House Candy
Our Miami correspondent, Andrea Kavanagh, is back and house-hunting for us! Calling all billionaire art aficionados and free-spending, globe-trotting investors! Miami is all a buzz over Ocean Drive’s most infamous residence to hit the sizzling hot real estate market at a whopping $125 million. Casa Casuarina, also known as the Versace mansion, is an iconic…
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Happy Fourth of July, 2012. We live the American Dream of real estate here in Texas more than anywhere. Maybe it’s because we learned our lesson back in the 1980’s — R.I.P. Danny Faulkner. Not only did we learn, we RETAINED. When I was in Denver at the National Association of Real Estate Editors Conference last month, Mark Fleming, the dashing economist for CoreLogic, told me over drinks that what saved our butts this time around was our state set limits on HELOCs, or home improvement loans. In Texas, we are limited on what we can borrow against our homesteads. That is what kept many of us from over-borrowing, so when the market fell we were not left with underwater loans*. I walked into our bank yesterday, Comerica, which I LOVE — who else sends you a thank-you note when you pay off a loan? But more than three people asked if they could offer me a home-improvement loan in the course of one hour. You know me, I’d buy a second home in a heartbeat! Our laws in Texas saved us, said Mark, in spite of ourselves.
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Perhaps you have procrastinated, like I have a tendency to do. Maybe you haven’t decided where to take the family for a fun-filled vacation, and it’s mid June. May I suggest Cinnamon Shore, Mustang Island’s seaside village, located in Port Aransas on Texas’s Coastal Bend? It’s not that far from Big D and offers a whole schedule of summer events planned to make vacationing in paradise even sweeter. Plus who knows: you might like it so much you decide to buy a second home there.
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Thought you might enjoy seeing the national/international post I wrote for Concierge Auctions, on our illustrious Champ d’Or, they being the folks who spurred the sale of our most famous or infamous mansion to date.
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Could they be buying it as a second or third home? Champ d’Or closed Monday, April 30, according to Laura Brady of Concierge Auctions. Which means it is official: Shirley and Al Goldfield no longer own the Hickory Creek mega mansion they have been trying to sell almost since the day they completed the 40,000…
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I have been on pins and needles waiting out this auction, bugging Robbie Briggs and Laura Brady at Concierge Actions all day yesterday. At about eight p.m. Friday night Robbie Briggs emailed me that “It was a fascinating process, and it appears to be successful.” Saturday morning I heard from Laura Brady who said — “we…
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