real estate
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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Those of us in real estate know that when the housing market plummets, vacation places plummet the most. Second homes are most often discretionary purchases you wait on until you feel flush with cash. Well, get ready. Realtors say second-home buyers are returning to the store, shopping from Cape Cod to Lake Tahoe. As I…
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Fernando M. Alva was a dear friend. I had not seen him for about nine months, but on Wednesday afternoon, May 9, I had a fleeting vision of him in my mind as I worked on a blog post. Call him, I told myself, call him later on today and connect. I was too late.…
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Meet Richard Soto, owner/broker of VIP Realty here in Dallas. Richard has an interesting story: he is an agent who spends more time on marketing and SEO than he actually does selling. That’s because Richard is an extremely tech-savvy agent, and he knows where his business comes from: the web. Whether it’s Dallas homes for sale, Fort Worth real…
Read MoreReal estate rules. But have I ever told you my story, why I am so obsessed with real estate and why I blog? It goes like this: I was a journalist, a magazine journalist, who covered real estate as a journalistic beat, then got hooked. I realized that blogging about homes and featuring them on the web is really the only and best way to market homes. If you disagree, I want to know. And I may challenge you to an ad dual. Agents in Silicon Valley don’t even bother with print any more: 89% of buyers search for homes on line, and internet buyers’ incomes are 25% higher than traditional print buyers. By the time a certain listing is printed, that home may have a price change or even be sold, if anyone ever reads it. In fact, the homes we feature are selling sell and when we write about a home, the open houses are overflowing. This one sold four days after our posting. From a reader in Plano:
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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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