I’m told that the builder of this home, Mark Early, also built Roger Staubach’s home in Preston Hollow. Excellent builder, sign of the times.

Yesterday I drove by five high-end foreclosures north of Northwest Highway.

Kitchen drawers that hide your appliances and other paraphernalia in kitchen drawers, whether dishwashers-in-a-drawer or under counter refrigeration (drawers being used as refrigerators). More home owners are opting to tuck their appliances away so they don’t interfere with the sleek design of the kitchen — the look of a kitchen where you never cook, my favorite kind!.

Ah but there’s a green component: dishwashers-in-a-drawer have the capability of washing small loads of dishes in each drawer, which saves water and electricity.

Kitchen colors — shades of white and off-whites are the most common kitchen colors, followed by brown, beige, and bone hues.

The most popular wood for kitchen cabinetry remains cherry, followed by maple. Painted cabinetry and light natural and distressed finishes like mine are passe.

More people prefer traditional kitchen design, but contemporary following closely behind.

Ceramic and porcelain tile and natural stone remain the most popular kitchen flooring, which I cannot figure out because it just kills your back after a long day in the kitchen. Hardwood is getting more popular, particularly bamboo and hand-scarped surfaces.

Granite, despite the cost and those musings as to whether it irradiated homeowners, is the most popular option. Quartz is following close behind.

By the way, this listing is a good example of why Trulia and the other national web sites out there will never replace local agents and information. This one says the home was built in 1952 –wrong! The home it replaced was built in 1952. Sometimes these aggregate ers pick up the wrong info. Now Zillow is getting busted for having unreliable home prices!

So I found this story on what to do with styrofoam peanuts from This Old House pretty interesting — the best tip is using the peanuts when you are nailing a nail in the wall. I don’t think using them for spacers on a painting is such a great idea unless you add adhesive.

But I have to say, I hate the things and they cannot be recycled, along with styrofoam cups. I bag mine up and drop them off at MailBoxes Etc., who takes them to re-use. Fed-Ex (Preston-Royal) would not take them. I hate to throw them away because I know they are not bio-degradable. So until we can get them to stop making these things, what else can we do with them?

Another Candy moving tip: when you move or store furniture, shrink wrap it. I am the shrink wrap Queen and would not be caught without a long roll of the stuff. I shrink wrap all my friend’s upholstery when they move.  (Shrink-wrap pillows on the sofa so you won’t lose them.) Bubble wrap, then cover with cardboard, chair legs and “ball on claw” feet to minimize scratches.

Update: my bad, this is by Steve McGonigle, not Steve Brown. Guess all Steves look the same to me…

I’m torn on this one. Does anyone know any folks who profited by investing in this market, the second mortgage market?  Now they are losing their shirts. But then, second liens were not even around twenty years ago? How did they get started? My other fear is that this source for mortgage funding might dry up all together, but really, would that be such a bad thing?

This will be an interesting one to watch. Good example of what’s happening in that million dollar plus market — this home could potentially drag down the value of its neighbors, unless a knight in shining armour armed with $3.5 sweeps in to buy it.

“Give me boots on the ground,” he said. And so I wrote. Sent in the story and he published it. I’ve written a few more, owe him at least two.

Then I looked up his biography and, when I found out who I had written for, almost fainted.

Joel is an internationally-recognized authority on global, economic, political and social trends. His academic credentials go like this: Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, California and an Adjunct Fellow with the Legatum Institute based in London, UK.

He’s a speaker and futurist, and California friends told me how he consults for many leading economic development organizations, private companies and investment houses, regions and cities. He’s a Senior Fellow with the Center for an Urban Future in New York City, a Senior Consultant with the Praxis Strategy Group in Fargo, North Dakota. And he’s also a journalist, maybe the kind more of us should become. For thirty years he has written for Forbes.com, ABC, Newsweek, The New York Times’ , Inc. Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The American and  Politico.com.

But here’s the coolest thing: Joel Kotkin really likes Dallas.

He readily admits to being quite bullish on Houston. And to tell you the truth, before I realized who it was I was emailing, I kind of got on his case for that. It’s a traffic nightmare, I whined — hot and humid. No, he insisted, Houston is a future superstar city. In his book, The Next One Hundred Million: America in 2050, he tells us how Houston started. (Sidenote: one of the things I love about Joel’s writing is fascinating histories and anecdotal insights into how cities began and evolved. For example, New York City where, in 1810, the French counsel complained “the inhabitants have in general no mind for anything but business…” As if that doesn’t sound familiar.) It was “founded by New York real estate speculators… with ‘heat so severe during the middle of the day, that most of us lie in the shade and pant.’…” But Houston is now the nation’s fourth-largest city, diverse, international, ripe full of opportunity for immigrants and poor/working class to work hard and live well and transform themselves into the middle class. Which is the whole point of cities — mobility –something that will no longer be found in the expensive, elite enclaves of San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Boston who are, incidentally, losing population while places like Phoenix, Charlotte, Atlanta, Houston, Austin and Dallas are gaining it.

But enough about Houston. So I kept saying (in my emails) Joel, you’ve got to come and see Dallas, you won’t believe it. We’ve got a beautiful, burgeoning urban core and world-class Arts District and people are living downtown. You must see it — I think you’ll get over Houston.

Well, now he’s coming. And in his book, which I am reading, he gives Dallas a ton of praise. We are, he says, one of the power cities of the future. Oh but guess what — we don’t need that strong urban core. (I will quit fretting about condo sales.) We developed/evolved kind of like Los Angeles did — the city William Faulkner called “the plastic asshole of the world.” A collection of suburbs, yep that’s us. Working centers and manufacturing in the outskirts, around the city, not so much in the city. In fact, when we first moved here, we SELDOM went downtown for anything but museum tours. We found great Asian food in Richardson, Italian in North Dallas, Mexican on Lemmon, Thai over on I-35 and Walnut Hill, the Greek Food Festival in East Dallas, shopping everywhere. I recall a wonderful Romanian restaurant my husband took me to once downtown but then, come to think of it, it moved up to Alpha. Who needs the central urban core, asks Joel?  In Houston (yawn), in 1946, Joel says journalist John Gunther described it as a place “where few people think about anything but money.” Sounds like New York City in 1810. But Joel’s entire treatise in the 248 page book is that the most dynamic growth in America from 2010 to 2050 is going to happen here in Dallas — also in Atlanta, Houston, Austin, Charlotte, San Antonio. Why? We have the ingredients –affordability, climate, jobs, housing. Cities like New York and Chicago will no longer serve as vehicles for class mobility — but we will. They’ll be “entertainment machines” for the privileged, so think about how that is going to change real estate. Sick of hearing me harp on things like fractional home ownership? (I think home ownership will be less important to Generation Y. Have to ask Joel what he thinks.) Look ahead — economics are changing the way we buy and sell homes. Residents of metropolitan areas will become more nomadic, live in the city for awhile while young or students, then move away. Joel says in 2007, non-residents made up 10 percent of all Manhatten apartment purchases. Guess where they will move to raise and educate families? Here.

Their loss, our gain.

As I finish the book this week, I’ll offer up more Kotkin nuggets. One of the best things about The Next Hundred Million is that, for the first time in about 18 months, I am feeling positive about the future. The U.S., says Kotkin, is about the only nation not losing population. We are still having babies and raising families which is a very good thing — someones got to pay our social security and buy homes! And then I will interview Joel when he is here in Dallas, right up in our offices at D Magazine, overlooking the beautiful city that he is so very bullish about.

Stay tuned.

All you have to do to belong to the Dump-of-the-Month club is send me a photo of a home you consider a dump, a link to the listing if the dump home is on the market, and tell us why you think it’s a dump. So realtors, darlings, you’re going to have to relax. These are not coming from me, but from the world, from Dallas. And if you are unfortunate enough to be listing a dump, we will hold your hand and get you through this.

Dump-of-the-Month house for February: 2733 Stanford. According to the reader who sent it to me, “the home is way over-priced at $723,775.00.” Built in 1941, it has 2400 square feet, three bedrooms, two baths, and a kitchen with what appears to be granite countertops. Also. Has. Cabinets. I don’t think I have to tell you the home was remodeled in the 1970’s — mid-century modern, no? The reader is also not fond of the drapery valences that scream “Grandma”. (And is seriously worried someone might bury some shrimp in there — ew.) Come on, all that can be changed! Personally, I think the front of the house is adorable, love that stone, and the roof appears to be smiling. (Or is it smirking?) And you certainly cannot argue over the location: University Park.

If you can think of any other reasons, go for it.

Earlier this week, we talked about my suspicions that this deduction could be under fierce attack as some argue that the fired-up real estate market, in Dallas and everywhere, was responsible for this the greatest recession since the Great Depression. The MBA would rather extend it to everyone in an effort to stimulate the housing market. I am still trying to find out how many taxpayers actually take advantage of this deduction now — the IRS put me on a three-hour hold when I called them. But I think this would be really great news for housing. The first-time home buyer tax credit was responsible for almost HALF of all the sales in red-tape drowning California last year. Americans just love a deal; tell them something saves them tax dollars and they jump on it.

Do you think the residential mortgage interest deduction should be offered to all taxpayers regardless of whether they itemize or not?

Amen. But I recall almost fainting when a banker friend told me that Wachovia’s land lease at Preston and Mockingbird Lane ran $451,000 a month, one of the costliest in the country. Wachovia, which is now Wells Fargo, wanted to be walking distance to that blue-chip real estate called Highland Park. There are five banks at the intersection of Preston and Forest. A bank was supposed to be built at the Gold Coast corner of Preston and Northwest Highway where the old Texaco station once stood, but the land owner has leased the property to a locksmith.

So a locksmith on every corner? Now comes word that the bank branch craze is in retreat. The Wall Street Journal reports that for the first time, the total number of retail bank branches will decline this year. It apparently costs a cool million to open a bank, and three years to turn a profit on a bank branch, and with the losses these institutions are suffering for all the bad loans they made, they cannot afford to expand, or even re-decorate.

So pretty and bright, this home is great for a first time home-buyer OR a couple looking to downsize to dual homes. Midway Hollow is loaded with both sets of homebuyers.

In Midway Hollow, you get pier and beam, wood floors, and great bones—all of which make these houses easy to expand. There is also a lot of new home building going on in Midway Hollow, to the dismay of some residents. This little circa 1953 number on Lomita Lane offers 1,703 square feet on a one-quarter acre lot (.257), three bedrooms, and two full baths. A little entry area leads to a light-filled living room with a pretty stone fireplace. The formal dining room is next to the living room, separated by French doors. Because the kitchen has been remodeled, the living area is open to it, showing off new cabinets and stainless steel appliances. But the best attribute of this home is the great backyard, filled with hefty trees and a wooden deck for entertaining. Hurry: at $324,000, this home will fly off the first-time home buyer shelf before that credit ends April 30.

Update: Sorry, phone rang as I finished this post. Address is 7142 Mimosa.

Update#2. Plus how great to live on a street named after a drink, I mean, a flower.

The home mortgage deduction worked just fine until the advent of a lot of things like adjustable rate mortgages,  creative financial types selling and securitizing loans, and the U.S. government silently approving loans to folks who couldn’t afford them. In other words, it worked for the last 60 years.

Let’s look at our neighbor to the north, Canada, where mortgage interest is not deductible. I was shocked to learn that home ownership rates in Canada are actually higher than in the USA — 69% there to our 67.2%, this without a tax advantage to home ownership.

But maybe it’s not the mortgage deduction that helped Canada remain the only industrialized country in the world that has survived the last two years of financial and economic stress without a single bank failure. Maybe it’s their banking structure. What do they do to survive the recent worldwide slowdown, and even the Great Depression, without a single bank failure, and what can the United States learn from Canada about sound banking?

There are many differences. Canadians hold a fixed rate for five years, then re-negotiate the loan. Canadian banks don’t sell off mortgages, mortgage insurance is more common up there than down here, and all Canadian mortgages are “full recourse” — that is, lender can go after personal assets in case of a default. There are higher pre-payment penalties which discourages lot of re-financing, and instead of encouraging home ownership for low income households, Canada provides public funding for low-rental housing.

But I still think we need our mortgage tax deduction. It is woven into the fabric of this country, and the housing market is one of our biggest indicators of economic health. Forget the old line that as GM goes, so goes the U.S.A;  replace it with as housing goes, so goes the U.S. economy.  If housing falls into the crapper at all levels, we all suffer just as we have been the last few years.  Building homes creates jobs, as does buying, selling, maintaining, decorating,  re-decorating, moving.  You really want to mess with that just as we may be seeing the light of day out of the worst recession since the Great Depression? That first-time homebuyers credit was one of the smartest things this administration has done to pull us out of the hole. It targeted a group of buyers who may have otherwise clung to renting. It moved them into new homes, where they set up housekeeping. Another bright idea: HUD relaxing the 90 day moratorium on flipping investment properties.

Chris, focus: if we eliminate the mortgage tax deduction, who in the beejesus is going to take those foreclosed homes, fix them up and flip them to the new home buyers? A new report out yesterday by George Roddy of Foresclosure Listing Service says that investors bought up 250 Dallas-area homes during the first quarter of  2010 for 56 cents on the dollar. (Investor buy ups represented more than six percent of the market.) Clearly, one man’s loss is another man’s gain.

“Despite the downturn in the economy, there are many households out there that have stashed some money away or have good credit.  For these families, it is an ideal time to be shopping for a home to live in or for an investment piece of real estate,” says Roddy.’”

I guess, Chris,  you were in Pampers in the 1980’s.

Then there’s this thing called pride in ownership, which comes when you have a little patch of grass to garden, a room of your own. Study after study shows that people who lease do not take care of the property as much as they would if they owned it. Studies also show children raised in homes their parents own actually score higher on exams.

Besides, have you noticed that if you want to motivate Americans to do just about anything, offer a tax credit?

Meantime, Barney Frank has written the heads of the nations’ top four second loan mortgage lending banks, asking them to basically write-off second liens on underwater properties. Like I said, I’m told that in many short sales, the first lien holder is often ready to play let’s make a deal but the second lien holder slows down the show. Why? Because usually they have to write off the loan. Foreclose on the property, you might get more than nothing. I also suspect they don’t want to write that loan off… on their books.

Do you think the administration’s and Mr. Frank’s treatments will get the market out of intensive care or just sustain it until the next election?

“Isn’t this great, ” said Charme Gallini with Dave Perry-Miller. “In the worst recession since the Great Depression, we are launching a magazine.”

Actually, they are not alone: Magazine Publishers of America claim magazine launches surged 10% in the first part of 2009 from the prior year. But the reason why Ebby is doing this is because it’s just smart. Agents of higher-end homes like to showcase their listings. It makes them look good with their sellers.

Seller: “What are you doing to market my house?” Agent: “I am putting your home everywhere, plastering the city with photos. Money is no option…”

Pinched by the recession, agents advertise homes in the newspaper, in magazines (like ours), and they send out postcards, letters — direct mail. Does it work? In this market, to some extent. But as I have studied what agents in other markets do, no. In fact, I may have to put on a bullet proof vest for this one, but newspaper advertising is almost unheard of in many markets on the east and west coast. Advisers who teach realtors to stay afloat tell them to aim for zero marketing dollars: do as much as they can on the web, target tightly, and network socially: 56%  of people on the internet are reached by Facebook.  (I had the discussion last night that Facebook is now essentially a nation unto itself.) They advise blogging (BAHHH!) and websites and spending, if any, marketing dollars locally, on a neighbor-hood based focus, like postcards. (But then other consultants claim postcards are a waste of paper and time.) Ask any realtor right now what the two scariest things in their life are: Craig’s List and Google. For the last four years, search interest in homes for sale has increased an average of 36% on Google. Despite the economic downturn, interest in real estate online continues to grow with 52% growth in search queries over the last three years, an average of 30% growth from Dec. to Jan EACH YEAR!

Another point: many of you may have seen the two “magazines” (neither have editorial) that Grand Vie is essentially cloning, Great Estates and Luxury Home. I’m told Great Estates is no more and Luxury Home is gorgeous but alas, expensive. Home sales are down and sliced, diced prices mean sliced, diced commissions in one of the hardest-hit real estate segments, million-dollar plus homes.

And so Ebby is trying to save its agents marketing dollars. As one company spokesman put it, we don’t have to make a profit on publishing this — all we care about is helping our agents have a beautiful place to market their properties. (Question: then why are you showing so many “sold” properties other than to demonstrate the prowess of that agent?) Which means, I guess,  get ready for two more glossy magazines to hit the mailboxes of the high-net worth soon — one from Briggs-Freeman, one from Allie Beth Allman.

*Ebby Halliday celebrates her 99th birthday March 9, the day Grand Vie begins arriving unsolicited in people’s mailboxes.

What is your favorite real estate web search site for House Porn and why do you like it? The comments are wide open and waiting for your response.

Here’s the deal: used to be that when an investor bought up a foreclosed property, they had to wait 90 days before they could sell it to someone bearing an FHA loan. That was discouraging to investors for many reasons. First of all, time is money — the faster they can get these properties fixed up and sold, the faster they get their profits. Chris says the average is about six weeks to clean up, paint, redo cabinets, counters and floors and pop in new appliances. Investors also like to buy and fix-up a slew at a time to utilize efficiencies in materials and labor. So before the change, they’d have to sit on the houses an additional six weeks.

Here’s the good news: for one trial year, investors can buy a home and flip it within 30 days.

This is also, says Chris, great news for the plethora of first-time home buyers out there. With more stringent borrowing rules, buyers have to dig deeper for heftier down payments and often do not have any resources (i.e. funds) left over after buying that starter home for improvements. They prefer spending a little more up front and wrapping it all into the financing, then move into a turn-key house that has been rehabilitated.

This brainy move will hopefully help the market absorb all those foreclosed properties faster, and fill those homes with warm, mortgage-paying bodies. Good for fueling the rest of the economy, too. Thanks, HUD.

(Uptown? Hey you guys totally copied us.)

Now here’s the housing connection: The Lofts At West 7th will have gorgeous downtown residential: 345 high end rental units with bamboo wood floors, deep soaking tubs, designer granite kitchens, walk-in closets, efficiencies to  three-bedroom apartments conveniently close to TCU, but priced for  professors or baby boomers who have shed their homes but prefer being in the city than out withering on a golf course in Florida.

West 7th, we’ll be watching you! And please, no plastic surgeons’ offices as tenants, that’s too Hollywood for Cow Town.

So it was no wonder that she settled in Munger Place, where she fell in love with a 2,700-square-foot classic colonial built in 1922. The home, like most in this historic Dallas neighborhood, needed work, so Karen jumped in with all her musical heart. She reinforced the foundation, replaced piers, and sanded the nearly100-year-old hardwoods. She put in her dream kitchen, with custom white cabinets, white granite counters, tile backsplash, Wolf range, convection oven, and wine cooler. She enclosed the back porch where, a century ago, laundry was wrung out in washtubs. Now enclosed, she popped in modern laundry equipment.

While she was bringing this grand dame into the 21st century, she kept a careful eye on the home’s heritage. So you can see the original 6-inch floor base trim, thick ceiling and crown moldings, and the original claw foot tub in the main upstairs bath. There are three bedrooms, two and a half baths, and some bonus attic square footage (only recently finished out) that we don’t want the tax man to know about.

So why is she selling her dream castle? Because a little more than a year ago, Karen suffered a stroke that nearly killed her, and it’s nearly impossible to make house payments when you are recovering from a stroke and unable to work. Friends say she is recovering beautifully and will return to the Dallas music world. The home’s price has been reduced to $355,000 from $370,000. Karen is currently in an assisted living center for her recovery; friends have moved her belongings to storage where they await her new home, which she hopes to buy with some of the equity from the sale of 5025 Junius, her dream home.

I wish more than anything that she could just go back there and live.

Her bank is waiting patiently, not wanting to foreclose, but it won’t wait forever. So I want to get the word out about this fabulous home, which has been loved and cherished. The seller needs to move on for reasons more serious than wanting a change of pace. The house has great vibes: before Karen, the home was owned by a host of happy people, including the Little Flower Missionary Society Organization in the 1960s. From 1937 to 1959, it was owned by Dr. and Mrs. Benjamin Schoolfield, and it was built in 1921 by owner/architect S.C. Skielvig, who worked at M.M. Mayfield and the T&P Railway. I’m not making any guarantees here, but there’s enough intellectual spirit in those walls to inspire anything.