Real Estate Blog

Are you remodeling or redecorating? Then you’re probably looking for some inspiration in the color department. One tip: Look no further than fall’s fashion runways. Fashion trends often dictate what’s hot in home decor. So, if you’re looking to get a jump-start on next season’s trends, check out Pantone’s hot colors for fall 2008. Saturated tones of both warm and cool colors dominate the list. But how do they look in actual rooms? I was inspired by this great post on the Material Girls blog to find rooms from Dueling Digs that put these bold colors to use:

This office is from 11754 Treadwell Dr, Poway, CA
See more living space remodeling ideas
See more Poway, CA real estate

This bedroom is from 1955 King Arthur Cir, Maitland, FL
See more bedroom remodeling ideas
See more Maitland, FL real estate

This kitchen is from 5383 E Rockridge Rd, Phoenix, AZ
See more kitchen remodeling ideas
See more Phoenix real estate

This bathroom is from 3667 Gleneagles Dr, Tarzana, CA
See more bathroom remodeling ideas
See more Tarzana, CA real estate

This kitchen is from 4144 Flintlock Rd NW, Atlanta, GA
See more Atlanta real estate

This living room is from 2242 81st Ave SE, Mercer Island, WA
See more living room remodeling ideas
See more Mercer Island, WA real estate

This bathroom is from 814 Sheridan Rd, Wilmette, IL
See more Wilmette, IL real estate

This bedroom is from 16593 Catena Dr, Chino Hills, CA
See more Chino Hills, CA real estate

This bedroom is from 3338 SW Fairmount Ln, Portland, OR
See more Portland, OR real estate

This living room is from 2049 NE 6th Ter, Wilton Manors, FL
See more Wilton Manors, FL real estate

See the rest here:
Home Remodeling: Hot Colors for Fall

Through the always-solid reporting work at Big Time Listings, Bob Goldsborough added color to the Wall Street Journal’s scoop a couple of weeks ago on the sale of Hollywood power couple Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn’s home in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. It looks like Coldwell Banker’s John McGeough has the listing, but it doesn’t seem to be public yet. Here are the basic facts, as reported by WSJ:

“The 10,000-square-foot house was designed with hand-hewn wood-beamed ceilings and floors, stone fireplaces and hand-painted tiles in the bathrooms and kitchen. The two-story home has five bedrooms, a home office, an au pair suite, a gym and a three-car garage. A two-bedroom guest cottage has its own two-car garage. There’s also a pool, tennis court, gardens and dog run.”

Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn’s home
7 Laurel Grove Ave, Kentfield, CA 94904
For Sale: $15,000,000
See more Ross, CA real estate
Affordability*: Your monthly payments are $82,366!

Other notable homes:

Former NBA star Reggie Miller’s home
14301 E 113th St., Fortville, IN 46040
For Sale: $7,500,000
See more Fortville, IN real estate
Affordability*: Your monthly payments are $43,273!

Reggie had a stellar 18-year career with the Indiana Pacers, retiring after the 2005 season. It looks like he’s ready to cut ties with Indiana, putting his Geist Lake home on the market for $7.5 million.

Listing Description: There are few, rare properties such as this that become available in our state and region. Nearly 6ac waterfront on Geist Lake. Gourmet kitchen, MF Master Suite w stunning dressing areas, Garden Room, Formal Living & Dining rooms, multiple rear decks, Gunnite pool, pool house, tennis court, stocked pond. Media, Rec, Billiards, countless additional areas. Listed by Century 21. [Source: Big Time Listings].

Porn star Jenna Jameson’s home
1618 Sunset Plaza Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90069
For Sale: $2,700,000
See more Hollywood Hills, CA real estate
Affordability*: Your monthly payments are $14,801!

Listing Description: Beautiful and unique combo of Hollywood circa 1920s and chic upgrades with awesome city views. Former Valentino family home, currently celebrity owned with long celeb history. This stylish Mediterranean features incredible master suite, guest apartment, third suite and two bonus rooms. Sunken living room w/ fireplace, formal dining room, den opens to spa courtyard, gourmet kitchen, 5 patios/balconies, and 2 car garage. Fully gated/sec system and private. Entertainer’s dream. Listed by Coldwell Banker. [Source: the Real Estalker]

Former pro baseball player Mike Piazza’s home
1000 S. Pointe Dr., Miami Beach, FL 33139
For Sale: $4,900,000
See more Miami Beach, FL real estate
Affordability*: Your monthly payments are $29,186!

Former catcher for the L.A. Dodgers and N.Y. Mets (among others), Piazza retired from pro baseball in May of 2008.

Listing Description: Fabulous contemporary unit at Murano. Designer finishes include designer furniture, fine limestone floors, custom built-ins, floor to ceiling glass windows, private entry foyer, large state-of-the-art kitchen w/den area, spacious living and dining room, media rm and lrge terraces. Most spectacular views of Fisher Island, Biscayne Bay, cruise ships, marina, downtown Miami skyline, the ocean and South Beach. No expense was spared in making this the must-have apartment in SoFi. The ‘01’ line is Murano’s finest. Listed by The Jills. [Source: Luxist.com]

French artist Sylvain Copon’s home
6579 Pickwick St, Los Angeles, CA 90042
For Sale: $1,899,000
See more Los Angeles real estate
Affordability*: Your monthly payments are $10,432!

Listing Description: Fine Vintage Spanish Villa with apx. 800 authentic Batchelder tiles. 1.6 AC. Mature olive orchard. Beautiful panoramic views from every room.Private driveway and gate. Exuding with character, featuring hand-huned wood beams, bronze window screens, chair railings and moldings, rebetted French doors, brass knobs and levers, plank doors, oak tongue and groove floors with cherry bouchone, fireplace,multiple water features and octagonal breakfast room.5 minutes to Downtown L.A. and Old Town Pasadena. Listed by Sotheby’s International Realty. See a home tour. [Source: Luxist]

Filmaker Barry Levinson’s former home
20 Glenwood Ave, Ross, CA
For Sale: $17,500,000
See more Marin County, CA real estate

Even though Baltimore native Barry Levinson has not lived in this home since he sold it in 2001, it has become known as the “Barry Levinson Estate.”

Listing Description: Originally built circa 1902, now elegantly and superbly renovated and enlarged to create a family compound of over 10,000 sq. ft. of exquisitely designed & appointed living space, with state-of-the-art communications & entertainment technology, & situated on approx, 2 level acres of secured privacy in Ross’ premier location. Features a stunning, approx. 2,500 sq. ft., 3-room master suite occupying the entire top floor, with large bedroom, retreat, study, his-and-hers baths & dressing areas, & 2 fireplaces. The children’s wing comprises the child’s study with built-in computer & network wiring, & 2 bedrooms, each with full bath. Spectacular kitchen with chef’s sink & refrigerator & walk-in butler’s pantries. Private guest room with fireplace and full bath, a separate, approx. 800 sq. ft. studio with full bath & a luxurious, approx. 1,500 sq. ft., 2-story, 3-room guest house with full bath, kitchen and fireplace. Listed by Sotheby’s International Realty.

*Affordabilty calculator: Based on a 30-year fixed rate of 6.33% and with 20% down, these are your monthly payments. See today’s rates on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace.

Celebrity tips and quips are welcome! Send ‘em to celebtips@zillow.com

Read more:
Celebrity Homes: Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn, Reggie Miller, Jenna Jameson, Mike Piazza, Sylvain Copon, and Barry Levinson

Apparently not at Home Depot. The store posted a 24 percent decline in fiscal second-quarter net income, according to The Wall Street Journal.

But according to Zillow’s Q2 Homeowner Confidence Survey, which we released earlier this month, more than half of respondents are planning to do some sort of remodeling in the near future. Fifty-six percent said they were planning some kind of home improvement, either major or minor, in the next six months.

About half of all the respondents (49 percent) said they were going to do minor repairs, like repaint a room or install a garbage disposal. About a fifth (17 percent) said they were going to do major improvements, like replacing the roof or a kitchen remodel. FYI, some people said they are doing both major and minor repairs.

This is the first time we’ve asked this question of homeowners, so we don’t know if the numbers are going up or down. We’ll know more next quarter, when we ask it again.

My hunch is that the number of people planning some kind of home improvement is staying fairly steady. But I think there have probably been changes in the scope of these improvements.

Back in 2005 and 2006 when homes values were going up up up, it wasn’t hard to secure a home equity line of credit, or HELOC, and put in those new granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances. But it was also much easier to sell your home and move to a bigger and better one down the block.

These days, though, if people don’t need to sell, a lot of them aren’t. Even though our Homeowner Confidence Survey showed that most people aren’t exactly in touch with reality when it comes to the value of their homes, it’s no secret that it’s not as easy to unload your house as it once was. So maybe people are nesting, and since it’s not as easy to dig into the equity of their homes (some recent calculations here at Zillow showed that one in seven American homeowners is underwater on their mortgage), maybe they’re making more minor home improvements.

So maybe homeowners are buying their paint at Home Depot, but not as many new kitchen cabinets or hardwood flooring. We’ll find out more next quarter, when we have more data to compare, but what do you think?

Originally posted here:

Another one bites the dust. Record producer, actor, writer and founder of Roc-A-Fella Records, Damon Dash, is facing foreclosure, according to the NY Daily News. Allegedly, Dash and his wife, fashion designer Rachel Roy (no - not Rachael Ray), allegedly owe $7.3 million on two Tribeca real estate addresses. If the addresses are correct, the first property at 25 N Moore St., NY, NY, looks to be for sale for $4,795,000 with a “contract signed,” according to the listing description. Dash’s other property at 79 Laight St., NY, NY, doesn’t appear to be on the market.

Just one more celeb to add to the celebrity foreclosure list…

More:
Another Celebrity Foreclosure: Record Producer Damon Dash

When buying a home, one of the most important and most difficult questions to answer is “How much can I afford?” With price tags in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, it’s hard to determine what those prices will equate to on a monthly basis.

To make it easier to answer this question, Zillow recently released a new monthly payment feature at the top of every home details page. This feature shows what the monthly payment would be on that house, if you were to purchase it with a 30-year fixed mortgage with 20% down, using today’s mortgage rates.

If you have more or less than 20% to put down on the house, or you were thinking about getting a different type of mortgage, you can just click the edit button to change the assumptions to fit your criteria, and the payment will automatically recalculate using the most current mortgage rates.

To give you a complete sense of what your total monthly costs will be, the monthly payment includes estimated taxes and insurance. If you want to see the mortgage principle and interest payment only, simply uncheck the box just above the estimated payment amount in the edit screen.

Once you find a home that you can budget into your monthly expenses, you can get a jump start on securing financing for it by visiting Zillow Mortgage Marketplace to get custom loan quotes, anonymously.

How Much Can You Afford?

House, Czech Republic, 2 houses at the shared land (ideal for 2 generation), with big courtyard and big garden 2228m2, near beatiful castle … 195.000 EUR

Read the rest here:
2 houses with 3491 m2 of land at the all

House, Greece, House with view to the sea, near a sandy beach, nice enviroment … 140.000 EUR

Credit:
House with view to the sea

Plot of Land, Dominican Republic, Caribic dream property about the cliffs … price on request

See the original post:
Caribic dream property

Commercial Property, Dominican Republic, Bar in Sosua, you can take over immediately … 65.000 USD

Here is the original post:
Bar in Sosua

Plot of Land, Seychelles, 22-30m wide Plot runs 270m uphill rising to 50m ASL, overlooking ocean & Curieuse Island. Last 50m run reaches 80m ASL. … 225.000 EUR

More:
Buildable virgin land with beachfront

Season four of the The Hills premiered last night, and for all of us closet Hills fans, it didn’t disappoint.

This season opened with a pool party at LC’s house for Audrina. As I’ve blogged about in the past, this house has been the source of much friendship melodrama. While I didn’t get an invite to the shindig, using Zillow’s Bird’s Eye View functionality, I can at least see the pool where the action went down.

Another Hills party that I didn’t to attend, but can stalk online, went down earlier this week when the crew headed over to the Project Beach House (a sponsored beach house for celebs to hang out at during the summer) for an exclusive party and taping session. You can read about the filming of this “reality” show by this lucky blogger that did get to attend. The home sits on 5 acres of land and overlooks the Pacific Ocean and El Matador State Beach in Malibu. Oh the glamour life those Hills girls lead!

See original here:

Reality TV update: Million Dollar Listing, Season 2, Episode 1 “Sellers From Hell”

Madison, the self-proclaimed “King of Malibu,” used Zillow to prepare for his listing presentation and secure one of the biggest listings of his career during the season premier of his reality TV show Million Dollar Listing, which appears on Bravo.

Madison is a high-end real estate agent in Malibu, CA and has sold more than $80 million in celebrity real estate (and he’s not even 30!). His most recent celebrity listing: Karen Pankow’s Malibu mansion (ex-wife of James Pankow, trombonist from Chicago).

Pankow’s pad is located at 3874 Puerco Canyon, Malibu, CA 90265 and is listed at a cool $4,385,000. (See more Malibu, CA real estate).

Much to our delight, Madison is an active contributor on Zillow (agent screen name “900624lead100457964”) with 6 listings for sale. Hey Madison, thanks for the shout out and for using Zillow!

Million Dollar Listing airs Tuesdays at 10/9C on Bravo.

Excerpt from:

I spend a fair amount of time speaking with Web developers around the country, and one thing I have heard numerous times is that they’d like to be able to access data on homes for sale via the Zillow API. I have good news — now you can!

We recently added two new API calls — GetRegionPostings and GetUpdatedPropertyDetails.

The combination of these two new calls provides a way for real estate agents and brokerages to integrate for sale by owner listings directly into their listing search functionality. We’re happy to have Redfin as an early adopter (Redfin blog post) of FSBO listings in the markets it covers. Here’s an example of a FSBO listing from Zillow on Redfin (here’s the same listing on Zillow).

Zillow is a living, growing database of all homes — not just homes for sale (we currently have data on more than 80 million homes). More than 1.3 million owners have claimed their homes on Zillow and many have updated their home facts. While we are storing those updated home facts in our databases, we think it’s only fair that we allow individuals to use the data they input into Zillow on their own Web sites, if they wish. This is where the GetUpdatedPropertyDetails API call comes into play. Have a Make Me Move price on your home and want to easily show it off? Now it’s possible. Or, have a listing that you want to automatically display within your own Web site or blog? That’s possible as well.

The GetRegionPostings API takes a place (ZIP code, neighborhood, or even geo points) as an input and returns a count of listings by type (Make Me Move, for sale by agent, for sale by owner, and reported for sale) in addition to some home facts about each property returned. The attributes of each property that are returned are home type, beds, baths, square footage, lot size, and price — along with a count of how many images are available for that property and a link to the home details page on Zillow. If you’d like to have access to the GetRegionPostings API call, please let us know.

Realius is another innovator that has adopted our postings API in the New York Metro market as part of their Price Me Now game - you can try it out here. For those looking to learn more about adding Zillow content to your site, take a look at our API documentation — and don’t forget those mortgage rate widgets that are highly clickable and addictive!

Here is the original post:
Opening up the Zillow API to Allow Sites in the API Network to Access Homes for Sale

Vanity Fair, which likes to tweak U.S. President George W. Bush any way it can, has started a “George W. Bush Crawford Ranch Sale Countdown.” In doing some quick office math (thanks, Mary!), it looks like this VF countdown will put Bush’s Crawford, TX, home on the market in the middle of June, 2009.

Rumors have been heating up that the prez — love him or hate him — will sell the ranch because his wife,

Laura, wants to live in a town that has more than one traffic light and a public

library. Evidently, reports have placed Laura’s top choice to be Highland Park, which is a suburb of Dallas and about a two-hour drive north of their Crawford ranch. Laura, if you’re interested in Highland Park, TX real estate, you’ll see it’s quite affordable with a Zindex of $90K (at this writing).

Check out some interesting satellite imagery of Bush’s Crawford ranch. Evidently, he did a lot of work to the property, known as the Prairie Creek Ranch, after buying it for $1.3 million from the Engelbrecht family in 1999.

Even Dallas Dirt is speculating that W is looking into a Dallas office. Oh, where will they land?

Read more here:
Bush Countdown: Sale of Crawford Ranch

House, Turkey, All-inclusive, furniture everything ! Just move in … 133.000 EUR

Original post:
Avsallar, Incekum, a luxery dream, but affordable