Real Estate
gregladen | March 24, 2017In real estate.
I'm not an expert on this but I've seen the sausage being made a few times. Individuals with investment money, commercial businesses that might use new space, other possible tenants, maybe or maybe not some designers or builders, municipal or other government stakeholders, community stakeholders such as neighborhood associations, etc. consider a real estate deal. Perhaps there is a bit of condemned land the county wants to sell cheap if only you clean up the brownfield and develop something nice. Maybe the investors include a person who owns an underexploited business…
aardvarchaeology | November 22, 2016Downtown Kavalla's mix of well-kept properties and hopeless ruins confuses me. I've seen similar in the Baltic States, but there it has to do with uncertainty about the ownership after the Soviet period, I've been told. That doesn't apply here. So I googled real estate agencies and went visiting on my lunch break.
The first clue was simply that I couldn't find most of the agencies at their stated addresses. One had closed down so recently that the sign was still there and the shop space hadn't found a new tenant. The real estate market here isn't exactly booming: demand is low. But eventually…
gregladen | August 8, 2016If so, I have a recommendation for you.
We recently sold our old house and bought a new one, and moved.
The main reason we did this: to get closer to Amanda’s place of work. We managed to turn a commute that ran from 35 minutes to 1.5 hours (on really bad winter days) each way to one short enough that Amanda will usually bike, with about a five or six minute drive on non-biking days. Probably a ten minute drive on the worst winter days.
The main reason we did this now rather than a couple of years ago: our house was under water thanks to the GB Economic Crisis. In fact, we weren’t sure if…
aardvarchaeology | December 31, 2012I saw something odd in Marrakech recently. Along the main avenues there was a considerable amount of construction going on. But also properties right next door that had clearly been vacated years ago without receiving new buildings. And newish buildings and shop space that were boarded up. Freshly painted fronts of closed restaurants that looked like they'd opened and failed within the past year, right on downtown main street.
Moving out a few blocks from the main drags, there were entire abandoned buildings. And in the Medina / Old Town, buildings that had been abandoned so long ago that…
sastyk | July 13, 2012There's a fascinating article using Zillow analysis to figure out the value of food gardens to residential housing. This isn't news to a lot of us, but it is nice to see the numbers quantified:
Minor Kitchen Remodel. Cost: $14,917 Return on resale: $14,645 Percentage Return: -1.8%
Major Bathroom Remodel. Cost: $26,060 Return on resale: $24,264 Percentage return: -6.9%
Here’s how a garden stacks up:
Average cost of a garden per year (what people spend today): - $70
Average value of a garden per year (in produce): + $600
Average value of a garden per year: + $530
So, the…
razib | December 9, 2009At Reuters Felix Salmon has been making the case that a home should not be thought of as an investment. Here's the the Google Trends for "investment property":
I think the biggest argument that one should be careful about viewing a home purchase as an investment is that many people will now roll their eyes at you when you moot the idea. In other words, a substantial proportion of young adults are going to view the idea of getting locked down into a mortgage with a great deal more skepticism than they would have a few years ago. The cultural shock of the late real estate correction is going…
razib | August 6, 2009Calculated Risk points out that you can look up foreclosure status on Google Maps. Pretty weird. Had no idea that a house 2 blocks away was being foreclosed on....