Virtual Open Houses

The New York City real estate market -- though real estate tax revenues fell during the first nine months of the budget year.

Real property transfer taxes fell 12.7% and mortgage recording tax collections dropped 20.1%, Reuters reported. The New York City, which has already lost jobs on Wall Street in the wake of the subprime crisis, could lose another 36,000 jobs, the city's labor department reported last week.

For nearly two years, Adriel and Lance Bush tried unsuccessfully to sell their 1925 home in West Palm Beach, Fla. First the couple went the traditional route: They hired a realtor (three of them, in fact) who gave them standard advice, like getting rid of all the clutter caused by their twin toddler boys. They also renovated their master bath and added granite counters to the kitchen. Still no takers, which wasn't surprising: Home sales in the West Palm Beach area have fallen by double digits.

Buffalo, N.Y.-based Delaware North Cos. has promoted Jim Houser to the new position of vice president of facilities.

The pace of housing rescue efforts slowed in the first quarter of the year, according to a new report, while the number of people losing their homes to foreclosure skyrocketed during the same period.

One out of every 194 U.S. households received a foreclosure filing in the first three months of 2008, according to the latest figures released Tuesday by RealtyTrac.

Snyder Langston reported that it has completed construction of a nine-story, 246,600-square-foot build-to-suit office tower for Newport Beach, Calif.-based Pacific Life Insurance Co.

Eli Broad, the co-founder of KB Home, told Bloomberg TV yesterday that home prices could fall another 20%. Here's a link to the story. That is an absolutely enormous amount when you consider that prices have already fallen a bunch. Today the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price Index for February was released. It showed that the 20-city index fell 12.7% from a year earlier and is down 14.8% from its all-time high in July 2006.

I'm guessing that the execs at KB Home aren't real happy with Eli Broad, because who's going to buy a house now if they think that Broad is right about where prices are heading? I don't know how many shares of KB Home that Broad himself still owns, but it can't be too many because he doesn't appear on the list of holders of 5% or more of KB Home shares in the latest SEC filing.

^^^^^^^

Trivia: KB Home was founded in 1957 in Detroit as Kaufman & Broad Building Company

James Shea, Jr. has been named partner at Choate, Hall & Stewart L.L.P., the law firm, according to the Boston Herald.

Tribune Co. has bought eight office properties used by its newspapers around the United States in a like-kind exchange for $175 million from TMCT L.L.C. The transaction will save the media company $24 million a year it would otherwise have paid to lease properties where newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant have their operations.

Robert Maguire III, chairman & CEO of Maguire Properties Inc., has proposed a plan to privatize the REIT. The proposal represents the latest chapter in the company's efforts to resolve its debt problems, which is being spearheaded by a special committee of independent directors.