, operable shading devices, bamboo flooring, low flow toilet and sink fixtures, and locally sourced and manufactured materials and furnishings."
Other fun facts: there's a computer-controlled closet that "allows for the clothes to be displayed and visible from every angle of the house" and a total sum of 1,500 square feet of space designed for entertaining, all to suit Barb's tastes: "Although she is an internationally renowned globe trotter, when not traveling she loves to look smart, entertain her potential clients, and come up with innovative ideas in her high tech, low energy consumption home."'
(Editor's note: Mattel will not actually manufacture the house, but the company will donate $1,000 in the winning architect's names to an architecture/design-oriented charter high school in Philly.)
Click to expand!
· AIA Announces the Winner of the AIA Architect Barbie® Dream House™ Design Competition [AIA.org]
· Please Welcome Barbie Architect to the Mattel Dancefloor [Curbed National]
· AIA Asks Architects to Design Barbie's Dream House [Curbed National]
Monday, June 20, 2011
I Still Dream About You: A Novel
The beloved Fannie Flagg is back and at her irresistible and hilarious best in I Still Dream About You, a comic mystery romp through the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, past, present, and future.Meet Maggie Fortenberry, a still beautiful former Miss Alabama. To others, Maggie’s life seems practically perfect—she’s lovely, charming, and a successful real estate agent at Red Mountain Realty. Still, Maggie can’t help but wonder how she wound up in her present condition. She had been on her hopeful way to becoming Miss America and realizing her childhood dream of someday living in one of the elegant old homes on top of Red Mountain, with the adoring husband and the 2.5 children, but then something unexpected happened and changed everything.
Maggie graduated at the top of her class at charm school, can fold a napkin in more than forty-eight different ways, and can enter and exit a car gracefully, but all the finesse in the world cannot help her now. Since the legendary real estate dynamo Hazel Whisenknott, beloved founder of Red Mountain Realty, died five years ago, business has gone from bad to worse—and the future isn’t looking much better. But just when things seem completely hopeless, Maggie suddenly comes up with the perfect plan to solve it all.
As Maggie prepares to put her plan into action, we meet the cast of high-spirited characters around her. To Brenda Peoples, Maggie’s best friend and real estate partner, Maggie’s life seems easy as pie. Slender Maggie doesn’t have to worry about her figure, or about her Weight Watchers sponsor catching her at the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop. And Ethel Clipp, Red Mountain’s ancient and grumpy office manager with the bright purple hair, thinks the world of Maggie but has absolutely nothing nice to say about their rival Babs “The Beast of Birmingham” Bingington, the unscrupulous estate agent who hates Maggie and is determined to put her out of business.
Maggie has heartbreaking secrets in her past, but through a strange turn of events, she soon discovers, quite by accident, that everybody, it seems—dead or alive—has at least one little secret.
I Still Dream About You is a wonderful novel that is equal parts Southern charm, murder mystery, and that perfect combination of comedy and old-fashioned wisdom that can be served up only by America’s own remarkable Fannie Flagg.
From the Hardcover edition.
Price: $26.00
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Demolition Porn: Berkeley: Mr. Kapor, 4th Horseman, Builds His Dream House
Demolition begins at 2707 Rose Street [Photo Credit: Jason Strauss via Berkeleyside]
In classic Berkeley fashion, there's been a brush fire raging over Freada Klein and Mitch Kapor's plans to build a new house on Rose Street, and this week demolition began on the dilapidated 1920's house that stood in the way. While the immediate neighbors supported the new construction, it seems like everyone else in Berkeley had (and still has) an opinion over the size of the Lotus software mogul's house and its accompanying subterranean ten-car garage. The Berkeley City Council denied an appeal of the Zoning Board's approval late last week. The Klein-Kapor's lot is large enough to absorb the project in 40% of the lot area and it fits within the buildable envelope. Additionally, the ten-car garage is mostly for visitors, since parking on Rose Street has always been problematic, plus they're putting in a turn-around at the end of the street where there was none previously. Comments in Berkeleyside's fourteen previous posts have that cluck-cluck you're-destroying-the-planet attitude from people who seem overly attached to someone else's shrubberies, although the project fits within Berkeley's green construction parameters. Probably it just means that critical thinking in Berkeley tends towards the Apocalyptic. So how green is an underground garage? Not much, but it's greener than street parking, if only because storm-water runoff can be managed. And a whole lot more attractive.
· Mitch Kapor Takes First Steps to Building Berkeley Home [Berkeleyside]
· Can One Call Mitch Kapor's Berkeley House Green? [Treehugger]
· Berkeley Gets Indignant Over a Ginormous House's 'Green' Label [Curbed SF Archives]
Friday, May 13, 2011
HGTV Dream Home Winner Revealed!: Here's a warm 'n' fuzzy story...
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? Next: Grand Georgian; Japanese Building Codes; Alberta Ferretti; More!
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
[Contest] Congrats to our 2nd “My American Dream” Contest Winner!
During week #2 of our “My American Dream” Twitter contest, @dropastich won a $50 Crate and Barrel gift card from Trulia for her entry:
@trulia=>My American dream=>a safe loving home for my grandson to grow up in #Crate&Barrel #giftcards #myamericandream #contest #giveaway
Don’t forget to share your American Dream with us for a chance to win - we’re picking our last Twitter contest winner on Monday!
Here’s how to enter - it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3
Step 1: Be a registered user of Twitter.com. (If you are not a registered user of Twitter, simply visit https://twitter.com/signup to register for free.)Step 2: Follow Sponsor on Twitter at @trulia.Step 3: Tweet (1) the hashtag #myamericandream and (2) a brief response to the following question: What is your American dream? Do not include personal information in your answers, including, without limitation, your name, e-mail address, or contact information.Judging
Beginning on or about the final day of each Submission Period, a panel of Trulia Judges will evaluate eligible tweets and select one (1) winner for the prior Period based on which tweet is the most apt, original, and interesting.Winners Announced
Each potential prize winner will be notified by direct message via Twitter within 48 hours after the then-applicable Period ends. Once the winners have been confirmed, we’ll announce them on our blog http://www.truliablog.com/.Click here for the full the official rules.
Popularity: 3% [?]Saturday, March 26, 2011
[Contest] Congrats to our 3rd “My American Dream” Twitter Contest Winner!
During the 3rd and final week of our “My American Dream” Twitter contest, @LizRevillaS won a $50 Crate and Barrel gift card from Trulia for her entry:
#myamericandream-healthy kids&hubby, enough $ to take yearly vacation, a nice home w/Large kitchen to enjoy friends, family, wine & Food
Congrats and thank you to everyone who participated! We loved hearing about your American Dreams and hope you all achieve them! Next week, we’ll be announcing the grand prize winner of our “My American Dream” Facebook contest, so stay tuned.
Popularity: 2% [?]Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Contests: Swank Mountain Lodge Rises as HGTV's 2011 Dream Home
This weekend, HGTV unveiled its 2011 Dream Home, the first-ever Vermont property to be given away by the network. Part of a $2M prize package that also includes a new car and $500K in cash, the 3,400-square-foot manse is nestled in Stowe Mountain Resort. Principals on this project were Paul Robert Rouselle and interior designer Linda Woodrum, who aimed to fuse 19th-century Adirondack building with modern trimmings. Thoughts? Leave 'em in the comments.
· Dream Home 2011 [HGTV]
Friday, December 24, 2010
I Still Dream About You: A Novel
In 1992, I met Fannie Flagg in Los Angeles at the end of her triumphal march through America to promote her book and movie, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. She was in town because sheâ??d been nominated for an Academy Award for her marvelous screenplay based on her novel. Because my tribe is a man-eating one, I inquired among other southern writers about her reputation. On the road, Iâ??ve encountered writers about as friendly as scorpions or copperheads, and I always like to get a scouting report before I approach any member of my contentious breed. Anne Rivers Siddons told me that she was "a fabulous creature;" Terry Kay added that â??she is even better than her novel,â? which both of us had loved; and Mark Childress assured me that "she is the best of the best of the best." I met her that night and have loved her ever since.
I just finished her new novel, I Still Dream About You, and itâ??s a grand thing to have Fannie Flaggâ??s name carved on my heart again. Her main character is Maggie Fortenberry, a woman with a brand-new plan to change her life but who keeps getting interrupted by phone calls from friends and responsibilities to the troubled real-estate company where she works. A former Miss Alabama who represented her state in the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, Maggie is a worthy descendant of those four fabulous women who were the main protagonists in Fried Green Tomatoes. In this novel, as in all of her novels, Fannie Flagg creates memorable characters, great set pieces, and gales of unexpected laughter. When a cop stops Maggie for speeding, Flagg writes one of the most hilarious scenes she has ever created in the oddball world of southern letters. There is a trunk in the attic of an enchanted house for sale that reminded me of William Faulknerâ??s â??A Rose for Emily.â? I laughed my way through this book, and I found myself falling in love with Maggie as she kept postponing her plans for reasons of real estate and friendship. Always an artist with her villains, Flagg introduces us to Babs Bingington, a carnivorous real-estate agent who would sell her soul for peanuts to steal a listing from anyone else trying to sell property in her part of Alabama. In fact, the other real-estate agents call her â??The Beast of Birmingham,â? and she lives up to that title in this funny, well-made novel. There is also a mystery in the center of the story that is solved in a shocking and most satisfying fashion. I Still Dream About You is a love letter to the city of Birmingham and the state of Alabama, and it captures a South that seems both original and right to me. Flagg creates a world that you love entering and are reluctant to leave. You fall hard for characters like Hazel Whisenknott, Brenda Peoplesâ??the list goes on and on, and there is great wit and wisdom on every page. Iâ??m still smiling at the passing mention of the man who robbed the First Alabama Bank armed with only a live lobster. She has written a wondrous gift for all of us--five stars for Fannie Flagg.
Price: $26.00