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Old WB building sold for $110M

By Inman News, Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

KBS Realty Advisors recently acquired a 301,000-square-foot office building in New York City for $110 million.

The building, located at 619 W. 54th St. between 11th Avenue and the Westside Highway, was fully leased at the time of sale to 10 tenants.

ARRI, a German-based movie camera production company, who inherited the building when it purchased CSC (a U.S.-based movie camera production company, sold the property.

Built in 1930 for Warner Brothers Pictures, the building includes 21 surface parking spaces.

Masco dumps space near Boston

By Inman News, Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

Masco Corp., a manufacturer of home improvement and building products, recently sold its 95,290-square-foot industrial project in Brockton, Mass., for $4.1 million.

The property is located at 1123 Pearl St. near the Brockton/Easton town line.

Casey & Hayes Movers Inc. purchased the property from Masco, which is based in Taylor, Mich.

Metropark Corporate Center purchased

By Inman News, Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

Tishman Speyer has expanded its office portfolio with the recent purchase of Metropark Corporate Center, a three-building property in Woodbridge, N.J.

A joint venture between Rockwood Capital and Ivy Equities sold the complex for an undisclosed price.

The property, which was 100 percent leased at the time of sale, includes a nine-story, 480,000-square-foot office tower completed in 2000; a three-story, 280,000-square-foot office building that opened in 1976 and was renovated in 2001; and a single-story, 150,000-square-foot storage facility constructed in 1982.  more...

Civil rights groups call for moratorium on foreclosures

By Inman News, Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

Civil rights groups Wednesday called for a six-month moratorium on foreclosures on homes purchased using "reckless and unaffordable" subprime loans, saying a disproportionate share of the harm done by those loans is falling on African-American and Latino homeowners and their neighborhoods.

At a Washington, D.C., press conference, the groups -- including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the NAACP, the National Fair Housing Alliance, and the National Council of La Raza -- urged Congress to pass anti-predatory legislation, including a "private right of action," that would give  more...

Move.com moves up real estate Web rankings

By Inman News, Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

Move Inc.'s Move.com jumped in position from 17th in December to 9th in March in market share of visits to real estate sites, metrics company Hitwise reported today.

And Move Inc.'s Realtor.com site continues its reign as the leader among real estate sites, recording an 8.71 percent market share among real estate sites in March. The statistics are based on a sample of 10 million U.S.  more...

Reply gets $6 million in funding

By Inman News, Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

Reply Inc., an online lead-generation service for real estate professionals, has secured $6 million in additional funding, the company said today.

The new round of financing includes a major investment from Outlook Ventures, as well as new contributions from existing backer Scale Venture Partners (formerly BA Venture Partners) and board member Debi Coleman, the former chief financial officer of Apple Computer who currently serves as chairperson of the Reply!  more...

Rising rates deter borrowers

By Inman News, Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

Overall mortgage application volume fell last week for the third week as interest rates rose sharply, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported today.

The market composite index, a measure of mortgage application volume, dropped 3.2 percent, falling to 649.5 last week on a seasonally adjusted basis from 671 one week earlier.

The index that tracks refinancings took the biggest hit as it dropped 4.5 percent last week from the week before, and the purchase index sank 2 percent.

Refinancings and adjustable loans continued to lose market share, with refis slipping to 44.5 pe  more...

Real estate rates rise overnight

By Inman News, Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

Long-term mortgage interest rates were up Tuesday, and the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond yield rose to 4.67 percent.

The 30-year fixed-rate average gained to 5.75 percent, and the 15-year fixed rate edged up to 5.46 percent. The 1-year adjustable dipped to 5.32 percent.

The 30-year Treasury bond yield increased to 4.85 percent.

Rates are current as of 7:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Mortgage rate figures are according to Bankrate.com, which publishes nightly averages based on its survey of 4,000 banks in 50 states.  more...

Zillow opens homes to online discussion

By Glenn Roberts Jr., Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

Home valuation and marketing site Zillow.com is on the move again, launching new tools that allow anybody to post information, photos, questions and answers about any property, including for-sale properties. The company also announced the creation of a ZIP code-focused display advertising platform.

Any Zillow user can identify the address and list price of any for-sale property.  more...

Why won't my second home sell?

By Tom Kelly, Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

What do you do when the housing market is slow and you absolutely must sell? You pull out all the stops -- and pray for the best.

Let's focus on the "pray" part for a moment. More than 15 years ago, when home prices plummeted along with the hopes of many would-be sellers, I wrote about an ex-Jesuit priest and his family who had bought a new home in another city. They cleaned, polished and painted but could not find a buyer for their home. In addition, carrying two mortgages at the same time began to take a heavy toll.  more...

Custom window retrofit made easy

By Bill and Kevin Burnett, Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

Q: When my house was built in 1978, the windows were bricked in -- that is to say, the windows overlap the brick by one-half inch. Now I would like to update them.

My old windows will have to be removed from inside the house. My contractor wants to put the new ones on the brick and not in the original openings. He says that is how the windows should have been installed in the first place.

I'm not sure about this. Why can't new windows be made and installed from inside the house?  more...

IRS defeated in quest for real estate back taxes

By Robert Bruss, Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

The Internal Revenue Service wants to foreclose on a house occupied by its former owners, Thomas and Joen Towne. They owe the government about $329,000. But the house is owned by Peter Swan and his wife, Jane Harris. Swan is the attorney for the Townes.

The government argues the Townes are the real owners of the house in which they live. If this is correct, the government can seize the house to satisfy its tax lien against them.

Purchase Bob Bruss reports online.  more...

Co-owner seeks best buy-out arrangement

By Robert Bruss, Tuesday, April 3, 2007.

DEAR BOB: Is it possible to add someone to the title to a property but not to the mortgage loan obligation? If so, after that buyer dies, does the surviving owner get to buy out the deceased's share of the property? --Paula T.

DEAR PAULA: From the tone of your letter, it sounds like you want to sell someone an interest in your property. Yes, that can be done without their taking on the mortgage payment obligation.

Purchase Bob Bruss reports online.  more...

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2007

No separation of church and real estate

By Glenn Roberts, Jr., Tuesday, April 3, 2007.
A real estate broker in Minnesota has moved his real estate business into a church building, The Daily Journal newspaper of Fergus Falls, Minn., reports. Robert Jennings of Robert Jennings Realty, a former IBM employee, bought the 115-year-old church building...  more...

House Hunting... with your Hands?

By Joel Burslem, Tuesday, April 3, 2007.
Perceptive Pixel is a New York based company that is trying to develop and market one of the most advanced multi-touch touchscreen systems in the world. The eight-foot screens they have developed are reminiscent of the screens in the futuristic...  more...
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