Tag Archives: Real Estate

Manhattan Home Prices Plunge

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manhattanHuge downturn for co-op and condo owners in pricey housing market. Number of sales ticks up as buyers with money take an opportunity.

The housing bust has finally clobbered super-pricey Manhattan home prices.

Reports released Thursday by four major New York brokers show that prices cratered during the three months that ended June 30.

Prices fell between 13% and 19% compared with the same quarter last year. The brokers found median prices that ranged from $795,000 to $849,000.

The decline shows a marked turn from the first quarter of 2009, when the year-over-year change in median home prices ranged from a loss of 2% to a gain of 6%.

Another change in the recent period: More people are buying.

The number of sales picked up by more than 28% in the second quarter, according to Prudential Douglas Elliman.

Driving the increase were sales of studio apartments and one-bedrooms, both of which gained market share, according to Jonathan Miller, president of appraisal company, Miller Samuel, which compiles data for Prudential Douglas Elliman.

“It’s value-based shopping,” said Pam Liebman, chief executive of the brokerage Corcoran Group. “People are coming back into the market, but nobody is going to overpay.”

Of course, in Manhattan “value” means studio prices that go for a median of $400,000 and one-bedrooms that fetch $650,000.

South Florida Market Looking Better

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South FloridaMIAMI – June 16, 2009 – South Florida home prices have hit bottom, but threats to the housing market still loom as foreclosures rise, mortgage rates creep up and inventories remain high.

That’s according to a prominent economist and several top real estate brokers who spoke here Thursday during the International Real Estate Congress hosted by the Realtor Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches.

“We’re certainly near the bottom if not at the bottom,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.

The median price of an existing single-family home in Palm Beach County has plunged more than 40 percent since 2005. Yun cited a study released last week by research firm IHS Global Insight that said home prices in Palm Beach County are undervalued by 32 percent.

Mike Pappas, head of Keyes Co. Realtors, agreed that the withering collapse of the past three years finally has ended.

“We believe the worst is behind us,” Pappas said.

That’s not to say that the housing market is poised for a big rebound. Realtors see obstacles, including:

• Foreclosures. The number of foreclosure filings in Palm Beach County rose 33 percent from April to May, research firm RealtyTrac said Thursday. “Unfortunately, foreclosures will continue to increase,” Yun said.

• Rising mortgage rates. The average rate for a 30-year mortgage spiked from 5.29 percent last week to 5.59 percent this week, Freddie Mac said Thursday. Yun acknowledged that rates above 6 percent would slow the recovery, but he predicted rates will fall to 5.2 percent later this year. “I believe the bond market is overreacting,” Yun said, causing rates to rise.

• High inventories. The number of homes for sale has fallen over the past year, but there remains a glut of homes on the market. Inventory “is still much higher than it should be,” said Ron Shuffield, head of EWM Realtors.

• A sluggish high-end market. Although properties priced at under $200,000 are moving quickly, the high-end market is “stagnant,” in part because of high rates for jumbo loans, said Rei Mesa of Prudential Florida Realty.

Copyright © 2009 The Palm Beach Post, Fla., Jeff Ostrowski. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

This Month In Real Estate – May 2009

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Each month, This Month in Real Estate provides expert opinion and analysis on real estate trends across the nation. The aim of the consumer-oriented segments is to provide real information on real estate.

 

 

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This Month In Real Estate – April 2009

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Each month, This Month In Real Estate features our real estate experts that guide you through national real estate news.  Check in at the end of each month to stay informed and feel free to call me with any questions.

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Lennar Being Sued Over Chinese Drywall

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Chinese drywall continues to be a headache for home builder Lennar Corp.

Lennar said Monday that it had been sued in U.S. District Court in Florida in connection with imported drywall that smells bad and possibly releases dangerous gases.

The suit was filed by an individual, Lorena Garcia.

Lennar itself is suing two Chinese drywall manufacturers, claiming the drywall, which it bought and installed in 2005 and 2006, is defective and is causing electrical problems and foul odors in homes it built throughout Florida.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Ingrid Pedrick Lehrfeld (04/20/2009)

Author Says Lowering Ceilings Adds Visual Impact

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imagesSarah Susanka, author of the popular “Not So Big” home-design books, devotes lots of space in her eighth book “Not So Big Remodeling: Tailoring Your Home for the Way You Really Live,” to ceilings.

She urges owners of homes with vaulted ceilings to consider lowering them so the house has what she calls, “visual layering.”

“Ceiling height is something that people don’t understand,” Susanka says. “If you make all ceiling heights 9 or 10 feet tall, it becomes monotonous.”

She recommends differentiating space by adding soffits that don’t reduce the space, but do define the area and differentiate it from neighboring areas.

“Just as punctuation helps us to extract the full meaning of a sentence, spatial layering serves the same function for our eyes, separating the space we’re looking at into bite-sized pieces without obscuring the experience of the whole,” she writes in the book.

In the case of small rooms like powder rooms, she recommends creating a “beltline,” a horizontal division in the wall space created with molding or wainscoting that makes the small, high-ceilinged space feel less like a cell.

Source: Chicago Tribune, Mary Umberger (04/19/2009)

Chinese Drywall – Another Problem For Homeowners To Deal With…

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Drywall imported from China continues to make headlines nationwide, and a growing number of lawsuits have been filed in Florida. In response to the problem, FAR’s Business Forms Forum Task Force is considering a new form that addresses Chinese drywall problems. Task force members are slated to discuss the issue again on April 6.

Attorneys with Higer Lichter Givner, The Blumstein Law Firm and Podhurst Orseck have filed a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of Florida homeowners Janet Morris-Chin and Dajan Green. They’ve targeted Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin Co. Ltd., and the foreign company that distributed that company’s drywall within the United States, Rothchilt International Ltd.

Drywall manufactured in China was used in U.S. homes between 2004 and 2007. According to the lawsuit, toxic chemicals that emanate from the drywall have damaged houses, fixtures and personal property. Members of the class action are also seeking medical monitoring for any adverse effects of prolonged exposure to the toxic chemicals.

“We have filed a national class action because more than 60,000 homes in 13 states are believed to have defective Chinese drywall,” says Victor M. Diaz with Podhurst Orseck. “We anticipate that when the Consumer Products Safety Commission completes its investigation, this product will be recalled across the country. This could be potentially one of the largest product liability cases related to home construction in U.S. history.”

Gov. Charlie Crist has called in the feds to help with problems related to the use of Chinese drywall that could affect up to 30,000 Florida homes. On Friday, Crist sent a request for help in developing testing strategies to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control.

Some Louisiana homeowners who rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina are discovering that they share a problem with some Florida homeowners – Chinese drywall. The sulfur-emitting wallboard burns out electrical wires, eats away at metal and possibly sickens families. The U.S. Product Consumer Safety Commission and a number of states, including Florida, are investigating.

This Month In Real Estate – March 2009

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Each month, This Month in Real Estate provides expert opinion and analysis on real estate trends across the nation. The aim of the consumer-oriented segments is to help combat the “doom and gloom” messages of the national print and television media with real information on real estate.

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Home Prices Rise in February

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WASHINGTON, DC – March 25, 2009 – U.S. home prices rose 1.7 percent on a seasonally-adjusted basis from December to January, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) monthly House Price Index. In December, the FHFA first reported a 0.1 percent increase, which was later revised to a 0.2 percent decline. FHFA ( www.fhfa.gov ) regulates Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks as authorized by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.

For the 12 months ending in January, U.S. prices fell 6.3 percent, and the U.S. index is 9.6 percent below its April 2007 peak.

The FHFA monthly index is calculated using the purchase price of houses sold or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. For the nine Census Divisions, seasonally-adjusted monthly price changes from December to January ranged from -0.9 percent in the Pacific Division to +3.9 percent in the East North Central Division.

Month-to-month changes in the geographic mix of sales activity explain most of the unexpected rise in prices in January. Home sales disproportionately occurred in areas with the strongest markets, according to the release issued by FHFA. “While it is difficult to perfectly control for changing geographic mix in estimating house price indexes, the data suggest that if one were to remove those effects, the change in home prices in January, while still positive, would have been far less dramatic,” according to the FHFA release.

Reported sales volume, in absolute terms, was relatively low in January. As a result, the FHFA warns that relatively large revisions could occur later.

© 2009 FLORIDA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®