Category: RealEstate

Leona Helmsley’s Greenwich, Conn., estate (pictured here) is officially on the market with a hefty $125 million price tag. (Property taxes: over $1.8 million.) There will be a broker open house for the home on Round Hill Road today, but no cellphones or cameras will be allowed, a local broker tells us.

“The house is […]

Foreclosure filings for March rocketed 57% from a year earlier and rose 5% from February, a foreclosure listing service said, a sign that U.S. housing woes have yet to slacken. RealtyTrac said there were 234,685 foreclosure filings in March, or one for every 538 households.
Chief Executive James J. Saccacio said many defaulting homeowners “are simply […]

The ‘Father of the Bride’ house, from seeingstars.com

As houses sit on the market longer, owners of multimillion-dollars homes are looking or a new way to insulate themselves from the housing market downturn – by casting their houses in movies and TV, writes Rebecca Ascher-Walsh for Reuters/Hollywood Reporter.
Such homeowners hope to recoup at least some of […]

Meticulous research and time well spent in city hall may help Max Weinberg, the drummer for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, turn a tidy real-estate profit, writes Ben Casselman in today’s Journal.
The musician owns 40 acres and an 8,900-square-foot, seven-bedroom house in Middletown, N.J. He hopes to subdivide the property and put […]

How long will your house keep losing value? Depending on where you live, home prices could continue to decline for the next two years, says PMI Group Inc., chief economist David Berson.
“There are a chunk of cities where the risk that prices will be lower two years from now is pretty high,Â’Â’ says Mr. […]

What do the Federal Reserve and real-estate Web site HotPads have in common? Both have ginned up online maps in recent weeks to track the mortgage maps. The Fed’s map, released last week, illustrates subprime loan conditions across the U.S. Hotpads.com offers similar heat maps, and uses them to showcase listings of foreclosed homes.
The site […]

The supply of homes available for sale in major metropolitan areas grew moderately in March, new data show.
Total listings of homes in 29 metro areas at the end of March were up 2.5% from a month earlier, according to figures compiled by ZipRealty Inc., a real-estate brokerage firm based in Emeryville, Calif. The data […]

Lucy, Ricky, Ethel and Fred were neighbors - - and friends — on “I Love Lucy”

What can you do to keep your home’s value from falling as home prices drop and the foreclosure virus spreads across the U.S.? Be a good neighbor, suggests June Fletcher in today’s Journal.
Because the quality of your neighborhood affects […]

Even as federal and state governments come under growing pressure to respond to the mortgage crisis, new data show that the pace at which mortgages are going delinquent is speeding up.
A new report by Equifax, the credit bureau, and Moody’s Economy.com shows that 4.46% of mortgages were at least 30 days past due at […]

In response to the mortgage crisis and more sweeping, costly Democratic proposals for reform, the Bush administration plans to expand a program to help homeowners underwater in their mortgages.( See Bush to Expand Help on Mortgages in today’s Journal.)
By expanding FHASecure, about 100,000 more homeowners may receive assistance with their mortgages, including those who […]