kaulat

There's a campaign underway to save Tasmania's largest newspaper. The bean counters at News Ltd are keen to relocate (sack local workers) the sub-editing desks of The Mercury to a place that apparently knows its spelling and grammar better than us. As is standard operating procedure in any 'save our arses' campaign, there's talk of a mythical beast, filled with integrity, quality, skill and one that sometimes even defecates ice-cream cones. A newspaper you've never encountered in reality, but nonetheless this new found perception seems to act as the main defense to save the under fire entity. I had been prepared to sign up to the Save Our Mercury campaign; I don't think we need to lose any further jobs down here, but then I realised the axe will be swinging tomorrow, and to further push me into the 'couldn't care less' column, I stumbled across this ... $1m mansions snub downturn I assume the sub-editors at The Mercury still write the snappy head...

If you’re writing about real estate right now, it kind of helps to have your head out of your arse. Thousands of eagle eyes are reading and ripping apart real estate writing at the moment, usually in less time than it takes a horny kid to spray his shorts over massivehooters.com. So if you’re prepared to stumble into a story , quote the David Lereah of Australia, offer up a real estate agent masquerading as home buyer for your secondary source, then use that real estate agent’s boss to round out the article... I'd have to ask, "how do you enjoy working for Gold Coast Bulletin?" "Oh no, I'm an experienced journalist, in fact, I write for The Australian." "Hah, you relentless joker, you!" "No. I really write for The Australian." "Really?" "Yeah my name's Andrew Fraser ." Andy F, who kind of looks like Guy Sebastian from the year 2050, has fallen for the old "real estate agent poses as home buyer" trick, it ...

Price changed from $675,000 to $669,500 This is actually the second price reduction in the last four weeks ($30,000 lopped off so far). Will it be enough to for this flipper to make money on his lipstick-on-a-pig makeover? Well, considering the census bureau reported that homes for sale are currently the lowest they've been since 1967 (yes, you read that correctly), they might find an impatient, frustrated buyer willing to overpay. For this kind of scratch I think a buyer can do way better, but in this inventory-free environment nothing really surprises me anymore. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ADDRESS: 4512 East VERMONT St, Long Beach, CA 90814 ASKING PRICE: $699,900 BEDS: 3 BATHS: 2.75 SQ. FT.: 1,500 $/SQ. FT.: $467 LOT SIZE: 4,735 Sq. Ft. YEAR BUILT: 1948 COMMUNITY: Belmont Heights/Alamitos Heights MLS#: P772185 ON REDFIN: 4 days DOWN PAYMENT: $140,000 INCOME REQUIREMENT (3.5x): $160,000 MONTHLY NUT: $3,700 DESCRIPTION: Remodeled 3 bedroom 2 3/4 bath Home with...

Over the past 10 years I have watched lots come and go off the market.  I have personally sold the same lot a couple times.  I also participated in one of the last level waterfront lots to have been sold through the multiple listing service.  I can tell you that selling waterfront lots is difficult. Currently there are 11 active lots listed as being on Skaneateles Lake.  They range in price from $69,000 for .4 acres to 1.5M for slightly over an acre.  One is on the market as a single family home and a lot, which I think is prudent.  I have my gorgeous 50 acres listed the same way, plus a separate waterfront lot for $250,000 (a bargain, I might add!).  Many of the lots come with names like "Bluff" or "Cliff" - but such is the lake.  The lowest priced one reminds you it is dangerous to go over the guardrail... In the past two years three properties have closed described as Skaneateles waterfront lake lots.  Two were on the east s...

Every time I've ever driven through Pontville someone tried to make a joke it was the spiritual home of Ricky Ponting. Right now, according to Sue Neales , it's the spiritual home of racism, oh and Lara Giddings is pretty awesome too - future press secretary arise! While Sue conveniently ignores her long term overarching employer whipping up this kind of sentiment for all it's worth, likewise, the peeps of Pontville overlook the coolness of the redo of their army barracks to house asylum seekers. $15 million for six months of use ain't bad, especially when another a Hobart construction company recently went into voluntary administration. 3 million owed, 150 creditors and 40 jobs potentially flushed. Scenport wasn't insignificant, it had commercial work at the Hobart airport and at UTAS, along with building some big arse homes - one of those back up for sale in Sandy Bay. 2.2 million and it's all yours. Amidst this ongoing tale of construction doom and gloom, th...

The real estate industry likes to get its Christmas list in early. Back in January the REIA had its pre-budget submission ready to go, which I had a bit of a glance at, chuckled and thought I'd revisit it when there as a little more currency in the story. With rumblings of a tough budget seeping out, in an effort to soften up those downtrodden minorities - families on over $150k with kids in daycare, the REIA shouldn't get its hopes up any of their lunatic suggestions will be adopted. In saying that they shouldn't be too worried that any of their sacred cows will be slaughtered either.    As you'd imagine, the REIA submission is basically a bunch of real estate agents not washing for a couple of days, putting on their rattiest clothes, smearing some dirt on their face and panhandling for tax dollars. While they'll dress up the benevolence of their requests - usually in the well worn pair of pants known as 'affordability', most sane people have now noticed t...

Well!  All I can say is that it has been a very busy last two weeks, and the statistics bear this out.  Would you believe - 21 new listings?  7 of them in the Village?  Others have dropped out, been reconfigured and re-listed, so the current total is still only 110 with 37 of them in the Village.  Amazing! I broke down the "new" listings into re-lists, Village, and Town in order to handle them.  In the Village, new ones are a gorgeous ranch listed in the mid-$300,000 that I had sold a few years ago.  The owners put in hardwoods and generally updated everything.  Another little house in need of some work is priced affordably in the mid-$100,000.  To round it out, the third is in the $200,000 and is within an easy walk to the Village center.  The other four are re-lists. In the Town, there are therefore 14 more!  Of these, only 5 are re-lists, so here goes!  Out in the country there's a lovely home for $400,000 that was built onl...

  Inching home tonight in the bumper to bumper, I had my normal entertainment release on - MTR. A station so bereft of listeners my mere tuning in increased the audience by 20%. MTR is great lulzy fun though, a bunch of dudes who don't believe in much of anything - except lining their own pockets - lead a group of buffoons around by the nose all day. What's particularly fantastic is how those buffoons have learned all the lingo and now parrot it back when they call in raging against the latest Labor/Green screw up - "socialism" "redistribution of wealth" "moozlums on boats" "dey took er jerbs". Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Labor, nor Green, nor Liberal. I have nothing but contempt for most politicians, I'm a fair guy on that front - I hate everyone equally. What gives me the giggles though, is how easily these people slip into parody - kind of like some unhinged lunatic on a blog ranting about real estate... What kept me ...

A convergence of events has occurred - the temperature got warmer, the Village got busier, and I just spent a goodly portion of the weekend updating my listings on the multiple listing service as well as http://realtor.com/ and http://lakehouse.com/ . I also showed waterfront this past week and will do so again this upcoming week. Summer is right around the corner! So it seems appropriate that I write about the lakes and the marvelous opportunities that exist to own waterfront. Lake by lake, starting with Skaneateles. Today I'll focus only on single family homes, or "camps" as we call them here or lakehouses as the vast majority should be named. I used to own a "camp," but since we renovated it seems more like a lakehouse, even though it retains the small feeling and ease of care. There are currently 38 properties identified by the multiple listing service as being on Skaneateles Lake. They are contained in three counties - Onondaga, Cayuga and Cortland. Price...

Today's property is a throwback to the old days when you could buy an apartment for a good price, put a little elbow grease into it, quickly put it back on the market, and walk away with an easy, pocket-bulging profit. Unfortunately for this dolt, those old days of easy flipping are long gone and buyers know better than to fall prey to the greed-infused motivations of gold-bricking shysters. ADDRESS: 4301 East 2ND St Unit 3b, Long Beach, CA 90803 WISHING PRICE: $535,000 PURCHASE PRICE: $360,000 OVERLY OPTIMISTIC PROFIT TARGET: $140,000 BEDS: 2 BATHS: 2 SQ. FT.: 1,218 $/SQ. FT.: $439 YEAR BUILT: 1965 COMMUNITY: Belmont Shore/Park/Naples/Marina Pacific/Bay Harbor MLS#: P757318 DOWN PAYMENT: $107,000 INCOME REQUIREMENT: $122,000/year MONTHLY NUT (AT 5.05%): $2,900 HOA: $195 DESCRIPTION: Standard sale. Amazing ocean and Cataline views. Stunning end unit. Complete remodel, Kitchen has custom limestone floors, granite countertops, all new Bosch built-in appliances. Beautiful bat...

Mid-afternoon, too much coffee and my tongue thundered against the teeth on my bottom palate. It sounded like a chopper hovering inside my head, which seemed appropriate because housing finance figures were released this afternoon. Showing buyers are now like Americans at the end of the Vietnam war, riding helicopters up and away as Saigon falls. Fear for the vendors left on the ground. In Tasmania, The Examiner reported ... Tasmania's worsening economic situation has again been highlighted with the release of home loan data for February. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, new home loans fell a whopping 13.7 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms in Tasmania in February. You might assume I have a rock hard dong over that one, except I've always been using the original data - which was up 3.2% Jan to Feb. Ignoring that embarrassment, we'll move onto the figures which I'll argue matter a whole lot more - Tasmania now has fourteen consecutive months of sub 1...

10:28 AM On Tuesdays in Skaneateles and the western suburbs new listings are opened by their agents so other agents can come and preview them. This has been an ongoing tradition since long before I started in real estate. It helps to see homes - I guess this is a given.  50 West Genesee  In the old days when houses came on and houses sold within a month, it was vastly important to get the news out to potential buyers about what just came on the market. While the urgency isn't there, homes are still selling. Until today there have been few Tuesdays when a full slate of homes have been open. Last week we had three - my lovely 50 West Genesee Street and two others. Our times are usually 12:00 to 2:00, so doing an open makes it difficult to get to others. I ended up previewing one of the homes at another time. Today, due in part to the weather, I decided that I was not going to submit two of my homes waiting for brokers' opens, and see others instead. I PLAN (and plans chan...

Usually it's bozos like me who are questioning real estate statistics. I've never been good with a belt sander, so maybe it's just jealously I could never smooth out a rough edge. However, it's to be expected us goobers with blogs are contrarians, trying to crash the property market with every unminced word. We hate the fact we never had the backbone, testicles or requisite chest hair to enter the property market at an earlier date.  But for those who had that tri-winning combination of balls, spine and rug, you don't expect them to be pooh-poohing one of the major players in the property statistics game, from the unnamed angry person over at Australian Real Estate and Property ... Yet again Australian media outlets have published stories based on press releases from RP Data. You might say ‘so what’ ?  The problem is that RP Data statistics are inaccurate and unreliable.  Yet it is presented as factual information. RP Data state the ’market is booming’, ‘the market ...

Highlighting the nonsense, the stupid behavior, the price drops, basically showing real estate is not a one way street is what I get a kick out of. I get extra kicks from the fact I do it all while lounging around in my underwear. Don't worry readers I do have respect for you, most of the time I do change into my best pair when writing this blog. The satisfaction I derive from writing this thing is often enough, but some people pray for carnage to be unleashed. This, well I can understand. I mean I'm kind of an arsehole, but I don't have my fingers crossed for the worst. I do understand the thinking - sitting around watching insanity be facilitated and rewarded, while maintaining a disciplined strategy yourself is like being fingered for rape and having your balls lopped off, while the rape artist is offered a lifetime supply of rohypnol to carry on his twisted deeds. Mildly infuriating at the least, and earlier tonight something pushed me to that edge, I truly slipped int...

Last Friday evening Bob and I went to the Civic Center for a performance of the orchestra with Elliot Fisk, guitarist, and JoAnn Falletta, guest conductor. We had seen Fisk before - he graduated from Jamesville-Dewitt and so came back here on occasion. His wife joined him, a brilliant flower in the midst of all the black and white. Ms. Falletta is the conductor of the Buffalo Symphony. Our tickets had been graciously given to us by two of my clients. We had looked forward to going all year. The performance was wonderful - absolutely entrancing. We sat in the first row of the balcony and just enjoyed, but also worried that the people around us seemed to be older than we had remembered in the past. The audience was aging. But then, so were we. After the Intermission Ms. Falletta gave an impassioned speech addressing the financial woes of the Symphony. She begged the audience "Don't let them go" meaning the musicians. In the silence that followed a woman spoke up quite clear...

Sadly, as anyone actively looking for a house can attest, there isn't much to report. Same old shit, bigger pile. Here is the November update: ...and the most recent inventory : Sad. Just further decreases leading up to the (Supposed) Super Spring Selling Season ®. Looks like this year is going to be a(nother?) total dud for prospective buyers. Not only is inventory not ramping up in anticipation of selling season, it's down 4% from January (and down 14.5% from February 2010)! But the dismal lack of inventory (let alone quality inventory) has only emboldened sellers and their wildly optimistic pricing. Check out the substantial jump in list prices (blue line) during the last few weeks: ZZZZZZIP! Yes, I realize a $14 differential between List and Sold prices isn't that dramatic, but you have to compare it to 2010 when the List/Sold tracked within a few bucks. What's more interesting is how late-2009 buyers -- who listened to the hype about "the bottom is def...