[Less To Purchase] 3Q 2012 Brooklyn Report

Posted by Jonathan Miller - Saturday, October 20, 2012, 10:00 AM

We published our report on the Brooklyn sales market for 3Q 2012 this morning.   This is part of an evolving market report series I’ve been writing for Douglas Elliman since 1994.

Key Points

Fastest absorption rate in 4 years, inventory fell sharply.
Sales slipped, partially attributable to falling inventory.
Overall pricing indicators mixed, prices generally stable.
Luxury pricing edged above year ago levels.
Marketing time faster and listing discount compressing with falling inventory.
Condo sales down, co-op sales and 1-3 family sales are up.
South Brooklyn showed gains in prices and sales, one of lower priced regions, most responsive to falling mortgage rates.

Here’s an excerpt from the report:

…The Brooklyn housing market continued to show broad stability in price and sales activity, as listing inventory continued to fall. The familiar restraint of tight mortgage lending conditions tempered additional demand created by falling mortgage rates.

Mixed housing price indicators in the third quarter reflected the general stability of the market. Median sales price slipped 0.8% from $510,000 in the same period last year to $506,000, still marking its second highest level in four years. Average sales price increased 1.1% from $607,867 in the prior year quarter to $614,437…

You can build your own custom data tables on the market – now updated with 3Q 12 data. Charts with 3Q12 data appended will be online shortly.

The Elliman Report: 3Q 2012 Brooklyn Sales [Miller Samuel]
The Elliman Report: 3Q 2012 Brooklyn Sales [Prudential Douglas Elliman]
Aggregated Custom Market Data Tables [Miller Samuel]

View the original article here

On the Market: Now's Your Chance to Purchase One of the Very Few Pieces of Celebrity Real Estate in San Francisco

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Friday, July 20, 2012, by Sally Kuchar We gave you the heads up on Wednesday that Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin and his husband Christopher Turner would be putting their home on the market this week, and here it is in all its glory. The couple is moving to Santa Fe. The 3-bed, 2-bath, 1,606 square foot shingled Craftsman/Edwardian-style abode was built in 1906. Mr. Maupin picked it up in 1993, when he purchased it for $615,000. He's asking $1,198,000. The Parnassus Heights location is perched high atop San Francisco, so the home has views galore of downtown, Marin, and the Bay. It was in this home that Maupin wrote three New York Times bestselling novels. Maupin's most autobiographical novel, The Night Listener, published in 2000, is largely set at 27 Belmont Avenue, as described in this excerpt:

Out of habit I approached the house from the sidewalk across the street, where I could see it in context: three narrow stories noticed into the wooden slope. Its new cedar shingles were still too pallid for its dark green trim, but another season or two of rain would turn them into tarnished silver. I'd be eagerly awaiting that. I'd wanted the place to look ancestral, as if we had lived there forever.

Want to see it in person? There's an open house on Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 4PM.
· Author Armistead Maupin is About to List [Curbed SF]
· Armistead Maupin Sells in San Francisco [The Real Estalker]
· 27 Belmont [Redfin] 27 Belmont Avenue, San Francisco, CA

View the original article here

Purchase Apps Fall – S&P Downgrade’s Impact on Housing Market

As I wait to be battered by the impending visit by (Hurricane) Irene and returning from a mini-vacation, but I was struck by the latest results of the latest Mortgage Banker Association seasonally adjusted rate index:

The seasonally adjusted gauge of loan requests for home purchases tumbled 5.7 percent to its lowest level since December 1996, the MBA said. Refinance demand also sagged as interest rates rose, with the refinance index slipping 1.7 percent.

Mortgage rates are at the all-time low, yet mortgage applications are down. Why? Part of the decline is likely because consumers have become jaded with low rates since they have been so low for so long. These are seasonally adjusted numbers so the decline is not due to the typical August slow down.

I feel strongly that the decline in mortgage purchase applications is largely due to the S&P US downgrade of several weeks ago which roiled (my new favorite word) financial markets across the planet. Consumers don’t like the unknown and they are waiting for a sign of better times. It doesn’t mean people aren’t buying homes. What it means is that fewer people are buying homes. If this becomes sustained or rises, lower sales levels will lead to additional price declines.

I think I’ll focus on the weather right now.

View the original article here

Concept of Lease Purchase

One of the newest entrants in the paradigm of buying a house is to lease purchase the house. This is one of the best and most sought after procedures in which the buyer will always have an advantageous position. This is one of the reasons for the popularity of lease purchases in the present generation. We shall be looking deeper into this procedure in the following passages. In a recent research that was conducted among the citizens of the country, it was concluded that lease purchase is the best manner to proceed if you are looking forward to buy a new house.

There are mainly three factors in the lease purchase procedure, they are the seller, the buyer and of course the property which is usually a shop or a house. Houses are often given away as lease purchases. The entire procedure works out in the following manner. The seller will advertise that he as a house that is available for lease purchase. Out of the many potential customers who turn up in response to this advertisement, the seller will choose one. The house will be leased to him for certain duration, after which the buyer will have to pay for the house and buy the house from the seller.

This is a simple process which might sound a bit complex in the beginning. There are many advantages to this form of purchasing because the buyer will be always having the upper hand than the seller in the whole process. The buyer and the seller will fix a value for the house before allocating it for lease. Then the buyer gets to stay in the house periods, until he is able to amass the value that has already been fixed for the house. Once the buyer is ready to buy the property, he will inform the seller and the entire transaction is carried out swiftly.

The buyer gets to experience the house before he buys it this is another advantage that has been touted with this mode of purchasing. If the house if a bit old, then it is bound to have many problems, all of which can be found by staying in the property for a month or so. Nevertheless, whatever the problems found, the value of the house will never depreciate. This might tend to be loss for the buyer, but in actual cases, it works in the reverse manner.

With the passage of time, the value of the property will keep on rising it will never diminish. This proves to be good, at least for the prospective buyer because he will be able to sell the house in turn for larger profit values. The original seller will have to sit and see through the entire process muted, because he has already fixed the value of the house at something low. This is often considered as a business in many parts of the country, where agents buy the house on lease purchase and in turn sell it to others at high profit margins.

View the original article here