Kitchens That'll Make Your Mama Wanna Cook

Nice.

Dead People are Selling Thier Homes Too

Ok seriously. This is the second story involving a real estate agent discovering a dead body while showing a home since May.

I think we should investigate whether or not the sellers were using organic or conventional pest control methods. Someone should look into this. This could be ground breaking.

Dallas Suburbs Still Sprawling

NEW YORK (Forbes) – Twenty Texas cities sprawled into Forbes’ latest “100 Fastest-Growing Suburbs” survey, the most of any state making the list.

Frisco, ranked 7th, grew at a galloping 128 percent while Wylie, ranked 8th, grew at just over 109 percent, according to Forbes.

Other Texas cities making the list were Cedar Park (11), McKinney (13), Rockwall (21), Sachse (22), Pflugerville (23), Corinth (30), Allen (33), Pearland (34), The Colony (47), Round Rock (49), Saginaw (50), Mansfield (54), Georgetown (55), Burleson (58), League City (65), Missouri City (78), Schertz (91) and Terrell (96).

The fastest growing suburb in the country was Lincoln, Calif., which grew last year by almost 237 percent.

$165 million estate for sale...nuff said

Apparently "The Beverly House Compound," the fabled estate of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies in Beverly Hills, CA, has just officially been put on the market for $165 million. Take that Highland Park and your silly little $15 million lot! Here are some stats on this little cottage.

• Located on 6.5 acres
• 29 bedrooms
• 72,000 square feet
• 2 tennis courts

Ok, I just can't talk about this anymore without my head spinning. The listing broker is Westside Estate Agency Realtors but the listing is not yet on their website. But they did have this nice $75 million, 12,000 square foot "gated beach front compound" available in case you need to scale down. So the commission on $165 million sale would be...????

There's "HOPE" for the "F" Word

NeighborWorks America and The Ad Council have launched a National Foreclosure Prevention Awareness Campaign.

NeighborWorks® America, one of the nation’s largest housing and community development organizations, announced a new public awareness campaign today with the Ad Council aimed at preventing home foreclosure that urges homeowners in financial trouble to call 888-995-HOPE. The Homeowner’s HOPE hotline, provided by the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, is the cornerstone of a foreclosure prevention effort involving many of the country’s largest mortgage market companies. The public awareness campaign strives to reduce the number of homes entering the foreclosure process, which is expected to exceed one million households in 2007.

Is this because they just nice people and care about the national overall real estate market? No. Here's the real reason why as stated in the release.

Given that each foreclosure costs $30,000 or more, the total cost to the housing finance system of one million foreclosures could approach $30 billion.

Basically they're trying to save their own behinds. Which they should seeing as how their poor predatory lending practices are the reason this HOPE number is even necessary in the first place. Shame on them.

And on a self serving note, good agents will help their clients avoid "creative" financing which ends up hurting thier clients in the long run. In my experience, those people who purchase homes without using a Realtor are the ones who get srewed the worst. IJS.