Local Address

Feds link Chinese drywall to 'corrosive environment' in homes

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:14:35 -0500

The Consumer Product Safety Commission's unsettling advice to people who live in homes made with Chinese drywall: "Spend as much time outdoors in fresh air as possible." The CPSC said it has received about 2,091 reports from consumers in 32 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, all with concerns about contaminated drywall in their homes. Occupants have complained of rotten-egg smells; irritated eyes, skin and respiratory systems; asthma attacks and headaches. They also have complained of metals installed in their new homes, including copper pipes and electrical wiring, turning black from corrosion. On Monday, the CPSC reported there is a "strong association" between homes built with Chinese drywall and levels of hydrogen sulfide in the air and corroding metals around the home. They also found elevated levels of formaldehyde in the air, which CPSC said can be expected in well-insulated new construction. But they speculated that formaldehyde and

Is Washington turning into a seller's market?

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:48:43 -0500

Guy Wolcott, co-founder of Sawbuck.com, the online brokerage based in D.C., shared some local inventory numbers with me recently. Looking at the inventory of homes listed for sale on the local multiple listing service, Metropolitan Regional Information Services, the cupboard is pretty bare in spots. At the current sales pace, Manassas Park City has just 1.3 months' worth of listings. Manassas City, just 1.4 months. Falls Church City, 2.1 months; and Fairfax County just 2.7 months. Arlington County has 3.9 months The rule of thumb says 6 months' inventory marks a balanced market--favoring neither sellers nor buyers. According to the MLS data, the Washington metro area as a whole has only 4.5 months supply available--making it a bit of a seller's market. The District, proper, has 5.1 months' supply. Montgomery County has only 3.8 months' supply, but with that exception, Maryland still has enough inventory that favors buyers. Prince George's

Have you refinanced yet?

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:00:11 -0500

Mortgage interest rates dropped again this week, hitting 4.91 percent with 0.7 points (prepaid interest) for a 30-year fixed-rate loan. That is so low it almost demands a rush to the refinancing table. (Then again, bank deposits are paying less than 2 percent, so maybe rates aren't that low, after all.) Rates locked in for three decades now cost only 0.45 percentage points more than for a one-year adjustable-rate mortgage. One-year ARMS averaged 4.46 percent this week, according to Freddie. The the vast majority of borrowers would be foolish to take an ARM when fixed-rates are so close in price. But should you rush to refinance? If you've lost a job or your home equity, of course, the question is moot. You won't qualify, and today's low rates only serve to taunt you with the better prospects available to others. But if you have the equity, the income and the

Washington-area home prices down 2.5% from last year

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:45:19 -0500

The median home price for homes sold in the Washington, D.C., area, a vast Census territory that stretches from the Chesapeake Bay to West Virginia, fell 2.5 percent during the July-September quarter compared to a year ago, the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday. Nationally, the price decline was 11.2 percent. Also, the Realtors reported that 30 percent of all sales nationally were of distressed properties, including foreclosures and short-sales. The Washington-area's median price was $324,700 in the third quarter. That was up 1.72 percent over the April-June quarter, which tends to be one of the strongest sales periods of the year. The statistics are not seasonally adjusted to smooth out the differences between strong sales periods and traditionally weaker ones. The price decline was greater for Washington-area condos. At a median of $244,300, prices were down 7.1 percent in the third quarter compared to a year ago, or 0.2

Remodelers: "It will die if you don't take care of it."

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0500

Remodeling is not dead--but it's a much more modest endeavor these days, when more homeowners are paying the tab out of their savings instead of a cheap and easy home equity loan, according to remodelers. Officials of Case Design/Remodeling, which is based in the Washington area, had some interesting things to say about remodeling in Nation's Building News, an online publication of the National Association of Home Builders. Their average project now costs about $100,000, half of what was typical in 2007, said Mark Richardson, Case's co-chairman. And they're focusing much of their pitch to homeowners on the need to keep up their properties, pointing out maintenance issues that ought to be taken care of. "It will die if you don't take care of it," is Case's message. In the past few months I've started to see more remodeling jobs in my neighborhood, including some second-story additions getting underway. How's

Big Bird and the real estate agent

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:10:15 -0500

Sesame Street launches its 40th-anniversary season Tuesday with a visit from the real estate agent. According to an Associated Press story via MSN, the agent encourages Big Bird to consider a change of habitat. After considering moving his home to the beach, the swamp or the rain forest, our big, yellow friend reportedly decides to keep his nest right where it is--on Sesame Street. I guess he didn't need the home-purchase tax credit.

Washington home sales and The Weekend Poll

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0500

How much did the $8,000 first-time buyer tax credit boost local home sales? By about 1,900 deals that otherwise would not have occurred, according to local real estate analysts at Delta Associates. The area's lofty prices and high number of transients make our market less influenced by first-timers than most other parts of the country, Delta analysts say in a report released with Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., the local multiple listing service. Well, that tally of deals is poised to go up. President Obama is expected to sign the legislation (possibly today) just passed by Congress extending the $8,000 tax credit until spring. It also creates a new $6,500 tax credit for some move-up buyers. The earnings caps included in the legislation will limit the program's effect locally. For either the $8,000 credit or the $6,500 credit, a phase-out kicks in for people earning $125,000 a year or more,

Fannie Mae to allow some troubled owners to rent back

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:39:27 -0500

Fannie Mae announced a new program Thursday that will allow some homeowners facing foreclosure to hand the deed back to their lender but remain in the home as a renter. The idea behind their new "Deed for Lease Program" is that allowing rent-backs will minimize family displacement and stanch the deterioration of neighborhoods plagued by vacant foreclosures, according to Fannie's announcement. THE DETAILS: The servicer has to decide that the borrower qualifies for a "deed in lieu of foreclosure." Basically, borrowers who are in default on their loan voluntarily give the deed back to the lender, negating the need for a drawn-out foreclosure process. Traditionally this has been considered less damaging to the borrower than foreclosure, although both actions have severe effects on a borrower's credit standing--and both result in loss of their home. Borrowers-turned-tenants must be able to afford market rent on the home. That rent can't exceed 31

Now you can get closed-sale prices as fast as a real estate agent

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0500

If you're interested in home values in the Washington area--and about a dozen other big real estate markets around the country--the Redfin online brokerage has a sweet new tool for you. Starting this morning, Redfin is posting closed-sale prices and photographs for all homes on the multiple listing service as soon as the listing broker marks the sale as final. "With this upgrade, Redfin should have pictures of every sale within 15 minutes of the agent's taking it off the market," Redfin chief executive Glenn Kelman wrote in an e-mail. "It's a big deal because brokers have long kept to themselves the data that consumers need to do a CMA; it's a major reason why people feel like they need a real estate agent." (CMA stands for "comparative market analysis," a study of recent sales prices and current listings, which sellers need to perform before deciding on their own listing

Refinancers save $3 billion in a year

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0500

Mortgage interest rates have been bobbing around record-low territory through much of the summer, which led to a boom in refinancing. Freddie Mac said Monday that 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged only 5.1 percent during the first nine months of this year, which is the lowest interest rate in the 38 years Freddie Mac has tracked those loans. People who refinanced during the July-September quarter cut their interest rates by an average of 1.1 percentage points, and they stand to save $3 billion, all together, over the first 12 months of their new loan. Only 36 percent of refinancers took cash out--the lowest share in six years. The median age of their old loan was 3.5 years. Another telling statistic: The median appreciation of the refinanced property was 0 percent during the third quarter. Zero. In the third quarter last year the median appreciation was 16 percent. And it was as

First-time buyer credit and The Weekend Poll

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:00:00 -0500

There's some movement on Capitol Hill toward extending the first-time buyer's tax credit. As reported by the Post's Dina ElBoghdady, there is consensus in favor of a limited extension of the $8,000 tax credit. The latest version said to be favored in the Senate would extend the credit to home sales that go under contract by April 30 and close by June 30. A new, $6,500 tax credit would be available for buyers who have owned during five of the eight years prior to the purchase. (Vacation or investment homes would not qualify.) Among the highlights: the home price limit would be $800,000; the annual income limit to qualify for the tax credit would be $125,000 for singles and $250,000 for couples; and the cost to the Treasury would be $10.2 billion. Stay tuned: the compromise has not yet been voted on by the Senate. And the House of Representatives

Washington area is short 40,000 homes affordable to average earners

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:00:00 -0500

Families are being priced out of the Washington-area housing market. Or at least they’re being driven to the far edges of the region and forced into long commutes to and from the area’s employment hubs. That’s the message in a new report about to be released by the Urban Land Institute’s Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing. It’s not exactly news to anyone of average income looking to buy a home in the area — or to drivers stuck on clogged local roads. But the Terwilliger Center report quantifies our misery — and says things are likely to get worse if someone (ahem, government) doesn’t do something to make it profitable for developers to build more affordable homes. Those homes would accommodate families earning between 60 and 100 percent of the area's median income and be located close to jobs in the region’s six employment cores: Alexandria (including Crystal City and

Act fast to cash in credit card rewards

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:00:00 -0500

If you have a Home Depot Rewards MasterCard--and have been counting on tapping that line of credit for a big job--you need to go shopping, and fast. Citi, which issues the card, has announced that cardholders can use them to make purchases only through Saturday, Oct. 31. And Rewards Points must be redeemed by Jan. 31, 2010, or they expire. Samuel Wang, VP for Public Affairs at Citi, said in an e-mail that they mailed letters to card holders in late August announcing the changes and have repeated the warning in subsequent billing statements. But those are easy to overlook among the credit card solicitations that still pour through mailboxes. And people who receive their statements online may not bother to open such mail. Wang stressed that Citi is still continuing its regular Home Depot credit card--the one that doesn't pay rewards. Discontinuance of the Home Depot rewards card is

Germany Takes Top Honors in Solar Decathlon

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:36:30 -0500

Team Germany--led by students from Technische Universitat Darmstadt--won top overall honors in the 2009 Solar Decathlon, the Department of Energy announced Friday. Second place, overall, went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and third place went to Team California, which was a partnership of Santa Clara University and California College of the Arts. Houses built for the decathlon are still open for free tours on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. This is the second straight time that a German team won the overall prize. According to DOE, the team's "Cube House" design--which was covered on all sides by shiny, black solar panels--produced a surplus of electricity even during three days of rain. The ability to feed the most solar-generated electricity back into Pepco's electric grid was the most heavily weighted challenge of the 10 categories that made up the this year's decathlon. Team Germany earned

Solar Winners, Chat Day and The Weekend Poll

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:00:00 -0500

A couple of early winners have been announced at the Solar Decathlon still underway through this weekend on the National Mall. So far, Team California has taken first place for architecture and communications; the University of Louisiana at Lafayette has taken first place for market viability; and the University of Minnesota has taken first place for lighting design. The rest of the winners will be announced Friday. Here's the link to the ePropertyWatch service that monitors local government records for changes to your deed records. Details are in yesterday's blog post. Chat Day is today! Join the conversation live from 1-2 p.m. today, or submit your comments early. Weekend Reading: For all they give us, trees don't get a lot of recognition. That's changing in Arlington and some other communities. Susan Straight has the details. And columnist Kenneth Harney reports on government warnings about credit-repair cons. The Weekend Poll poll