In Mirage Mills, we’ve seen it all when it comes to the housing mess. Entire neighborhoods are so run down you would think Home Depot went out of business. Our kids think “bank owned” is an invitation to invite their friends to a weekend blow-out and trash a vacated house. The black market in copper stripped from hot water pipes and gutters is a major source of local employment. They don’t call my town the Chernobyl of American real estate for nothing.

So it’s no surprise that Mirage Mills was the birthplace of the short sale. Back then, we didn’t call it a short sale. We called it the Big Loser.

The Big Loser was the brain child of Ernest S. Crowe, the smartest mortgage guy in town. His friend, Ziggy Callamitti, was farther underwater than Jacques Cousteau in a National Geographic special. The monthly payments were killing him, so Ziggy decided to walk away from his home and mail the keys to the bank. Today they call that a “strategic default.” In those days we called it being a bum.

Ernest had a better idea. “Your bank will lose a ton of money if they foreclose on you. It will take them years to sell your house. I’ll ask them if they would consider forgiving, say, ten percent of your principal and refinance you at today’s rates. Then you would be able to afford your monthly payments. “

“Why would they ever do that?” asked Ziggy. “They don’t care if I lose my shirt. Ernest, these are the same people that sold me a loan they knew darn well I could never afford.”

“You have to think like a banker,” said Ernest with a knowing smile. “Bankers aren’t stupid.”

Well, Ernest was wrong. The bankers laughed at him. “Ten percent? Get outta here. I guess you would like to us to lower our profits ten percent, cut our dividends ten percent and get Christmas bonuses ten percent smaller than last year?”

“But you will lose a lot more if he walks,” said Ernest.

“You guys live in the Chernobyl of American real estate. You’re all bottom feeders. One guy gets ten percent, everybody else is gonna want ten percent. No, we need to make an example of deadbeats like your client. Tell him to go ahead and walk. We’ll torch his credit for the next 40 years,” said the bankers.

“Ernest, your problem is you don’t think like a banker,” said Ziggy when Ernest recounted his conversation. “And I mean that as a compliment.”

So Ziggy quit paying his mortgage like almost everybody else in Mirage Mills and waited. When the bank replaced the daily robo calls with very nasty real people threatening to foreclose, he decided to act first and not give them the pleasure.

The U-Haul in his driveway was nearly packed when Ernest called. “Congress just passed this thing called the homebuyer tax credit. Prices are going to go up.”

“So?”

“So let’s go ahead, find a buyer for your house now and get out of this whole mess. Do the bank a favor and save them some money. They’ll do much better than they would if they foreclose. You’ll take a credit hit, but at least you’ll be free and you can more on. It’s as close to a win-win as we’re gonna get.”

Ziggy reluctantly agreed and his real estate agent managed to find a young couple who had just heard about the tax credit. They put a contract on the house before it was listed. When Ernest called the bank, he discovered they had brought in a new manager because the old one had lost so much money. The new manager didn’t think like a banker, either. He listened when Ernest explained how they would do better by going ahead with the sale and agreed to jump through hoops with his bosses to make it happen.

They say that things happen for a reason and maybe the world wasn’t quite ready for the first short sale. The financing fell through for the young couple. It took another whole year to sell Ziggy’s house, for a lot less. By then the tax credit deal was over and prices in Mirage Mills plummeted once again. The bank lost $20,000 more than they expected on Ziggy’s house but the new manager stuck it out until the deal was done.

Instead of a win-win, it was actually a lose-lose . But it could have been a lot worse for everyone concerned, so that’s why we called it the Big Loser instead of the Biggest Loser, like the TV show about fat people. Ziggy lost his house and he couldn’t get a credit card for years, but he got to live in his house for free and saved enough to make some great stock investments. The bank lost a bundle, but they still did better than they would have had the house gone into foreclosure. Most importantly, the managers got their full Christmas bonuses every year. Ziggy’s real estate agent worked ten times harder than she would have for a normal sale, but she wrote a hugely successful training course based on what she learned and became the Mirage Mills Realtor of the Year. Poor Ernest, who thought the whole thing up in the first place, was the biggest loser. He didn’t make a dime.

Never did we think the Big Loser would become such a big deal. Now they call it a short sale, even though there’s nothing short about it. I guess that’s how it goes in the whacky world of real estate where words mean just the opposite of what you would think, like down payments that never go down and closing costs that aren’t the end at all but just the beginning of what your home is going to cost you.

Even though 92 percent of property managers report rents are rising or the same as they were a year ago, property managers are attracting residents more easily than a year ago.

A new TransUnion survey found that nearly half of respondents (48 percent) said rental prices on the majority of their units had increased since this same time last year. Approximately 44 percent said rental prices remained the same.  In the 2011 TransUnion rental survey, only 39 percent reported an increase while 48 percent said prices remained the same.

“Data throughout the last year has pointed to a healthier rental market, and our survey helps validate the current strength of the rental industry,” said Steve Roe, vice president, TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions. “The rise in rental prices, coupled with a decrease in vacancy rates and the ability to attract new residents with less effort are all positive signs for the market and rental property managers.”

Despite increasing rental prices, more property managers are finding it easier to locate prospective residents. Nearly 73 percent of respondents said it is not difficult to find residents compared to 67 percent last year.

Even with a healthier rental market, property managers continue to be concerned with attracting profitable and reliable residents for the remainder of the year. Nearly 60 percent of respondents said they are concerned or very concerned to find such tenants. “Though this number is down from 65 percent in last year’s survey, it does point to the continued unease about the economy and a lingering question about the ability of tenants to make timely rental payments,” added Roe.

Property managers also may be cautious because more than half of survey respondents (53 percent) said they have had a renter “skip out” leaving the unit with unpaid rent or damages. Approximately 18 percent of those surveyed said a tenant has skipped out in the last year.

“Finding reliable tenants is critical as property managers can lose thousands of dollars in rent if a tenant skips out of a rental unit, or if the property manager must take action to evict someone from a unit,” said Roe. “Nearly 50% of small property managers said they’ve had someone skip out of their rental unit. Many of these people only rent out a few units, thus it’s especially important for them to do all they can to identify reliable tenants.”

Paris has narrowly beaten London to be ranked as the top spot for investors in student property , according to research by the Knight Frank.

London missed out on the top spot for student housing due to the high cost of living; it is followed by Vienna, Dublin and Barcelona.

James Pullan, head of student property, Knight Frank, commented: “Student accommodation in the UK has delivered solid and consistent returns throughout every year of the economic downturn, thereby attracting significant volumes of international equity and institutional debt into the sector.”

The number of students travelling overseas to attend university has been rising steadily in recent decades, and this trend is set to continue. Just as the world’s economies have become more globalised, with the relaxation of trade barriers, education has also become a global commodity.

Students now seek out the best educational institutions across the globe. The factors that lie behind this trend are the rise of the middle classes in emerging economies, especially Asia, along with the growing acceptance of international higher education qualifications across the world.

Pullan added: “The rise in global student mobility has created an excellent opportunity for investment in key European cities and is a long-term trend that is set to continue. This structural shift in the make-up of student populations has significant consequences for cities that play host to the world’s best universities, and throws up key opportunities for developers and operators.”

While there are those who will steadfastly claim that Manhattan real estate is virtually bullet proof, many are worried that modest second-quarter gains in apartment prices augur a possible drop-off in demand during the second half of 2012, according to The Wall Street Journal. Economic and political uncertainties are paradoxically believed to be both a driver of demand and inhibitor of decision making by buyers. Economic turmoil in Europe may be driving sales of higher-end properties as a New York is seen as a safe haven for capital. But worries over Europe’s debt situation and uncertainty over the U.S. presidential election may be giving some buyers pause. Others feel that perhaps a drop in the latest median price of sales indicates that demand is being driven by first-time home buyers and that an uptick in prices has others concerned about buying into an up market.

As usual there is conflicting evidence supporting both worry and confidence. People are feeling antsy though. Market reports come out next week, and it’s unclear whether more data will calm or jangle real estate nerves

Beach Boy Would Love to Sell Tuscan-Style Pebble Beach Estate

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Date:June 27, 2012 | Author:Laura Vecsey | Category:Eye Candy

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Mike Love and The Beach Boys played the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee. SOURCE: Rolling Stone

Mike Love has not changed his mind. The Beach Boys’  baritone front man still wants to sell his  Pebble Beach, CA, home, which has been re-listed for $5.995 million.

The Tuscan-style home has been on and off the market since 2008, when it was first listed for sale at $7.875 million.

Love’s California crash pad is up the coast from where he and his cousins Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson, along with Al Jardine, created the lush sounds that changed pop music.

With 7 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms, the nearly 9,000-square-foot house is a haven for good times, complete with formal and informal dining spaces, generous patios, wine cellar, elevator, exercise, entertainment and game rooms plus views of the Pacific Ocean.

Love and his wife, Jacqueline, told The Wall Street Journal that the reason for selling is a lifestyle change, now that their children are out of school. However, Love and his family have long made Lake Tahoe their primary residence. The family lives in an 18,000-square-foot home in Incline Village on the Nevada side of the lake.

Love also owns a co-op apartment on the Upper East Side of New York City that he and his wife teamed to remodel. The 3-bedroom, 3-bathroom condo at 300 E. 93rd St.  had been listed for sale in late 2009.

Love, Brian Wilson and Jardine have reunited and are currently touring worldwide again as The Beach Boys, winning rave reviews for concerts across the U.S. and their new album, “That’s Why God Made Radio.”

Opposing voices were raised—sometimes only slightly but often simultaneously—when the town board mediated a full-throated debate Tuesday over the relative merits and potential perils of lawn-mower-powered leaf mulching.

After two sometimes-tempestuous hours, the debate ended largely in a draw, a consensus holding that leaf-mulching and leaf removal each has a place in Bedford’s rites of autumn.

Pre-empted by voting booths for the state’s new June primary, board members were forced to set up shop in the town hall basement. After squeezing in some 15 guests, the board heard from proponents of dicing leaves where they fall as well as critics who warned that such a bed of disintegrated leaves creates an attractive habitat for ticks.

The chief mulching advocate, Fiona Mitchell, a certified master gardener, as well as a number of her supporters, discussed the benefits of nourishing a lawn’s soil with decomposing leaves.

But Mark Solomon, who delivered most of the evening’s warnings, asserted that the pulverized leaves, allowed to nestle amid the lawn’s blades of grass, not only provide a convenient habitat for disease-carrying ticks but can also multiply the number of them.

A Bedford Hills resident and member of the town’s Tree Advisory Board, Solomon had conveyed his concerns to the town board on three earlier occasions, by Supervisor Lee Roberts’ count.

“That’s the genesis of this meeting,” she said. Opening the work session shortly after its scheduled 7 p.m. start, Roberts sat alone at the board table. Councilmen arrived as the supervisor sounded a theme that would be repeated in various forms all night. “I don’t think there’s hard fact on either side of this issue,” Roberts said, disclosing that she mulches her lawn as she helps with the weekly mowing. “It’s exercise and I enjoy it,” she said.

Mulching, its supporters maintain, provides an additional environmental benefit by not transporting leaves, which otherwise must be moved, first by gas-fired blower to the curb and later by diesel-powered truck to a composting station.

For much of the two hours, opposing sides traded charges and experts’ opinions, often in a welter of simultaneous crosstalk. Mitchell’s supporters included fellow members of “Leave Leaves Alone” and members of “Love ’em and Leave ’em,” a leaf-mulching initiative based in southern Westchester’s river villages. Solomon’s supporters included landscapers and tree board chair Michael Serio.

In the end, however, the last word on mulching vs. removal went to the board, and the word was mulching and removal.

Deputy Supervisor Peter Chryssos, returning to the theme Roberts sounded in her opening remarks, said, “What I’m . . . hearing is that by mulching leaves, it is inconclusive—from all the emails we’ve gotten, from all the discussions we’ve had—it’s inconclusive as to what exactly the effect of mulching leaves is on the tick population.

“Perhaps,” he said, “the answer is better communication,” explaining to people that “there are issues on either side of this [question].”

One issue not under consideration, officials insist, is financial. Still, Solomon told the town officials, “I’ve heard talk about you stopping leaf pickup,” an assertion denied during and after the meeting.

But Anne Holmes of Irvington, coordinator of school programs and environmental projects at the Greenburgh Nature Center, recalled how budget pressures led to leaf-mulching in her village’s parks, an economy move other tax-cap-constrained governments are either considering or have already seized.

Bronxville, for one, adopted leaf-mulching to soften a reported $100,000 price tag for annual leaf pickup. Officials in Bedford, a community 45 times larger than Bronxville—with three times the people and countless more trees—insist they have no separate accounting for annual leaf-removal costs. But observers acknowledge that the green a mulching mower cuts could mean more grass.   

Mulching mowers, and attachments that can retrofit others to accomplish the task, circulate the clippings—grass or leaves—under the mower until they’re chopped into pieces small enough that a neat lawn can accommodate them.

Councilman David Gabrielson recalled his own adventures with a 12-year-old Snapper mower. “Every leaf that landed on my lawn I ran over with a lawn mower,” he said.

“It produced a relatively fine residue, which made its way within a couple of weeks into the grass. It was barely discernible and by the following spring it was gone,” Gabrielson continued.

“Never had a tick, never saw a tick,” he said.

“That’s not a scientific experiment,” Solomon challenged.

“Of course not,” Gabrielson said.