Supermodel sells her home in the Hollywood Hills for $4 million and nests in the East. Looks like Gisele Bundchen sold her one-story, gated Spanish hacienda in the Sunset Strip area. The house has a media room, a gym, city views and a pool. With four bedrooms, there's enough room for the Gisele's five sisters, including her twin, to stay overnight. Bündchen said an official farewell in 2005 to her relationship with Leonardo DiCaprio. They were chosen by People magazine as the "Most Beautiful Couple in the World" in 2004. Her personal fortune, valued at $150 million, put her in the "Guinness World Records" book as "the world's richest supermodel." She has modeled for Victoria's Secret, Louis Vuitton, Valentino, Lanvin and Vogue Eyewear. She is a spokesmodel for Christian Dior and Ralph Lauren. And she has her own line of shoes, called Ipanema Gisele Bündchen. More than 100 million pairs have been sold in six years. Click here to read more.
Buyers in for future shock. Stage is set for a legislative battle over builder fees that are passed on to the next guy. Builders of housing developments generally are required to pay for the construction of roads, sewers and schools for the new residents. It's a given that those costs are passed along to the buyers of those homes. What isn't a given is that, for years, some builders in California and a handful of other states have been passing along other costs of doing business — appeasing environmentalists and local governments to get their projects approved — to subsequent buyers as well. The builders attach private transfer fees, which range from about 0.05% to 1.75% of the purchase price, to the deed, which must be paid every time the home is sold. Typically set at 1%, fees on a home sold for $550,000 would be $5,500. The fees can remain in effect 20 to 25 years or longer. The California Assn. of Realtors, which became aware of the practice about 18 months ago and opposes it, says it adds a hidden expense to the price of homes and makes them even less affordable. Click here to read more.
Appealing a low appraisal may mean doing some legwork. As many people are finding out that, in today's down market, their homes aren't worth what they thought. At least not in the eyes of the professionals hired to tell lenders what the places could fetch. If a real, live appraiser is responsible for a valuation you think has come in too low, you always can ask for a second opinion from another appraiser. But you'll have to pay for that too. Moreover, the second valuation must be more than 5% higher than the first. In the appraisal game, anything less is considered an acceptable difference. Click here to read more.
House & Garden : L.A. Design. Get a jump on you summer entertaining by gussying up your nest with indoor and outdoor decorating projects. Peruse some of the classic Home sections from the L.A. Times. Click here to read more.
Arizona is the new Nevada. The Phoenix area is a magnet for people from the Golden State for two reasons: real estate prices and jobs. According to Kyle Campos, "Living in Santa Barbara, you get used to nothing being under a million dollars, and a million-dollar house is really small," Campos said. "Here, I could build my dream house for less than $300,000. At some point, you weigh the beach versus a realistic life someplace." These days, that "someplace" is likely to be Maricopa County. For the first time since Nevada became a magnet for Californians in the 1990s, the Phoenix area has nudged Las Vegas aside as the No. 1 destination for people fleeing the Golden State and its soaring home prices. In fact, the Arizona-bound are at the head of a long parade of bargain hunters marching out of expensive urban California and settling ever eastward, in Riverside, San Bernardino, Buckeye, Phoenix. Click here to read more.
Real estate market is in the midst of a slowdown. CAR has forecast a statewide 7 percent drop in sales of existing, single-family homes in 2007. In California there were 31,434 foreclosure filings reported for March, the most of any state and an increase of 36 percent from the previous month, according to RealtyTrac. The foreclosure surge pushed California's rate to one filing for every 389 households. In the Inland area, San Bernardino and Riverside, where new construction took place at a blistering pace during the real estate boom, there's now an overhang in demand, Appleton-Young said. Expect the area to feel the pinch worse, because people flocked to the still-relatively-affordable Inland area while prices were soaring. Those buyers went in search of affordable prices, and many were low- to middle-income families taking advantage of adjustable rate and interest-only loans to get into a home, Appleton-Young said. "That's where you had a lot of the subprime market, households that were facing affordability hurdles being forced inland, and a lot of speculative demand for housing," she said. "The supply is there, but the demand is not." In Los Angeles County, CAR's housing inventory measurement for February was 7.7 months. In San Diego County, there was a 10.2-month supply, and in Orange County the supply was measured at 12.5 months. In the Riverside and San Bernardino areas there is a 17-month supply, according to CAR. Click here to read more.
~Tina Jan~
Coldwell Banker Kivett-Teeters
1655 E. Sixth St.
Beaumont, CA 92223
Work: 951-845-5520 Ext. 105
Fax: 951-845-4916
Cell: 909-446-2666
Toll-Free: 1-877-TINAJAN
tina.jan@coldwellbanker.com
www.tinajan.com
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