It’s what those who work in and visit the Short North have wanted: 250 public parking spaces to ease the crunch.

Columbus City Council approved a new tax-incrementfinancing agreement last night that will help pay for a new $14 million parking garage in the area. It will be built as part of a 10-story, 179-unit condominium project at the northeast corner of N. High Street and E. Hubbard Avenue. The garage will be built across Pearl Alley from the condominiums.

Town houses will be built along Hubbard to shield the garage.

A 2005 study showed a need for 500 parking spaces in the Short North, an area filled with shops, bars and restaurants.

“This is absolutely our No. 1 challenge,” said John Angelo, director of the Short North Business Association.

The developers approached the community, saying they wanted to do the project to help the community, he said.

Arms Properties plans to build the garage as part of its condominium development, which Columbus Development Director Mark Barbash said will cost $68 million and include 30,000 square feet of commercial space.

Council member Maryellen O’Shaughnessy held a hearing on valet parking last week in which people complained that valets took spaces that Short North visitors should get.

“There’s a tremendous amount of parking pressure,” O’Shaughnessy said.

Stan Sells, of the Friends of Goodale Park, said he hopes the public uses the garage. But he wonders whether they will, because it’s not as close to many Short North destinations as he thinks some visitors would like.

He wonders whether some public shuttle could be set up to ferry visitors from the garage down High Street.

The three-story garage will have two underground levels, Angelo said. Columbus Economic Development Administrator Bill Webster said there will be 500 parking spaces, with 250 reserved for the public. The other half will be for condominium residents.

Angelo said the developers have listened to concerns about the garage’s appearance, and said he thinks the town houses will help camouflage it.

The condominiums and parking garage should be finished by the end of 2008.

The city will continue to work on creating another 250 public parking spaces in the area, Webster said.

In other business, the City Council agreed to contribute $1.25 million to the Columbus-Franklin County Finance Authority, which was formed last year to help finance economicdevelopment deals.

Franklin County already has agreed to contribute $1.25 million to the fund. With other money sources, the fund should grow to $10 million, which officials hope will leverage $50 million in financing.

Also, Steve Tugend, the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce vice president of governmental relations, told council that those interested in applying for jobs at the expanding Defense Financing and Accounting Service Center in Whitehall should go to the Web site www.dfascolumbusjobs.com.

You read it in the headlines.  You hear it on the news.  Forecasters say the housing market is slowing, but still there are many homeowners that either want or need to sell there home. 

With the increased inventory levels and competition between sellers there has never been such a supply of quality homes in good areas and at good prices.  Not only do sellers have to have their homes in tip top shape, they have to offer something more to the buyer to gain their interest.  It’s not uncommon to see purchase offers coming in $10K or $20K below the list price with lots of contingencies protecting the buyer, and even asking for the seller to pay for closing costs.  Two years ago a seller would have laughed at an offer like this, but today they will do what it takes to put a deal together for a ready,willing and able buyer.

Here are some tips, to help you negotiate the best possible terms and conditions:

1)Try to determine the seller’s motivation.  Many times once you look at a home you see the signs.  Homes that have been on the market for a long time and homes that are vacant will have the most motivated sellers because they have been waiting for an offer or are paying two mortgages.

2)Work with your agent in developing a negotiating strategy.  In some cases it may work to ask for a lot of conditions or any repairs up front.  In other cases you fair better by negotiating the lowest price, then after having the home inspected you ask for more.

3)Do your homework.  Have your agent provide you with comparable sales of similar homes that have recently sold.  Know the top dollar you are willing to pay before you start the negotiations, and keep in mind you most likely will have to live in a home for at least two years to recoup your purchase price.

4)Don’t be afraid to ask.  One of three things will happen when you make an offer.  The sellers will accept it, reject it, or counter with terms more acceptable to them.  Most likely, no matter how low the inital offer you will see a counter-offer.

5)Get Pre-approved.  Do this before you ever step foot in a home.  An offer from a pre-approved buyer carries a lot more weight than from a buyer who hasn’t been to the bank.  If you have a home you need to sell before you buy, get it in contract before making an offer on another home.  In doing this you should be able to negotiate a lower price.

Tony L. Aspery, Broker

BOSS Realty Group

Posted on Thu, Jan. 11, 2007

Housing takes slight dip in Harris County
Officials say building permits expected to pick up in the spring
BY HARRY FRANKLIN
State Editor

Dave Woodruff stooped over a heating/air conditioning system last week he’s helping to install in the attic of a house being built in Highland Grove Subdivision in Harris County.

Woodruff, with Quality Air, Valley, Ala., said the company expects to install systems in many houses in the new development off Voorhees Road near U.S. 27 south of Hamilton.

Nearby, Doug Maddox and a crew of Can’t Be Beat Construction of Macon were installing the roof on another house — the eighth house they’ve worked on.

Housing construction just recently began in Highland Grove, where 169 houses are to be built in phases. None are yet complete. It is one of several newer developments expected to help build up the county’s property tax digest this year.

For the first time in more than a decade, the total annual value of single-family houses permitted for construction in the county slipped in 2006 — by more than $4 million. The value topped $100 million for the first time in 2005, reaching $103 million, only to drop to $99 million in 2006.

But Harris County Chief Tax Appraiser Wayne Morris said he doesn’t believe it’s a sign that housing construction numbers will continue to fall. Every month his office adds many completed houses to the tax digest.

Last year, permits to build 430 houses were issued by the county, records show, equaling the 2003 number, but falling below the 437 permits for 2004 and the record 449 for 2005. For the 10 years ending Dec. 31, the county issued about 3,600 permits for single-family houses valued at more than $700 million.

In Columbus, 678 permits were issued in 2006 for single-family houses valued at $77.65 million. The housing values are not comparable to the Harris County figures, because the two governments use different methods of determining the value. Harris County uses a figure of $65 per square foot to determine the value of a new house, while Columbus, since July 1, has used $50 a square foot, according to Kevin Sims, plans examiner for the Columbus Building Inspection and Codes office. Before July, Columbus used a $38-per-square-foot figure. In December, Columbus issued 40 permits for houses with a total value of $5.41 million, records show.

Morris credits the drop in Harris County permits last year to three factors: higher cost of construction materials and land, and higher interest rates.

The yearly valuation was pulled down by lower numbers in the four months of 2006, with the lowest monthly value for permitted houses dipping to $4.09 million in December, the lowest monthly figure since values hit $3.86 million in November 2004.

The average value for a new house remained high at $230,274 in 2006.

The county requirement not to allow houses on less than two-acre lots has impacted construction as the cost of land climbs, Morris said. He estimates the average two-acre lot in Harris County costs $40,000-$45,000. In more exclusive subdivisions such as Gray Rock Subdivision off Gray Rock Road and Piedmont Subdivision off Hopewell Church Road, lots may be substantially larger and land prices much higher.

“It still amazes me as houses continue to rise in value,” said Morris. “We get homes almost weekly that sell for more than $500,000. We have houses under construction with 12,825 square feet overall and 14,046 square feet overall.”

He said he has also been surprised to find that some residents buying new houses will live there a year or two and sell the house at $30,000-$40,000 more than they paid for it.

Morris said housing permits typically slow down in the winter months, generally picking up in February and March as spring approaches and sales perk up.

“I expect an increase in housing permits because of a couple of large developments coming on line, including one at Callaway Gardens. Housing construction is under way in Highland Grove. I understand they are close to beginning work on commercial development,” said Morris.

A drive through Gray Rock Subdivision near the Harris-Muscogee County line, developed by W.C. Bradley Co. Real Estate, shows that lot after lot is marked as sold. Many houses there already are occupied.

Tim Holmes is project supervisor for Cottonwood Land Corp. of Warner Robins, Ga., which has 10 houses under construction in Highland Grove Subdivision.

“We’ll have another 12 houses under construction in about two weeks,” he said. “Our first house will be ready for inspection in about two weeks and eight should be ready this month.”

These houses, each on two-acre-plus lots, will sell for $320,000-$380,000 apiece, he said, and will be on septic tanks. Later, the company will build on half-acre lots served by an on-site treatment plant. They are expected to sell in the low-to-mid-$200,000 range, Holmes said.

Large houses continue to be the rule, county records show. The average size of a house permitted in 2006 was 3,397 square feet. The largest was 6,632 square feet; the smallest, 1,469 square feet.

Houses with 6,000 or more square feet are no longer uncommon. Tax records show that at least 10 houses, including land, are worth more than $1 million each. Five houses, not including land, are listed with a fair market value of more than $1 million. That number could rise in the next 1 1/2 years as the assessor’s office completes a revaluation of property in the county, Morris said.

During the 10-year period from 1997-2006, the county permitted more than 3,600 houses valued at more than $706 million. The average cost of a new house during that period exceeded $196,000.

Business First of Columbus – 4:30 PM EST Thursday

Sales of existing houses in the Midwest fell nearly 10 percent last month from November 2005 but remained nearly unchanged from October, the National Association of Realtors reported Thursday.

Some 1.42 million existing residences were sold throughout the Midwest last month, down 9.6 percent from 1.57 million a year earlier, spokesman Walter Molony said.

The median sale price was $165,000 last month, down 3.5 percent from $171,000 in November 2005.

The national median sale price was $218,000 in November, down 3.1 percent from $225,000 a year earlier.

David Lereah, the association’s chief economist, said that for every 1 percent drop in prices, an additional 50,000 buyers are drawn into the regional market.

“As the housing market recovers from its correction, existing home sales should be rising gradually during 2007,” Lereah said in a release. “We’ve entered a more sustainable period of home sales now, and we expect greater support for prices over time as inventory levels are eventually drawn down.”

Inventories fell 1 percent at the end of November to 3.82 million homes available for sale – considered a 7.3-month supply at the current sales pace.

Meanwhile, Freddie Mac reported the national average commitment rate for a 30-year conventional, fixed-rate mortgage was 6.24 percent in November, an improvement from 6.36 percent in October.

“This is increasing buying power at the same time that sellers are showing a willingness to negotiate price and terms,” association President Pat Combs said in the release. “Combined with a plentiful supply of homes on the market, there’s a window for buyers now with conditions that we haven’t seen prior to the beginning of the housing boom in 2001.”

Sunday, December 10, 2006
KENNETH HARNEY

Is real estate heating up, cooling down, headed for a deeper freeze or just hanging in there despite the challenges?

The latest federal report on home real-estate price appreciation offers support for each of those scenarios.

The third-quarter house price index compiled by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight examined changes under way in 275 of the largest metropolitan markets.

As for the four scenarios:

• Yes, real estate is heating up. You have to be in the right markets, of course, but several dozen hot spots can be found around the country.

Consider Bend, Ore., where house values appreciated a stunning 30.7 percent rate during the 12 months ending Oct. 1, according to the survey. No dramatic bust or correction is taking place there — or in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (21.7 percent); Salt Lake City (20.4 percent) ; or El Paso, Texas (18.6 percent).

Overall, 37 metropolitan markets saw home-appreciation rates of 15 percent or more during the 12 months covered by the survey, and 16 states had average gains in excess of 10 percent.

• Yes, real estate is cooling down. The third-quarter index documented that conclusively. The average appreciation rate for houses nationwide dropped to 0.86 percent during the quarter, or just 3.4 percent annualized. That’s chillier than it has been since mid-1998.

In five states — Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island — the quarterly rate went slightly negative.

• The deeper-freeze scenario is a question mark. The statistics show some sobering trends in two categories: areas where the regional economy has been struggling; and regions where corporate layoffs and plant closings have pushed unemployment higher.

Examples of the strugglingeconomy category include large swaths of the Midwest — Canton, Cleveland and Akron, for instance, and Detroit — that saw quarterly net depreciation slightly below 1 percent. Other areas fared even worse. Burlington, N.C., took the heaviest hit — 3.4 percent, an annualized 13.6 percent.

• Without question, the most impressive scenario is that many large metropolitan markets are still registering net appreciation, albeit at lower rates.

Examples include Miami-Miami Beach (14.7 percent annualized quarterly gain), Fort Lauderdale (10.3 percent), and Orlando, Fla. (6.5 percent); Los Angeles (7.4 percent); metropolitan Washington (3 percent); and Seattle (14.8 percent.

Read the article below. It tells how compete idiots, like the CEO of Real Living in Columbus Ohio, are limiting the listings buyers can see on their website because they fear the competition from discount brokers.

That means that when you are searching for homes on their website, you are not seeing all the homes for sale in the Columbus area. Just the listings they want you to see, the listings they get paid the most on. Stay way from crooks like these guys. Here at www.oh-real-estate.com, we show you EVERY house for sale in the MLS. Everything! That’s the way it should be.

Discount Real-Estate Brokers Face
New Hurdle for Web Listings

By James Hagerty
From The Wall Street Journal Online

A revised policy approved by the National Association of Realtors this week may make it harder for discount brokers to draw attention to homes they list for sale.

The policy, approved by directors of the trade group at a convention in New Orleans, involves information about homes that real-estate brokers get from their local multiple-listing services, databases that are typically operated by local Realtor associations. Among other things, the policy reaffirms that brokerage firms that put listings from the MLS on their own Web sites can exclude certain homes.

The revised policy states that brokers must use “objective criteria” if they screen out some listings. The criteria could include location, type of property, compensation offered for agents who find a buyer, or the level of service provided by the listing company. Thus, listings from brokers providing limited service for lower fees could be excluded from other brokers’ sites.

By contrast, the policy now states that multiple-listing services must make all types of listings available to the Web sites of participating brokers. It would be up to brokers — not the MLS — to decide which listings are used on individual brokers’ sites.

In recent months, the Federal Trade Commission has cracked down on multiple-listing services that excluded certain kinds of listings from their computer feeds to local brokers’ sites and national sites, such as Realtor.com. Several MLS operators have agreed to end such practices. But the new Realtor policy may encourage more local brokers to leave discounters’ listings off their sites by making clear that the level of service provided is an acceptable reason for exclusion.

Patrick Roach, a deputy assistant director in the FTC’s bureau of competition, said the agency will continue to monitor the Realtors’ policies.

Harley Rouda Jr., chief executive of Real Living Inc., a 15-state brokerage chain based in Columbus, Ohio, said his company already allows its local offices to leave out listings from certain rivals on a case-by-case basis. “We spend a lot of money advertising our Web site to the public, and we have a right to put what we want on our site,” Mr. Rouda said. Rivals unhappy with that policy “can spend more money to promote their own Web sites.”

One concern is that potential buyers relying on a local broker’s Web site might not be aware of listings from discounters. But Mr. Rouda said that if a buyer signs a representation agreement with a Real Living agent, that agent is required to provide information about all offerings that might appeal to the buyer.

Business First of Columbus – 1:51 PM EDT Wednesday

The housing market continues its downturn with a nearly 12 percent decrease in the number of houses sold in September, compared with last year.

The Columbus Board of Realtors said Wednesday that 2,134 residences were sold in the region last month, down from 2,420 sold in September 2005.

The average sale price slid 1.5 percent to $172,476, compared with $175,162 a year earlier, with houses spending an average of 93 days on the market, compared with 82 days last year.

The number of new homes-for-sale listings in Central Ohio was down 11.3 percent in September to 3,884, from 4,380 a year ago.

Year-to-date home sales are off 3 percent from 2005.

The Columbus Board of Realtors monitors sales in all of Franklin, Delaware, Fayette, Madison, Morrow and Union counties, and portions of Licking, Pickaway, Fairfield, Champaign, Clark, Knox, Logan and Marion counties. The report does not include sales of new houses by builders.

Business First of Columbus – 11:11 AM EDT Tuesday

The Columbus area saw a 46 percent jump in nonresidential building contracts in July, while residential contracts, continued to slip, says a report from McGraw-Hill Construction.

Nonresidential contracts last month totaled $145.7 million, an increase from $99.6 million a year ago. Residential contracts dropped 9.8 percent to $185.4 million from $205.6 million last year, reflecting a slumping housing market.

McGraw-Hill’s research and analytics unit compiles monthly reports on construction contracts, using data from Delaware, Fairfield, Franklin, Licking, Madison, Morrow, Pickaway and Union counties. Nonresidential buildings include those for commercial, manufacturing, educational, religious and hotel uses. Residential buildings include one- and two-family houses and apartments.

Year-to-date, nonresidential contracts, helped along by big gains between March and May, have jumped nearly 45.8 percent to $890.2 million, from $610.3 million a year earlier.

Contracts for housing between January and July fell 7.3 percent to $1.14 billion, from $1.23 billion last year.

McGraw-Hill Construction is a division of New York-based McGraw-Hill Company Inc. (NYSE:MHP), a provider of textbooks, educational services and financial and business information.

The parent company is one of Central Ohio’s largest employers with more than 1,100 workers at its education publishing center in the Polaris area of Columbus and a distribution operation on the city’s east side.

THE NATION’S HOUSING
Sunday, July 30, 2006
KENNETH HARNEY

David Berson, chief economist for mortgage giant Fannie Mae, said that one of the few immutable laws of economics is “Unsustainable trends eventually come to an end.”

And the end of the housing trend is pretty much where we are.

Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, was more opaque. He told Congress, “The downturn in the housing market so far appears to be orderly.”

In classic Fed-speak, Bernanke managed to simultaneously soothe — and unsettle — his listeners. An “orderly” realestate downturn sounds OK, right? But what about “so far”? What does that mean in practical terms for people who need to sell a house in the coming months? And what about buyers? Could the property they buy be worth less in a year?

Part of Bernanke’s job is to avoid specific predictions at all costs. But top housing economists such as Berson are paid to make projections, and he offered them July 20 in a midyear forecast teleconference with Wall Street analysts.

Berson thinks that the Federal Reserve “is not done tightening” the ratchet on interest rates and will move up short-term rates again in August. After that, rates are likely to stabilize, bringing at least a temporary cessation to rising home mortgage rates.

He expects average homeprice appreciation, which had been running at a double-digit annual clip nationally for the past year, to drop to 3 percent or less by the end of the year. (On this point, Berson is more bearish than most of his housingand mortgage-industry colleagues, who project average appreciation in the 4 percent to 6 percent range.)

If investors dump rental houses and second homes purchased during the boom years onto the market in larger-thanexpected numbers, Berson thinks price appreciation could drop to a 1 percent or 1 1 /2 percent annual rate — a level not seen since the recession of the early 1990s.

In a handful of markets where investors accounted for large shares of boom-time property purchases and price increases soared for years, Berson thinks “there is a good chance of declines” in average home values. Although he avoided naming all of the markets that Fannie Mae worries about, he did identify San Diego, parts of California plus large swaths of Florida “but not Orlando.”

Like many analysts, Berson said the weakest link in the housing market — and the most vulnerable to price declines and investor dumping — is the condominium sector. Many markets are glutted with unsold inventories of new and converted condo units, and Berson is concerned that significant price corrections could be just over the horizon.

What to make of such sobering projections? Here are a few thoughts.

• Neither Berson nor Bernanke foresees widespread property-value declines as part of the current down cycle. Only in those markets where speculation was rampant from 2003 to 2005 and where job and population growth are anemic are there risks of price declines.

• Neither expects mortgage rates to rise significantly higher than today’s rates, which are still on the low side by historical standards. As long as financing is affordable, buyers will find ways to purchase houses.

• For all-weather real-estate players, a flattening market means changing one’s tactics, not burrowing away to hibernate until the market warms up. For sellers, it means getting acquainted (or reacquainted) with the toolbox of techniques developed during the down periods of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s — for example, seller financing, where you take back a second note on concessionary terms to push the sale, take back a first note if you can afford to, or “buy down” your purchaser’s interest rate to lower monthly payments. Real-estate brokers can fill you in on these strategies along with their pros and cons.

For buyers, down markets often offer exceptional opportunities to acquire real estate at prices that were unthinkable just a few years before. Again, the message is: Don’t go to sleep. To the contrary, get off your duff and scour the market for properties that might never be cheaper or even available.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Kathleen M . Howley
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Nearly a third of U.S. homebuyers chose risky interest-only mortgages in 2005 as a record jump in prices drove affordability to a two-decade low, according to a Harvard University study.

The average mortgage payment in 2005 rose to 24 percent of the U.S. median income after taxes, the highest level since 1984, when it was 25 percent, adjusted for inflation, according to the report issued yesterday by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Home prices rose 9.4 percent in 2005, the biggest annual gain in more than 40 years of recordkeeping, the report said. Thirty percent of new mortgages last year were products that allow buyers to skip paying money toward principal, and some allowed deferred interest payments that could result in people owing more than they borrowed, the report said.

“Stretching to afford evermore expensive homes, borrowers increasingly turned to mortgage products other than fixedrate loans to lower their monthly payments,” the report said.

So-called interest-only adjustable-rate mortgages that defer principal payments in the early years of the loan rose to 20 percent of the dollar value of all mortgages last year, the report said. Payment-option adjustable mortgages, often called option-ARMs, rose to 10 percent of the total, the report said.

Payment-option mortgages have introductory rates as low as 1.25 percent and allow buyers to pay a minimal amount that can result in them being “upside down” in the mortgage, or owing more than they borrowed. Interest-only mortgages, with rates currently at about 4.25 percent, allow borrowers to defer paying principal. Both types of 30-year loans were rare two years ago, the study said.

The average U.S. rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage was 6.22 percent last year, and the median home price was a record $219,000. In 1982, rates reached a high of 15 percent, and the median home price was $131,305, the report said.

The most expensive housing market last year was San Jose, Calif., where the median singlefamily house price was $744,500, the report said, citing prices issued by the National Association of Realtors. Second was San Francisco, at $715,700, followed by Los Angeles, at $691,900.