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Friday, May 9, 2008

Alexandria Real Estate Values Still Growing

Your home is not just a house anymore, this is an investment for many and it is the largest investment one can ever make. According to information given by a realtor in Greater Alexandria, the local real estate market is continuing to have steady growth in value.

In 2006, the average cost of a residential house in Alexandria was about $161,290 and in 2007 the average cost of a home has increased to $168,132. One of the greatest financial aspects of buying a house is the ability to leverage your money. Leverage permits you to use a small down payment and financing to purchase a larger investment. For instance, if you have bought a $150,000 home with 20 percent down, you leveraged the $30,000 down payment to purchase an asset worth 5 times that amount.

The benefits of leverage really become apparent with appreciation or the rise in value of a property. If you take the same $150,000 and the property values in your area were to increase on an average of 3 percent a year, your house would then be worth almost $175,000 in 5 years.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Seattle, San Francisco and New York Real Estate Continues to Boom

In cities such as Seattle, San Francisco and New York real estate continues to booming. During the first quarter of this year 2007, the median price for a Manhattan home went up to 18%, to $872,000, when compared with the same period last year, according to a repot from a Web portal that came on April 17. The median price for all of New York City, which includes much weaker middle-class neighborhoods in the Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten Island, rose to 4% in the first quarter, to $535,000.

And the numbers continue to amaze everyone in the real estate market. Manhattan real estate continues to climb greater heights because of the wealth of its buyers, the still-strong job market, the limited supply of homes and the weak dollar, which is pulling in more foreign buyers. And Manhattan isn't America's only strong market; bright spots in the real estate market include Charlotte, N.C. and Austin, Texas.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Real Estate Sites Aid Sellers and Buyers

Liz Crawford will never venture from her couch for anything less than a two bedroom condo with a parking space, washer and dryer. In the same time, she continues her home hunting by scanning the list of Norfolk, Va., houses in her price range that is sent to her automatically from her real estate agent's web site. When she finds something interesting, her agent will get her the full listings and they rarely speak over the phone.

According to Crawford, it is really nice to be able to stay at home and do the searching; she says, "When it comes to searching a home it can be very tedious." These online real estate websites have become an established part, when it comes to home buying process over the past 10 years, but these sites are evolving to offer a wider variety of services, tips, and useful articles; in some cases it brings positive relationships among sellers, buyers and the real estate agents.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Flourishing Charlotte Real Estate

As home prices in certain parts of the country are falling, Charlotte has managed to eke out modest gains when compared to last year. The most watched Standard and Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index released lately showed Charlotte having a 1.8 percent rise in January as the 20-city index fell 10.7$ 5 $7- the steepest decline in the index's two decade history. Local officials and real estate agents cited the strength in the regional economy and Charlotte's history of more modest home price growth during the boom years as reasons the market was holding up now. A real estate broker said, "We are still selling here in Charlotte,"

That's not to say Charlotte, with approximately 1.7 million people in its metropolitan area, isn't feeling the same pressures as the rest of the nation. "You have to try a little harder to sell more of your listings, but homes are selling," said a broker in the city. The Charlotte area is home to 9 Fortune 500 company headquarters, including 2 of the country's 4 largest banks, Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp. More than 14 thousand jobs were created in the Charlotte area last year, compared with about 12 thousand jobs in 2006.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

San Francisco Will Show off the Eco-friendly Buildings

The City of San Francisco will soon swank the greenest buildings in USA. The local government last week took a serious step towards agreeing what are perhaps the toughest environmental construction standards in America. Companies and families planning who are planning to build houses and offices might be required to earn green points by introducing water and energy saving measures, if failing they will risk losing their construction permits.

Now construction is not an attractive area of climate policy, but it is one in which huge profits can be made at relatively little cost. For example, existing technologies such as solar water heaters can reduce greenhouse emissions from a building by one-third. Yet authorities regulating the housing booms in places like south-west American and many cities across China have done little to support such measures.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Canadians Scoop up USA Real Estate

Today Canadians account for more than half of all new homes purchased in Texas, California and Florida. Due to strong Canadian dollar, declining U.S. dollars and weak housing prices due to the sub-prime mortgage mess have increased the appetite for Canadians to purchase real estate properties in America. Explosive local housing market in Canada where Canadians are seeing double digit appreciations in their own home values. Local real estate brokers in Arizona, California, Florida and other Sun Belt states are seeing tons of Canadian buyers. According to a broker interviewed in Sarasota, he said that in the past six months about 20 percent of his calls are from Canadians.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Alexandria Proposes Increase in Real Estate Tax

The latest northern Virginia jurisdiction, Alexandria has considered a real estate tax increase. The City Council chosen to propose a tax increase of up to 3 cents which could raise the tax rates to 86 cents per $100 of assessed valuation. The council also voted to advertise a commercial tax increase of an additional 2 cents. Mayor William Euille says officials are giving themselves 'flexibility' by providing legal notice of a big rate hike. He says he hopes the actual increase will be closer to zero than to 3 cents. The city is the latest jurisdiction to struggle with budget difficulties as property values fall.