Aware of their friend Wayne's delicate stomach, Martin and Gareth made the wise choice to start the meal with a Pepto amuse bouche.Photo by Laurey W. Glenn/Southern Living 
Showing posts with label Think. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Think. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Magazine Living: Think Pink...
× 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. Monday, July 23, 2012, by Sarah Firshein The all-American characters of Gary and Elaine have wormed their way into households aplenty thanks to the ingenuity of Molly Erdman, whose Catalog Living blog points to styling curiosities within catalogs. Here now, Erdman does the same for shelter magazine photos. Aware of their friend Wayne's delicate stomach, Martin and Gareth made the wise choice to start the meal with a Pepto amuse bouche.Photo by Laurey W. Glenn/Southern Living
Aware of their friend Wayne's delicate stomach, Martin and Gareth made the wise choice to start the meal with a Pepto amuse bouche.Photo by Laurey W. Glenn/Southern Living 
Monday, July 30, 2012
Money Mag Shows Us How To ‘Think Like an Appraiser’
Posted by Jonathan Miller - Monday, July 23, 2012, 3:18 PM
The August 2012 issue of Money Magazine on the newsstands now has a nice article penned by Ali Rogers called “Think Like an Appraiser.”
It’s not available online yet but the magazine is always a good read. Although Money Magazine has named me “Best Online Real Estate Expert,” I swear I have offline expertise too.
Ok before you go on with snarky comments about the last appraiser that screwed up your deal, I’ve heard it all before, much of it spoken here on this blog. The article is more about the concept of “contributory value” – how certain modest improvements help provide additional value of your home. In theory, an appraiser is going to walk through your home at time of sale just like your buyer would and place a certain value on things you may have done to improve the property. First impressions are important in building a sense of value for the property.
I’d like to expound on the contract “data” point in the article to provide context (not something I commented on for the article). Appraisers absolutely consider contract data in addition to closed data (and listing data). We can place them in the report but normally are not the sole basis of determining value.
What often happens is that we are told about a home that is under contract nearby but we don’t know the sales price. We will call the listing agent of that “contract” and try to get a sense of the interior condition and the actual price (99% of the time we are NOT successful getting the price) but we sometimes we might get feedback like “sold at list” or “sold very close to ask” etc. This can be a helpful gauge on value but not the key factor in the report presentation, especially since there is a higher probability in today’s market than in year’s past that homes under contract don’t always close.
These bits of info from a little detective work are among the subjective elements to valuation that help “tell the story” of the transaction. It’s not about dropping raw data on a spreadsheet and taking an average.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Bye-Bye Bay Bridge: It's time to think about taking...
× 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. Tuesday, January 31, 2012, by Abby Pontzer
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Think of the Children: It's with heavy hearts that we...
× 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. Tuesday, January 24, 2012, by Sally Kuchar
Friday, June 10, 2011
Comment of the Day: "I still think fertilizer runoff from...
× 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. Tuesday, May 31, 2011, by Sally Kuchar
? Previous: Windmill Renovations
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
On the Market: Think $60M is Too Much for a Spec House? Blame A-Rod.
× 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, January 7, 2011, by Sarah
Photo: Andrew Kaufman/WSJ
Today the Journal has a feature on high-end spec houses, including the little number above, set on a private island in Miami. While it has no owner yet, what the 30,000-square-foot estate does have is a cartoonish roster of amenities: a wine room that can only be accessed via thumbprint identification, a private beach with sand imported from the Bahamas, and gold-flecked countertop marble that was handpicked in Italy. Not to mention the extremely useful selection of hidden wall art! Despite the fact that this project will cost developers Shlomi Alexander and Felix Cohen $30M, they're confident not only that they will sell it, but that they will sell it soon. So why the $60M ask? Because they toured the space with Yankees third basemen Alex Rodriguez, who was apparently so impressed that he convinced them to bump up the price. Serves them right for consulting someone who's got a $275M contract.
· The $60 Million Dream House [WSJ]
Monday, December 20, 2010
Negative Home Equity Is Worse Than You Think
There was a lot of talk last week about how negative equity, now at 22.5 percent of all homes with mortgages, according to CoreLogic [CLGX Loading... () 
] , will affect the housing recovery. Then mortgage rates popped up to 5 percent overnight, thanks to the 10-year Treasury, and more folks voiced concern over today's potential home buyer and his or her ability to take advantage of this low-priced housing market. 
Owing more on your mortgage than your home is currently worth doesn't necessarily mean you can't afford your monthly mortgage payment or that you're going to go about your day any differently, other than feeling a little financially depressed. While it may make some more likely to walk away or "strategically default," most won't. It does mean that you can't use your home to pay for anything, like a new car or your kids' college tuition, and it does mean that you can't move up to a nicer home without having to take a hit by paying off your mortgage with whatever stash of cash you have. Now here's the issue: The move-up buyer (which is the market we're counting on now to get us out of this mess, given that the home buyer tax credit pulled a lot of first-time buyer demand forward to the beginning of 2010). A significant number of move-up buyers, even if not underwater on their mortgages now, may be in a negative equity position when it comes to buying a new home. Let me just preface that if you happen to be wealthy independent of your home, or a relative just died and left you a sizeable chunk of cash, this doesn't apply to you. Now here goes. Mortgage expert Mark Hanson makes an excellent point and did some math, which I want to share: "In order to sell and re-buy, a homeowner must receive enough proceeds from the sale to 1) pay off the mortgage(s), 2) pay a Realtor 5-6 percent and 3) put a 3.5-20 percent down payment on a new vintage loan," begins Hanson, and those alone may be too financially off-putting in today's economy for many potential buyers. "Effective negative-equity is the big weight on housing that has no easy or quick cure," continues Hanson. His math: Real effective negative-equity as it pertains to house selling and buying starts at: <9.5% positive equity for FHA repeat buyers (6% Realtor fee + 3.5% down payment) <16% positive equity for Fannie/Freddie repeat buyers (6% Realtor fee + 10% down payment) <26% for Jumbo repeat buyers (6% Realtor fee + 20% down payment) When lowering Corelogic's negative equity threshold to 75% on CA mortgages, 53% are effectively underwater. And I would add to Hanson's logic, that CoreLogic also noted that an additional 2.4 million borrowers are in a "near-negative equity" position, with less than 5 percent equity in their homes. That puts them out of the move-up market as well. With rising mortgage rates, even if they don't go much higher, the "effective" negative equity rate of the move-up buyer will impact recovery, slowing sales as more buyers/demand are priced out of the market. Questions? Comments? document.write("");document.write("RealtyCheck"+"@"+"cnbc.com");document.write('');And follow me on Twitter @Diana_Olick![]()
] , will affect the housing recovery. Then mortgage rates popped up to 5 percent overnight, thanks to the 10-year Treasury, and more folks voiced concern over today's potential home buyer and his or her ability to take advantage of this low-priced housing market. Owing more on your mortgage than your home is currently worth doesn't necessarily mean you can't afford your monthly mortgage payment or that you're going to go about your day any differently, other than feeling a little financially depressed. While it may make some more likely to walk away or "strategically default," most won't. It does mean that you can't use your home to pay for anything, like a new car or your kids' college tuition, and it does mean that you can't move up to a nicer home without having to take a hit by paying off your mortgage with whatever stash of cash you have. Now here's the issue: The move-up buyer (which is the market we're counting on now to get us out of this mess, given that the home buyer tax credit pulled a lot of first-time buyer demand forward to the beginning of 2010). A significant number of move-up buyers, even if not underwater on their mortgages now, may be in a negative equity position when it comes to buying a new home. Let me just preface that if you happen to be wealthy independent of your home, or a relative just died and left you a sizeable chunk of cash, this doesn't apply to you. Now here goes. Mortgage expert Mark Hanson makes an excellent point and did some math, which I want to share: "In order to sell and re-buy, a homeowner must receive enough proceeds from the sale to 1) pay off the mortgage(s), 2) pay a Realtor 5-6 percent and 3) put a 3.5-20 percent down payment on a new vintage loan," begins Hanson, and those alone may be too financially off-putting in today's economy for many potential buyers. "Effective negative-equity is the big weight on housing that has no easy or quick cure," continues Hanson. His math: Real effective negative-equity as it pertains to house selling and buying starts at: <9.5% positive equity for FHA repeat buyers (6% Realtor fee + 3.5% down payment) <16% positive equity for Fannie/Freddie repeat buyers (6% Realtor fee + 10% down payment) <26% for Jumbo repeat buyers (6% Realtor fee + 20% down payment) When lowering Corelogic's negative equity threshold to 75% on CA mortgages, 53% are effectively underwater. And I would add to Hanson's logic, that CoreLogic also noted that an additional 2.4 million borrowers are in a "near-negative equity" position, with less than 5 percent equity in their homes. That puts them out of the move-up market as well. With rising mortgage rates, even if they don't go much higher, the "effective" negative equity rate of the move-up buyer will impact recovery, slowing sales as more buyers/demand are priced out of the market. Questions? Comments? document.write("");document.write("RealtyCheck"+"@"+"cnbc.com");document.write('');And follow me on Twitter @Diana_Olick
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