kaulat

I expect to be unable to post over the next week, so I'll try to front a couple of interesting articles between now and next Saturday. From The Wall Street Journal, Jan 2009: Realtors' Former Top Economist Says Don't Blame the Messenger By NANCY KEATES FAIRFAX STATION, VA. -- On a recent weekday, David Lereah sat in the sunroom of his five-bedroom colonial house. The only sound was the yapping of his dog Maisy. Once one of the world's most-visible housing experts, Mr. Lereah is disconnected from his old life. The former chief economist for the National Association of Realtors says the group's top executives won't return his phone calls. He says he wasn't invited to the association's 100th birthday bash last May. Mr. Lereah, 55 years old, is one of many prognosticators who won professional accolades during the housing boom, only to see their reputations wither in the bust. Throughout 2005, when home prices in the U.S. hit their fifth consecutive annual re...

This is kind of an odd topic and I will keyboard my thoughts as I go, but there seemed to me a theme today as I drove back from Carlo's in Syracuse in the snow. I was listening to the international weekly round-up on Diane Rehm's show ( http://thedianerehmshow.org ) and of course hearing about the Middle East. Pressure there, all right. Who would believe that the people could rise up after all these years and throw out ruthless dictators. It continues to amaze me. Then the story from Rolling Stone ( www.rollingstone.com ) about the general who ordered his men to use psychological weapons (!) on Senators (!) to get them to approve funding. Now supposedly this was a balanced man who had come up through the ranks, and as they said on the show, was seen as a great candidate for future promotion. But here's where the pressure comes in. He was expected to perform, and he could not allow Senators to cut funding after seeing his troops. So he went around the law - until he w...

Crazy surveys come and go, in fact most are as meaningful as this blog, so much so, that if their arrival was in paper form and you'd run out of Sorbent, well at least your underwear wouldn't look like airport tarmac. The frustrations of the digital age - you can't wipe your date with a pdf. Some of these surveys do serve a purpose, occasionally they provide a window into the minds of the lunatics who you walk past on the street, who overtake you in your car, who sit next to you at work or manage the career of your favourite football player. Yep, this is the crazy country where mentoring a troubled seventeen year old girl means boning her and racking lines with her, and where taking out a home loan means you've got no clue what interest rate you're paying. Welcome to Australia. If you pay any attention to the scant numbers involved in a recent Mortgage Choice survey, barely 800, you'd disregard it as nonsense. Yet when the survey is done in a country where prop...

Thanks to LBCee for sending in today's property. Address: 242 PROSPECT Ave, Long Beach, CA 90803 Wishing Price: $1,350,000 BEDS: 2 BATHS: 0.75 SQ. FT.: 1,476 $/SQ. FT.: $915 LOT SIZE: 6,347 Sq. Ft. YEAR BUILT: 1923 COMMUNITY: Belmont Heights/ Alamitos Heights MLS #: P769097 ON REDFIN : 10 days DESCRIPTION: This lovely bungalow will captivate you from the moment you step inside with its warm character and special attention to detail. Enter the garden dolloped with colorful flowers and bushes. Don't miss the exterior walls which were painted with what looks like whipped cream. Walk up the Spanish tiled steps to the veranda and enter your dream home through the gorgeous custom wrought iron double doors. Step inside to see a large main living space with lots of sunlight. Don't miss the custom hand-cut 12' wood plank flooring. A separate dining area leads you to a beautifully remodeled chef's kitchen with granite countertops and backsplash and top of the lin...

Whist on a summer sojourn of sniffing out dishonesty and downright weaseldom, I've continued to stray away from Tasmania. Apologies to my four Tasmanian fans, but when weasels have to be smoked out, you pour some diesel down the hole and light it up - then hope the weasel doesn't come for you balls. None of this may modify anyone's behaviour, but at least if anyone stumbles in here looking for a penis enlargement in Devonport (yes, someone found me that way) they'll receive a quick lesson in ethical bypasses, before moving on and acquiring those extra inches. Over in Adelaide it's the same game as everywhere else. Reporters who shelled out for a degree to get their foot in the door, find the only skills they're using are the ones from the first three weeks of their first semester - in their first year - and that's from one subject. Had they realised this earlier, they could have dropped out before their first census date and saved themselves three years and ...

It was exciting today to realize that it was indeed Blog Update Day! I certainly feel less knowledgeable about the houses coming on and off the market even though I check my "hotsheet" every day. Writing it all out is very helpful - I am certain that's how I learn, by assimilating the information and then re-forming it. Currently there are 108 active listings in the Skaneateles area of the multiple listing service. Of these, 30 are in the village. Eight properties came on the market since my last report on January 30th, but only three were new listings. The others ranged from two in the mid-$100,000 to two waterfronts in the 1 million plus category and a large estate valued just under three million dollars. The three new ones were a ranch listed around $200,000, a small home for just over $100,000 and a lovely village colonial in the mid-$600,000. Four properties are marked contingent with one new one joining the other three. This is a lake rights home in need of s...

Last week I took a course in the process from contract to closing on homes. It was taught by an attorney, Rob Carter ( www.RobertCarterLaw.com ) who gave it a different perspective. I wanted to share one of his handouts.... This is entitled "Most Common FHA Repairs." I will paraphrase in some places, but for the most part it will be the sheet we received. It comes from Forsythe Appraisals' website:( http://www.forsytheappraisals.com ). An FHA appraisal seeks to determine if the house is able to be mortgaged by the Federal Housing Authority. As agents, we sometimes dread theses appraisals in older homes because they are super-critical it seems, at times. Reading this list, any mortgage appraiser would be looking at the same things, I think. The suggestion from Forsythe is that by using this list you will be forewarned, and therefore can make the repairs prior to even marketing the house, much less getting as far as an appraisal. If the home was built prior to 1978, ...

December's ABS housing finance stats have shown their face and despite it being Valentine's Day, there's been no roses for Tasmania. While December's figures were the best month for 2010 with 994 (seven higher than March's 987), for the first time since since 1998, Tasmania spent every month of a calendar year below 1000 housing finance commitments. And despite the relentless crystal balling of bank economists and housing propaganda outfits, the Tasmanian first home buyer is still firmly hidden inside their shell. January 2010 remained the peak month for first home buyers with 170. December being the fifth best month, behind January, March September and April. As we're told, the first home buyers will be returning. BIS Shrapnel who has the ear of Fairfax's Jonathon Chancellor reminded everyone back in April 2010 ... BIS Shrapnel expects the first-timer numbers will start to recover in the second half of this year.  At the time that prediction was made, with ...

Just to bring everyone up to date on some changes that have occurred in the real estate market in Skaneateles. Some things I absolutely know, others are rumor and I will tag them as such. To start, Aaron Moss has teamed up with Nothnagle out of Rochester and will become part of their company once the state gives its okay. This has been in the works for months; in the meantime Aaron and Steve Ansteth and their agents are open next to Sweetwater on Genesee Street. Jerry Morrissey and agents Sara Collins and Betsy Barrett are opening an office at 44 East Genesee Street in the old Quinzi and Quinzi Jewelry Store. The name of their new company is Finger Lakes Realty Partners. The office is not open as yet, but signs are going up around the village and town. Michael Falcone is also involved as a partner although I do not have much more information than that. I have been told - rumor alert! - that they are working out of his Pioneer Company offices. Mike DeRosa has become part of Sot...

It's been a while since I entered a post, and please forgive me. I will try to make up for that. I do miss my weekly updates - they seem to keep me honest and I also know better myself what's happening. I may reconsider - but for now.... The photo at the side of this post is of the Sherwood Inn when it "burned" last week. I was in the office, enjoying my late afternoon social hour with Lisa which we seem to have more and more since her return from North Carolina. We were constantly interrupted by sirens and we knew something major had occurred somewhere, just not where. Chris Evans, one of our RE/MAX agents, called in and said that the Sherwood was on fire! Of course then we smelled the smoke. Opening the door we saw the smoke rising over the Old Stone Mill. I took my camera and walked the short block (past Doug's and Bijou and the newsstand) to the corner of Jordan and Genesee. The block going west was closed off and sure enough, there were firemen on the roof. A...

The primary goal of any spruik is a call to arms - grab some debt and buy some bricks: NOW! Yet it's only the most feeble of mind that falls for the cheapest of lines from the guy who recently mothballed his oversized Harvey Norman shirt. The secondary goal of spruiking is the most insidious part, and the one that really sucks the oblivious over the falls. It's the accumulation; the nonsense you've read and seen and heard. Continually building in your system until it becomes accepted fact - not because it is, but because the unrelenting BS has left a virtual skidmark on your psyche. How can you bleach that skidmark away? Unfortunately, the lessons that flush away myths usually come at the expense of your own finances. The "gee I saved money by waiting" story, is one rarely presented by media overlords, especially when they're at the behest of real estate ad bucks. As you might have noticed, it's one story I pull the pin on and throw regularly. On this occa...

I was halfway through another post delighting in the revelation of a spruiking attempt turned to dust, when my ADHD kicked in. Flicking through 80 something channels didn't curb my restlessness, it led me back to the computer, over to news.com.au and into the Courier Mail's website. The post I was working on is now is pushed back a day or so - nothing urgent - I can't imagine anyone purchasing a couple of overblown $800k Devonport town houses in the next 24 hours anyway. And so begins this post. If you've ever been fortunate enough to have a flasher operating in your local park, you'll know the deviancy starts on a minor level: Grannies copping an eyeful of junk and mothers scared to let their kids off the leash. All because one of the human races' more pitiful physical specimens likes to drop his shorts in public. From here the deviancy usually escalates and things become more brazen - no longer is he hiding in the bushes, he's wide in the open and now he...

Yesterday, as I was driving over to Cayuga Lake to show a property, I heard on NPR that the snowstorm due to arrive Wednesday would be "atrocious." What a word, I thought...then went to "the weather outside is frightful" almost immediately. If the storm came as promised, dumping 12 to 18 inches of snow overnight, then it might indeed be "atrocious." As I may have already said before, I had clients who bought a house and closed in early December. As they were packing up to leave their home in Rochester the morning of their closing, they heard on the news that Rochester would be spared the new snowstorm swirling up the coast, "but if you want snow, move to Syracuse." They thought it was a great sign - of what, I'm still not sure. But certainly a marvelous story! I saw in the paper today that Syracuse has three feet more snow than Rochester this season, four feet more than even Buffalo and a whopping six feet more than Albany. That's a lot! ...