Feeling Nosy about DC? MD? VA?

Ok, I know you're probably not planning on moving this very second, but here's this week's list of interesting-looking listings that have just come on the market. Mind you, they may not actually be my personal listings --- just intriguing properties I've come across that week.

Feeling nosy about the District of Columbia?
Feeling nosy about Virginia?
Feeling nosy about Maryland?

If you know someone who might be interested in this list, please forward it on to him or her. And if there's a listing that you're curious about yourself, just let me know ... and I'll show it to you ... just for the hell of it ... no obligation ... *I promise*. Really. (One of the perks of being the friend of a real estate agent ought to be that you get to freely snoop around other peoples' homes!

Home Buyers Forced to Change Tactics

By Dina ElBoghdady
Washington Post
Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 29, 2007; D01

The credit crunch has turned $417,000 into the magic number for home buyers shopping for mortgages.

Rattled investors have become reluctant to buy loans for more than that amount -- known as jumbo mortgages -- and that in turn has pushed some lenders to raise interest rates. Caught in the middle are potential home buyers who are getting walloped by higher rates or shut out of the market.

The phenomenon is particularly significant in Washington, where half the homes sell for more than $417,000. Here, home buyers are figuring out how to adapt to the new circumstances by making larger down payments or splitting their purchase into two loans to dodge higher rates. Others are sitting tight until the rates go down.

The course they take can have deep implications for the mortgage industry, the housing sector, and by extension, the economy. If too many potential jumbo-loan borrowers wait it out, chances are the excess supply of homes on the market will swell, further dragging down prices. Home values fell in 15 of 20 large metropolitan areas in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to a report yesterday from S&P/Case-Shiller. They fell 7 percent in the Washington area.

About 24 percent of mortgages granted in the District, 14 percent in Virginia, and 10 percent in Maryland were jumbo loans in 2005, according to the most recent Mortgage Bankers Association data available. Sixteen percent of all new mortgages last year were jumbo loans, according to the trade publication Inside Mortgage Finance.

"Lenders are all putting our collective heads together to come up with a new way to get borrowers into houses," said Bill McGoey, a senior vice president at American Partners Bank, owned by the thrift holding company Federal City Bancorp of the District. "There are tools that we've been using forever, but we've had to tweak them to suit the current situation."

That tweaking benefited Melissa Pool, who took out a jumbo loan to purchase a new $950,000 loft in Arlington. Her father, Otis Pool, helped arrange the logistics but said the experience "kind of put me in a tizzy."

Pool said his daughter signed a contract for the loft a few months ago while it was under construction, but as the closing date approached and the jumbo rates jumped, her mortgage company, First Savings Mortgage, arranged an alternative.

Her loan officer advised her to apply for a piggyback mortgage, meaning two loans. She made a $350,000 down payment, as planned. Then she split the remaining $600,000 between a first loan for $417,000 and a second at a higher interest rate for the balance.

The combined rate of the two, 6.875 percent, was about half a percentage point lower than the jumbo loan would have been, the mortgage company said.

So what's so special about a $417,000 loan?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by law can purchase or guarantee loans for single-family homes up to that amount. The limit is determined annually by federal regulators based on the average home price nationwide from October to October. Some members of Congress want to increase the limit in light of the current mortgage problems.

Loans that meet Fannie and Freddie rules are called "conforming" loans, and they are about the only types of mortgages that investors want to buy now because they are perceived as safe bets.
Investors lost their appetite for non-conforming loans soon after subprime borrowers, typically those with poor credit, started defaulting on their loans at an alarming rate this year.

Jumbo loans are not nearly as risky as subprime loans, but they too are non-conforming and also suffered when investors yanked their money out of the non-conforming market. With investors' money gone, many firms specializing in jumbo loans were left with little money to fund mortgages.

Some shut down, including a unit of Capital One of McLean, which closed last week. Others stopped making loans, as Thornburg Mortgage did this month. Countrywide Financial, IndyMac Bancorp and other large lenders are getting more selective about who gets jumbo loans.

Many lenders reacted by simply raising their rates. Some did it to offset investor concerns by offering better returns for their money. Some also wanted to pull back on granting those loans until they could find investors to buy them on the secondary market.

That led to a widening gap between jumbo and conforming loans in recent weeks, making the former more expensive. While jumbo rates were rising, a conforming 30-year fixed-rate loan is the lowest it has been since June.

Lenders were charging an average 7.46 percent for prime 30-year, fixed-rate jumbo loans last week, compared with 6.57 percent for conforming loans, according to mortgage research firm HSH Associates.

That's why consumers are angling for conforming loans and why some lenders are accommodating them with such options as the piggyback.

But a piggyback mortgage is tougher to find for people with less-than-stellar credit. And sometimes the math does not work out even for those who qualify for that arrangement, said Steve Calem, vice president of real estate lending at American Bank of Rockville.

For people buying homes of $1 million or more, a second loan may be so large that the combined rate of the two loans far exceeds the jumbo loan rate, Calem said. Second mortgages are more risky for lenders and typically carry higher rates than first mortgages.

"You really need to know how to cut these things up to get the best rate," Calem said. "A little bit more on the first or a little bit less on the second could add thousands of dollars to closing costs and interest expenses for the consumer."

The numbers did not work in Mike Stidham's favor. Stidham was approved for a jumbo loan that fell through a day before he was to settle on a $560,000 home near Baltimore.

Stidham, who works in advertising sales, put no money down, something lenders now frown upon. His lender had his home reappraised at the last minute. The value came back lower than the original appraisal, and the lender canceled the loan.

Stidham scrambled and found a new loan through his mortgage broker at Universal Trust Mortgage in Columbia. But the jumbo rates had increased in the meantime and now he's paying $230 more a month than he would have under the original loan.

"We had no choice. I had sold my house that Monday and I had to settle on Tuesday," Stidham said. "So I had to take my lumps."

Tammy Arbogast and her husband, Derrick Fouts, were in less of a bind. They own a townhouse in Germantown. Now that they have two young children, they want a larger home and were planning to buy one nearby until jumbo rates shot up and pushed them to reconsider their options.

Instead of buying the home and then selling the townhouse, they hope to do the reverse. But even if they get the asking price for their townhouse, they may need a jumbo loan. To lessen the borrowing costs, they could make a larger down payment by dipping into their kids' college savings, but they prefer not to.

"We can just stay put in our townhouse," said Arbogast, an environmental health and safety specialist at a nonprofit organization. "We'll just wait it out."

Doing so might mean passing up the house they've been eyeing, but that's okay, said Fouts, a scientist at a nonprofit group. "You can't get attached to a house in this climate. It's so easy to lose a house because of variables out of your control."

The question now is how long the jumbo rates will stay this high, said Mark Fleming, chief economist at First American Core Logic. "If this lasts much longer, then people will begin to reevaluate what they can afford."

Feeling Nosy about DC? MD? VA?

Ok, I know you're probably not planning on moving this very second, but here's this week's list of interesting-looking listings that have just come on the market. Mind you, they may not actually be my personal listings --- just intriguing properties I've come across that week.

Feeling nosy about the District of Columbia?
Feeling nosy about Virginia?
Feeling nosy about Maryland?

If you know someone who might be interested in this list, please forward it on to him or her. And if there's a listing that you're curious about yourself, just let me know ... and I'll show it to you ... just for the hell of it ... no obligation ... *I promise*. Really. (One of the perks of being the friend of a real estate agent ought to be that you get to freely snoop around other peoples' homes!

A New Conundrum in the D.C. Real Estate Market

A New Conundrum in the D.C. Real Estate Market
August 22, 2007 - 12:50pm
Adam Tuss, WTOP Radio

WASHINGTON - Buy or sell? Rent or own? It is a tricky time in the local D.C. real estate market. Now there's another conundrum.

New statistics from the Metropolitan Regional Information Systems show that while the region has the highest number of properties for sale on the market since October 2006, home prices are actually spiking by nearly 10 percent in some areas.

"What we saw in the housing sales data for July 2007 (compared to July 2006) is that closer-in jurisdictions to the center of the region where the jobs are had significant average housing price increases," says John McLean, senior fellow at George Mason University's Center for Regional Analysis. "The District was up about 6.5 percent, Montgomery County was close to 10 percent, Arlington was up over 9 percent, Alexandria was up 3 percent and for the first time Fairfax County was up almost 2 percent. It had been negative there for several months."

Those numbers are in contrast to some other areas, away from jobs, which saw decreases. "Contrast that with minus 3 percent in Prince George's County, minus 5 in Loudoun and Prince William counties. It appears that the closer-in markets are not only able to sustain prices now, but are actually moving higher," says McLean.

He believes our commutes are definitely playing a part.

"Traffic congestion in many cases is not as bad in some of the inner areas of the region as it is in some of the outer, suburban areas."

Residential properties in many of the areas where prices have shot up are also staying on the market for shorter periods of time.

"Right now we are looking at two months for the close in neighborhoods, and that is really healthy and normal," says local real estate guru Donna Evers. "That number has come down from three months in January of 2007."

Evers also believes if you are shopping around for a property, now may be the best time to get in.

"Because it is August, I think you can get a good deal on quite a few things. August and December are the best months to look for good deals, because people are tired of waiting out the Spring and Fall seasons."

(Copyright 2007 by WTOP Radio. All Rights Reserved.)
Adam Tuss, WTOP Radio

Feeling Nosy about DC? MD? VA?

Ok, I know you're probably not planning on moving this very second, but here's this week's list of interesting-looking listings that have just come on the market. Mind you, they may not actually be my personal listings --- just intriguing properties I've come across that week.

Feeling nosy about the District of Columbia?
Feeling nosy about Virginia?
Feeling nosy about Maryland?

If you know someone who might be interested in this list, please forward it on to him or her. And if there's a listing that you're curious about yourself, just let me know ... and I'll show it to you ... just for the hell of it ... no obligation ... *I promise*. Really. (One of the perks of being the friend of a real estate agent ought to be that you get to freely snoop around other peoples' homes!

Greater Washington's Housing Market

From the Washington Business Journal

The news wasn't all bad for Greater Washington's housing market in July, as prices and sales volume eked up in some jurisdictions.

In D.C., 740 single-family homes were sold in July, up 10.6 percent from July 2006, according to data compiled by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. The median sales price for homes in the District was $431,000, up nearly 4 percent from $415,000 a year ago.

Some municipalities still didn't fare too well during the typically-slow summer month for real estate activity. In Prince George's County, sales volume fell 42 percent in July and median prices were virtually unchanged at $320,000. Sales volume also fell nearly 16 percent in Montgomery County in July, but the median sales price was $490,000, up nearly 8 percent from a year ago and the highest median price in Greater Washington for the month.

In a region that includes Arlington and Fairfax counties and the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax and Falls Church, sales and median price were flat. There were 1,859 single-family homes sold in that region in July, an annual increase of just 0.1 percent, and the median price was $480,000, up 0.7 percent from the previous year.

In Loudoun County, 478 units were sold, an increase of about 12.5 percent, and the median price was $440,000, down about 6.4 percent from July 2006. Sales volume fell more than 26 percent in Prince William County in July, and the median sales price was $365,000, a decline of 6.4 percent.

Feeling Nosy about DC? MD? VA?

Ok, I know you're probably not planning on moving this very second, but here's this week's list of interesting-looking listings that have just come on the market. Mind you, they may not actually be my personal listings --- just intriguing properties I've come across that week.

Feeling nosy about the District of Columbia?
Feeling nosy about Virginia?
Feeling nosy about Maryland?

If you know someone who might be interested in this list, please forward it on to him or her. And if there's a listing that you're curious about yourself, just let me know ... and I'll show it to you ... just for the hell of it ... no obligation ... *I promise*. Really. (One of the perks of being the friend of a real estate agent ought to be that you get to freely snoop around other peoples' homes!

Once More, With Savings

Once More, With Savings
Homeowners increasingly are selecting used building materials to make projects look better, cost less and save resources.

By Allan Lengel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 4, 2007; F01

On a sizzling Saturday, inside a toasty warehouse, Eunice Youmans walks past the vintage fireplace mantels, unhinged doors and light fixtures at Community Forklift, a nonprofit store in Prince George's County that peddles reusable housing materials.

In one hand is her 10-month-old son, in the other a tape measure. Her two young daughters trail behind her like ducklings. She zeroes in on a used 48-by-17-inch kitchen cabinet.

It needs some work. It has been sitting for months. One door is chipped. The white paint is old. She plans to fix it up, refinish it and put it in her dining room.

The price is $50. She gets it for $30.

"It's much cheaper and good-quality stuff," the Cheverly resident says of the store's products, extolling the benefits of buying used rather than going to the large home stores. "I come here all the time."

In a disposable society, where new is often equated with better, where big-box stores such as Home Depot have become the temple of home improvers, a growing number of homeowners are turning to reclaimed or reused products. In the past five years, the number of reused-material stores around the country has doubled, from 150 to 300, according to the Building Materials Reuse Association.

Driven by economics, environmental concerns, aesthetics or old-fashioned quality -- or all the above -- do-it-yourself homeowners, as well as contractors, handymen and landlords, are buying construction products at a fraction of the retail cost -- such things as marble countertops, cast-iron radiators, sunken bathtubs, toilets, sinks and solid five-panel pine doors. Some come from homes built more than a century ago, some from new-home construction sites.

Sometimes there's even historic value: The Community Forklift recently landed marble from a federal building and a chandelier and several mahogany doors from a penthouse at the Watergate.

"Most people are proud of themselves for recycling cans and recycling newspaper and buying bags that are made out of recycled plastic, but people don't realize that they can recycle entire houses and that they can buy recycled products for their homes," said Ruthie Mundell, outreach director for Forklift, which opened in November 2005.

"When we first started, we had probably five customers a day. Now we probably have 150 sales a day," she said. "People are finding out about the concept. They realize how much it makes sense financially and environmentally."

In the Washington region, the Building Materials Reuse Association and Habitat for Humanity's Habitat ReStore Web site together list 60 for-profit and nonprofit operations that collect or sell reusable and reclaimed products: three in the District, 17 in Maryland and 40 in Virginia.

Nonprofit organizations such as Community Forklift, the Loading Dock and Second Chance in Baltimore, and Habitat ReStores in Virginia and Maryland get all or most of their products from donations, many of which come from homes that have been torn down or "deconstructed" instead of being demolished by bulldozers and wrecking balls.

"I would say about 85 percent is donated," said Desiree Carter, general manager of the Loading Dock. In addition, "We get some materials from landfills" and buy some from places going out of business, such as plumbing supply shops.

Often, about 80 percent of a disassembled home can be salvaged or recycled, experts say. In that case, donating the materials is a boon for everyone, recycling advocates say. Homeowners get a tax write-off by donating the disassembled materials to the nonprofit stores and save on trash fees at the landfill. The environment benefits, as do the people who bought the products.

"Some homeowners can't stand good material -- hardwood floors, kitchen cabinets, and on and on -- just being dumped in a landfill," said Paul Hughes, president of DeConstruction Services of Fairfax, which tears apart homes and donates the materials to nonprofit organizations. "Many builders are starting to feel the same way."

For many people, such as Gregory Cavanaugh, the savings are attractive, but more important is "the durability of the product."

Cavanaugh, a contractor, said he saved more than $1,000 recently by buying six used doors -- five from Community Forklift and one from Second Chance -- for a restoration job at a Capitol Hill home built in the 1800s.

He said he paid $58 for an entrance door instead of about $300 new; $260 for a walnut Victorian-style door that "you'd probably pay upwards of $1,000" for; and $25 each for the interior doors that would run "upwards of $150" each at a lumber store.

On top of that, he said, he got a good deal on used yellow pine, a couple of hundred years old, that he used for door and window frames and windowsills. He said the quality was superior to that of lumber sold today.

"Basically, what you buy in the stores today is white pine, and it's junk," he said. "In two to three years, it can start to rot."

Still, not all reusable material is cheap.

Mountain Lumber in Ruckersville, Va., which manufactures products from reclaimed wood, charges an average of about $3,000 for flooring for a 300-square-foot kitchen and about $8,000 for an 800-square-foot one. And that's just for the product -- the company does not do installation.

Willie Drake, president and founder, said the wood averages 100 to 600 years old and comes from barns, ancient temples, buildings and schools around the world, including countries as far away as China. Recently, he said, the company bought 25-by-25-foot wooden Guinness beer vats from Ireland to convert to flooring.

Drake said most customers are from the United States, particularly the mid-Atlantic, but he "just shipped an order to Moscow and just sent an order to Italy."

"We have never cut down a tree to make our product," he added with pride. "It's all from 100 percent reclaimed wood."

Some places specialize in certain products.

The Brass Knob, a for-profit store on N Street in Northwest Washington, has an impressive collection of cast-iron radiators, some from the early 1900s, that cost about $85 to $500. It also has more than a thousand used doors. There's a second location, in Adams Morgan, which operates under a different owner.

Ron Allan, owner of the N Street shop, said he attracts a lot of homeowners, architects and contractors who work on old homes.

"I've almost become a Victorian Home Depot," he said.

Jim Schulman, president of Community Forklift and a big believer in the reuse business, concedes: "This place is not for everybody. Not everybody is a do-it-yourselfer."

Sometimes, even the do-it-yourselfers bump up against a task too great.

That was the case with Pamela Preston of Clinton, who was at Community Forklift one recent Thursday with her 9-year-old son Jelan, hunting for kitchen cabinets.

She had been to Home Depot, which wanted about $5,000 for new kitchen cabinets. She picked out used cabinets at the Community Forklift for about $500.

They needed refinishing, which she said her husband would do. She seemed excited.

"I'm going to put him to work," she said with a smile. "Five thousand dollars is ridiculous when you have other things to do with your money."

She took pictures and measurements. She asked the store to put the cabinets on hold until she could talk to her husband.

By the next day, it was a no-go: Her husband thought it would be too much work.

Feeling Nosy about DC? MD? VA?

Ok, I know you're probably not planning on moving this very second, but here's this week's list of interesting-looking listings that have just come on the market. Mind you, they may not actually be my personal listings --- just intriguing properties I've come across that week.

Feeling nosy about the District of Columbia?
Feeling nosy about Virginia?
Feeling nosy about Maryland?

If you know someone who might be interested in this list, please forward it on to him or her. And if there's a listing that you're curious about yourself, just let me know ... and I'll show it to you ... just for the hell of it ... no obligation ... *I promise*. Really. (One of the perks of being the friend of a real estate agent ought to be that you get to freely snoop around other peoples' homes!

NAR: Market Shows Signs of Improvement

Daily Real Estate News August 1, 2007

The market is likely to stabilize in the months ahead, according to the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®’ forward-looking indicator on pending home sales.

The Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in June, was 5 percent higher from the downwardly revised May index of 97.5, but is still 8.6 percent below June 2006 when it stood at 112. The 5 percent monthly gain is the largest in more than three years, since a 6.1 percent increase was recorded in March 2004.

Lawrence Yun, NAR senior economist, says it’s encouraging that the increase occurred in all four major regions of the United States. “However, it is too early to say if home sales have already passed bottom,” he says. “Still, major declines in home sales are likely to have occurred already and further declines, if any, are likely to be modest given the accumulating pent-up demand.”

The index is a leading indicator for the housing sector, based on pending sales of existing homes. A sale is listed as pending when the contract has been signed but the transaction has not closed.

What Happened Regionally

Here’s a breakdown of what the PHSI showed across the country:

-West: the PHSI increased 8.6 percent in June to 103.6, but was 5.5 percent below a year ago.

-Northeast: the index rose 3.1 percent from May to 96, which is 2.4 percent lower than June 2006.

-South: the index increased 4.7 percent in June to 111.6, but was 12.7 percent below a year ago.

-Midwest: the PHSI rose 3.5 percent in June to 92.5, which is 8.2 percent lower than June 2006.
— REALTOR® Magazine Online