What’s the most expensive luxury real estate market?
This Week’s Top of the TweetsBy Camilla McLaughlin
International buyers are getting lots of scrutiny these days, a trend we’ve been reporting for awhile. And this influence isn’t just limited to New York, Miami and the handful of U.S. cities with global appeal. Harold Bubil @htrealestate from the Herald-Tribune gives a fresh take on the topic, showing the growing influence of foreign buyers in Sarasota. http://bit.ly/pMZmK9
Latest stats — August sales of existing homes rose by 7.7 percent to an annual rate of 5.03 million sales. This is an 18.6-percent hike over August 2010. @BHGRealEstate and others tweeted this news. http://t.co/ItAhfhoa Florida existing home sales up 15-percent in August from year ago. http://goo.gl/fb/8sYrP Architecture billings index turned positive in August, according to American Institute of Architects.
Maine mania! Interest from buyers along the Maine coast are boosting sales along the coast and in the western lakes region. A Tweet from @MyFavoriteAgent steered us to a report from the folks at Landvest in the LRE Blog. A surge of productive shows in the last six seeks in the mid-coast is another indication that buyers believe it’s time to take advantage of the opportunities the current market offers. http://bit.ly/pBu4dP
Prudential’s Earl Lee, @reallyearllee, Tweets a link to a Trulia factoid that should be good for long-term demand: 80 percent of homeowners plan to buy again. http://tinyurl.com/43owqyy
Bifurcation of the market leads to an increasingly downbeat outlook for housing. At least for Michelle Meyer, chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, according to a recent AP article on the growing divide between Wall Street and Main Street. Few would disagree that the high end in many locations has been on the rebound and luxury’s recovery stands in sharp contrast to what is happening in the overall market. But this article also uses a very broad brush and focuses mainly on Detroit to make the case. Painting real estate with a broad brush only added to the hype in the run up of prices and today similar strategies are just as misleading. Real estate is still a local business and markets and price brackets all over the country have their own individual story. http://bit.ly/nHm7gR
Most expensive luxury real estate market? Hong Kong takes that honor, according to a recent report compiled by global real estate consultancy Savills. Of the 10 cities studied, Hong Kong has the highest price for luxury homes — $10,316 per square foot, nearly double that of London. Tokyo, which ranked second on cost per square foot, actually had the most expensive luxury homes because the properties tended to be larger, 16,000 square feet on average. On a square-foot cost, Paris came in third. The cost of luxury homes is rising fastest in cities where luxury is emerging, with Singapore and Mumbai showing more than a 100-percent price appreciation since 2005. http://bit.ly/o3zkrW CNN @CNNWBT gives a good overview of this report in a blog.
Loan limits for conforming mortgages will fall October 1. Despite heavy lobbying by the housing industry, the maximum size of loans that can be guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Authority will decline on October 1, barring unexpected last-minute action by Congress, reports Alan Zibel in The Wall Street Journal. The limits will drop to $625,500 in expensive markets such as New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. http://on.wsj.com/pCFl7d Once again, @NickTimiraos points us to the story.
There is no dispute that falling loan limits will push more buyers, especially those at the low end of luxury, toward jumbo loans. “It’s no time to reduce conforming loan limits,” says National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. Yun explains how lowering the limit will be an obstacle to recovery, especially for small business startups, which often rely on home equity as a source of funds. http://bit.ly/rb3vPT
Latest Forbes 400 is out. No surprises here. Once again, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett lead the list. The total wealth of all the 400 is up 12 percent in the last year, slightly better than the S&P 500′s 10 percent. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was the year’s biggest gainer and in the top 20 for the first time. Price of admission to the list in 2011? $1.05 billion. http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/
The future of housing? True next-gen homes will be on display this weekend at the Solar Decathlon in Washington. At the International Builders Show in January, I had the opportunity to view models of a number of these homes, which have been designed and built by teams from 20 colleges from five countries. Many designs were very futuristic while a few, such as Purdue’s entry, mimicked local architecture. Most interesting was how each home reflects the local climate. All are designed to be super energy efficient. http://bit.ly/mYuEfq A tip of the Tweets hat to @katieweeks, editor of @ecostructure magazine for the link.
