Monday, October 31, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
The Price Is Right
A CMA is a compilation of statistics on recent, nearby sales of comparable houses or "comps" (houses with a similar number of bedrooms and baths, similar square footage, etc). Your real estate agent provides the CMA to determine your FMV. In a busy market, this can be unnecessary since the agent (or you) will be able to determine the value based on knowledge of neighboring properties.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
ROADS NOT TAKEN
Saturday, October 22, 2011
MARKET WATCH: Outlook positive for commercial real estate
Canada’s top real estate executives are predicting a bright future for commercial real estate. The views of 49 leading real estate executives were captured in the third quarter 2011 REALpac/FPL Canadian Real Estate Sentiment Survey. Respondents expected market conditions to improve, although not at the same pace as last year. Overall, they view Canada’s commercial real estate market as stable and attractive, which bodes well for future investment and development. To download the report, go to www.realpac.ca and click on REALpac/FPL Canadian Real Estate Sentiment Survey, third quarter, 2011.
Resale housing market to stabilize by 2012
Fewer buyers and more listings will result in a more balanced resale housing market in Ontario over the next year, according to the third quarter Housing Market Outlook by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
The report states that, due to stronger momentum in Ontario’s labour and housing markets during the first half of 2011, CMHC has issued a more positive forecast than anticipated. Existing home sales and new housing starts are projected to reach 191,900 and 62,400 units in 2011 respectively. However, the demand for new and existing homes in the province is expected to drop slightly for the remainder of this year before stabilizing into 2012. Although lower demand by first-time buyers and higher mortgage carrying costs are expected to dampen housing activity, higher employment and income levels are projected to offset those factors and provide support for housing into 2012.
Ontario’s economy and labour markets have reached their pre-recession levels and are entering a new phase of the business cycle, according to CMHC. Current leading indicators suggest that the pace of the US economic recovery will be more modest than earlier predictions. Meanwhile, Ontario consumers are expected to contribute less to the economic recovery due to a drop in pent-up demand, high energy costs and slower employment growth.
The CMHC report forecasts that single-detached housing starts will slow to 23,000 units in 2012. These types of properties have led the recovery in residential construction activity across the province because many buyers purchased early in the hope of avoiding mortgage rule changes.
Resale home sales will drop modestly this year to 191,900 units before stabilizing at 193,300 units in 2012. Mortgage rule changes encouraged more home purchases earlier in 2011. Rising mortgage carrying costs and less first time buyer demand will limit gains in existing home sales in 2012. Shifting demand to less expensive housing will also support slower growth in the average price. The average MLS® price is forecast to be $372,500 in 2012.
To view the full CMHC report, visit www.cmhc.ca, click on Library, then click Publications and Reports and then select Housing Market Information. Click on Housing Market Outlook – Canada and Major Centres. Ontario highlights are on page 12.
Friday, October 21, 2011
5 Ways to Know if a Home is "THE ONE"
With so many homes on the market, many buyers house hunt for months, even years before hitting property pay-dirt. Even for the savvy buyers who have narrowed their house hunt to an affordable price range, the condition issues so common in distressed homes can make choosing a home difficult. And on the flip side, some subdivisions have scads of similar homes, all of which are in good shape, all listed at a similar price, making it nearly impossible to choose just one.Here are five indicators that a particular home you’re viewing might be “The One” – the property on which you’ll want to place an offer:
1. You feel possessive about it, instantly. I once showed a less-than-fabulous home to a buyer who stepped in the front door, opened her eyes wide, and uttered in a much-quieter-than-normal voice, “I would cry.” We got a good laugh out of this later, after she found and bought a home that made her feel virtually the opposite.
Not only did the winning home bring a smile to her face, it also made her instantly possessive. She didn’t just want it - she wanted it immediately. She could barely even wait to write the offer paperwork! When another agent showed up to bring a buyer through the place while we were still there, she lingered leisurely (in hopes they would just leave) and secretly looked at them with daggers in her eyes (out of competitiveness, because in her heart, the home had already become hers).
If you walk through a place and leave wondering how quickly you can get your offer in, how much you’d offer to beat someone else out, or what you can do to lock it down quickly, it might be “The One.”
2. You start rationalizing its flaws away. Train tracks 10 feet from the bedroom window? Next door neighbor that runs a pigeon-sitting service? Okay – I exaggerate. But if you find yourself viewing a home with traits that you would normally deem undesirable or as deal-killers, yet you like the place so much that you instinctively compile a mental list of reasons those traits just don’t matter, you might have found “The One.”
Now, smart buyers should be aware of a syndrome I like to call “Pottery Barn Psychosis,” whereby the aesthetics of a wonderfully staged home with amazing curb appeal can hypnotize a buyer, rendering them blind to the negative property features, which would be glaring or grave concerns if the place weren’t so stinking cute. It’s fine to make a conscious decision that the pros of a place outweigh its cons, and even to consciously re-rank your priorities in light of a particular property’s advantages. But buyers should take steps to avoid falling victim to Pottery Barn Psychosis (and the Buyer’s Remorse that often follows suit) by writing down your absolute musts and deal-breakers before you ever step foot in a single property – and by revisiting this document before you write an offer and again before you remove your contingencies.
3. The bathroom and kitchen don’t disgust you. We humans are born with only two fears in life: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. By about eight months old, we start to acquire new fears, and most of us never stop. Among the first fear most people learn: the fear of other people’s kitchens and bathrooms.
I exaggerate (again!), but it is true that generally speaking, other people’s kitchens and bathrooms hold definite gross-out potential. There’s just something about what goes on in those rooms that seems exceptionally intimate and even unsanitary. So, if you happen to find yourself falling in love with a home’s river rock shower floor or drooling over the pot-filler over the stove and the built-in cookbook stand on the countertop, that’s a sign that you’re falling head over heels with a home that might just be “The One.”
4. You involuntarily envision your own family, furniture, decor, daily activities or remodeling choices in/to the home. They say that the best staging helps prospective buyers envision their own idealized lives taking place in the staged home. But whether or not a property is staged, if you find your mind’s eye Photoshopping a given property to insert your own kids and sofa into the living room, your dining table and favorite wall hangings into place in the dining room, and your daily meditation in the breakfast nook – or even start mentally removing walls entirely – it’s entirely possible that the home you’re in could be “The One” for you.
5. You lose interest in seeing other homes. I once took some buyers out for their first house hunt in my territory after they’d spent two years looking for homes in a neighboring area, without ever making a single offer. I’d planned to show them seven homes, but when they got to the fourth property, they declared that they’d found their home, and they neither wanted nor needed to see any more. I insisted that they finish the list, if for no other reason than to confirm their choice and to avoid feeling later that they hadn’t seen enough nearby homes to compare theirs to. They humored me and saw the last three places on the list, then promptly bought house #4 and still live there, blissfully happy, to this day.
When you find “The One,” continuing the house hunt you may have obsessed over for months, even years, starts to seem silly, like a waste of the energy you could be using to move into your new home.
Model/Actress Andie MacDowell Lists Country Club Crib in North Carolina anyone interested??
SELLER: Andie MacDowellLOCATION: Asheville, NC
PRICE: $4,500,000
SIZE: 10,872 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 7.5 bathroomsYOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama is finally back home but plum tuckered out and on our last nerve from nearly a week dragging around San Francisco after our busy as a beaver and punishingly boozy b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau during a week of weather uncharacteristically reminiscent of Hot and Hades Los Angeles.The apparently indefatigable and more often than not drunk Miss Trambeau scampered us around to here, there, and everywhere including the almost completely gentrified Valencia Street corridor for the LitCrawl, a high-brow-ish literary event that might better be named Booze and Books Night. We ate cheap Chinese food and downed buckets of beer on Clement Street with Miss Anne and her new man and we immensely enjoyed a Proseco-fueled dinner in SoMa with Falsetta Knockers and her husband Herr Wordsmith. We ogled at all the butt-ass nekkid gays who strut boldly around the Castro–yes, puppies, we're talking about people going about their errands and making the bar rounds naked as the day they were born–and we came home with a new tattoo on our right arm that we only barely recall having done. We are, in short, exhausted. None the less we push on, pedal to the medal with gas tank on fumes.Most of the time–and sometimes too often–Your Mama blathers on about high-priced homes owned by famous folks in star studded places like Los Angeles and New York City. Iffin we're lucky we might get a nugget in London or Nashville. It isn't often, then, we get to work over a ritzy residence in a decidedly un-celebrity-like locale such as Asheville, NC. (That's North Carolina butter beans.) Today, in an effort to spread our celebrity real estate wings a bit, we piggy-back on the peeps over at Zillow to (dis and) discuss the elegant if a tad dowdy Ashville, NC mansion that pushing sixty and still stunning model and actress Andie MacDowell recently heaved on the market with a very celebrity-like asking price of $4,500,000.First let Your Mama remind the older children of and educate the younger children as to the what's-what for our Miz MacDowell. Born into an affluent and educated family in South Carolina, Miz MacDowell had bigger dreams, it seems, than debutante balls and NASCAR races. She saved her pennies and high-tailed it to New York City in the early 1980s where she became a top model, mostly print, who worked with top photographers.It wasn't long before she went into acting, a rarely successful professional move for models. Her big (but ultimately bittersweet) break came with a part in the 1984 movie Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Alas, in the final cut her lines were dubbed by none other than Her Tinseltown Majesty Glenn Close because at that time Miz MacDowell's pleasantly genteel but rather pronounced southern accent was deemed rather too pronounced for the silver screen. Incidentally, that movie was adapted from the Edgar Rice Burroughs books by Oscar-winning screenwriter Robert Towne whose mansion in Pacific Palisades, CA was just put on the market for $14,000,000 and discussed just yesterday by Your Mama.Miz MacDowell's salad days in the Big Business of Show came in the late-1980s and ran into the mid-1990s with starring roles in cinematic successes such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Short Cuts, Groundhog Day, and Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Since then she has appeared in a very long list of lackluster films and tee-vee movies that include Riding the Bus With My Sister, The Six Wives of Henry LeFay, and the unfortunate recent remake of Footloose. Miz MacDowell continues to model, mostly for cosmetic companies.Anyhoo, property records indicate Miz MacDowell purchased her property in the upscale Biltmore Forest community outside Ashville back in June 1998. She paid $790,000 for two vacant and adjacent parcels in the woodsy enclave that total 1.89 acres and overlook the 7th fairway of the hoity-toity Biltmore Forest Country Club. The subsequently built residence, a fanciful top-heavy stone and pebble dash Tudor crossed with an Arts and Crafts-y cottage, looks to Your Mama like the sort of place the witch in the Grimm brother's Hansel and Gretel would live if she were a wealthy southern divorcée with a Mercedes and a handsome golf pro on speed dial.Listing information for Miz MacDowell's très trad 4-floor mansion shows it measures 10,872 square feet–property records show 10,425 square feet–and contains a total of 6 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms, 6 fireplaces plus an antique English stove, whatever that is, and a 10-zone heating and cooling system.A (possibly mahogany) wood and stained glass door with architecturally appropriate and vintage-looking hardware opens to a sizable but warmly decorated foyer with dark wood floors–also possibly mahogany–a vaulted ceiling with exposed wood beams, and walls covered in paper printed with a complicated but subtly colored pattern. It's all a little antique-oriented and Sophisticated Grandma for Your Mama but it's certainly tasteful and properly dignified.The interior spaces include a conservatory lined on three sides with tall and narrow arched windows and a formal dining room with leaded-glass windows and painted paneling that extends 3/4 of the way up the wall towards the carved moldings and detailed ceiling. The primary living and entertaining space seems to be an informal dining nook and capacious great room with lustrous wood floors, wood burning fireplace, double-height vaulted and beamed ceiling, heavy carved wood architectural details, and a staircase that winds and climbs its way to the second floor living areas. A wide-screen television was cleverly tucked under the stairs and hidden behind wood panels that disappear into the cabinetry when fully opened. The adjoining informal dining area has double-height ceilings and walls lined with a graphic grid of rectangular windows and thick moldings.The formal dining room connects through a large butler's pantry to the even larger, well-equipped eat-in kitchen that includes a large center island, snack counter, breakfast area, and high ceiling crisscrossed by heavy wood beams. This is the very picture of the sort of traditionally done cooker that neither Your Mama nor the Dr. Cooter would ever want to have installed in our own home but that does not stop us from having a romance with the double-wide commercial-style range and the elegantly rustic jade-colored Arts and Crafts tile back splash behind it.A second floor family gathering room hangs over the great room and offers a decorative brick fireplace and built in book and display shelves tucked into a pointed arch beneath the staircase. Listing photos show the room is furnished with little more than a fancy-looking pool table. We can only hope someone in the MacDowell family likes to shoot the pool otherwise that big ol' thing is just an expensive and useless hunk of wood and felt whose sole purpose is to fill up otherwise useless square footage.The master suite, wrapped in dark wood trimming and molding and lined with a mossy-green and bone-colored wallpaper, includes a shallow brick and tile-faced fireplace and a sizable separate sitting room with high-pitched ceiling. The attached bathroom has a masculine edge trimmed with ecclesiastically-inclined architectural details. Custom wood paneling adds an strong whiff of manliness to the space that has double sinks and a soaking tub for two that sits in front of a gigantic window with forest view. On either side of the tub are two etched glass panels, one opens into the shower stall and the other to the crapper cubby. Some of the children may be disturbed to notice, as does Your Mama, the carved wood structures into which the shower and terlit cubicle are fitted bear a too-striking resemblance to a Catholic confessional.A study/library on the third floor has a fireplace and wildly pitched and multi-peaked ceiling and the lowest level of the house contains a family room filled with fringed-upholstered furniture that opens through French doors to sunken terrace.Listing information for Miz MacDowell's digs in Asheville indicate in addition to the 10,000-plus square foot of interior spaces there is also 1,977 square feet of terraces, porches and balconies with views of the surrounding forests, over the manicured fairway and towards the rolling mountains in the distance. Your Mama would rather live in a trailor park than have mansion that backs up to a golf course–there's just something we find dreadful and entirely undesirable about golf courses–but this part of North Carolina has undeniably spectacular scenery that explodes into a riot of rusts, oranges and yellows in the dramatic leaf peeping fall season.Your Mama can only guess at Miz MacDowell's reason(s) for wanting to sell her 10,000-plus square foot Tudor. Perhaps now that her three children are all now young adults and (presumably) off living elsewhere the mansion has just become too big for the mistress? Could be, but then again, maybe not.In March 2008 property records reveal that Miz MacDowell paid $995,000 for a 4,939 square foot residence in Fletcher, NC with 4 bedrooms and 4 full and 2 half bathrooms. Of course, we don't know a bolt hole from a hole in the wall and as such Your Mama has zero idea if this property was purchased for private use by Miz MacDowell or for some other purpose.Back in 2002 (or maybe 2003), Miz MacDowell was still married to her magnificently named second husband Rhett DeCamp Hartzog and property records indicate that a corporate entity linked directly to her (and then their) address in Ashville purchased more than 2,500 acres of rugged and remote ranch property in Huson, MT. Your Mama again freely admits we have no notion whatsoever if Miz MacDowell has any sort of ownership or involvement with this property. We only know that deeds and documents we peeped show the address for the corporate entity and owner as Miz MacDowell's mansion in Asheville.Now then, on that wishy-washy note, we're off for a nip o' gin and a nap. We suggest y'all do the same.
To Rent or Buy…That is the Question
Remember in the Wizard of Oz when Dorthy is ready to go home and Glenda the Good Witch tells her to just click her heels and say there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home? Well be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home. And in humbling times like today one must ask, is it better to rent or buy that home? I think there is no right or wrong here, there are pros and cons and returns and risks for both. At the end of the day it is a personal choice.
Clear advantages include the fact that owning is a tax write off and when you rent it is not. When you own, you can decorate and renovate to your heart's content but in rentals, you need the landlord’s permission. As an owner, you are building up your own equity not your landlord's.
Disadvantages though are the on-going costs of maintenance and tax and utilities and when you rent, this falls on the landlord’s shoulders. Renting definitely allows you to be more liquid. And, you never know when the next rent hike will happen.
My rental clients say the biggest challenge in moving towards ownership is coming up with the down payment. For some, saving money is hard, very hard. Often when one’s paycheck only covers rent, cost of living and not too much more, getting ahead is though. However, there are lots of ways to save bit by bit and still feed your shoe habit and that, my darlings, is an entirely other story.
by Heather Rovet
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Nobody Expects Fire to Happen
Yet fires do happen. That’s why it’s important to have the right home and property insurance protection. It can cover your personal belongings, both inside and outside your home. The right coverage should also help you get your life back on track as quickly as possible. That’s why it’s so important to understand what your coverage includes in the way of claims service after a home fire occurs. The way an insurance company responds to your needs when you have a claim can make all the difference in the world when it comes to restoring order to your life. What to look forHere are some of the services that home insurance providers should offer their clients when it comes to claims service:
- Ensure house fires receive priority status and the quickest possible response time when there’s an emergency.
- Arrange for a place to stay during clean-up, restoration or repair, such as hotel for short-term relocation or a condo for extended stays.
- Provide you with the funds for any out-of-pocket expenses incurred.
- Give you access to a team of professionals to help determine which household items can be repaired and which ones need to be replaced.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
CANADIAN HOME SALES PICK UP IN SEPTEMBER
OTTAWA – October 17, 2011 – According to statistics[1] released today by The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), national resale housing activity picked up in September 2011.
Highlights:
- Sales activity rose 2.7 per cent in September from the previous month.
- Holding in line with the ten-year average, activity during the first nine months of this year pulled ahead of sales over the same period last year.
- The number of newly listed homes held steady when compared to the previous month.
- The national housing market tightened in September from the month before, but remains firmly entrenched in balanced territory.
- The national average price posted the smallest year-over-year increase since January.
National sales activity rose 2.7 per cent in September when compared to August, and follows three months of stable activity. September’s increase reflects strengthened activity in a number of major markets, led by Toronto. The monthly increase pushed national sales to its highest level since recently tightened mortgage regulations dampened sales earlier this year.
Actual (not seasonally adjusted) national sales activity came in 11 per cent above levels in September 2010. As was the case over the summer, the year-over-year increase reflects weakened activity one year ago.
A total of 361,749 homes have traded hands via Canadian MLS® Systems to date this year. This is 1.2 per cent above levels for the same period in 2010, and in line with the ten-year average.
“The Canadian housing market remains a bright spot against a backdrop of mixed headline news about the global economy,” said Gary Morse, CREA President. “Low mortgage rates continue to draw buyers to the housing market, while recently tightened mortgage regulations are working as intended. That said, housing market trends often diverge from national trends due to local factors, so buyers and sellers should talk to a local REALTOR® to understand housing market trends at play where they live.”
The number of newly listed homes nationally was little changed from each of the previous two months. New listings were up from the previous month in a number of major markets including Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Oakville and Vancouver, offset by fewer new listings in other markets including Edmonton and the Fraser Valley.
The monthly rise in sales resulted in a tighter national housing market that remains firmly planted in balanced territory. The national sales-to-new listings ratio, a measure of market balance, stood at 52.8 per cent in September, up from 51.6 per cent in August.
Based on a sales-to-new listings ratio of between 40 to 60 percent, nearly two-thirds of all local markets in Canada were in balanced market territory in September, with an even split of buyer’s and seller’s markets among the remainder.
The number of months of inventory stood at 6.1 months at the end of September on a national basis, little changed from the end of August (6.2 months). It represents the number of months it would take to sell current inventories at the current rate of sales activity, and is another measure of balance between housing supply and demand. Months of inventory have held steady at about six months since April.
The actual (not seasonally adjusted) national average price for homes sold in September 2011 stood at just under $352,600, remaining below record level heights reached earlier this year. While up 6.5 per cent from September 2010, the year-over-year increase is the smallest since January.
“Canada’s housing market remains stable amid continuing financial market volatility, contributing to Canadians’ confidence in the economy and providing support for Canadian economic growth,” said Gregory Klump, CREA’s Chief Economist. “Interest rates are expected to remain low for longer, and evidence suggests that recent changes to mortgage regulations are preventing the kind of excesses they were designed to avert. Both of these developments are good news for the housing market.”
Saturday, October 8, 2011
A Thanksgiving Thought
"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Thursday, October 6, 2011
AN EULOGY OF ACTION
I can't compose a proper eulogy for Steve Jobs. There's too much to say, too many capable of saying it better than I ever could.
It's one thing to miss someone, to feel a void when they're gone. It's another to do something with their legacy, to honor them through your actions.
Steve devoted his professional life to giving us (you, me and a billion other people) the most powerful device ever available to an ordinary person. Everything in our world is different because of the device you're reading this on.