Lance Armstrong, from cycling to real estate
pimg alt="Lance Armstrong Headshot (BlackWhite).JPG" src="http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/Lance%20Armstrong%20Headshot%20%28BlackWhite%29.JPG" width="340" height="286" /br / Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong is going into commercial real estate. According to a news release today: /p pArmstrong ... has joined with longtime agent Bill Stapleton and business manager Bart Knaggs to form CSE Realty Partners, a privately-held real estate investment company based in Austin, Texas. The trio, responsible for directing more than 20 successful enterprises since 1995 ... have recruited 20-year real estate industry veteran Lance Sallis to lead the new company. /p pAs if that's not enough athletic ability for one real estate company, the team will also include Patrick Jeffers, a former NFL wide receiver who played for the Denver Broncos Super Bowl XXXII Championship team. /p pArmstrong is a natural-born entrepreneur. He's also co-founded businesses ranging from hotels to artist management to live events to a bicycle shop to LiveStrong.com./p pNote to the Austin real estate community: Do not, repeat not, accept an invitation to play these guys in any "friendly" game you can think of.br / /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/bw_rss/hotproperty/~4/dWqozGyC1I8" height="1" width="1"/
October 30, 2009 | Filed Under News | Leave a Comment
Should Wall Streeters Give Their Bonuses to the Homeless?
pimg alt="money and house.jpg" src="http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/money%20and%20house.jpg" width="170" height="125" //p pEconomist and writer Katerina Alexandraki has launched a creative idea for easing the housing crunch this holiday season. She’s asking Wall Streeters getting big bonuses to contribute them to folks in danger of losing their homes. /p pWall Streeters are expected to get a lot of heat this bonus season, both for creating the loose lending standards and securitization of loans that fueled the housing bubble and now for making a killing with stocks and distressed assets surging in value thanks largely to the trillions of dollars in government support. Check out the Web site for Katerina's campaign, which she called a href="http://bonusforhome.weebly.com/index.html"Bonus for Homes/a./p pKaterina hopes to distribute the money to low-income earners and the unemployed., specifically folks who were victims of predatory lending or who are facing foreclosure. She describes it as “a private-sector initiative to address the anomaly that, while everyone, from top to bottom, public and private, is to blame for the financial crisis, some of us have fared much better than others.”/p pShe’s looking for volunteers to contribute or to nag their fellow high-earners. Of course you could just as easily donate to local housing-related charities. Maybe even with company matching funds!br / /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/bw_rss/hotproperty/~4/VGIFJa5UNJY" height="1" width="1"/
October 30, 2009 | Filed Under News | Leave a Comment
Expanded Home Buyer Tax Credit to Cost $10.8 Billion
pMajority Leader Harry Reid's office just sent me an outline of the Senate Democrats' plan to extend and expand the home buyer tax credit. Much of this was covered in my a href="http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/2009/10/home_buyer_tax.html"previous blog post/a. But there's one new detail that hasn't been reported elsewhere. It will cost $10.8 billion. That's a bit more expensive than the existing credit, which will have cost taxpayers about $8.5 billion by the time it expires Nov. 30./p pSome more details: /p p*The credit is available for homes that go under contract by April 30, 2010 and close within 60 days after that./p p*It will be attached to a bill to extend unemployment benefits, but it's unclear when that bill will be voted on./p p* First-time buyers (those who have not owned a home for three years) can claim an $8,000 credit. Homeowners who buy a new principal residence after living in their current home for at least the last five years can claim up to $6,500./p p*Income limits: $125,000 a year for individuals, $225,000 a year for married couples./p p* The proposal will include anti-fraud measures, including minimum age requirements and additional authorities for the IRS./p pI ran the $10.8 billion figure by Moody's Economy.com chief economist Mark Zandi, who hasn't yet come up with a cost figure for the current proposal. But he said "that sounds in the ball park."/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/bw_rss/hotproperty/~4/qgCaehkVLpw" height="1" width="1"/
October 29, 2009 | Filed Under News | Leave a Comment
Surprise drop in new home sales
Sales of newly built homes fell unexpectedly in September after rising for five straight months, according to government figures released Wednesday.img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rss/money_realestate/~4/V9ueT1NVmCk" height="1" width="1"/
October 29, 2009 | Filed Under News | Leave a Comment
O.C. Great Park: if you build a little of it, they will come
pimg alt="balloon.png" src="http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/balloon.png" width="247" height="119" //p pLandscape architect Ken Smith has precisely the right idea for how to build Orange County Great Park, the ambitious urban park planned for the site of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station south of Los Angeles in Orange County, Calif. The park was supposed to be financed by real estate development, but homebuilder Lennar Corp., which took control of the base in 2005, has put construction on hold because of California's massive housing bust./p pSmith's idea: Build just a little of it, attract some crowds, garner interest and support, and then go from there. According to a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-great-park1-2009oct01,0,6540980.story?track=rss"an article in The Los Angeles Times by Paloma Esquivel/a, the bicoastal Smith was inspired in part by New York City, where builders of a park along the Hudson River built a constituency for the project by putting in temporary trails for jogging, biking, and roller-skating. /p pNot that Smith has much choice--no one's going to sit down tomorrow and write him a check for the $1.3 billion that he thinks will eventually be needed to build "the first great metropolitan park of the 21st Century." /p pPragmatically, Smith started out by building a Preview Park on a tiny piece of the 4,700-acre former military base. Its main attraction is an iconic crowd-pleaser, a big, orange, helium balloon that gives park visitors panoramic views from an altitude of 400 feet. More than 100,000 people have flown in the balloon--not a bad way to engender optimism for the bigger project./p pIn August, according to a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/park-great-city-2520846-lennar-developer#"an article in the Orange County Register/a, the city of Irvine, Calif., and Lennar agreed that Lennar would commit $58 million over the next five years for infrastructure and maintenance in the park, and would give the city 135 more acres of park land. The article quotes Emile Haddad, Lennar's former chief investment officer, whose new company, Five Point Properties, recently took over management of the Great Park. "We're trying to set this thing to be successful based on the world we live in today," Haddad said. (Meaning: A post-bust world.)/p pThen, earlier this month, the park's board of directors approved $65 million worth of construction on 200 acres, including sports fields and gardens but not a planned lake. /p pOrange County Great Park isn't exactly great yet. It isn't even exactly a park. But you do what you can./pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/bw_rss/hotproperty/~4/rLTiFkis_Xs" height="1" width="1"/
October 29, 2009 | Filed Under News | Leave a Comment
$8,000 home credit still in play
Confused about whether lawmakers will extend the $8,000 first-time homebuyer credit and what it would look like?img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rss/money_realestate/~4/UgbBnj8Rv1A" height="1" width="1"/
October 28, 2009 | Filed Under News | Leave a Comment
The FDIC’s Sheila Bair: “There Will Be Losses.”
pFDIC Chief Sheila Bair spoke at the Town Hall Los Angeles this morning, sharing her thoughts on financial markets and some of the policy issues she faces as one of the nation’s top banking authorities. Formerly a professor of regulatory affairs at the University of Massachusetts, Bair speaks in a rapid fire style. So I’ll put her comments in bullet points./p pimg class=imgRight alt="bair_sheila.jpg" src="http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/bair_sheila.jpg" width="129" height="194" //p pstrongOn the economy as a whole/strongbr / Bair said the Administration was winding down some of the emergency programs introduced in the wake of the crisis such as the TARP funding. “Things are getting better,” she said. “It’s time for government to get out and let the markets work.” /p pstrongThey’ll be more bad news though./strongbr / “Banking is a lagging indicator. They’ll go through the process of cleaning up their balance sheets for at least two quarters past the end of the recession.” There are now 416 trouble banks, 106 that have failed this year. Bair said banks will see $100 billion in losses over the five year period beginning in 2008. About $60 billion has been recognized already. /p pstrongAnd more changes are coming./strongbr / “There’s a difference between free markets and a free-for-all,” she said. Bair supports legislation proposed by Rep. Barney Frank that would create a government-run recovery fund, financed by private industry, that would take over investment banks and insurance companies deemed “too-big-to-fail.” The process would work in much the same way the FDIC takes over failed banks. In such cases, shareholders and lenders would take more of a hit than they did in the cases of bailouts such as AIG. “I want the market to understand there will be losses,” she said. /p pstrongOn the unpopular decision to bail out big banks./strongbr / “Everybody did what we had to do, a lot of us didn’t like it,” she said. Bair said she wants to see the quasi-governmental agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac redesigned. “We either nationalize them or privatize them, but this hybrid approach didn’t work.”/p pstrongIndyMac, no mas/strongbr / She told a vocal group of folks who had invested more than the insured limit in IndyMac CDs that they wouldn’t be getting any more money—“there are virtually no assets left.” She said that if folks wanted to increase their recoveries in bank failures they’ll have to get Congress to change the laws./p pstrongWhy loan officers don’t return calls/strongbr / I asked the Chairwoman after her talk if the PPIP program would be expanded to purchase bad assets from good banks. She said yes. I also asked her take on why there have been so many complaints about banks taking so long to approve loan modifications. “They didn’t staff up,” she said. “There is still to too much of an inclination to just not do it. Investors are still unwilling to do modifications. We tried to streamline it, to make it about pay stubs and tax returns. That’s what you need.”/p pstrongThe future of banking/strongbr / When asked if the FDIC was slow in allowing new banks to be insured, she conceded it was. “The old model of brokered deposits funding commercial real estate, we have a lot of problems with that.” She also said she hoped federally insured institutions will have learned something from the crisis and avoid exotic financial instruments and focus instead on the basics. “We’re going to get away from models and math and make loans based on getting to the know the borrower. It’s not who comes up with the best financial engineered product or who made the most fees anymore.” /p pWishful thinking, but let’s hope she’s right./pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/bw_rss/hotproperty/~4/3VZp_BqDAHs" height="1" width="1"/
October 28, 2009 | Filed Under News | Leave a Comment
Home Buyer Tax Credit Could Soon Be Extended, Expanded
pIt's increasingly likely that Congress will extend and expand the popular home buyer tax credit, which will expire next month. CNN.com reported today that a compromise proposal based on bills that have already been introduced could pass the Senate as early as this week (assuming that it is attached to a bill to extend unemployment benefits). /p pThe compromise bill would likely open the program to some existing homeowners. The expiring tax credit is limited to buyers who have not owned a home for the last three years./p pAccording to a a href="http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/28/real_estate/homebuyer_credit/"CNN.com story/a today:/p p* First-time buyers could continue to claim up to $8,000. But existing homeowners who have lived in their home for five years could receive up to $6,500 if they trade up to a larger principal residence. /p p* The full credit would be limited to buyers who earn less than $125,000 a year and for married couples with annual incomes up to $225,000./p p* The credit could only be used for homes selling for $800,000 or less./p p* Contracts must be signed by April 30, 2010 and sales must close by June 30./p pMark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com (MCO), told me recently that he supports the extension because the housing market could take a big step back without it. But he agreed with critics that it is one of the most inefficient ways for the government to support housing. /p pAccording to Zandi, only 22% of about 1.8 million buyers who will claim the soon-to-expire credit would not have bought a home but for the incentive. Expanding the credit to include previous homeowners and extending the credit through June will cost about $30 billion, on top of about $8 billion that would have already been spent, he said./p pThe compromise bill outlined here might be cheaper because it seems to more narrowly define the existing homeowners who can take advantage of the credit.br / /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/bw_rss/hotproperty/~4/vvpajKifUbg" height="1" width="1"/
October 28, 2009 | Filed Under News | Leave a Comment
Foreclosures: Worst-hit cities
While foreclosure rates are easing in some of the hardest-hit cities, the crisis is beginning to expand into new metro areas.img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rss/money_realestate/~4/FjKlXWo87Xw" height="1" width="1"/
October 28, 2009 | Filed Under News | Leave a Comment
16-Story Manhattan Office Trades Off-Market
Daniel Findorak of Dumann Realty, a full-service real estate solutions company, has completed a deal for 222 West 37th Street Realty Corp. in the disposition of a 16-story, 50,000-square-foot office building located at 222 West 37th Street in Manhattan. pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/MfFxOGTZhIeOxm6-KgzT3K-BdJg/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/MfFxOGTZhIeOxm6-KgzT3K-BdJg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/MfFxOGTZhIeOxm6-KgzT3K-BdJg/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/MfFxOGTZhIeOxm6-KgzT3K-BdJg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p
October 28, 2009 | Filed Under News | Leave a Comment
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