The Real Estate Bloggers

Hours Before Home Foreclosed Upon, Woman Kills Herself

Tom Royce — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:42:28 +0000

A 53 year old Massachusetts woman killed herself after faxing her mortgage company that she was going to do so. Her family home was due to be foreclosed upon later that afternoon, and in a last gasp desperate attempt to save the home, she committed suicide.

This is a tragic story, no doubt about it, but the foreclosure of the home was the catalyst, not the reason. When you dissect the situation, the home was being foreclosed upon, but she never told her husband that she had stopped paying the mortgage 42 months earlier.

No I want to respect the dead, but come on. This is a story of a wife failing to communicate with her family and hours before they are to be kicked out of the home she commits suicide. The foreclosure will get the headlines, but the reality is she did not want to face the lies that built up to it.

My heart goes out to her family, this is a tragedy. But this is not primarily a situation where the foreclosure caused the suicide. The lenders gave her 42 months of not paying her mortgage. This is a person who had other more serious issues in her life.

A 53-year-old wife and mother fatally shot herself shortly after faxing a letter to her mortgage company saying that by the time they foreclosed on her house that day, she would be dead.

Police said that Carlene Balderrama used her husband’s high-powered rifle to kill herself Tuesday afternoon, shortly after faxing the letter at 2:30 p.m.

The mortgage company called police, who found Balderrama’s body at 3:30 p.m. The auction was scheduled to start at 5 p.m. and interested buyers arrived at the property in Taunton, about 35 miles south of Boston, while Balderrama’s body was still inside, according to Taunton Police Chief Raymond O’Berg.

Police did not immediately release the name of the mortgage company. O’Berg said Balderrama’s fax read, in part, “By the time you foreclose on my house I’ll be dead.”

O’Berg also said a suicide note found next to Balderrama told her husband, John, and 24-year-old son to “take the (life) insurance money and pay for the house.” via ajc.com.

A 4.8% Drop in Home Prices For May, 2008

Tom Royce — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:03:47 +0000

Housing prices dropped 4.8 percent in May from the previous year according to the Office of Federal Housing Oversight. The most severe hit occurred out west where housing prices fell 14.5 percent while prices actually rose in the West South Central region of the country (Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana).

What does this mean? Overall the housing market is still declining. Sellers are still being confronted with competition from foreclosures and when they find a buyer, banks are being very tight lending money.

Eight out of nine regions showed declines as the worst housing slump in more than a quarter of a century deepened with banks cutting lending following $400 billion in mortgage-related losses and writedowns. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson last week asked Congress to approve legislation allowing the government to extend credit to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and buy their stocks if needed to stem further declines in housing.

A new law including provisions for stricter regulation of the government sponsored enterprises “may have a positive impact on future house price performance,” Ofheo Director James Lockhart said in a statement.

Prices fell the most from a year ago in California, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Hawaii, which recorded a 14.5 percent drop. Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and states in the south Atlantic fell 5.8 percent, Ofheo said. In New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania the decline was 2.1 percent. via Bloomberg.com

Candy Spelling Trades in Mansion For Record 47 Million Dollar LA Condo

Tom Royce — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:18:51 +0000

Candy Spelling, widow of TV mogul Aaron Spelling, has bought a record setting Los Angeles Condominium for the tidy sum of 447,000,000. The new condo will be on the top 2 floors of The Century, a new condominium in Century City right across fro the Century Plaza Hotel.

Candy Spelling caught heat for putting her husbands mansion up for sale weeks after his death and sold for a reported 130 million dollars.

Her new home will be less than a third the size of the old one — just 16,500 square feet — but with a killer 360-degree view spanning the horizon from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Catalina Island. The condominium building called the Century is going up next door to the Century Plaza Hotel on Avenue of the Stars and will be completed in late 2009.

“She will be moving into it, though it won’t be up for a year or so,” said Spelling’s attorney, Stephen Goldberg, who confirmed the sale Monday.

At a time when headlines are focusing on plummeting home prices, foreclosures and bad loans, the sale highlighted the vast differences in the region’s housing markets.

There are still wealthy buyers keeping the very top end in play — often at ever higher prices. The price of $2,848 per square foot paid by Spelling at the Century is a record for a Los Angeles condo. The old record of $2,700 was set in February — at the same building. via the Los Angeles Times.

Tags: Candy+Spelling, The+Century, Tori+Spelling, Aaron+Spelling, Most+Expensive+Condo, Los+Angeles, LA

So You Want To Know Why We Are In This Mess?

Tom Royce — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:58:05 +0000

If you are wondering why the housing credit crisis happened, and the implicit role the government, media, and press played in it, please read this editorial by Paul Gigot at the Wall Street Journal.

He and his staff have been on this story since 2001. That is right, 2001. While the rest of the media and government kept it bottled up, he has been trying to expose the corruption and waste that has been coming out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The abiding lesson here is what happens when you combine private profit with government power. You create political monsters that are protected both by journalists on the left and pseudo-capitalists on Wall Street, by liberal Democrats and country-club Republicans. Even now, after all of their dishonesty and failure, Fannie and Freddie could emerge from this taxpayer rescue more powerful than ever. Campaigning to spare taxpayers from that result would represent genuine “change,” not that either presidential candidate seems interested.

Read the whole editorial at WSJ.com

Fannie Mae Has 5 Billion Worth Of REO Property

Tom Royce — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:00:20 +0000

You wonder why it is hard to resell homes today? Just take a look at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae has 5 billion worth of unsold property on it’s books. That is not properties in foreclosure, that is 5 billion dollars worth of property they have already taken over and have to pay upkeep, taxes, and maintenance of the property.

Yet at the end of the process they are typically selling for 74 percent of the unpaid mortgage. So any downpayment on the home is lost and 26 percent of the mortgage amount has also disappeared. This is a crushing blow to others trying to compete with these foreclosures.

And to make it worse, selling them still takes nearly half a year. This helps explain why the real estate market is in such a tough position.

Freddie Mac-owned properties spend an average of 152 days on the market and typically sell for 92 percent of the listed price, usually about 30 percent less than the peak prices of 2006, said Ingrid Beckles, vice president of servicing and asset management. The company re-evaluates prices every two weeks, she said.

“We are very careful to ensure our properties are not driving market values down and they show well,” Beckles said. “Our challenge is like everyone else’s from a volume perspective: maximize recovery and minimize credit losses, and balance that with making sure we’re not driving down property values and not destabilizing neighborhoods.” via Bloomberg.com: U.S.

If you are looking for foreclosures click here for a free 7 day trial at Foreclosure.com are in your neighborhood.

Cottage Homes Foster Community In Small Spaces

Tom Royce — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:21:27 +0000

An interesting twist on the McMansion vs Cottage debate in this video by the Wall Street Journal on cottage communities being built in Seattle.

The homes cost as much as their much larger counterparts in the city, but what the developers are trying to create is the sense of community.

Of course the cynic in me wonders if the high price of the homes is designed to create a Yuppie outpost for the crunchy granola set. They get to live in small houses and get big green points by their peers while not having to associate with rif-raf that neighborhoods with smaller houses would attract.

Tags: McMansion, Cottages

Japan’s Zephyr Co Collapses, Sparks Commercial Real Estate Fears

Tom Royce — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:20:54 +0000

The credit issues that we face in the United States are being mirrored in Japan. Zephyr Co., a midsized developer in Japan, went under yesterday. While that would not make much of a wave in the U.S., Japan’s central bank tends not to let businesses like this fail. But with the credit crunch happening world wide, the central bank is not in a position to prop everyone up.

So companies that were considered safe in Japan now have investors worried.

Japanese banks, reeling from the credit crunch, have been tightening lending to real estate companies now seen as risky as sales of apartments weaken and the outlook for the world’s second-largest economy dims.

Many developers are now looking to shore up their finances by selling vacant land and buildings, but the extra supply has depressed prices and potential buyers are finding it more difficult to secure loans.

“Even if they sell excess property, buyers would not pay much and seek a big bargain,” said Yutaka Kakizaki, a real estate sector analyst from Chibagin Asset Management, adding that this meant developers end up selling property at a loss.

“It will just be a matter of time until we see the next (corporate failure),” Kakizaki said. Forbes.com.

Technology Allows Success in Targeting Real Estate Niches

Tom Royce — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:15:41 +0000

In the past, marketing was so unspecific that you really needed to take big swings to get customers. The concept of television advertising speaks to that. If a real estate agent ran an advertisement on the local television she would not want business that could be 100 miles from her.

But with the advent of the internet, you can really target your clients. Reading this press release brought this into focus.

The company targets commercial real estate. Medical real estate. Medical real estate in Florida. Mostly in medical real estate in Broward and Palm Beach.

That is specific marketing. Nothing fancy, the site is not going to blow you away, but if you are looking to invest in medical real estate in Southern Florida they will be your guys.

That my friends is targeted niche specific marketing at it’s best. They aim to be the experts in their field.

They get it.

Serving the state of Florida, FloridaMedicalRealEstate.com focuses on all types of medical real estate, including assisted living facilities (ALFs), doctor offices, medical storefronts and medical flex space.
“We encourage anyone in Florida looking for medical-related real estate to visit our new site, particularly those in Palm Beach or Broward counties,” says Michael Buonaituto, CCIM candidate and founder of FloridaMedicalRealEstate.com.
“Our state-of-the-art tools allow us to search for the best available properties based on a client’s specific criteria,” he adds. via MarketWatch.

Imagine Spending 2 Billion Dollars To Live In A House For 4 Years

Tom Royce — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:25:00 +0000

The cost of certain housing in Washington has gone through the roof.

Get this: Obama and McCain’s people say they will both try to raise $400 million between now and Election Day.

Our presidential campaign has already topped a billion dollars. That is a first.

By Election Day it is expected to top $2 billion - our first-ever $2 billion presidential campaign. via CBS News.

IRS Takes Close Look At Real Estate Professionals

Tom Royce — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:59:37 +0000

Are you a real estate professional? If you have a W-2 job elsewhere the IRS does not think so. The difference in income (and loss) classifications between passive losses and material participating losses can be huge for the bottom line.

And it looks like the IRS has set their sites on these investors. According to Diane Kennedy’s article at the Realty Times, audits on real estate professionals are rising as the IRS is enforcing this distinction.

To meet the IRS requirements, you need two things: spend the majority of your working time spent performing qualified real estate activities (regardless of what you do), and rack up at least 750 hours. Qualified activities include “develop, redevelop, construct, reconstruct, acquire, convert, rent, operate, manage, lease or sell” real estate.

Practically speaking you won’t make the cut if you work elsewhere and report full-time W-2 income. And there’s a third hurdle: material participation. In a twist that can only make sense in the IRS world, real estate activities are one of two things: passive, or materially participating passive. If you have a passive loss, it can only be used against passive income. Period.

Read the rest of Diane’s article at Realty Times

The Real Estate Bloggers

Hours Before Home Foreclosed Upon, Woman Kills Herself

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A 4.8% Drop in Home Prices For May, 2008

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Candy Spelling Trades in Mansion For Record 47 Million Dollar LA Condo

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So You Want To Know Why We Are In This Mess?

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Fannie Mae Has 5 Billion Worth Of REO Property

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Cottage Homes Foster Community In Small Spaces

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Japan’s Zephyr Co Collapses, Sparks Commercial Real Estate Fears

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Technology Allows Success in Targeting Real Estate Niches

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Imagine Spending 2 Billion Dollars To Live In A House For 4 Years

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IRS Takes Close Look At Real Estate Professionals

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