Real Estate News for Monday, August 6th, 2007

I was reading through my daily real estate news articles and found some interesting tidbits for my blog. The New York Times had a fun article about internet house valuation called, What’s My House Worth? And Now? The author talks about her constant obsession with her home's fluctuating value from different websites such as, EAppraisal.com, RealEstateABC.com, HomeGain.com, CyberHomes.com, PropertyShark.com, Zillow.com. It's a comical view on the inaccuracy of those internet valuation sites. I'd say it's worth a quick look through.

In celebrity real estate news, Mel Gibson has just sold his Malibu home for $30 million. The home is 7,000 sqft with 155 feet of beachfront property, 6 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, a gym, a library, an office, an elevator, a lagoon pool, a cabana, a bar and a wine cellar. The Malibu deal preceded Gibson's sale this month of his 28-room, Tudor-style mansion on 76 acres in Greenwich, Conn. The selling price of the 13-bedroom, 16,000-square-foot estate was reported by Bloomberg News as $39.5 million. And in May, Gibson bought a 400-plus-acre agricultural and cattle ranch in Costa Rica for $25.8 million, according to La Nación, a Costa Rican publication. Gibson appears to be quite the real estate money-maker.

So is anyone else interested in Bravo's new house flipping show? I haven't had a chance to take a look at it, but sources say that "Jeff Lewis is a very scary man, and he isn't scary solely because he treats his employees like dust mites or consults a psychic to assist him in the running of his business or sends his cat, Monkey, to an acupuncturist. No, Jeff Lewis, a Los Angeles real estate speculator who is a native of Orange County, evokes a chill because he is so leveraged, a man balancing multiple mortgages like bricks on a noodle." Now who could turn down such a disaster of a show?! It'll be like watching a train wreck, complete with shudders and cringes of pain.



Hiring in California was hit by a bad case of June gloom last month as the effects of the real estate slowdown seeped into the job market, according to data released yesterday by the California Employment Development Department. Economists pinned the blame for slow job growth on the local housing market. In the past year, home sales declined 24 percent, meaning less work for mortgage and real estate brokers. And applications for residential-construction permits have declined in nine of the past 10 months, meaning less work for builders.

There is a sunny side to real estate though. Delinquencies in California's commercial real estate market hit a 5-year low, in contrast to the residential market that is reeling with a record number of defaults. Just for your information, a loan is considered delinquent if the mortgagee is two or more payments late.

For new homebuyers, I read a great article with a checklist of things that would be helpful. The first thing to do is to talk to a good lender. It saves you time because you know what you can afford.
I can't stress how important it is to work with an agent and lender that you trust. There are so many scary people out there who aren't afraid to commit fraud. Check out the article by clicking the link at the beginning of this paragraph. There are alot of good basics to follow.


~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