5 bedrooms / 4.5 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms upstairs / 1 downstairs, Beautiful floor plan, very spacious and open high ceilings throughout with stained crown molding, Bright entry with 3 skylights, Living room with fireplace, Formal dining room
$2,695,000
Contact Realtor Bruce D. Stuart
(310) 403 - 7439 ; (888) 777-7WEB
blindo@blindo.org
OR
Antonio Hachem
(310) 678 - 4141
antoniohachem@verizon.net
Remodeled home, 1 block east Beverly Glen, 1 block north Olympic. Granite kitchen with 6 burner viking stove, spacious master suite, opening out to backyard through french doors. Master bath with huge shower, mosaic tile and frosted glass. Junior suite with 3/4 bath has own deck. Formal living room with fireplace. Open formal dining/family room. Wood floors, Extra Storage, flagstone patio, new backyard landscaping.
$1,525,000
Contact Realtor Bruce D. Stuart
(310) 403 - 7439 ; (888) 777-7WEB
blindo@blindo.org
OR
Susan Payne
(310) 577 - 5300
Stunning ultra bright front corner unit. Above quiet single family residential neighborhood. Spacious Kitchen with breakfast area. Large open Living room with fireplace. Wrap around terrace. Separate bedroom suites. Lots of windows, extra storage.
$659,000
Contact Realtor Bruce D. Stuart
(310) 403 -7439; (888) 777-7WEB
blindo@blindo.org
OR
Rada Roberts
radaroberts@coldwellbanker.com
Contemporary and large for the money, ground floor has 2 car garage entering into a large recreation room with fireplace, bonus room and bath. It’s almost like a guest quarters with spiral stairs leading to upper, main floor. Where we find four bedrooms, 2 baths, living room also with fireplace, adjoining dining room area, kitchen and long center hallway out to back patio.
$1,250,000
Contact Realtor Bruce D. Stuart
(310) 403-7439; (888) 777-7WEB
blindo@blindo.org
OR
Nourmand and Associates Realtors
Peter Fleming
(310) 454 - 1373
peterfleming@earthlink.net
$869,000
2111 S. Beverly Glen Blvd.
2 bedroom, 2.5 bath, Gourmet Kitchen with granite countertops. Patio and loft. 1859 sq. feet.
Contact Bruce Stuart. (310) 403-7439, (888) 777-7WEB, blindo@blindo.org
See video of our listing at 524 15th Street, Santa Monica, Ca.
House is two blocks north of Montana, has 6 bedrooms and four baths, is 3600 sq feet on a 7500 sq foot lot. Built in 1992. On quiet street yet walking distance from Montana commercial district.
Asking price is $2,595,000.
Mortgage rates around the country fell this week, with rates on 30-year mortgages sinking to their lowest level in 10 months.
Freddie Mac, the mortgage company, reported Wednesday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 6.18 percent for the week ending Nov. 22. That’s down from 6.24 percent last week and was the lowest rate since the week ending Jan. 26, when 30-year mortgage rates averaged 6.12 percent.
It marked the second week in a row that mortgage rates dropped, a development that economists attributed to easing inflation pressures. Inflation is calming down amid stabilizing energy prices, slower overall economic activity and the housing slump.
“Slower growth usually means less inflation and less inflation means lower interest rates. Hence, the drop in mortgage rates this week,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac’s chief economist.
After five years of booming activity, the housing market has lost its sizzle this year. Sales have fallen, home builders have cut back on construction and home prices have lost considerable altitude, falling in some markets or rising more slowly in others.
The housing slump was the major culprit behind the slower economic growth rate that was logged in the late summer.
All categories of mortgage rates surveyed by Freddie Mac showed declines this week — offering some welcome news to those wanting to buy a home.
Rates on 15-year, fixed-rate mortgages, a popular choice for refinancing, averaged 5.91 percent. That’s lower than last week’s rate of 5.94 percent.
For one-year adjustable rate mortgages, rates fell to 5.49 percent, compared with 5.53 percent last week.
Five-year adjustable rate mortgages dropped to 5.99 percent this week, from 6.04 percent last week.
The mortgage rates do not include add-on fees known as points. Thirty-year and 15-year mortgages each carried a nationwide average fee of 0.5 point. One-year and five-year ARMs each carried a fee of 0.6 point.
A year ago, 30-year mortgages averaged 6.28 percent. Fifteen-year mortgages stood at 5.81 percent, one-year ARMs were at 5.14 percent and five-year ARMs averaged 5.75 percent.
Debbie Sforza sold a Palm City lakefront home in only two months.The 2,200-square-foot structure with three bedrooms, two baths and two-car garage showed well and, at $475,000, was priced right, said Sforza, a broker’s associate at Realty Executives in Palm City.
Still other South Florida homes are sitting on the market anywhere from six months to a year.”If it’s overpriced, it’s going to be on the market for a long time,” she said.
“For Sale” signs sit on front yards everywhere but aren’t as effective as professionals who can offer aggressive pricing information to get buyers in the door, said Will Rosselle, a broker at Rosselle Real Estate Group in Port St. Lucie.
The number of homes for sale has tripled, even quadrupled, since last year, according to Rosselle, who is primarily seeing buyers from more pricey points south.
The 2004 and 2005 hurricanes, along with rising property taxes and insurance, also have been causing South Floridians to move to areas such as the Carolinas, according to area Realtors.
But the supply vs. demand situation is part of a nationwide cycle that will change, they say.
Glenn Sudnick attributes the current bent on the supply side, in part, to a lack of “flippers,” or investors who purchase properties to profit on them in a short amount of time.
The current real estate market is “normal — one where people are purchasing homes because they want to live in them,” said Sudnick, the broker and owner of Palm Beach Florida Properties and chief administrator of the Palm Beach School of Real Estate, both in Juno Beach.
John Reichard, owner and president of Southwind Construction and Homes in West Palm Beach, builds new homes from Boynton Beach to Port St. Lucie, where he has a model along Southwest Mercedes Avenue selling for between $285,000 and $325,0000.
To move the properties, he has increased broker commissions and tried making upgrades such as granite countertops and paver driveways standard. Still, he said, he’s seeing home prices in general fall somewhere between 12 percent and 18 percent.
California is home to nine of the 10 least affordable U.S. metro areas in the third quarter, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index released this week.
The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, Calif., metro area ranked as the least affordable, according to the index, with 1.8 percent of homes in the area affordable for median-income households.
Bay City, Mich., ranked as the most affordable U.S. metro area in the third quarter, with 90 percent of homes affordable for median-income households, and Indianapolis, Ind., ranked as the most affordable large metro area, with 85.9 percent of homes affordable to median-income households.
In Indianapolis, the median household income was $65,100 in the third quarter, and the median sales price of all homes sold in the metro area during that time was $122,000 — up from $120,000 in the second quarter.
Among the top 30 least affordable metro-area markets in the third quarter, 25 are in California.
Ranked behind Los Angeles for least affordability is Salinas, Calif., followed by Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine; Modesto; Merced; Stockton; Madera; San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos; and Napa metro areas. The New York-White Plains-Wayne metro area in New York and New Jersey ranks 10th for least affordability.
Indianapolis has been ranked as the most affordable large metro area for five consecutive quarters, according to a National Association of Home Builders announcement about the index.
The index is a measure of the percentage of homes sold in a given area that are affordable to families earning that area’s median income during a specific quarter. Prices of new and existing homes sold are collected from court records by First American Real Estate Solutions, a marketing company. Mortgage financing conditions incorporate interest rates on fixed- and adjustable-rate loans reported by the Federal Housing Finance Board, the home builders association reported.
The index indicates that 40.4 percent of all new and existing homes that were sold during the third quarter were affordable to families earning the median U.S. income of $59,600. That compares with 43.2 percent of homes that were affordable to median-income families in third-quarter 2005 – the index was 50.4 percent in third-quarter 2004 and 61.5 percent in third-quarter 2001.
David Pressley, president for the home builders’ group, said in a statement that the index was roughly level with the second-quarter index, “in part because higher mortgage rates in the period were offset by somewhat lower home prices in many markets.”
According to the report, the national weighted interest rate on fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages – a key component in calculating the index – was 6.77 percent in the third quarter, which is 12 basis points higher than it was for the previous quarter.
Also near the top of the list for affordable major metros in the third quarter were Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, Ohio-Pa.; followed by Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, Mich.; Buffalo-Niagara Falls, N.Y.; and Grand Rapids-Wyoming, Mich.
Seven smaller metro markets outranked all others in terms of housing affordability during the third quarter, including Bay City, Mich.; Springfield, Ohio; Mansfield, Ohio; Lansing-East Lansing, Mich.; Lima, Ohio; Battle Creek, Mich.; and Canton-Massillon, Ohio.
In the Los Angeles metro area, the area’s median family income was $56,200 and the median sales price of all homes sold in the area during the period was $523,000.
U.S. mortgage applications fell for the first time in three weeks despite a dip in mortgage rates to their lowest level since January, an industry trade group said Wednesday.The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and purchasing loans, for the week ended Nov. 17 decreased 3.7 percent to 623.6 from the previous week’s 647.5.
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Borrowing costs on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, excluding fees, averaged 6.13 percent, down 0.02 percentage point from the previous week and well below a four-year high of 6.86 percent touched in June.
Interest rates were also below year-ago levels of 6.26 percent.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was at its lowest level since the week ended Jan. 20 when it reached 6.04 percent.
The MBA’s seasonally adjusted purchase index, widely considered a timely gauge of U.S. home sales, fell 2.8 percent to 401.4. The index was substantially below its year-ago level of 472.3.
The group’s seasonally adjusted index of refinancing applications decreased 4.3 percent to 1,935.3. A year earlier, the index stood at 1,584.1.
The refinance share of applications increased to 48.6 from 48 percent the previous week, remaining at its highest level since February 2005, the MBA said.
Fixed 15-year mortgage rates averaged 5.88 percent, up from 5.85. Rates on one-year adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) increased to 5.88 from 5.87 percent.
The ARM share of activity was unchanged at 25.5 percent of total applications.
The MBA’s survey covers about 50 percent of all U.S. retail residential loans. Respondents include mortgage banks, commercial banks and thrifts.
