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Gay St. Construction Photos & Neighborhood Update 2007-10-19 06:06:41 During preparation for the upcoming Carlyle’s Watch Auction next Sunday (it’s going to be a circus!) I was spent about two hours taking photos of EVERY unit for my clients. I also paused… Visit Columbus43215.com for the Full Story! ... Amp

11 Steps to Buying the Home That’s Right for You - Step 4: Fine Tune Your Needs & Wants 2007-10-19 00:24:40 So if you’re following my steps, you are now pre-approved, and know exactly how much home you can afford in San Francisco. Now would be a good time to pull out your wish list from Step 1 of Buying the Home That’s Right for You. And take out your loan pre-approval…. now go to your REALTOR®’s office and put together a realistic list of goals that match both your price range, and your preferences. You’ll find that now that you have both of these critical pieces of information, your REALTOR® will be able to take a look at your homeownership goals, and see how they match up with your price point. Of course, the first place to start is with what you don’t want! I don’t want to live on a busy street. I don’t want a 100 year old home that needs maintenance. I don’t want to live in a place that I can’t rent out if I need to. These are all excellent places to start. Your dislikes will help narrow down your search to the list o ... Amp

Washington Mutual Hammered 2007-10-18 14:47:56 If you thought Bank of America was bad, with their 32% profit hit last quarter, check out Washington Mutual’s meltdown: a 72% drop in quarterly net income. The cause? Come on now! Mortgage related losses of course! From the Wall Street Journal (h/t Calculated Risk): Washington Mutual Inc. third-quarter net income plummeted 72%, as the company took a bruising hit to cover home-loan losses. … “We’re disappointed with our third quarter results but they reflect the increasingly difficult market conditions that are challenging the banking industry,” said WaMu Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Kerry Killinger. … WaMu also had a $147 million write-down on mortgage loans it planned to sell but were instead were moved to the company’s investment portfolio due to the summer’s credit-market seizure that essentially dried up demand for mortgage-related securities. This is scary to me, and I’m not even a WaMu depositor. WaMu has ...

Bank of America not Immune from Turmoil 2007-10-18 11:45:34 Bank of America today reported larger-than-expected losses resulting from credit-related losses and poor investment banking returns.  The company, which was one of the few to not report massive write-down charges on their investment portfolios due to subprime mortgage performance prior to releasing earnings, surprised analysts by reporting a 32% drop in profit for the 3rd quarter. Analysts also questioned the company’s efforts to boost loan loss reserves to further protect against further loan degradation and performance. From Reuters: “We knew the credit situation was going to be bad, but this was worse than expected,” said Michael Mullaney, who helps invest $10 billion at Fiduciary Trust Co in Boston, which owns the bank’s shares. “What causes us concern is the increase in reserves doesn’t appear aggressive, and the bank may need to reserve more in the future, which hits earnings,” he added. “The real surprise was investment banking, w ... America

No ‘fall’ in the Toronto market 2007-10-18 09:00:31 October housing activity confirms consumer confidence in the Toronto real estate market Resale housing activity substantially outpaced mid-October results from a year ago, Toronto Real Estate Board President Maureen O’Neill announced today. “There were 3,297 sales reported to mid-month, which is a 10 per cent increase over the 3,007 homes sold during the same period last year,”� Ms. O’Neill said. “We are on course to rival October’s best result, which was in 2003 with 7,227 sales.”� In Riverdale (E01) the number of transactions to mid-month jumped 29 per cent compared to the same timeframe a year ago due to strong sales in all housing types. Streetsville East (W19) saw a significant increase in the sale of semi-detached homes, which helped push overall sales up 48 per cent compared to mid-October 2006. A combination of strong condominium and detached home transactions drove Willowdale’s (C07) mid-month sales to an overall increase of ...

ByTheOwner’s September For Sale By Owner Stats: New Listings, Sold Properties, Active Listings 2007-10-18 02:02:07 Here are ByTheOwner.com’s Canadian For Sale By Owner stats for September 2007: New listings increased 92% from 551 new listings in September 2006, to 1059 new listings in September 2007 Sold properties increased 31% from 372 sold properties in September 2006, to 478 sold properties in September 2007. Total active listings increased 42% from 3,985 active homes for sale in September 2006, to 5689 active homes for sale in September 2007. www.bytheowner.com ...

ByTheOwner September 2007 Webstats - FSBO Visitors Increase 58% 2007-10-18 01:29:46 ByTheOwner.com’s website statistics for the month of September 2007: Website visitors increased from 406,719 unique visitors in September 2006, to 645,134 in September 2007. This is a 58% increase in unique website visitors from September 2006 to 2007. Pageviews increased from 4.1 million page views in September 2006, to 5.8 million pageviews in September 2007. This is 40% increase in pageviews from September 2006 to 2007. Unique visitors and pageviews are the two most useful statistics when it comes to measuring the exposure you will receive from a For Sale By Owner website. Unique visitors is the number of individual people coming to look for properties on the site. Pageviews is the number of pages that those visitors look at. On ByTheOwner.com in August 2007 we had 729,036 unique visitors and they looked at 6.5 million pages. This means each visitor looked at approximately 9 pages. Some websites claim to have a certain number of “hits”�. This is not a valid meas ...

Forgot You Not! 2007-10-17 23:07:36 To my loyal readers (and random readers that visit my San Francisco real estate blog on occassion)… I just wanted to let you know that I haven’t forgotten about you, or about my blog! I’m a full time San Francisco REALTOR® and a part time San Francisco blogger… and this week, duty calls, so the blogging is on hold. I’m busier than usual, with several properties in escrow, and a few new listings that need to be juggled too… so clients come first, and the blog comes second. But I wanted to let you know that I missed you all, and I’m thinking of you, and that I’m remembering you! And hoping that the “forget me nots” (one of my favorite flowers that grow at a secret place I take my doggies in the springtime) will somehow make up for the lack of communication you’ve had from me in the last few days. It might be another few days before I can pick back up at my full blogging speed… but please be assured that Y ...

Stanford Students Interview Redfin (Not the Other Way Around) 2007-10-17 20:52:40 Redfin just wrapped up its first big day of on-campus recruiting, in Palo Alto. Since we didn’t actually reserve a room on Stanford’s campus, this involved sitting in a café for nearly seven hours straight and guzzling hot chocolates made from asphalt by surly French baristas. Listening to the students’ poised recitation of accomplishments in robot-programming competitions and other obscure academic Olympics, it was hard not to think of my own summers spent mowing lawns and washing dishes, and my post-collegiate ambition to get a girlfriend, and to work in a climate-controlled facility (I became a bike messenger). We met a national chess champion, a drum major, a fencer, an entrepreneur starting her second company, an Israeli diplomat, the daughter of a Mongol shepherd, a documentary film aficionado and, most tragically, a one-time vegetarian now addicted to Jack in the Box. One student wore a nice little suit. Everyone else came in shorts, or a baseball cap turned b ...

SEC Opens Probe on Countrywide’s Mozilo 2007-10-17 14:50:29 While the probe is still called “informal” it is still a probe.  The SEC is investigating Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo and the changes he made to his 10b5-1 plan which dictates share prices when corporate executives divest themselves of stock held in the company.  The 10b5-1 plans are supposed to protect executives from probes of impropriety in share sales by being established long before the actual sale; but Mozilo’s continual tinkering with his plans raised plenty of red flags. Earlier in the week North Carolina Treasurer Richard Moore questioned the timing of Mozilo’s share sales as the market collapsed late this summer in a letter to the SEC. From Reuters: The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an informal probe into stock sales by Countrywide Financial Corp Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo, the Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday. Countrywide, the largest U.S. mortgage lender, is one of a dozen companies the SEC is looking into in connection wi ...

NovaStar No Longer Fit for NYSE - May Be Delisted 2007-10-17 13:13:52 NovaStar Financial has been notified by the NYSE that their stock offering is no longer fit to be traded on the NYSE floor and may be delisted. NovaStar is appealing the decision, but there is no guarantee that the beleaguered subprime lender will be able to continue trading common stock at the NYSE. The trigger to this was NovaStar’s decision to forego a shareholder dividend during the credit crunch which caused their standing as a Real Estate Investment Trust to be invalidated, changing their corporate structure to a C-corporation. This structural change also changes the requirements of net worth, market capitalization and other conditions that the company needs to satisfy to stay listed with the NYSE. From the release: NovaStar Financial, Inc. a residential mortgage portfolio manager, today announced that it has been advised by the staff of NYSE Regulation, Inc. that the company’s Common Stock (ticker symbol: NFI) and its 8.90% Class C Cumulative Redeemable Preferred ...

Toronto asked to “Axe the Tax”� 2007-10-17 08:56:15 A Toronto Real Estate Board directive to its members: Strong public attendance at the upcoming Toronto City Council meeting can influence the vote!  Council is scheduled to debate and vote on this tax on Monday October 22, 2007. It is very important that as many people as possible attend this meeting to demonstrate to City Councillors that the public does not want this tax. The City of Toronto wants to charge a second land transfer tax that would DOUBLE the current provincial land transfer tax. REALTORS® have shown City Council that there is strong opposition to this tax. Your continued help is needed. What you can do? Attend the Meeting! Anyone from the public is allowed to attend the City Council meeting to OBSERVE (City Council’s meeting rules do not allow public deputations). The Toronto Real Estate Board encourages you to attend this meeting to continue the strong opposition that Realtors and the public have shown. Or in other words: Real Estate commissions are at st ...

ResCap to Cut 25% of Workforce Today 2007-10-17 07:47:30 The Wall Street Journal Online is reporting that Residential Capital, GMAC’s mortgage origination unit will lay off 25% of its workforce today. The unit, better known as ResCap, cost parent company GM nearly $1 billion in charges related to subprime loan quality issues when GMAC unloaded a 51% equity stake to Cerberus Capital Management (the same company that also purchased Option One from H&R Block). From the Journal: Residential Capital LLC, the home-lending arm of GMAC Financial Services, will announce a reduction of about 25% in its work force today, according to people familiar with the matter, joining a parade of lenders paring operations as loan demand slows and financing for mortgages tightens. … In recent quarters, weakness at ResCap has been a drag on GM’s bottom line. GM’s reported net income of $62 million in the first quarter fell well below the $602 million it posted in the first quarter of 2006, with GM recognizing a net loss of $115 million ...

Home Staging a «REAL» house “? Kids and all! 2007-10-17 06:33:49 I want to share a recent Home Staging transformation I was involved in. A family with two young children decided to sell their house in order to purchase a larger home. The husband is a real estate agent and wanted to Stage the house, but his wife was resistant to the idea at first. So, he decided to get an external opinion and called me in for a consultation. I spent 1,5 hours in the house, going from room to room and telling them what I thought needed to be changed, painted, moved, decluttered, etc”¦ Decluttering was a BIG issue for this family. As you can see from the pictures, the house is full of their possessions, furniture passed on from the family, kids’ toys and other everyday stuff. BEDROOM —————————- Before —————————————————–– After ——————&m ...

Rev. Jackson, State of Michigan Announce “Save the Dream”� 2007-10-16 20:18:36 The Reverend Jesse Jackson, along with the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) - and other local agencies - to kick off Michigan’s “Save the Dream” consumer education and foreclosure assistance program. The program, a state-funded initiative is intended to help homeowners squeezed by adjustable rate mortgages and high-rate subprime mortgages deal with (and hopefully avoid) foreclosure. According to the release, Michigan ranks 4th in the nation in foreclosures; with a rate more than double that of the rest of the nation. The kick off will include a tour by Rev. Jackson, meeting and speaking with local residents of Lansing, Detroit, Flint, Saginaw and Pontiac - all foreclosure-devestated areas - to announce the two foreclosure assistance programs introduced by the MSHDA. ARM Assist Refinance, which helps residents who are in an adjustable rate mortgage obtain a fixed rate loan; and Rescue Refinance Program, which assists residents who are delinquent ...