Virtual Open Houses

pimg alt="Lance Armstrong Headshot (BlackWhite).JPG" src="http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/Lance%20Armstrong%20Headshot%20%28BlackWhite%29.JPG" width="340" height="286" /br / Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong is going into commercial real estate. According to a news release today: /p blockquoteArmstrong ... has joined with longtime agent Bill Stapleton and business manager Bart Knaggs to form CSE Realty Partners, a privately-held real estate investment company based in Austin, Texas. The trio, responsible for directing more than 20 successful enterprises since 1995 ... have recruited 20-year real estate industry veteran Lance Sallis to lead the new company. /blockquote pAs if that's not enough athletic ability for one real estate company, the team will also include Patrick Jeffers, a former NFL wide receiver who played for the Denver Broncos Super Bowl XXXII Championship team. /p pArmstrong is a natural-born entrepreneur. He's also co-founded businesses ranging from hotels to artist management to live events to a bicycle shop to LiveStrong.com./p pNote to the Austin real estate community: Do not, repeat not, accept an invitation to play these guys in any "friendly" game you can think of.br / /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/bw_rss/hotproperty/~4/dWqozGyC1I8" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="money and house.jpg" src="http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/money%20and%20house.jpg" width="170" height="125" //p pEconomist and writer Katerina Alexandraki has launched a creative idea for easing the housing crunch this holiday season. She’s asking Wall Streeters getting big bonuses to contribute them to folks in danger of losing their homes. /p pWall Streeters are expected to get a lot of heat this bonus season, both for creating the loose lending standards and securitization of loans that fueled the housing bubble and now for making a killing with stocks and distressed assets surging in value thanks largely to the trillions of dollars in government support. Check out the Web site for Katerina's campaign, which she called a href="http://bonusforhome.weebly.com/index.html"Bonus for Homes/a./p pKaterina hopes to distribute the money to low-income earners and the unemployed., specifically folks who were victims of predatory lending or who are facing foreclosure. She describes it as “a private-sector initiative to address the anomaly that, while everyone, from top to bottom, public and private, is to blame for the financial crisis, some of us have fared much better than others.”/p pShe’s looking for volunteers to contribute or to nag their fellow high-earners. Of course you could just as easily donate to local housing-related charities. Maybe even with company matching funds!br / /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/bw_rss/hotproperty/~4/VGIFJa5UNJY" height="1" width="1"/

pimg alt="balloon.png" src="http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/balloon.png" width="247" height="119" //p pLandscape architect Ken Smith has precisely the right idea for how to build Orange County Great Park, the ambitious urban park planned for the site of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station south of Los Angeles in Orange County, Calif. The park was supposed to be financed by real estate development, but homebuilder Lennar Corp., which took control of the base in 2005, has put construction on hold because of California's massive housing bust./p pSmith's idea: Build just a little of it, attract some crowds, garner interest and support, and then go from there. According to a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-great-park1-2009oct01,0,6540980.story?track=rss"an article in The Los Angeles Times by Paloma Esquivel/a, the bicoastal Smith was inspired in part by New York City, where builders of a park along the Hudson River built a constituency for the project by putting in temporary trails for jogging, biking, and roller-skating. /p pNot that Smith has much choice--no one's going to sit down tomorrow and write him a check for the $1.3 billion that he thinks will eventually be needed to build "the first great metropolitan park of the 21st Century." /p pPragmatically, Smith started out by building a Preview Park on a tiny piece of the 4,700-acre former military base. Its main attraction is an iconic crowd-pleaser, a big, orange, helium balloon that gives park visitors panoramic views from an altitude of 400 feet. More than 100,000 people have flown in the balloon--not a bad way to engender optimism for the bigger project./p pIn August, according to a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/park-great-city-2520846-lennar-developer#"an article in the Orange County Register/a, the city of Irvine, Calif., and Lennar agreed that Lennar would commit $58 million over the next five years for infrastructure and maintenance in the park, and would give the city 135 more acres of park land. The article quotes Emile Haddad, Lennar's former chief investment officer, whose new company, Five Point Properties, recently took over management of the Great Park. "We're trying to set this thing to be successful based on the world we live in today," Haddad said. (Meaning: A post-bust world.)/p pThen, earlier this month, the park's board of directors approved $65 million worth of construction on 200 acres, including sports fields and gardens but not a planned lake. /p pOrange County Great Park isn't exactly great yet. It isn't even exactly a park. But you do what you can./pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/bw_rss/hotproperty/~4/rLTiFkis_Xs" height="1" width="1"/

Confused about whether lawmakers will extend the $8,000 first-time homebuyer credit and what it would look like?img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rss/money_realestate/~4/UgbBnj8Rv1A" height="1" width="1"/

pIt's increasingly likely that Congress will extend and expand the popular home buyer tax credit, which will expire next month. CNN.com reported today that a compromise proposal based on bills that have already been introduced could pass the Senate as early as this week (assuming that it is attached to a bill to extend unemployment benefits). /p pThe compromise bill would likely open the program to some existing homeowners. The expiring tax credit is limited to buyers who have not owned a home for the last three years./p pAccording to a a href="http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/28/real_estate/homebuyer_credit/"CNN.com story/a today:/p p* First-time buyers could continue to claim up to $8,000. But existing homeowners who have lived in their home for five years could receive up to $6,500 if they trade up to a larger principal residence. /p p* The full credit would be limited to buyers who earn less than $125,000 a year and for married couples with annual incomes up to $225,000./p p* The credit could only be used for homes selling for $800,000 or less./p p* Contracts must be signed by April 30, 2010 and sales must close by June 30./p pMark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com (MCO), told me recently that he supports the extension because the housing market could take a big step back without it. But he agreed with critics that it is one of the most inefficient ways for the government to support housing. /p pAccording to Zandi, only 22% of about 1.8 million buyers who will claim the soon-to-expire credit would not have bought a home but for the incentive. Expanding the credit to include previous homeowners and extending the credit through June will cost about $30 billion, on top of about $8 billion that would have already been spent, he said./p pThe compromise bill outlined here might be cheaper because it seems to more narrowly define the existing homeowners who can take advantage of the credit.br / /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/bw_rss/hotproperty/~4/vvpajKifUbg" height="1" width="1"/

Sales of newly built homes fell unexpectedly in September after rising for five straight months, according to government figures released Wednesday.img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rss/money_realestate/~4/V9ueT1NVmCk" height="1" width="1"/

NorthMarq Capital has arranged a $77.4 million first mortgage refinancing for a 1,188-unit Long Island-N.Y., apartment portfolio. pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9pv29501Oow465a64ZIPR0frQZQ/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9pv29501Oow465a64ZIPR0frQZQ/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9pv29501Oow465a64ZIPR0frQZQ/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9pv29501Oow465a64ZIPR0frQZQ/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed green legislation over the weekend, as covered by CPE on Monday, but also nestled in the raft of bills that he signed were major overhauls of the rules governing residential mortgages. The thrust of the reforms was to help prevent some of the mortgage origination abuses that were rampant in the mid-2000s, and which did their part to inflate the housing bubble. pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/uQ-yzx6dnlLskpdv-yHg-zHYgcs/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/uQ-yzx6dnlLskpdv-yHg-zHYgcs/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/uQ-yzx6dnlLskpdv-yHg-zHYgcs/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/uQ-yzx6dnlLskpdv-yHg-zHYgcs/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

The economic crisis started with a credit crunch, has undergone the containment stage with the government providing bailout packages and stimulus money, and is now in the resolution stage, said Marci Rossell, former chief economist for CNBC, who was a keynote speaker at the CREW Network’s convention in Boston last week. pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/CGL2oHD_0qd3hls69gP7lC1PDl8/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/CGL2oHD_0qd3hls69gP7lC1PDl8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/CGL2oHD_0qd3hls69gP7lC1PDl8/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/CGL2oHD_0qd3hls69gP7lC1PDl8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Broadway Partners has completed the refinancing of Ten/10 Post Office Square, a 13-floor, 435,000-square-foot office property located in Boston. pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VE4hvitNmv5BRQ5iXEvu6AoVQN8/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VE4hvitNmv5BRQ5iXEvu6AoVQN8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VE4hvitNmv5BRQ5iXEvu6AoVQN8/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VE4hvitNmv5BRQ5iXEvu6AoVQN8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p