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Lansner on Real Estate ~ The latest news about the housing market from Orange County Register columnist Jon Lansner.

Broke actor’s O.C. cottage unsold at half off

November 18th, 2009, 9:30 pm by Jeff Collins
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Financially troubled actor Nicolas Cage’s 1913 cottage — just steps from the Newport Pier on the Balboa Peninsula — has been pulled off the market after he dropped the price three times, down from $1.9 million to $995,000.

Cage’s real estate trust paid $1.7 million for the home in December 2006, county records show.

The most recent price cut occurred Nov. 12, according to Redfin. Less than one week later, however, one of the home’s listing agents said that the house was off the market because it had been rented out. A neighbor said the home was still vacant on Wednesday.

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The actor’s late father, literature professor August Coppola, had been living in the home. Coppola, brother of “Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola, died three weeks ago in Newport Beach of a heart attack. The home’s neighbor said he moved out sometime since the house went on the market in July.

According to the property listing, the one-story cottage, located about six doors from the sand, has 1,500 square feet, with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, “high-vaulted ceilings, a granite kitchen with maple cabinetry, all the best appliances … beautifully tiled bathrooms, attached to each of the three bedrooms (and) bamboo and tile flooring throughout.”

The front porch is adorned with saloon-style doors, stain-glass with artificial bunches of grapes suspended from the rafters.

  • Click on photos above to enlarge. For interior photos, CLICK HERE!

The listing described the home this way:

Read the rest of this entry »

Really? 2010 recovery for real estate

November 18th, 2009, 6:00 pm by Jon Lansner

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Real estate news and views from around the globe that make you go, “Really?”

  • SUNNY SIDE: Real estate group looks on bright side (SignOnSanDiego) MORE HERE!
  • RECOVERY: Home Sales Expected To Increase In 2010 (NuWire) MORE HERE!
  • BOOST: Tax credit extension likely to spur sales of more expensive homes (Washington Examiner) MORE HERE!
  • CITY WATCH: The Hot Real Estate Spots For 2010 (BiggerPockets) MORE HERE!
  • CROSS THE POND: UK real estate giants optimistic on outlook (Interactive Investor) MORE HERE!
  • UP NORTH: Canadian home resales hit record high in October (Reuters) MORE HERE!

LA Times real estate blog folds

November 18th, 2009, 1:50 pm by Jon Lansner

screen-shot-2009-11-18-at-11400-pmThe “LA Land” real estate blog from our pals at the Los Angeles Times is no more. It’s a victim,so to speak, of a consolidation strategy where most business content will appear in one giant financial blog. LA Land’s last post reads …

LA Land has moved to a bigger, brighter, newer home. You can now find it in our Money & Company blog. You will still be able to find all the real estate news, foreclosures, and Hot Property pieces, but now in our uber-business blog.

  • Says my old pal, Russ Stanton, editor of the Los Angeles Times …

We aren’t killing it, we’re merging with other business-related blogs. It’s a strategy that we have had a great deal of success with, gang blogging (see LA Now, Fabulous Forum or Hero Complex, named best blog at Online News Association this year). Three years ago, with a bunch of single-author blogs, only 4% of our site traffic came from our blogosphere. Today, it’s 20%.

  • One comment on the final LA Land post seemed most special:

I’ll miss you LALand. You were a great blog and I’ll definitely miss the musings of Pete, Pete, Lauren, Beef, Nelciso,Cal, and even Lefty. It is funny how, just like real folks during the recession, LALand is going to be bunking with friends (Petruno) to cut costs. Farewell.

The latest Los Angeles Times blog to fade away is L.A. Land, which never seemed to quite recover its mojo from last year’s departure of originator Peter Viles. When real estate reporter Peter Hong left the paper last month on a buyout, the blog became less necessary. Now what’s left of the real estate news and observations has been folded into Money and Company, the main blog produced by the paper’s business writers. … Back in April, based on these stats, L.A. Land was doing way better than most Times blogs.

If you were a boss at The Register, you would ...
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Just so you know, we at The Register are still very committed to real estate blogging. Outside of this one, have you checked out our portfolio recently?

Mortgage Insider by Matt Padilla:

Huntington Homes by Marilyn Kalfus:

South Coast Homes by Kelli Hart:

Irvine Homes by Erika Chavez:

Home investments look twice as nice

November 18th, 2009, 12:00 pm by Jeff Collins

Nationwide survey found 12% of people responding plan to buy a home as an investment, twice the share (5.6%) expressing such interest in March.

The survey by the online property listing service Move.com said the lure of lower prices and foreclosure bargains were chief reasons for the growing interest.

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The survey by Move.com also found:

  • Of those expressing interest in investing in homes, 25.3% were interested in buying foreclosed homes.
  • 42% of potential foreclosure buyers are looking for an investment, while 57.6% are looking for a home to live in.
  • Of those planning to buy a home in the near future, 48.3% are first-time buyers.
  • Of the foreclosure investors, 13.2% intend to rent the home out; 11.3% plan to fix them up for resale; while 17.4% plan to have relatives live in the home until it can be sold at a profit.
  • 58% of foreclosure buyers expect to find a home at no more than 20% below market value; 38.5% expect a discount of 25% or more.
  • 73% expect properties to appreciate by 10% or more in five years; 28% believe values will go up 20% or more.
  • 48.2% expressed dissatisfaction with the federal government’s efforts to stabilize the housing market in October vs. 42.2% in March.

The poll was Move.com’s fifth quarterly Homeownership Survey. The latest sampling resulted from 1,002 interviews from Oct. 16-18. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3%. Move Inc. operates several online real estate listing services, include the National Association of Realtors’ Realtor.com. Chief Revenue Officer Errol Samuelson said the survey …

“… validates what many had hoped to see in the housing markets — affordable prices and ample inventories are restoring the appeal of real estate to investors while providing opportunities for first-time homebuyers to enter the market.”

Read more about the survey: HERE!

Our poll!

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Real estate outlooks:

Hear why O.C. housing has hit bottom

November 18th, 2009, 9:40 am by Jon Lansner

John KarevollJohn Karevoll of DataQuick has followed the local real estate market for the past two decades. As Orange County housing hits its fourth-year anniversary of its collapse, we figured we’d check in with him again to see what he’s thinking. (His last visit IS HERE!)

Karevoll tells ocregister.com in a podcast interview that the worst may be behind us — but the debacle has plenty of blame to share for many parties (and numerous lessons to be learned, too!) Bottom line, in his words: Years from now we’ll realize that 2009 was likely the bottom.

Check out your blogger’s previous podcasts:

$700 cake can’t sell TV house

November 18th, 2009, 12:01 am by Marilyn Kalfus, real estate reporter
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How to sell the $9.5 million — oops, now $6.7  million — waterfront Corona del Mar house seen Monday night on Bravo TV’s “Million Dollar Listing”?

Those of us who watched the show observed some remodeling, $30,000 worth of home staging, a $2,000 brokers’ open/champagne bash, and a big cake decorated with an image of  the house and celebrity Realtor Chad Rogers.

“I spent $700 on my cake,” said Rogers, who lopped off his head and ate it. ”But only time will tell if my investment pays off.”

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Rogers

Tick, tick, tick.

The house, at 2717 Shell St., is approaching a year on the market.

That’s no surprise. Demand for homes in Corona del Mar is at 10.7 months, meaning it theoretically would take that long to sell every home on the market there now, based on pending sales. But a year ago, that number was double that — 20.11 months, according to Realtor Steve Thomas at Altera Realty in Aliso Viejo, who does a bi-weekly analysis of the Orange County market.

The house also falls into the $4 million-plus market, which wouldn’t be depleted for 44.5 months, Thomas says.

The 2717 Shell St. home started at $9.5 million and several discounts later is at $6.7 million. What do you think it will go for?

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Hotels in really big trouble

November 17th, 2009, 6:00 pm by Jon Lansner

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Real estate news and views from around the globe that make you go, “Really?”

  • FLORIDA: Foreclosure targets two Marriott-branded hotels in Miami (South Florida Business Journal) MORE HERE!
  • COLORADO: Hard times send Denver’s Residences at the Ritz-Carlton into foreclosure (Denver Post) MORE HERE!
  • HAWAII: Waikiki’s Hawaiiana Hotel being phased out (The Associated Press) MORE HERE!
  • JERSEY: Embattled Hotel Pitman shut down in foreclosure (NJ.com) MORE HERE!
  • ALBUQUERQUE: Copper Square slips into foreclosure status (New Mexico Business Weekly) MORE HERE!

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Check HERE for our coverage of hotel troubles