Harsh Reality of Home Flipping
Leave a reply
Monthly Archives: May 2014
Why your home is not a good investment
Home sellers on price: The sky is the limit
Local Farmer’s Markets | Bedford Rel Estate
| |
|
Miami mansion once owned by drug lord Escobar garners nearly $10 million | Bedford Corners Real Estate
A Miami businessman on Thursday purchased a waterfront mansion once owned by Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar and said he plans to raze the coral pink house that federal officials seized in the late 1980s.
Christian Berdouare, the owner of a chain of casual Miami restaurants, paid $9.65 million for the 7,300-square-foot (680- square-meter) home in an affluent Miami Beach neighborhood, saying the location was its main attraction, not its history.
“If anything it’s a negative,” he said, referring to the property’s link to Escobar. “I don’t particularly like drug dealers and I don’t want to have their energy close to me.”
U.S. marshals seized the property in 1987 along with nearly $20 million of the Medellín Cartel’s Florida real estate assets.
Also included in the seizure was a 45-unit apartment complex, a three-bedroom condominium near a high-end Miami mall, a horse ranch in central Florida and a 240-unit rental complex near Fort Lauderdale then worth $9.6 million.
Miami attorney Roger Schindler bought the mansion from the U.S. government in 1990 for $915,000.
Escobar, along with members of the Ochoa family who sat atop the cartel, were among the world’s most wanted drug traffickers in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Escobar was gunned down in 1993 in Colombia with the help of U.S. counter-narcotics agents.
It is unclear if Escobar ever visited the Miami Beach home.
“According to neighbors and real estate agents he was definitely there,” said Mirce Curkoski with ONE Sotheby’s Realty who represented Berdouare in the sale.
read more….
http://news.yahoo.com/miami-mansion-once-owned-drug-lord-escobar-garners-224528290–sector.html
Demi Moore Wants to Sell Her San Remo Triplex for $75M | Chappaqua Real Estate
[Photo of Demi Moore via Getty]
Actress Demi Moore is looking to sell her home in the celeb-favored San Remo for a whopping $75 million. According to the Post, the price tag—which makes the home a contender for the most expensive co-op sale ever—include’s Moore’s “stunning” triplex, along with a ground-floor two-bedroom. Sadly, there is no official listing, and the Post has zero details about what the apartment looks like. The A-lister has listed in the Upper West Side building for awhile, and last year, the co-op was in the news because Moore wanted ex-husband Ashton Kutcher to pay her for renovations to the unit, which was reportedly valued at $25 million.
Over the years, the building has housed dozens of celebrities, including Donna Karan, Steven Spielberg, Glenn Close, Tiger Woods, Diane Keaton, the late Steve Jobs, and Dustin Hoffman, who sold his triplex for $21 million earlier this year. Moore is asking more than three times that (yes, yes, her asking price does include a second unit), so we’re very curious to see what, if anything, makes it worth that much dough
read more….
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/05/08/demi_moore_wants_to_sell_her_san_remo_triplex_for_75m.php
Is the smart money exiting the housing market? | North Salem NY Homes
The number of all-cash residential property buyers in the U.S. was on the rise in the first quarter, while institutional investors increasingly bowed out of the market.
All-cash buys constituted 42.7 percent of all residential property sales in the first quarter of 2014 — up 37.8 percent from the previous quarter and a 19.1 percent jump year-over-year, according to RealtyTrac’s first-quarter institutional investor and cash sales report, cited by Zero Hedge.
Institutional investors, meanwhile, are trickling out of the market. Traditional all-cash buyers like Blackstone accounted for only 5.6 percent of U.S. residential sales in the first three months of the year, down from 6.8 percent the previous quarter and 7 percent in the same period a year ago. This marks the lowest level of investment for institutional investors since the first quarter of 2012, according got the report.
“Strict lending standards combined with low inventory continue to give the advantage to investors and other cash buyers in this housing market,” Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac, told Zero Hedge. “The good news is that as institutional investors pull back their purchasing in many markets across the country, there is still strong demand from other cash buyers — including individual investors, second-home buyers and even owner-occupant buyers — to fill the vacuum of demand left by institutional investors.”
According to some industry watchers, the trend is evidence that “smart money” is exiting the market, leaving property flippers to pick up the scraps and deep-pocketed foreign buyers to snatch up properties as second, third or fourth homes.
read more…
http://therealdeal.com/blog/2014/05/08/is-smart-money-exiting-the-housing-market/
Take a Virtual Stroll Through Tokyo’s Bamboo Basket Bakery | Armonk NY Homes
Photo via Arch Daily
Built by pile o’ sticks guru Kengo Kuma—whose quirky, previous projects include high-design Starbucks locales and timber-lined dog huts—this bamboo basket-shaped bakery in Tokyo just might be the oddest, most flammable purveyor of sweets in all the land. Constructed using Kuma’s signature Japanese joint technique of “Jiigoku-Gumi,” the design team explains that the SunnyHills pineapple cake shop uses its interior and exterior wooden latticework to differentiate itself from its surroundings by appearing “completely different from a concrete box.” Inside, the space feels open and sunny, thanks to the filtered daylight streaming through the slatted walls. French architect and filmmaker Vincent Hecht has a video tour of the standout little building, below:
read more….
http://curbed.com/archives/2014/05/08/take-a-virtual-stroll-through-tokyos-bamboo-basket-bakery.php
Award-Winning Modern Country Estate In Dallas Asks $9M | Mt Kisco Real Estate
18 images
Location: Dallas, Texas
Price: $8,975,000
The Skinny: This striking modern home outside Dallas opens itself up to the spectacular surrounding scenery with 23-foot walls and windows that wrap around the living room and his and hers offices. The attention to the home’s relation to the outdoors continues with its siting, which maximizes sunlight and theoretically keeps the home evenly illuminated with natural light throughout the day. The design by Dallas firm Oglebsy-Greene—which won a 2010 AIA Interior Architecture Design Award—also includes a dramatic four-story stair tower that extends from the first floor to the rooftop terrace, Douglas fir and Lueders stone finishes throughout, and an open kitchen with gold granite countertops and Gaggenau cooking surfaces. The five-bedroom, seven-bathroom manse has 11,000 square feet of living space and sits on an acre of wooded land with creek and waterfall views. It’s asking $8.975M.
read more…
http://curbed.com/archives/2014/05/08/award-winning-modern-country-estate-in-dallas-asks-9m.php
Cash house sales hit high as smart money retreats | Cross River Real Estate
What do you make of the fact that all-cash home sales are at a record high even as institutional investor interest is dropping to its lowest level in two years?
Are families, as one tweeter (see Tweet below) put it, “shrewdly avoiding taking on usurious 4.21% 30-year mortgages?” (The lowest rate in 2014, by the way.)
RealtyTrac reported Thursday that the percentage of all-cash buyers has soared in the past year, with 42.7% of all U.S. residential property sales in the first quarter all-cash purchases, up from 37.8% in the previous quarter and up from 19.1% in the first quarter of 2013.
Notably, this is the highest level since RealtyTrac began tracking all-cash purchases in the first quarter of 2011. Meanwhile, institutional investors are walking away from housing.
According to RealtyTrac’s report, institutional investors — entities that have purchased at least 10 properties in a calendar year — accounted for 5.6% of all U.S. residential sales in the first quarter, down from 6.8% in the fourth quarter of 2013 and down from 7% in the first quarter of 2013 to the lowest level since the first quarter of 2012.
So who are these cash buyers?
“Strict lending standards combined with low inventory continue to give the advantage to investors and other cash buyers in this housing market,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac. “The good news is that as institutional investors pull back their purchasing in many markets across the country, there is still strong demand from other cash buyers — including individual investors, second-home buyers and even owner-occupant buyers — to fill the vacuum of demand left by institutional investors.”
read more…
http://www.housingwire.com/blogs/1-rewired/post/29955-cash-house-sales-hit-high-as-smart-money-retreats