Real Estate Blog

Officials in cities around the Bay Area often share a great sense of responsibility when it comes to housing: That is to say, many of them greatly share a sense that housing should be somebody else’s responsibility.

Even as the Bay Area undershoots its housing needs year after year, these officials maintain their conviction that the best place for new housing remains nowhere near them or their constituents. In this view, the region’s housing crisis remains somebody else’s problem, to be solved…

Atlanta-based Cortland Partners has agreed to buy a Canadian apartment company for $1.2 billion.

The transaction is expected to close by the fourth quarter this year.

Pure Multi-Family owns and operates 22 apartment projects with just over 7,000 units in Texas and Arizona.

The deal comes as Cortland continues investing heavily in Sunbelt markets such as Atlanta.

Last October, it paid $156 million for more than 500 units just northwest of Atlanta around SunTrust Park. In February, it paid…

Former NASCAR promoter Humpy Wheeler has packed up, moved to the SouthPark area and auctioned off some 350 items of his personal collection this past winter. Now, Wheeler has listed on the market his 2,100-square-foot home and 30 acres of property on a peninsula lot on the Huntersville side of Mountain Island Lake, where he's lived for the past 17 years.

Palm Beach County real estate brokers Ralph Harvey III and Christian Angle led Florida in transactions and sales volume, respectively, in 2018, according to Real Trends.

The new “America’s Best Real Estate Professionals” report by Real Trends and Tom Ferry International surveyed over 14,000 brokers in every state and utilized data from Realtors associations and MLS.

The Top 5 brokers in South Florida by number of homes sold were:

Boynton Beach-based Harvey, of ListWithFreedom.com, which…

The total number of luxury properties sold on Oahu declined by 17% last month, compared to the same month last year, but the number of single-family homes that sold for $2 million or more in June jumped by 50%, according to a report by Coldwell Banker Pacific Properties.

There was a total of 44 luxury properties that sold for $1.5 million or more in June, compared to 53 that sold in June 2018. The median price of those properties rose 11% to $2 million, from $1.8 million last year.

Single-family…

A global entrepreneur is selling his modern 10,000-square-foot Yarrow point home for $5.99 million.

Windermere brokers Karl Lindor and John Kritsonis have the listing.

“The home is grand in size and scale, yet it has a comfortable and sophisticated elegance about the design and execution,” Lindor said.

While the owner wants to remain anonymous, check out the Ferrari in the garage, and the historic sports jerseys on the walls of the enormous media area.

This custom-built contemporary estate,…

Holland Partners took over the project from Lane Partners, which had a development agreement with the city.

A shot of Republic Plaza in Denver, a city where office space costs less than it does in many other large cities.Home prices in metro Denver may have skyrocketed this decade, but Denver office space remains a bargain compared to other major markets.

COMMERCIALCafé and Yardi Matrix did a study comparing what it cost to purchase 100,000 square feet of Class A office space in the nation’s 15 top central business districts with five or more transactions since 2017.

For Denver, the price tag was $25.4 million, toward the middle of the pack.

Midtown Manhattan was more than three times as expensive at $79 million for that amount of Class A space. The same square footage went for $60.6 million in Washington, D.C., $53.6 million in Seattle and $44.6 million in Los Angeles.

Denver prices are similar to those of Chicago, which came in at $26.7 million, and just ahead of Charlotte, N.C., at $24.4 million.

Minneapolis, Atlanta and Philadelphia were more affordable cities than Denver when it ca..

Foreign buyers have pulled back sharply on their purchases of U.S. homes, according to a report Wednesday from the National Association of Realtors.

Foreign buyers purchased $77.9 billion worth of existing homes between April 2018 and March 2019, a decline of 36 percent from the prior 12 months. Foreign buyers who didn’t set up residency and recent immigrants to the U.S. showed similar declines.

The number of homes purchased fell from 266,800 to 183,100. The average price paid was $426,100. Chinese residents, the biggest foreign buyers in the U.S. the past seven years, cut their purchases by 56 percent.

“A confluence of many factors — slower economic growth abroad, tighter capital controls in China, a stronger U.S. dollar and a low inventory of homes for sale — contributed to the pullback of foreign buyers,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, in a release. “However, the magnitude of the decline is quite striking, implying less confidence in owning a property in the U.S.”

Flori..

One piece of advice for home sellers looking to get the highest price possible — rip out that old carpet.

Opendoor provides sellers an instant offer on their homes, and then turns around and sells them. Since this fall, it has studied hundreds of local properties and is honing its sense of what does and doesn’t appeal to buyers.

Having carpet as the primary flooring type is the top detractor from a home’s value in metro Denver, knocking $10,800 off the price on average, according to Opendoor.

Having Formica or tile kitchen counters, which are considered outdated, deducts $4,800 from the average home price, and low-quality cabinetry shaves off $2,900.

And there are some things a seller can’t change. Being on a busy street reduces a home’s value by $6,000 on average and being near big powerlines knocks $2,200 off the sales price.

“With Denver among the most expensive housing markets that Opendoor operates in, we find that local buyers generally tend to expect a higher degree of upgr..