Maryland Real Estate Listings, Information & Advice

Zillow

The New York City skyline is visible through the enormous clock faces.

1 Main St., Brooklyn, N.Y.
For sale: $23,500,000

Whoever said time is money must have seen this New York City apartment.

The converted clock tower penthouse is by far the most expensive listing in Brooklyn at $23.5 million. Located in the Dumbo neighborhood (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), the 7,000-square-foot space is defined by four 14-foot-high glass clock faces. Peering out between each working clock hand are 360-degree vistas of the New York City skyline including views of the Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges.

Built in 1914, the brick tower building was first used as a cardboard box factory. In the 1980s, developer David Walentas of Two Trees Management bought the factory as part of a $12 million real estate acquisition.

Walentas turned the clock tower building into 126 condo units as part of the area development in the late 1990s, leaving the top portion of the tower until a few years ago. As a part of a personal project, he outfitted the three-story penthouse with high-end furnishings and “smart home” technology. Accessible by a private glass elevator, the loft-like apartment boasts 15- to 50-foot ceilings, an open floor plan and sleek modern finishes. The fourth floor has a small crow’s nest and rooftop deck for further city panoramas.

The three bathrooms have stone radiant-heated floors, and the all-white kitchen features stone and stainless steel countertops, high-end appliances and lacquer cabinets.

Originally listed on the Dumbo real estate market in 2005 for $25 million, the penthouse caught the eye of Esquire magazine editors, who used it as their ”2011 Esquire Apartment.”

“They could pick anywhere, and they fell in love in this apartment,” said Ian Kleier, vice president of brokerage Gumley Haft Kleier.

Labeling it the “ultimate bachelor pad,” the magazine outfitted the three-bedroom space with luxury designs sponsored by Hugo Boss, Asics, Lufthansa and others.

“They say they’ve transformed a stunning contemporary home into a modern man’s lifestyle,” said Kleier. “It’s just gorgeous what they’ve done to it.”

Esquire showed off the finished pad with a few charity events, hosting celebrities and philanthropists for the Fresh Air Fund, City of Hope and International Medical Corps. While you can take a video tour of Esquire’s space online, the penthouse will also be in the January 2012 issue of Esquire.

Esquire’s furnishings are only temporary, but whoever buys the pricey penthouse probably won’t need to invest in any clocks.

According to data from Zillow’s Mortgage Marketplace, monthly payments on the apartment would be $88,319, assuming a 20 percent down payment and 30-year mortgage.

The listing is held by Michele Kleier of Gumley Haft Kleier.

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The open floor plan is dominated by a glass elevator and staircase.

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An enormous kitchen has stainless steel appliances and countertops.

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The fourth floor of the penthouse features a crows nest and covered deck.

Steven Senne / AP

A home for sale in Milton, Mass.

By msnbc.com news services

Home sales perked up in October, according to new data from the National Association of Realtors.

October existing home sales were up 1.4 percent, rising modestly to 4.97 million units from a downwardly revised 4.90 million in the previous month. The number of homes on the market continued to decline in October, the new NAR data showed.

Contract failures jumped to 33 percent in October from 18 percent in September, the association said. Contract failures are cancellations caused by declined mortgage applications, failures in loan underwriting from appraised values coming in below the negotiated price, or other problems including home inspections and employment losses.

“Other recent factors include disruption in the National Flood Insurance Program, and lower loan limits for conventional mortgages, which paradoxically force some of the most creditworthy consumers to pay unnecessarily higher interest rates,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the NAR.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Zillow

The Samuel-Novarro house has Mayan design influences.

By Zillow

While Frank Lloyd Wright dominated the Midwest with his groundbreaking design, his son, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr — or simply Lloyd Wright — made his mark on architecture in Southern California.

While Lloyd Wright’s homes are architecturally significant, many of them are culturally significant as well and housed some of the biggest up-and-coming stars from the early days on the silver screen. One of his most significant properties is Lloyd Wright’s Samuel-Novarro house currently listed on the Hollywood Hills real estate market for $4.195 million. Not only is it the former home of silent film star Ramon Novarro, but a few current day stars as well.

Like Lloyd Wright’s Sowden house, the Samuel-Novarro residence is a contemporary building with blocky Mayan influences and tropical gardens.

Wright built the home in 1928 for Louis Samuel, Novarro’s personal secretary and companion. However, when Novarro discovered Samuel was embezzling funds from him in 1929, he told Samuel he wouldn’t press charges if Samuel “made it right.” To make up for the financial losses, Samuel turned over his Lloyd Wright property to Novarro. Born in Mexico, Novarro emigrated to the U.S. as a small child and began his role in film as a dancer. After starring in a few films, he gained national fame with his role in “Ben-Hur” and then “Mata-Hari” alongside Greta Garbo.

Upon acquiring the estate, Novarro rehired Wright to renovate and enlarge the hillside home, adding a pergola, a music room, a bedroom suite.

According to the Big Orange Landmark blog, Novarro owned the home until the 1930s. In the 1940s, Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green rented the home while they worked on the Broadway musical “On the Town.”

The property then bounced around between a few different owners, including record producer John Carter. Actress Diane Keaton picked up the home in the early 1990s and hired celebrity designer Josh Schweitzer to remodel it. Keaton sold it a decade later.

In 2005, Christina Ricci bought the property, but turned around and sold it the following year for $2,827,528.

According to the property listing, the current owner has meticulously restored the residence to its former glory. The historic 3-bedroom, 3-bathroom home has concrete floors and dramatic windows and skylights. Part of the property’s allure is its exotic grounds, which include a partially covered pool, bamboo tree-lined sitting area and jasmine-covered walkway.

Hollywood Hills has long been a celebrity enclave, hosting everyone from Matthew Perry to Ryan Reynolds. Median Hollywood Hills home values are currently $976,700.

The listing is held by Marisa Zanuck of Hilton Hyland.

According to Zillow’s mortgage calculator, a monthly payment on the Lloyd Wright Samuel-Novarro house is $15,852, assuming a 20 percent down payment on a 30-year-mortgage.

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The home is a light-filled modern residence.

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The private deck is the perfect place for an A-Lister to sunbathe.

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Like other Lloyd Wright residences, the grounds of the home are landscaped with tropical plants.

CHICAGO — Just your luck — you have to sell your home in winter, the slowest and dreariest sales season of all.

But cheer up. You can use staging, the reduced competition and some seasonal opportunities to your advantage.

“You wouldn’t necessarily choose to sell your home in winter,” says Katie Severance, a broker for ReMax in Upper Montclair, N.J. “But there are certain extra steps you can take to really help your chances.”

Many homeowners pull their houses off the market by year’s end if they haven’t sold. That’s understandable. The period from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day is the slowest time of year for home shopping as people focus on family and holidays.

The weather, too, helps put the chill in sales in most locations between now and spring. January and February see the fewest home sale closings, according to the National Association of Realtors, with the market not fully gearing up until April and May. Another big factor: Homebuyers with children generally time their purchases so moving doesn’t interfere with the school year.

Sometimes a job transfer, lease or personal circumstances require plunging into making a sale in the dead of winter. Although that means fewer buyers in most areas, as a seller you’ll have a chance to stand out in a thinned-out field of competitors.

Here are some tips to lessen the chances your home will languish on the market:

Remember the basics

Taking care of needed maintenance and repairs is obligatory in any season. A thorough cleaning and getting rid of clutter are equally essential. And tidying up the yard and touching up the exterior appearance to improve the curb appeal also can make the difference between deal or no deal.

In a slow market, nothing counts more than pricing aggressively. Check recent sale prices in your neighborhood on sites such as Zillow.com and Trulia.com and price your home competitively. “If it’s priced properly, it will sell any day of the year,” says Severance.

Think warm and cozy

Home staging — techniques used to make your house look bigger, brighter, warmer and more appealing — takes on a new focus in winter. Rearranging the furniture and applying a fresh coat of paint to any room in need are just as important. But to convey a cozy impression in winter, it may behoove you to turn up the thermostat and have a fire in the fireplace for open houses. It will give you an edge over the many vacant homes on the market.

Staging may in fact be even more important in winter, according to Loren Keim, a real estate broker and professor of real estate at Lehigh University. “If you have a vacant house in winter with the heat turned down to 50, chances are someone will make a very low offer,” he says. “And if you can leave at least a few pieces of furniture behind, it has more of an impact.”

Displaying photos of how your property looks in summer is a good idea. Some staging experts also recommend decorating with warm colors such as deep orange or crimson.

Neatly shoveled paths make a difference

It might seem obvious to keep sidewalks and driveways free and clear of ice and snow. But many homeowners who have already vacated their houses either aren’t diligent about that winter duty or don’t do a thorough job.

It’s important for reasons of safety, aesthetics and, once again, competition. In particular, a foreclosed house probably won’t have walks and parking spaces shoveled out, and “people don’t like to deal with that,” says Holden Lewis, real estate expert for Bankrate.com.

Lewis recalls pulling up in front of a house he had an appointment to see one February years ago in Toledo, Ohio. The sidewalk wasn’t shoveled, and he took a look at the house from his car and decided not to go in. “If you want to sell the house, everything needs to be shoveled and clear,” he says.

Good lighting is essential

Your home may appear darker due to less daylight. Fight the gloom. Turn on all the lights possible for visitors — this is no time to worry about the electric bill. Open blinds, drapes and shutters to let natural light pour in. Make sure to clean any grime off the windows first.

Encourage showings during high-daylight hours. Showing after work in the dark isn’t a great idea. Make sure you have enough outside illumination for drive-by visitors in the evening, however. And keep the place well-lit even when you’re not there.

Tasteful holiday decorations can help

The holidays give you an extra chance to make your home stand out. Keep decorations conservative and don’t overdo it on outdoor lighting. You don’t want to put 25,000 lights on the roof like Clark Griswold in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” As sure as he blacked out the neighborhood, you would scare off buyers. But a big red bow on the For Sale sign and some holiday greenery, twinkling lights and elegant decorations inside can help give buyers a dose of seasonal cheer.

When Christmas and Hanukkah are over, you can keep the spirit alive. A colorful winter wreath on the front door and colorful poinsettias and holly bushes in the yard will help retain a festive look for January and February, when more house-shoppers start to turn up.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Zillow

This San Francisco home, a onetime speakeasy, has a bar on the lower level.

2 18th Ave., San Francisco CA
For sale: $3,995,000

It doesn’t take a private investigator to come up with a theory about this curious San Francisco property. With a secret passageway, small doors leading to a back garden and an enormous bar that was clearly aimed to please a crowd, the signs all point to one thing: speakeasy.

That is certainly the conclusion of the home’s current owner, Patricia Dodson.

“The room has a 12-foot ceiling and there are three slits about 11 feet up,” Dodson said. “We were told when we bought the house, (that this) was a way for the person at the front door to flash lights on the bar so people could leave.”

Then there’s the bandstand and the built-in beer taps — major context clues that this place was once a Prohibition-era watering hole.

“It looks like the real deal,” said Dodson.

Additionally, marks on the second-floor ceilings where walls appear to have been removed lead Dodson to believe that the house once had several more rooms, perhaps for other illegal activity.

“You can tell there were a lot of rooms that aren’t here now,” she explained. “And we were told that speakeasies usually had brothels upstairs.”

Today, the speakeasy room has been renovated into a home theater. The thin slits in the home’s exterior are now expansive windows overlooking the Presidio in San Francisco. The secret passageway is now a wine cellar.

But the home’s past remains alive throughout the home, including original stained glass windows, plaster ceilings and arches.

Sitting at the end of a dead-end street, the San Francisco home is an oasis from the surrounding city’s hustle and bustle. The Presidio is the only national park located in the city, and the home looks out over its 1,480 acres of forest and adjoining golf course.

Inside, there’s an array of amenities done in a style that maintains the home’s Art Deco style, including an indoor pool and a fourth-floor library with views that on a clear day stretch to the marine headlands and the ocean.

With over 5,000 square feet of living space, five bedrooms and three bathrooms, the home has become too large for the empty-nester couple. But won’t make it easier for the couple to leave.

“It’s going to be hard because we’ve done so much to to it,” she said. “Sometimes, I’m not so sure I want to part with it.”

With current low mortgage rates and a 20 percent down payment on a 30-year-mortgage, the home would have a monthly payment of $14,998 according to Zillow’s mortgage calculator.

The listing is held by agent Monica Pauli of TRI/Coldwell Banker.

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The home features an indoor pool with a constant current.

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On clear days, the home has views of the marine highlands from the fourth-floor library.

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A recurring theme in the home is detailed arches.

See more photos of the home on Zillow.

Zillow’s site is filled with information on homes for sale and apartments for rent, plus data on more than 100 million homes in the U.S., so lots of homes catch our eye.

AP

The data paint a picture of declining homeownership rates for younger and middle-aged Americans, with sustained ownership rates among older adults.

By Jane Hodges, contributor

Despite a historic downturn in housing, the ranks of homeowners grew between the second and third quarter.

The American homeownership rate rose slightly to 66.3 during third quarter 2011, up from 65.9 percent in second quarter, according to data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Rental vacancy nationally was 9.8 percent during the quarter, down from 10.3 percent this time last year but up from 9.2 percent in second quarter. Rental vacancy hit a recent-year peak of 11.1 percent during third quarter 2009, according to the data. 

“These are two unexpected changes,” said John McIlwain, a senior fellow for housing at the Urban Land Institute, who as recently as two weeks ago was predicting a further decline in homeownership to 65.7 percent. “I’m not used to being proved wrong.”

Homeownership peaked in the U.S. during 2004, at around 69 percent, and has shown gradual declines since that time due to the housing and foreclosure crisis and a soft economy. But McIlwain and other industry observers, such as Greg Willett, vice president of apartment research firm MPF Research, both predict homeownership will gradually fall to between 62 percent and 64 percent.

The data paint a picture of declining homeownership rates for younger and middle-aged Americans, with sustained ownership rates among older adults. Homeownership has dropped most substantially among the young and middle-aged: The homeownership rate among under-35 buyers is now at 38 percent, versus 42 percent in 2007.  During third quarter 2011, adults ages 35 to 44 had a 63.4 percent homeownership rate, down from 65.2 percent this time last year and 70.1 percent in 2005. Adults in the 45 to 54 year old age range had a 72.7 percent homeownership rate, down slightly from 73 percent this time last year and from 76.7 percent in third quarter 2005.

To McIlwain, these numbers reinforce his prediction that in the future those who buy will wait longer to buy, until their late 30s or even early 40s, and then remain homeowners into their older years as prior generations have.

“We continue to have the aspiration for homeownership, but it’ll take longer for future buyers,” he says.

Homeownership is highest in the Midwest (70.3 percent) and South (68.4 percent), but lower in the Northeast (63.7 percent) and West (60.7 percent).

Vacancy abounds

Some 85.8 percent of American housing is occupied, with 56.9 percent of that property owned and 28.9 percent rented. Among the 14.2 percent of properties vacant, 3.2 percent are for rent, 1.4 percent are for sale, 0.9 percent are temporarily vacant (sold or leased but with tenants or owners not yet living there), and 5.4 percent of properties are currently “held off market” due to their status as a non-primary residence (2.5 percent) or for other reasons (2.9 percent).

Rental vacancy was down slightly year-over-year within metropolitan statistical areas (to 9.8 percent, from 10.3 percent during the year prior), little-changed in “principal cities,” and declining in the suburbs where it was 9.1 percent during third quarter 2011, down from 10.1 percent in the same quarter last year. The census noted that none of these changes were “statistically significant.” Vacancy was highest in the South (12.2 percent) and Midwest (10.5 percent), but lower in the Northeast (8 percent) and West (7.3 percent).

Top towns for rental vacancy (by metropolitan statistical area)

• Houston/Baytown/Sugarland, Texas: 17.1 percent
• Tucson, Ariz.: 17 percent
• Poughkeepsie, NY: 17 percent
• Orlando, Fla.: 16.6 percent
• Greensboro/High Point, NC: 16.3 percent
• Kansas City, Mo.: 15.2 percent
• Detroit/Warren/Livonia, Mich.: 14.9 percent
• Memphis, Tenn.: 14.8 percent
• Charlotte/Gastonia/Concord, NC: 14.6 percent
• Indianapolis, Ind.: 14.5 percent

Top towns for owned-home vacancy (by metropolitan statistical area)

Vacancy among owned homes was 2.4 percent during the quarter, and has been below 3 percent nationally for several years now. Nonetheless, some metro area showed high vacancy rates among owned homes.

       Top towns for vacant owned homes (by metropolitan statistical area)

• Dayton, Ohio: 6.5 percent
• Columbia, SC: 5.1 percent
• Las Vegas/Paradise, Nev.: 4.9 percent
• Atlanta/Sandy Springs/Marietta, Ga.: 4.6 percent
• Poughkeepsie/Newburgh, NY/Middletown, NJ: 4.6 percent
• Richmond, Va.: 4 percent
• Tampa-St. Petersburg/Clearwater, Fla.: 3.8 percent
• Grand Rapids, Wyo. Mich.: 3.8 percent
• Virginia Beach/Norfolk/Newport News, Va.: 3.7 percent
• Chicago/Naperville/Joliet, Ill.: 3.1 percent

Zillow

Feel boxed in, in a good way.

By Zillow 
411 W Mary St. Austin TX
3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths
Asking price: $875,000

As the host city for the music and film festival South by Southwest and the ever-popular music show Austin City Limits, the Texas capital is one of the top meccas for cultural hipness in the U.S.

When it comes to creative architectural design, Austin is no slouch in that department, either, as demonstrated by this one-of-a-kind modern house in the trendy SoCo (South of Congress) neighborhood listed on the Austin real estate market for $875,000.

Designed by Austin team Spaller Glover Design Build in 2011, this home was created to be a piece of art.

“The company has a reputation for hip, cool and groovy,” explained listing agent Kenny Hilbig. “They’ve done other projects in the area that are phenomenal.”

The square-shaped home features an all-white masonry exterior punctuated by custom-built, round windows. The effect of the round windows in the box-like dwelling only serves to emphasize the geometric dimensions of the building, juxtaposing not only the square shape of the house, but the rectangular shape of the exterior tiles.

Not only are circular windows difficult to build, but they’re expensive and hard to weatherize, said Hilberg. “But they managed to do all those things and build a really quality product.”

An enormous glass door opens into the front of the home where the chevron-patterned white oak flooring leads to a great room where a sitting area features a removable platform.

A top-of-the-line kitchen has Carerra marble countertops and backsplash as well as high-end appliances.

The master bath is lined with onyx tile and focused around a custom circular glass-tiled soaking tub with a shower head above. Hilberg says that there is room for a shower curtain for those nervous about the concept.

First listed in September, the home has had a recent slash in price — from $929,000 to $875,000 — a 5.8 percent reduction.

With a 20 percent down payment on a 30-year-loan, this modern home could be yours for a $4,898 monthly payment, according to data from Zillow’s Mortgage Marketplace.

Zillow

A stage in the living room provides elevated hang out space.

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The kitchen features Carrara marble countertops and blacksplash.

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The master bath features a custom circular tub.

See more photos of the modern home on Zillow.

Zillow’s site is filled with information on homes for sale and apartments for rent, plus data on more than 100 million homes in the U.S., so lots of homes catch our eye.