Some cities, mostly in places where the market has slowed significantly in the last year, are offering incentives in the form of tax abatements to help developers unload slow-selling condominiums.

The neighborhoods tend to be pre-gentrification, but the savings can be significant. For instance, the buyer of a two-bedroom condo in a 180-unit development in a former school in Grand Rapids, Mich., will save about $5,300 a year in taxes until 2018. The savings is transferable to a buyer.

Kansas City, Des Moines, Brooklyn, Harrisburg, Columbus, Tacoma, Wash. and Richmond, Va. have dangled similar tax holidays in front of buyers.

Anyone who is buying a condo for investment should read the fine print. In many new projects, developers limit the number of investors to as little as 10 percent of total available units. And that’s despite more lenient standards set by Fannie Mae, which buys many condo mortgages from lenders. Fannie Mae permits an investor-owned level as high as 30 percent.

Source: Forbes, Matthew Swibel (06/04/07)

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Once more there was little movement in the mortgage markets during the week ended May 10, especially for fixed rate mortgages (FRM).

The 30-year FRM averaged 6.15 percent with 0.5 point compared to 6.16 percent and 0.5 point the previous week while the 15-year FRM was unchanged at 5.87 percent and 0.5 points. 

Five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs averaged 5.89 percent, an increase of two basis points. Fees and points were unchanged at 0.6.

One-year Treasury indexed ARM’s averaged 5.48 percent with 0.7 points. During the week ended May 13 the average was 5.42 percent with 0.7 point.

“Low employment growth in April - the slowest pace since November 2004 - and downward revisions to both February and March job growth tempered market concerns of future increases in the rate of inflation,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist. “As a result, mortgage rates were little changed this week.” Read more

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This is the second installment in a several part series about Second Life, a fantasy web site that is attracting much attention from role players and in the media. Click here to read part one of this series on virtual real estate.

Second Life is an interesting concept if viewed solely as entertainment. Losing one’s Avatar’s ears and clothing is amusing; flying headlong into a Gothic column is painless and pretty funny, and reading the blogs and coming to grips with some Second Life residents’ total commitment to their secondary reality is, well it is massively creepy. But Second Life is also a living, breathing economic system and, for that reason, it is fascinating.

Some of the figures coming out of that economy are startling and the numbers are increasing quickly. In November, 2006 13,788 Second Life business owners earned one dollar or more. These were U.S. dollars (USD) not the Second Life Linden Dollar (L$). Last month that number had grown to 34,474. Granted most had a Positive Monthly Linden Dollar Flow (PMLF) of less than $10 USD but 810 business owners had a PMLF of over $1,000 and 129 made more than $5,000. Read more

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Massachusetts’ property insurers are asking customers to absorb more risk or storm proof their homes.

Ten companies and the state’s insurer of last resort, the Massachusetts Fair Plan, have won or are seeking regulatory approval for higher deductibles that customers along the coast would pay if their homes are damaged by high winds or a hurricane.

These deductibles would be generally 2 percent to 5 percent of a home’s insured value, so that someone with a $400,000 home and a 5 percent deductible would be obligated to pay $20,000 before the insurance kicks in. Read more

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Wellington has remade its entire budget process this year, and the result will likely be fewer services for its relatively pampered residents.

The village is examining all its expenses and ranking them in importance from “must haves” that the village is required to provide to nice but unnecessary services.

With property tax reform looming in the Legislature, those unnecessary services likely won’t make it on the budget this year. Francine Ramaglia, the village’s finance director, expects Wellington will only be able to fund services ranked as level one or level two under the tax cuts. Services ranked either one or two are considered required, either by law or Wellington’s own comprehensive plan.

“If you cut back to level two, it’s a good level of service,” Ramaglia said. “But it’s not a Wellington level of service.” Read more

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Builders pulled residential construction permits at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,429,000 units in April. This was an 8.9 percent decline from the seasonally adjusted March rate of 1,569,000 and is down 28.1 percent from the revised April 2006 rate of 1,987,000 according to the monthly report on new residential construction released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The April figure represents the slowest pace for permitting since June, 1997.

Housing starts, however, bumped up a bit to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,528,000, 2.5 percent higher than the revised March figure of 1,491,000. Starts, however, were still 16.1 percent below the 1,821,000 pace of one year ago.

As is only logical with starts up and permitting down, the number of outstanding permits under which construction has not yet started dropped from 214,100 units to 200,900 units from March to April, a decrease of 6.1 percent and 14.7 percent lower than the 235,600 permits outstanding in April, 2006.

The President of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), California-based builder Brian Catalde remarked on the association’s website that “Builders are adjusting to the adverse impacts of tighter lending standards on home sales and cancellations by cutting back on the number of new permits and working down their backlog of unused permits. NAHB’s single-family Housing Market Index has been declining since February and builders are bracing for the challenges ahead.” Read more

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Sales in southern California neighborhoods that offer affordable housing and cater to first-time buyers are in freefall because of tougher mortgage loan standards, which is shrinking the pool of buyers.

Meanwhile, sales of houses in neighborhoods where prices are higher than $600,000 continue to be relatively brisk, according to an analysis of sales data by DataQuick Information Systems.
Read the rest of this entry »

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The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday passed key legislation — strongly supported by the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® — that would close a loophole which allows large retailers such as Home Depot to own a type of bank called an industrial loan company, or ILC.

The Industrial Bank Holding Company Act of 2007 (H.R. 698) passed by a landslide: 371-16.

“This is a huge victory for the real estate industry and for the stability of our nation’s economy,” says NAR President Pat V. Combs. “NAR has consistently opposed blurring the lines between banking and commerce.”

Citing dire economic risks, NAR has been a voice against any measure that would weaken the national policy against mixing banks and commerce — either by allowing commercial firms to engage in banking, or by permitting large national banks to engage in commercial activities such as real estate brokerage and management. Read more

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NEW YORK · Like the legions of aspiring poets, tap dancers and musicians who came before her, Nina Rubin, 29, a graduate of Wesleyan University, has struggled to find decent housing in New York. Earlier this year, she ended up in her most unusual home yet: an office.

After taking a job as an instructor at Outward Bound, Rubin, along with some of her co-workers, settled into the top floor of the organization’s Long Island City headquarters. She camped out in a bunk bed; others converted nearby office cubicles into sleeping spaces or pitched tents on the roof of the building. To create some privacy, they hung towels and sheets around their bunks.

Rubin, who has since moved to Vermont for a short while, was grateful for a free place, though Outward Bound officials emphasized they view these cubicles and tents as temporary housing solutions. Read more

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TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Senate early Thursday approved its version of a property tax relief package that rolls back city and county taxes while providing extra tax breaks for first time homebuyers and business owners.

The vote sets the stage for the House and Senate to immediately begin working out their differences over how to address a brewing property tax crisis that led hundreds of homeowners from across the state to protest outside the Capitol earlier this week.

“This plan benefits every single property owner in the state,” said Senate Majority Leader Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden. “I think it’s pretty awesome.”

The House plan, passed Wednesday, calls for a major cut in local government property taxes and would let voters decide if they want to eliminate property taxes in exchange for an increase in the state’s 6 percent sales tax. The House plan could ultimately lead to a 2.5-cent increase in the sales tax, making it the highest state-mandated sales tax in the country. But House leaders are predicting homeowners could ultimately save $35 billion over the next five years. Read more

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