Apply Now for the 2016 Good Neighbor Awards

Apply Now for the 2016 Good Neighbor Awards

REALTOR® Magazine is currently accepting applications from REALTORS® for the 17th annual Good Neighbor Awards. This program recognizes NAR members who go above and beyond to support their communities through charitable and volunteer work.

Five winners will be announced in this year’s November/December issue of REALTOR® Magazine and will receive a $10,000 grant for their charity.

They will also be recognized at the 2016 REALTORS® Conference & Expo in Orlando where they will receive their awards. Winners also will receive paid travel expenses to the conference and can expect national publicity for their cause. In addition to the winners, five honorable mentions will each receive a $2,500 grant.

“REALTORS® play a significant role in building and improving communities across our nation,” said NAR President Tom Salomone, broker owner of Real Estate II, Inc. in Margate, Florida. “Over the last 16 years, more than 160 Good Neighbors and their charities have been recognized for their outstanding acts of altruism and kindness.”

Last year’s Good Neighbor Award winners contributed countless hours to their causes, raised millions of dollars and drew a standing ovation from thousands of REALTORS® and guests during the annual conference in San Diego.

The 2015 winners were Daniel L. Goodwin, The Inland Real Estate Group, Inc., Oak Brook, Ill., founder of the New Directions Housing Corporation; Nancy E. Hines, F.C. Tucker Co. Inc., Avon, Ind., co-founder of Ovar’coming Together Inc.; John Kersten, Century 21 Town & Country, Utica, Mich., power fundraiser for Easter Seals Michigan; Barbara Mills, RE/MAX Realty One, Inverness, Fla., founder of Operation Welcome Home; and Susan Stearns, Berkshire Hathaway, California Properties, Calabasas, Calif., former president of New Horizons.

Previous Good Neighbor Award winners’ charities benefited from the grant money and media exposure that resulted from winning the Good Neighbor Award.

“Winning the Good Neighbor Award has brought donations from across the country, which will help bring more awareness, education and support,” said 2015 Good Neighbor Award winner and four-time cancer survivor Nancy E. Hines, who won for cofounding the Ovar’coming Together, Inc., which supports women diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

The Good Neighbor Awards is supported by primary sponsor realtor.com® and Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. Nominees will be judged on their personal impact on the community through volunteer work. To be eligible, nominees must be NAR members in good standing.

—By REALTOR® Magazine

The Wealthy Still Want a Trophy Home

The Wealthy Still Want a Trophy Home

Wealthy hot spots like the Hamptons, Beverly Hills, and Aspen are not seeing any shortage of home buyers in their ultra-luxury housing markets, proving the global market panic isn’t deterring the rich in real estate. The wealthy are still seeing real estate as a strong investment, despite recent turmoil in China’s financial markets and mounting concerns about global growth, CNBC reports.

The median sales price in Beverly Hills for a single-family home reached $5.5 million, soaring 54 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the same period last year, according to sales data from Douglas Elliman. In the mountain resort of Aspen, its median single-family home price rose 35 percent to $6.7 million. The Hamptons reached a record number of homes that sold for more than $5 million and more than $10 million during the fourth quarter. In the Hamptons, the average sales price also hit a record high of $2.39 million.

“There’s a general perception that the luxury market across the U.S. is weaker than the middle or lower end,” Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, an appraisal firm, told CNBC. “But in the most highly regarded areas, like Beverly Hills, the market is strong.”

The largest sales in recent years have occurred in the fourth quarter, Miller says.

“I’m not sure why, but ever since the financial crisis, the largest activity has come at the end of the year,” he says.

Source: “Mansion Prices Hit New Highs in Super-Rich Enclaves,” CNBC (Jan. 28, 2016)

Equity Gains for 2015

Equity Gains for 2015

More home owners are unlocking equity, which has pushed the number of underwater properties nationwide to about half of the peak reached in the second quarter of 2012, RealtyTrac reports in its Year-End 2015 U.S. Home Equity & Underwater Report.

By the end of 2015, about 6.4 million homes – or 11.5 percent of all properties with a mortgage — were considered “seriously underwater” – in which the loan amount is at least 25 percent higher than the property’s estimated market value. That marks half the 12.8 million –or 28.6 percent of all properties – of seriously underwater properties in the peak of the second quarter of 2012, RealtyTrac reports.

“Over the past three and a half years, the number of seriously underwater properties has been cut in half, but we continue to deal with a long tail of seriously underwater properties, and it will likely be another five years at least before most of those remaining underwater properties move into positive equity territory,” says Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac. “At the other end of the spectrum, the growing number of equity rich properties reflects a moribund move-up market and restrained leveraging of home equity by U.S. home owners.”

By the end of 2015, about 12.6 million properties – or 22.5 percent of all properties with a mortgage — were considered “equity rich,” having at least 50 percent equity.

What’s more, also by the end of 2015, 49.7 percent of all homes in foreclosure had at least some equity – a record high since RealtyTrac began tracking in the third quarter of 2013.

Tracking the Highs

The following markets – with a population of at least 500,000 — had the highest share of seriously underwater properties at the end of 2015:

• Las Vegas, Nev.: 27.7%
• Lakeland, Fla.: 24.4%
• Cleveland: 24.2%
• Akron, Ohio: 22.5%
• Orlando, Fla.: 22.2%

On the other hand, the following markets had the highest share of “equity rich” properties as of the end of 2015:

• San Jose, Calif.: 53.7%
• San Francisco: 47.6%
• Honolulu, Hawaii: 36.7%
• Los Angeles: 35.8%
• Pittsburgh, Pa.: 35%

Source: RealtyTrac

Homes Built for Roommates?

Homes Built for Roommates?

The New American Home, unveiled at the International Builder Show last week in Las Vegas, was designed with roommates in mind. The 5,200-square-foot home tied in nontraditional living arrangements for extended families or roommates who may be sharing the same roof to ease financial burdens.

The home, designed by Element Design Build, incorporated affordability and cohabitation as top concerns, including a second floor that can accommodate aging parents or recent college graduates who are moving back home. The intent was to accommodate two families comfortably.

Industry professionals say they are seeing increasing demand for properties that can easily be shared by extended family members, roommates, or even rented out to tourists. Indeed, for the year ending June 2015, 13 percent of buyers purchased a home to accommodate multiple generations, according to research by the National Association of REALTORS®. What’s more, a quarter of all buyers say they want a separate suite in their home with a kitchenette to accommodate extended family members or roommates, according to research by John Burns Real Estate Consulting Inc.

Another home spotlighted at the builder show was created by Pardee Homes and included two guest suites that can be rented on home-sharing sites such as Airbnb. The suites include separate entrances and small kitchenettes. A recent survey by TRI Pointe found that 35 percent of young adults say they want to be able to rent out space in their homes, at least occasionally.

“A lot of their motivation for doing that is to make the financial step of buying their home more doable,” says Linda Mamet, vice president of corporate marketing at TRI Pointe.

Source: “New U.S. Homes Make Room for Airbnb Crowd,” The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 22, 2016)

Life for Closed Hospitals: Condos

Life for Closed Hospitals: Condos

As hospitals across the country close down, developers are seeing unexpected new purpose for these now vacant spaces. Developers in New York City have increasingly reenvisioned shutdown hospitals as luxury condominiums – believing they can make “hospital buildings hospitable for full-time residents,” The New York Times reports.

For example, a former maternity ward on Second Avenue in Manhattan has morphed into Rutherford Place, a rental-turning-condo building. Two-bedroom apartments there recently listed for as much as $2.3 million.

Gramercy Square, a $350 million complex, is planned for the former site of the Cabrini Medical Center, which closed in 2008. A condo village is being constructed on the property, which has included tearing down some of the original buildings while adapting others and building new on the 1.4-acre site. About 223 apartments are planned among four residential structures in the space.

“I found it very interesting and very rewarding to take something like that and make it work,” David Bistricer, the founder of Clipper Equity, one of the developers, told The New York Times.

Developers are redesigning towers that once housed patient rooms, operating rooms, and a psychiatric ward. Cabrini’s emergency room is now being reenvisioned as a place for gardens.

“From the standpoint of an architectural project, it was extraordinary, the range of disciplines involved,” says Jeremy Singer, the managing principal of Woods Bagot’s New York office.

The apartments are to run around $2,200 a square foot or about $995,000 for a studio and up to $33 million for a penthouse. Sales started this winter.

The project is slated to open by the end of this year.

Source: “From Hospital to Condo,” The New York Times (Jan. 22, 2016)