Real Estate Rentals

Archive for the ‘Real Estate Agent’ Category

Savings bonds are considered some of the safest investments available.They are in fact backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. Individuals are eligible to purchase Series EE, E and I bonds. Series EE paper bonds, for example, take 30 years to mature. Because of this timeframe, an individual may die before cashing out his savings bonds. If the bonds were solely owned, they become part of the estate.

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The end of the first half is always an interesting time to look at the sales numbers. We are midway through 2011what has it brought us, and what may that indicate for our future? As is usual, some areas are up and some are down, but overall we are doing pretty good. The number of sales in the first half of the year were down across the board from last year, but last year we had the homebuyer tax credits during the first half. Average and median prices, on the other hand, were close to last year or up a bit, except in the Sudden Valley and Mt Baker areas, where they have continued to slide. Numbers from Bellingham and the entire county for the past three years are shown in the table below. 

A comparison of June 2010 to June of this year is even better, with number of sales even closer to last year in fact, by the time late reports have straggled in, most areas could match or beat last years numbers.

Distressed property (short sale and bank owned) numbers have stayed pretty consistent over the past year. At the end of June, 10.6% of the Bellingham homes for sale were distressed. 38.6% of the pending sales were distressed, and 16.2% of the sales closed in June were distressed. They dont seem to be having a big impact on overall sale prices.

Inventory levels in Bellingham are down 12% from last year at this time and pending sales are up by 2%.

Frankly, it looks as though the market is pretty stable. Unless there is some major change in the national economic picture, it seems that it might stay that way for a while.

Some things I am noticing:

Appraisals are more of a problemeither with appraisers not coming up with the value or with underwriters not accepting the appraised value without more comparables. In a market like Whatcom County, where we have multiple small, unique markets, there arent always a lot of comparable sales, and that can be a real problem.

There are more multiple offerssometimes on distressed properties, but often on ordinary sales of desirable homes at good value. As was tru

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China Grove hasn’t changed too much since the Doobie Brothers’ 1973 homage to the “sleepy little town down around San Antone.”

Incorporated in 1960, the town of about 1,250 is laidback, quiet and sparsely populated. On a recent hot afternoon, cattle grazed in fields while children splashed around pools and cars zipped down U.S. 87, the town’s main thoroughfare. The scene was a stark contrast to the San Antonio’s packed highways and busy city life, but not far from it physically.

Residents and real estate agents say people are drawn there by its close-knit community and “country feel.”

“It’s just a great place to raise your kids,” said Cynthia Farmer, a real estate agent with Realty Place who lives in China Grove and specializes in property there. “The best part of Chi

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I wanted to point out that Architectural Photographer Chad Jackson has a useful review/tutorial of the Donation-ware Lightroom/Enfuse plugin by Timothy Armes.

Chad’s review/tutorial and website demonstrates the quality of work it’s possible to do with Enfuse.

The number of homeowners in the San Antonio-New Braunfels area who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth — known as being “underwater” — has steadily declined since the beginning of 2010.

According to a 2011 first-quarter report from real estate data firm CoreLogic, 9.2 percent of area residential properties with a mortgage were underwater. That’s 30,837 borrowers in all, a drop from the first quarter of 2010, when 34,218 borrowers, or 10.4 percent of area properties, were underwater.

An additional 18,914 area borrowers were in near negative equity — within 5 percent of becoming underwater — during the first quarter of 2011. That’s down

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Former Chicago Bears wide receiver Marty Booker has closed the books on his local real estate portfolio, taking a major loss on his 13-room house in Grayslake, which he recently sold for $390,000.

A Louisiana native, Booker, 34, spent two tours of duty with the Bears. The team released him in February 2009, and he last played later that year, for the Atlanta Falcons.

Marty Booker Smashing Pumpkins Atlanta Falcons Ahmad Merritt Louisiana Real Estate Booker paid $523,700 in July 2008 for the four-bedroom, 4,100-square-foot house. He listed it in late 2009 for $515,000 and reduced its asking price in early 2010 to $499,000 and then to $479,000. Full Story…

Here is the latest property video from Brett Clements and crew of PlatinumHD.tv Propvid Australia.

But Linnaeus Estate on Byron Bay is a very special property which needs a longer than normal story.

Remember that classic episode of “Married With Children” when the Bundy family set up lawn chairs at the supermarket to avoid their un-air-conditioned home? With summer here, The Frugalista, like Al Bundy before her, is looking for strategies to avoid running the air conditioner.

A common piece of electricity-saving advice is to use a programmable thermostat to avoid cooling the house during the day when people are at work. But stay-at-home or work-at-home parents with kids in and out of the house all day, like the Frugalista, need to work harder to avoid running up the electricity bill in summer.

Of course, I turned to Frugalista readers on Facebook and Twitter.

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One of San Antonio’s most prestigious communities, Terrell Hills is a small city five miles northeast of downtown characterized by wide, manicured lots and lavish ranch-style homes.

“People are drawn to the character of the houses and the convenience of downtown,” said Fred Holliday, a real estate agent with Keller Williams Realty who lives in the area. “There’s a character to the neighborhood as opposed to suburbs where you get little box houses.”

Terrell Hills has a mix of new homes and older ones built in the 1950s — most of the older homes have been significantly renovated. Options r

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For those of you that have Scott Hargis’s Lighting Interiors eBook or have been hanging out in the PFRE flickr group for any amount of time, you understand why Nikon SB-80dx manual flashes are THE small flash of choice for real estate photographers so move along, there’s nothing here for you. However, the questions I’ve gotten recently about, “why not use some of the SB-80DX alternatives”, indicate it would be good to recap what’s so special about the SB-80dx and how do you set them up.

1. We are talking small manual flash here. Scott’s eBo

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