Mortgage Closing Costs Fell 7% Over the Past Year
I have a feeling that we will look back on this time and wish we had bought more real estate. Prices are still declining just a tiny bit in SW Portland (though rising in other parts of town) and interest rates are still AMAZINGLY low.
Now there's even more reason to get in the game – lenders have finally reined in closing costs. They were down by 7% in the last year, thanks to Federal regulations, which are helping to significantly reduce the amount new homebuyers are paying come closing time.
The average cost of closing on a mortgage has fallen by 7.4% over the past year, according to a recent survey by Bankrate.com. At the end of June, a homebuyer looking to close on a $200,000 mortgage with 20% down paid an average of $3,754, $300 less than 12 months earlier.
Included in those costs are origination expenses, such as application fees and the cost of doing credit checks, and third-party fees, such as those paid for title searches and insurance.
The decline can be attributed to new regulations that require lenders to be more accurate when estimating closing costs for borrowers, said Greg McBride, Bankrate's senior financial analyst.
The regulation, which was put in place two years ago as part of the Real Estate Settlement Practices Act requires lenders to provide a "good faith estimate" of third-party fees that is within 10% of the actual amount the buyer will pay.
"The big drop in third-party fees indicates the lenders are doing a better job at estimating what the costs will be," said McBride.
source: NEW YORK (CNNMoney) —
Where are housing prices headed?
Everyone seems to be asking their professional Realtor’s prediction is on where home values are headed.
To answer this question I want to quote three separate reports that have been published in the last 60 days: the Home Price Expectations Survey (HPES), the Urban Land Institute Real Estate Consensus Forecast (ULI) and the Demand Institute’s Report (DIR): The Shifting Nature of U.S. Housing Demand. Here are their projections:
A slow but steady return is projected by all. If you plan to stay in your house for 5 years, you can expect appreciation – not like the good old days in the rush, but a good, modest growth at a pace that’s a welcome relief after the last few years.
With thanks to the KCM Blog.
Pearl District’s Field Park
The Pearl District is finally getting it’s park!
My clients in the Pearl District are going to be so excited! Especially the ones with kids and dogs!
After more than a decade of conceptualizing, planning and designing, Fields Neighborhood Park is now under construction in the northeast end of the Pearl District.
R&R Construction this month started work on the $3.1 million project, in which a 3.2-acre parcel is being transformed into a recreational field and play area.
Fields is coming out of the master plan that first spurred creation of the Pearl’s Jamison Square and Tanner Springs Park – two elaborate public spaces featuring a popular interactive water fountain, artificial wetlands and walking paths. Fields is intended to complete the recreational picture.
“I think it’s going to be kind of a game-changer for the North Pearl District,” said Dave Davis, president of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association.
Davis, whose condominium overlooks the park, said access to a large swath of land where residents can exercise, play softball or throw a flying disc is long overdue for the dense downtown area.
But design involved more work than plotting four corners of a field and planting some turf. Andrew Sullivan, an associate principal at the Office of Cheryl Barton, which designed the park, said the community wanted to make sure the San Francisco firm got it right.
“A lot of people know, short of something happening with Centennial Mills, that this is the last big piece of open space that is planned for this area of the Pearl,” Sullivan said. “So it’s their last real chance to get the park they want for their future, family or whatever their agenda might be.”
Fields Neighborhood Park was designed by the Office of Cheryl Barton and will include a dog area, children’s play areas and a large open space.
Sullivan said some people wanted the space to be a huge dog park, while others wanted children’s play areas, and others wanted only a field. The result is a design featuring all of those elements with a motif that aims to conjure the swirling, sweeping, eddying image of the nearby Willamette River.
Sullivan said the plan is to include artistically scoured lines in the sidewalks, interactive play walls for children, permeable pavers and rain gardens to recycle stormwater. But a big design aspect will be wave-like planters and tree canopies.
“I think what we’re trying to do is use the planter to kind of pop lots of different colors,” he said. “We’ve got these sweeps at both the ground level – these beds of perennials and canopy trees around the perimeter – and these sweeps that will have really nice spring blossoms as well as fall colors.”
Sullivan said another focus will be encouraging kids to interact with nature. Play walls will invite children to reach plants through openings and play areas will steer kids through planters rather than around them.
“It reinforces the idea that kids are in a natural setting instead of putting them on a rubberized surface, on an asphalt lot, with just plastic equipment,” he said. “I think putting them in a natural setting, and pushing for more imaginative play leads to a richer experience.”
One original design aspect that will not be present is a pedestrian bridge linking the Fields park to the Portland Development Commission’s nearby Centennial Mills site. Shawn Uhlman, spokesman for the PDC, said the agency is reviewing development proposals from Venerable Properties and Daniels Real Estate for that site. The preferred proposal is planned to be presented during a meeting on May 23.
Sullivan said the Fields park was designed to accommodate construction of a pedestrian bridge to the Centennial Mills site when that property is finally developed.
The Fields park also represents completion of negotiations between Hoyt Street Properties LLC and the city of Portland.
Riley Whitcomb, system development charge program manager for Portland Parks and Recreation, said Hoyt donated the three-acre site in exchange for consideration of a $650,000 waiver on a future development project. Whitcomb said $400,000 of that waiver would come from the parks bureau and the remaining $250,000 would come from the PDC. He said it was a small price to pay for an integral piece of property.
“We really needed that extra land, and from that standpoint it was a very good deal,” Whitcomb said. “The value of the property is a lot greater than the credits that we will likely eventually give them.”
Aaron Slowik, project manager for R&R Construction, said its contract completion date is January 2013. Davis said neighborhood residents are anxious to see the finished product.
“We wanted an exceptional park rather than just land and a couple trees thrown here and there,” Davis said. “But the proof is in the pudding.”
(Article courtsy of Daily Journal of Commerce, Oregon.)
(Rendering courtesy of the Office of Cheryl Barton)
Tired of losing your phone or keys?
This is it. The technological breakthrough you’ve been waiting for. The one you can’t believe hadn’t been invented already. The one that probably deserves a trumpet and a choir singing hosannas.
So let’s say you’ve lost your keys. Here’s how this works, not necessarily in this order:
- One: Download the myBiKN app from BiKN (you’ll want to pronounce that “beacon”) on your iPhone.
- Two: Slip the smart case onto your iPhone.
- Three: Attach the BiKN tags to your valuables. (By the way, we’re giving you two more than the standard kit—so that’s four in total.)
- Four: If something goes missing, the app will then show you the right direction and distance to walk in to find your stuff. Think of it as a digital treasure map. The electronic tags you’ve attached to said valuables will also start beeping, letting you know exactly which side of the couch you should be searching.
- Five: If the reverse occurs (i.e., your phone mysteriously disappears), you can use the electronic tags to find the damn thing.
And voilà: the easiest way to never lose anything again. And naturally, Perks is getting it to you for something less than the going rate…
And best of all, here’s a link to get it on sale, thanks to my friends at Urban Daddy. They have it for $135 (for a limited time only) instead of the list price of $170.
For more information, and details on the product, see www.bikn.com.
I know a few people who definitely need this. Is their one in your life?
source: www.urbandaddy.com. Thanks!
Excellent article on the Real Estate Rebound
Maybe you think Realtors are being optimistic when we say that the market is coming back. We are, I believe, optimists by nature. This job isn’t for the faint of heart, especially in the last few years when up to 40% of the Realtors left the business. But here is Barrons joining in our argument that we are on the mend.
Not only that, the article predicts 30% growth in the next 10 years. Payback. If you were waiting for the bottom, wait no longer. Let’s go house shopping.
The Buyer’s Market is Coming to a close….a MUST read!
As inventory levels off, and buyers try to take advantage of the record-breaking low interest rates, Sellers are finding themselves in an advantageous position for the first time in a few years. But that position may be short-lived. Shadow inventory (foreclosures that the banks had been forced by the Feds to hold back to help stabilize the market) has been cleared to be put on the market very shortly…. and prices will undoubtedly go down (it’s been predicted to be around 3-5%) before we see things level off .
I met Steve Harney in Seattle at the Windermere Symposium. He’s pragmatic, crusty, and above all, SMART. Here’s what he has to say to sellers: click this link… You may enjoy the blog, with its insight to current market conditions nationwide. (but many click-throughs to local stats)
The 3.8% Tax Effective January 2013
To get you up to speed about this new tax legislation, the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® has developed this informational brochure.
On the following pages, you’ll read examples of diff erent scenarios in which this new tax — passed by Congress in 2010 with the intent of generating an estimated $210 billion to help fund President Barack Obama’s health care and Medicare overhaul plans — could be relevant to your transaction.
Understand that this tax WILL NOT be imposed on all real estate transactions, a common misconception. Rather, when the legislation becomes eff ective in 2013, it may impose a 3.8% tax on some (but not all) income from interest, dividends, rents (less expenses) and capital gains (less capital losses). The tax will fall onlywillon individuals with an adjusted gross income (AGI) above $200,000 and couples filing a joint return with more than $250,000 AGI.
For more information, please click here.