U-Haul sells color coded tape to help make moving an easier job. The tape has the as the room or printed right on it allowing you to tape and label your belongings in one step. What a great way to ease and speed up that move!
While working on permits for Desert Highlands, the sixth phase of the Desert Canyon Resort, the developers were surprised to learn that Douglas County will now require them to improve a 1 mile section of Brays Landing Road at a cost of nearly $2 million.
The investor/developers claim in a Wenatchee World article that the development is in jeopardy because of this new requirement. Even though the improvements to Brays Landing Road were not mentioned when the master plan was first developed in the 1990s, current Douglas County standards would require the developers to improve the road. Each phase of the project, under county regulations, is re-evaluated under current road standards regardless of what was in place earlier.
The Desert Highlands project is the development’s sixth phase. It would be surrounded by the Desert Canyon Golf Resort and will include 140 lots and three parks on 80 acres, said the lead planning consultant, Thom Vetter, owner of ecoPlan & Design in Wenatchee.
Vetter said Wednesday his clients have no problem with the state Department of Transportation’s request to include turning lanes from Highway 97. Nor do they have a problem with paying to improve a frontage road and second entrance to the area, he said.
“But they are not willing to widen Brays Landing Road from the development’s entrance all the way to the highway, especially when our traffic study says it isn’t necessary,” Vetter said.
Commissioner Ken Stanton explained to the group involved with the project that the county has road standards that developers must follow. “We can’t just say willy-nilly that you don’t have to follow our road standards,” he said. - Wenatchee World
It certainly seems like a shame for this project to stall when the industry with our economy in its current state. Maybe they just need some new financing options!
Here are some comparisons of some basics for the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS) and the Lake Chelan Co-Brokers MLS. Most Lake Chelan real estate brokerages are only members of the local Lake Chelan MLS. The entire Puget Sound area is served by the NWMLS. Most folks over there, and many agents, think it is also the MLS in the Lake Chelan area. It does have listings here, but only those of the few brokerages who are members of both or properties that are listed exclusively with agents from other areas.
With almost 90% of homes being sold by agents other than the listing agent, do you want 100 or so agents able to sell your property, or 24,000 agents able to sell your property? Do you want thousands more people seeing your property? These are important questions if you are selling your Lake Chelan home or real estate.
Lake Chelan MLS NWMLS
# of Agents 120 24,000
Coverage Local Chelan Area 21 Counties
Closed Sales 9 3,214
February
Active Listings 353 36,350
Americans have not only reduced their appetite for cashing out their home equity but are often bringing cash to the table and reducing their principal when they refinance. Yep, rather than taking money out when refinancing, a “cash out” refinance, homeowners are paying down their mortgages and putting money in for “cash in” refinancing. Apparently those cash out home equity loans are just so 2006 today!
Now the pendulum in consumer psychology appears to be swinging toward reduction of household debt — whether on credit cards or mortgages.
In Freddie Mac’s latest quarterly survey of refinancings, 33% of homeowners put cash into the deal to lower their mortgage balances, the highest percentage ever. By contrast, only 27% of refinancers took cash out — the lowest percentage on record.
Why shift money from savings into your house? Nothaft says a small percentage of refinancers — including himself and his wife — traditionally have preferred to lower their mortgage balances whenever possible.
There are at least two key rationales for doing so, Nothaft says. No. 1: If interest rates are low and you’re getting minuscule returns on your bank savings or money market funds, paying down your home loan may well provide you a better return on your investment. - LA Times
If you’re daring and want to buy foreclosures, there is a new web site being set up just for you. www.rebuildus.com is set up to sell some of the homes bought by a major foreclosure investor, James Odell Barnes, over the web.
Mr. Barnes buys his foreclosures in big batches over the phone. He doesn’t visit, inspect them or even see them before buying them. That’s also how buyers would typically be buying them!
While rebuildus.com does have an area for people to purchase for their primary residence, most of its customers are expected to be investors. His homes average sale price is about $4,000 and they would typically be sold in batches of 5 or more to people interested in reselling them.
The idea is for users of the new Web site to resell the homes to low-income people on what amounts to an installment plan, with monthly payments stretching over 15 years or so, a technique known as “seller financing.” That’s because many of the people likely to buy homes in poor neighborhoods couldn’t qualify for bank loans. The site provides links to firms that can manage and sell the properties on behalf of buyers, for a fee. – WSJ
This isn’t a plan I’m suggesting to anyone, but it is another example of using the internet to market homes.
The folks at the Pine River hedge fund believe housing is heading into a double dip with the small recovery we’ve seen followed by another down turn. The Pine River hedge fund makes big bets in the housing market.
Hedge fund firm Pine River, which makes big bets on housing, is bracing for a double dip in that market, its chief executive officer said on Tuesday.
“There are still issues in the housing markets and it would not surprise us to see the recovery turn down,” Brian Taylor, who founded the $1.6 billion hedge fund eight years ago, said at the Reuters Private Equity and Hedge Funds Summit in New York. – Reuters
I share the concern that housing may be headed for a double dip. Well, Pine River might not see it as a concern as much as an opportunity to make money. However, if you’re a seller pay attention. There may not be a better time to sell your Lake Chelan home than right now for some time!
The Lake Chelan Residential Real Estate Market Report shows that waterfront home sales at Lake Chelan are up for 2010! Since 2009 was a pretty good year for sales of waterfront home sales at Lake Chelan, that’s a pretty strong performance.
Community Waterfront homes sales are up so far as well. That means 3 so far this year versus only 1 at the end of February last year. 4 waterfront homes have sold as compared to only 1 last year at the end of February. Prices are down a bit. The only home waterfront home last year was a high priced one, at $2.7 million. This is above the average of $954,975 so far this year. But prices on the Community Waterfront homes are up, with this year’s average sales price at $396,666 through February compared to $270,000 last year.
Combined, we have had 7 sales of waterfront and community waterfront homes this year compared to a total of 2 for last year. That’s a pretty strong difference! As I’ve been saying for a little while now, this is the time to be selling at Lake Chelan!
If you have ever considered fishing, hunting, hiking, boating or almost anything outdoors, you have probably heard of Cabelas. Today, a Lake Chelan Ranch property is featured on the Cabelas Trophy Properties web site. (click the picture for a larger version)
The property on the Cabelas web site is our listing, the Antoine Creek Ranch. While not every property is a match for Cabelas Properties, we have lots of great acreages and ranch properties that are an ideal fit. I have been working with the Cabelas Franchisee in Eastern Washington, Northwest Outdoor Properties, to be able to provide this service to our clients in the Lake Chelan area.
Now you have one more reason to consider selling your Lake Chelan property with Criterion Properties!
The real estate news today is troubling. New home sales have plunged to a 50 year low in January. The current pace of troubled commercial loans is on pace to hit $6o billion this year which is trouble for both banks and the real estate market. One in four borrowers are underwater on their home mortgage balance at the end of 2009!
The Fed hopes to wind down its program of buying mortgage backed securities in March, although it seems unlikely. The feds have been buying virtually all of them for the last year. When it does, interest rates will go in only one direction. That will bring higher payments to people who have Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) who have been experiencing rates as low as 3%. Their options will be to either refinance, make the payments or eventually lose their homes.
Read the links. That is a bunch of clouds on the horizon for a market that is still a long ways from healthy. Ignoring those indicators would be like thinking in 2007 that real estate could never lose value. If you are still thinking that prices can’t go any lower, while I hope you’re right, you may want to have contingency plans in case they do.
In 2007, it was still considered irresponsible to default on your mortgage. That’s not the case anymore. A study last year by researchers at Experian Information Solutions Inc., a credit-reporting company, and consultants Oliver Wyman Group estimates that 588,000 U.S. mortgage borrowers defaulted strategically in 2008, more than double the year-earlier total. I would expect the pace to climb with so many more homeowners underwater on their mortgages.
That is the question being asked by Credit Suisse’s home building analyst Dan Oppenheim.
Home price declines, paired with low mortgage rates, have made ownership possible for many would-be buyers left on the sidelines during the housing boom. The monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home was just 15.3% of the median-family income in the fourth quarter, far below the 20% average from 1991-2008. Affordability, the key driver of housing demand, is “at or better than historic averages in 49 of the top 50 home building markets,” Mr. Oppenheim writes in a client note. - WSJ
While many experts have predicted that the market will eventually stabilize at a lower home ownership level and with higher percentages of people renting, the ration or price of homes to income levels might suggest a different outcome. What I can tell you for sure is that the predictions for the future are mixed.
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