Please post your local house search updates, MLS finds, on-topic ideas, and links here.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Northern Virginia Real Estate Statistics
REAL ESTATE SEARCH
County Assessment Websites
Buy/Sell Without an Agent
Local Real Estate Agents
Housing Economics Blogs
Local Interest
Housing Bubble Links
Eastern Regional Blogs
Western Regional Blogs
- Bakersfield Bubble
- Bay Area Real Estate Blog
- BubbleInfo (N. San Diego)
- Burbed (San Francisco)
- Dr. Housing Bubble (SoCal)
- Patrick.net (San Francisco)
- Portland Housing Blog
- Professor Piggington's Econo-Almanac
- Rancid Truth (Orange County)
- Sacramento Land(ing)
- Seattle Bubble
- SoCal Real Estate Bubble Blog
- Socket Site (San Francisco)
Real Estate Blogs
REAL ESTATE AUCTIONS
16 comments:
Here's a truly amusing new listing (http://tinyurl.com/6fkh8g):
"Brick colonial that has the potential to be your dream home!Great lot, trees, neighborhood, location, & curb appeal! Great opportunity to buy as is and renovate it yourself. Owner/agent is ready to submit plans to county for a 2000+ sq ft addition. After addition is complete house will list for $1.6m! BRING ALL OFFERS SOON IF YOU WANT TO BUY "AS IS" OTHERWISE OWNER WILL PROCEED WITH ADDITION!!"
If you don't buy my house now, I'll spend about $200,000 (or less!) improving it and then sell it to you for $675,000 more!!! Buy it. Now!
And the topper: Purchased in August 2007 for $586,700 (http://tinyurl.com/64bghs), no apparent sign of any improvements made to the property.
All that said, it's a good location and a very big lot.
Cory
Monday morning will be the big test, probably not the only one but if they fail this one they are going to have a rough run of it.
is due to sell $3 billion worth of short-term debt
I'd be really scared if Fannie and Freddie cannot sell short-term debt in that small of a quantity. As the link notes: Fannie Mae said it has access to "ample sources of liquidity," noting it had issued more than $24 billion in debt this week.
The better barrometer is the long bond auctions. If one of those ever seizes up... gulp! (Note: I think it will, but not in the 5th wave we're in of this credit crunch. More likely the 7th.)
$3B is chump change for these two. Its if those tens of billions of bonds being auctioned weekly ever lack buyers...
I'm bearish... but *not* that bearish.
Cory, that is a funny ad. I see from the arial photos that most of the local homes are of similar size to the advertised house, but some are far larger too. I hope to see the realtor owner pay for the addition. ;)
Got Popcorn?
Neil
The US Treasury is studying plans to inject as much as $15bn (£2.75bn) of fresh capital into beleaguered mortgage firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The cash injection is one of several plans being considered by US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson as he looks to instill confidence in the country’s ailing mortgage market.
Speculation that the US Treasury was mounting a plan to rescue Freddie and its sister company Fannie Mae has grown after a week in which the groups lost half of their stock market value on fears that they would be unable to keep raising money.
http://tinyurl.com/63dr9o
Cory, I agree with your point (and that it's funny) but there is no way that a builder can put on a 2000 square foot addition in Arlington for $100 a square foot, unless it's a really big garage, and certainly not up to the standards that might sell in Arlington on a house like this. The builder's costs alone are going to be more than that.
I should have also said: Mr. Fowler apparently has not checked out the competition for his prospective large new house (once the addition is completed). Houses that size and in that price range, in comparable neighborhoods, are sitting, and sitting, and sitting...
Cory, more comedy. Arlington assesses the house at $771200
http://tinyurl.com/6xz7f4
which reflects an average level of updating. Given Mr. Fowler's description of it as needing reno, and his not paying for interior photos, my guess is that it's in worse than average shape inside, so it's probably worth less than $771200.
A little interesting factoid I saw in the Examiner this weekend. Concerns sales in the 20037 zip, Foggy Bottom, West End. (I could not tell if this included condos, but I don't think so)
May 2008 -- average sold price for homes: $533,818
May 2007 -- average sold price for home, $583,148.
That's an approximately 8.5% decline in year-to-year price.
May 2008 -- Average list price for homes sold: $554,771
May 2007 -- Average list price for home sold $613,752
That's a decline of about 9.5% in list price year-to-year
May 2008 -- Average days on market: 73
May 2007: Average days on market: 2007.
Bleak choices for Fannie and Freddie
By Krishna Guha in Washington
Published: July 13 2008 20:24 | Last updated: July 13 2008 20:24
Speculation mounted over the weekend that the Federal Reserve and US Treasury could intervene to support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the troubled mortgage finance enterprises, possibly before the markets open on Monday.
In the past week the share prices of both Fannie and Freddie have collapsed, as investors calculate that future losses and dilution from new equity raising will all but wipe out the interest of existing shareholders.
Yet the fall in share prices does not in itself pose any immediate danger either to the companies or to the markets as a whole. Fannie and Freddie have considerably more regulatory capital than they are obliged to hold.
Of course this is largely because their existing regulatory capital requirements are very low. But the two enterprises may well not have enough capital to withstand future writedowns and losses on loans held in portfolio or guaranteed by them.
It appears likely that there will have to be an injection of public capital, either in the form of preferred shares or subordinated capital – possibly with capital raising from the private sector.
But capital losses will be realised over many months, not days. So the authorities do not need to decide what they would do on a recapitalisation at this juncture.
Analysts said it was possible that the Fed and Treasury would do nothing in the near term and would instead try to ride out the equity market turmoil – at least until Congress passes legislation to reform regulation of the two entities.
The immediate danger revolves around Fannie and Freddie’s access to debt finance. If either enterprise faced a sudden loss of access to funds, they would be forced abruptly to pull back their own housing finance activities, engage in a firesale of assets or – in an extreme case – seek bankruptcy protection.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/898e6482-510d-11dd-b751-000077b07658.html
Ace--You're definitely right about the cost, unless he's contemplating adding two stories of open rooms. But even at a more realistic $175/sq. ft., the offer (threat?) is still to spend $350k and then charge the buyer an extra $675k.
Perhaps he meant add 2,000 square feet and do a full gut rehab of the house he is currently choosing not to show interior pictures of??
Cory, that would make more sense.
But I still agree with you he's going to have trouble selling either the unimproved current version or the expensive new one. That location isn't ideal. And we know what the competition looks like.
An attorney I once knew said that of all the occupations he dealt with in general no one knew less about their work than real estate agents. Obviously we know no generalization is true for everyone and there are some great real estate agents, but it sure seems true in the case of Mr. Fowler.
Hey guys
the listing agent IS the owner of that home
no one picked up on that?
http://www.arlingtonva.us/DEPARTMENTS/RealEstate/reassessments/scripts/Inquiry.asp?action=view&lrsn=35039
He bought it at foreclosure.
I also say - let this fuzznutz keep dreaming..
he won't get but 700-800k when he is done 'remodeling'..
muhahahahahahahahahahahhahahahaaha
Cory: I lived on the same street as that house for eight years. The owner died about two years ago.
I saw the ad and found it amusing. It is an okay house, was built in 1933-34, and does need work. The price seems high to me.
On the other hand, I still think that Ashton Heights is one of the finest neighborhoods in the greater Washington, DC area. Walk to metro convenience, great neighbors, tall trees, beautiful houses - and pricey!
Post a Comment