Archives: June 2006

How To Find A Rich Single Landowner

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on June 29

Long before Zillow.com came on the scene with what often seems like wildly inaccurate estimates of home values and Google.com made a big splash with satellite photos of your neighbor's...

Land Swings Home Prices

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 26

The cost of land is an increasingly important factor in the prices of homes. Not just in a few markets with well-known shortages of open space like San Francisco. Even...

Deeper Downturn

Posted by: Toddi Gutner on June 23

It’s bad news when dismal reports on the residential real estate market are revised downward. Well, that’s just what Ed McKelvey of Goldman Sachs recently did when he re-examined his...

What U-Haul Teaches Us About Housing

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 23

You can learn a lot about what market's hot and what's not by looking up how much U-Haul charges for rentals of moving trucks to and from different cities....

Beverly Hillbillies Mansion, Brady Bunch House, etc., etc.

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 22

And now for something completely different ... Zillow.com has a fun page of famous houses ranging from the Beverly Hillbillies mansion (pictured) to the Playboy mansion, the Brady Bunch...

The Rent-To-Own Missing Link

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on June 21

I just got off the phone with Michael Shin, founder of National Home Buyers Assistance. He's started a unique business that offers a way for people with really bad credit...

Window-Shopping for Homes That Aren't For Sale

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 19

As we near the summer solstice, let's cast our eyes northward to the land of the midnight sun ... Finland! A Finnish company called Igglo has an extremely interesting...

"Bright Spot In The Economy"

Posted by: Toddi Gutner on June 16

It is no surprise that the residential and commercial real estate markets are intimately connected. What befalls the residential market typically cycles through the commercial markets, but with up to...

Electric Art in Downtown LA

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on June 16

One line of the press release stood out. Announcing the grand opening of Met Lofts, a new apartment building in downtown Los Angeles, it said the developer had spent...

Soft in San Diego

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 14

Check out this story from the San Diego Union-Tribune saying that the median price of new homes in the area dropped from $495,500 in April to $424,000 in May. Mathematically...

So How Weak Are Housing Sales?

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 13

John Burns Real Estate Consulting in Irvine, Calif., says new home sales are worse than the Census Bureau says. Here's an excerpt from the company's newsletter, which came out today:...

Putting on the Ritz in Downtown LA

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on June 13

For decades Los Angeles-based KB Home was the classic suburban homebuilder, putting up acres of tract homes in booming sunbelt cities such as Phoenix, Dallas and Las Vegas. The...

Only One Household In Seventeen (??) Will See Their Mortgage Rates Reset In 2006

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 13

Let me preface this blog item by saying it has gone through several permutations. First the headline said one in 20. Then it said one in 24. Now it says...

Overvalued Markets

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 12

National City Corp., the Cleveland-based banking company, and market researcher Global Insight are out today with the latest edition of their widely watched quarterly report on overvalued housing markets. It...

Condo Hotels take a European trip

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on June 12

Condo hotels have been one of the fastest growing categories of the U.S. lodging industry, accounting for nearly one-fifth of all hotel rooms under construction. Some markets, such as...

A Concrete Problem: Middle-Income Housing

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 09

The soaring price of cement is having a disproportionate effect on lower-middle to middle-income families. Why? Because the denser housing that tends to get built for them uses lots...

Big Brother of the Blogs

Posted by: Toddi Gutner on June 08

I feel like I'm in high school again. I just found a website that is keeping track of Hot Property's traffic--of course, I knew Businessweek was doing that, but now...

Hurricane-Damaged Gulf: Will the Poor Be Forgotten?

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 08

There's lots of rebuilding going on in Katrina-damaged parts of Mississippi, but very little of it is low-income housing. And that's a big problem, says a study issued today by...

More 'Green' Builders

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 07

Green construction is still a sliver of the housing market, but it's a fast-growing sliver. A survey by McGraw-Hill Construction and the National Association of Home Builders released yesterday says...

Spooky: 6.66% on 06-06-06

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 06

Today is 06-06-06 and the 30-year fixed rate mortgage, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, is 6.66%. I will leave it to the more supernaturally inclined to tell us if...

R U Into Indecipherable Abbreviations?

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 05

If U R into indecipherable abbreviations then you probably love real estate listings in which BICC means built-in china cabinet and AGDO means automatic garage door opener. (I suppose ACCDO...

Housing Glut?

Posted by: Toddi Gutner on June 01

Ian Shepherdson, Chief U.S. Economist of High Frequency Economics has touted his bearish housing market views for months. In fact, he predicted something of a summer meltdown. He’s certainly in...

Construction Down, Prices Up

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 01

So this is how the housing market cools. Demand softens. Builders cut back. But prices keep going up for awhile, almost like a car gliding to a stop long after...

Peter Coy, Reporter, Interviews Pete Coy, Real Estate Agent

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 01

Over the years I've been in touch with several other Peter Coys--a playwright, a broker in San Francisco, a software executive in Toronto, et al. Sharing a name with someone...