And now, in the latest sign of the cooling home sales market, a luxury home builder in Rockville has begun resorting to the kind of tactic usually reserved for screaming electronics discounters — the Lowest Price Guarantee.
To ease buyers’ worries about declining prices, Mid-Atlantic Builders will adjust its sales contract if the price it is charging for one of its houses falls from the time a customer signs an agreement to 45 days before settlement. So, the thinking goes, jittery buyers shelling out $500,000 to more than $1 million for one of the builder’s single-family houses can rest assured that they’re not sinking money into a depreciating asset.
In the past five years, housing prices in Fairfax County have grown 12 times as fast as household incomes. Today, the county’s median family would have to spend 54 percent of its income to afford the county’s median home; in 2000, the figure was 26 percent. The situation is so dire that Fairfax recently began offering housing subsidies to families earning $90,000 a year; soon, that figure may go as high as $110,000 a year.
Seventy years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that the Depression had left one-third of the American people “ill-housed, ill-clothed and ill-nourished,” Americans are well-clothed and increasingly overnourished. But the scarcity of affordable housing is a deepening national crisis, and not just for inner-city families on welfare. The problem has climbed the income ladder and moved to the suburbs, where service workers cram their families into overcrowded apartments, college graduates have to crash with their parents, and firefighters, police officers and teachers can’t afford to live in the communities they serve.
CRISFIELD, Md. Each morning before dawn, Chesapeake Bay watermen gather for coffee and gossip at Gordon’s Confectionery, an 80-year-old diner in this tiny fishing village that once bustled with three dozen crab-packing houses.
For years they have watched the sun climb above Crisfield’s shoreline, which for decades consisted only of sailboat masts, seafood restaurants and a few storefronts.
The seven-bedroom 1936 U.S. Coast Guard station of your dreams is on the market. The asking price is $5 million. And here’s the cool part: It won’t be so hard to climb to the crow’s-nest lookout on the roof because the scary ship’s ladder has been replaced by a spiral staircase.
Who would buy this thing?
Rates on 30-year mortgages fell for a fifth consecutive week as sales of both existing and new homes in July declined, confirming a cooling housing market.
Mortgage company Freddie Mac said Thursday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages fell to 6.48 percent this week, down from 6.52 percent last week.
Q: DEAR BARRY: From time to time, you address the subject of asbestos and refer to building materials as “possibly containing asbestos.” As a home inspector, I avoid “might be” types of wording with my customers. My reports state: “There was a time when asbestos building materials were used.” I always follow this by explaining, “The only way you can verify asbestos content is by testing the material.”
Don’t you think that home inspectors should avoid suggesting what “could possibly be contained” in various materials, especially regarding hazardous substances that are outside the scope of a home inspection? — Bernie
Critics denounce big houses as ugly, vacuous and without soul. While such descriptions certainly fit some big houses, they do not describe all of them built today. Many are well designed, with soul oozing from every corner.
This came to mind as I toured six large furnished models at the Founder’s Club, a new subdivision in Sarasota, Fla. The houses had 4,700 to 7,500 square feet of “conditioned space,” plus another 1,000 square feet of shaded outdoor living space near a swimming pool and 800 to 1,500 square feet of patio around the pool itself.
In a slow real estate market, would-be sellers and potential buyers begin to think about creative financing.
Last week, I wrote about transactions in which the seller holds the entire mortgage, a type of arrangement that is treated as an installment sale for tax purposes. This type of creative financing works best when the seller has no mortgage or a small one.
Q: DEAR BOB: My husband and I, ages 74 and 77, live in our home worth about $900,000 for which we paid $125,000 in 1978. We have a remaining mortgage of $44,000 at 5.25 percent interest with $330 monthly payments. But we dislike sitting on all that “dead money” in our home equity. We have been investigating a reverse mortgage to pull out some of that money either to invest or to help our daughter buy a house. However, we are not interested in additional monthly income. Is a reverse mortgage the way to go? — Darlene MacP.
A: DEAR DARLENE: Are you in reasonably good health and do you plan to stay in your home at least five years? If your answer is yes, then a reverse mortgage could be ideal for your situation.
Redecorating might seem easy — just apply fresh paint and buy new furniture, right? Not so fast.
There’s a lot to consider when updating your home. Choosing a design theme — antique or modern — provides direction and focus. And it’s important to find a look that is both practical and suits your personal style. That’s where