Archives: July 2006

Struggling to keep up with your mortgage?

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 31

My BusinessWeek colleague Mara Der Hovanesian would like to speak with people who are struggling to keep up with their mortgage payments now that teaser rates are expiring and ARMs...

Housing Prices Stronger Than You Think

Posted by: Toddi Gutner on July 27

I find it incredibly refreshing to read Michael Youngblood’s reports on housing prices in the U.S. Why? Because the managing director of asset-backed securities research at Friedman Billings Ramsey &...

Convenient Truths

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on July 27

"Facts all come with points of view, facts don't do what I want them to," the band Talking Heads once sang. I'm reminded of those lyrics when I read recent...

If You Liked "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" ...

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 26

... you'll love Glenn Kelman's account of his trip to Washington to testify on behalf of free enterprise in the real estate business. Kelman runs Redfin, an online real estate...

WellcomeMat Is a Website, Not A Typo

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 26

Roll out the welcome mat for WellcomeMat.com, a new home-listings website that's trying to kick-start business by offering the first 1,000 listings for free. (After that it will be 75...

A Complaint About E-Loan, And A Response

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 25

Here's an interesting complaint about E-Loan from "VelocityDC," followed by a reasonable response to the complaint that I solicited from the company. Hot Property doesn't make a practice of investigating...

Making Sense of Real Estate Ad Abbrvns.

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 24

I already knew that wic means walk-in closet and sf means square feet. But I was surprised to learn that aek is all-electric kitchen and fag is forced air gas....

Turning the Tables on the Trial Lawyers

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on July 20

Suing home builders has become a cottage industry in many parts of the country. It's easy to understand from a trial lawyer's perspective. Find one alleged problem and you can...

Tips for Selling in a Changing Market

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on July 17

No doubt the temperature of the housing market has cooled. Bidding wars, multiple offers over asking, forget about it. If you're thinking it's time to sell, Mark Nash, author of...

Martha Traffic

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on July 13

Normally new home sales centers in the suburbs of Raleigh are sedate places. The winding, wooded roads are not conducive to high volume traffic. And builders aren't allowed to...

Thinking of Raiding Your IRA for a Downpayment?

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 12

Just a wild guess, but I don't think Carrie Schwab Pomerantz needed to take money out of her IRA in order to cough up a downpayment for her first house....

Time To Color

Posted by: Toddi Gutner on July 11

I live in a community in northern Westchester County, NY where interior decorators are deified. But it wasn’t until a few nights ago, when my family and I were having...

Sex and the Rental Market

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on July 11

Eric Tyson, co-author of Home Buying For Dummies, has some advice for those in the real estate market right now: sit tight. Tyson, the only author to have four books...

Are 'Liars' Loans' Bad for America?

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 07

Comptroller of the Currency Barbara Grunkemeyer (pictured) has been in the forefront of the fight against so-called "liars' loans"--that is, loans that don't require documentation of income. The biggest victims...

How Stuart Wolff Got Himself Caught In A Trap

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on July 06

There was a period of time when Stuart Wolff was a powerful and much-listened to man in the real estate world. As founder and CEO of Homestore.com he led the...

Sales Pitch: 'The Westernmost Point on the East Coast'

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 06

Folks, history is being made. This may be the first time ever that being on the same longitude as Akron, Ohio, was a key selling point in the real estate...

An Inside Look at What Affects Your Mortgage Rate

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 06

Everybody knows that people with low credit scores, high loan-to-value ratios, and no documentation pay more for mortgages. But wouldn't it be nice to know exactly how much more? Hot...

Buy A House, Get a Crop Subsidy

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 05

Check out this great article in this past Sunday's Washington Post about how some people are getting crop subsidies from the federal government because they built their houses on farmland....

Middle-Income Metro Neighborhoods In Decline

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 05

A new study from the Brookings Institution says that metro areas are becoming increasingly segregated by income. This should be no surprise to someone who has ever walked up New...

Global House Price Index

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 04

Sometimes we bring you news as it happens and sometimes, like now, we're just a little bit late. With that apology, here are the findings of what's billed as the...

Housing: Where the Market Is Really Headed

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 03

The headline on this blog item is the headline of the Business Outlook column in the current issue of BusinessWeek, by my colleague James C. Cooper (pictured). I think it's...