Archive for
August, 2009
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | August 26, 2009
From our Cool Houses Daily files:
Iconic “Baywatch” and “Knight Rider” star David Hasselhoff has relisted his 5-bed, 5-and-a-half-bath home in Encino, Calif., at a reduced price of just under $4.2 million (a discount from the original $5.95 million price tag earlier this year).
The “America’s Got Talent” judge is selling the estate as part of his divorce settlement with ex Pamela Bach.
The estate has almost 9,000 square feet of living space, with a two-story entry foyer and his-and-hers closets in the master suite.
In the chef’s kitchen, there’s a whole wall devoted to Hasselhoff’s gold and platinum late-1980s European pop albums, but you fill the wall space with your own personal accolades when you snap up the property.
Outside, the home features a pool with a waterfall, tennis court and a huge motorcourt for all of the Hoff’s celebrity get-togethers.
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | August 20, 2009
I’m in the Seattle area trying to take a couple days of R&R, but wherever I go, I always get sucked back into work. And it’s not just the daily responsibilities of managing FrontDoor’s content.
As a real estate editor and licensed real estate salesperson, friends and colleagues often ask me what I think about the market and whether a property they like is actually a deal.
Sometimes I feel like Howie Mandel on “Deal or No Deal,” except on my game show, instead of opening random suitcases looking to eliminate low dollar amounts, homebuyers are looking through houses hoping to eliminate potential money pits.
They weigh the pros and cons of holding on to their current property — their “suitcase” if you will — or taking advantage of what they think is the “ultimate deal.”
To them, I’m the quintessential expert, on topics like home value and foreclosures, because I don’t stand to benefit from the purchase the way their official agent will and they know I’ll give them a straightforward, honest opinion.
So when my Seattle friends showed me a bank-owned property they were interested in, we talked about what needed to be fixed and how much they would need to put into the property to get it into move-in condition.
The exercise proved helpful. If I posed Howie’s question “Deal or no deal?,” the answer would be a resounding “no deal.”
Buying a home? Try these resources from FrontDoor.com:
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | August 16, 2009
Everyone is so focused on home value these days that we forget that buying a home is really an emotional experience.
Sure staging and price play huge factors in whether we like a place, but house hunting is really about finding a house that fits your current lifestyle and aspirations. What really makes a homebuyer ultimately make an offer is feeling a personal connection to the place, not necessarily its price tag.
Ladies, think of it this way. They say when you’re shopping for a wedding dress, you’ll know when you find the one. It just fits. (And since 90 percent of real estate decisions are made by women, I figure you’d understand the analogy.)
This week, I talked to Eileen Imada and Walter Dixon, who just bought their first house in Newton, a suburb of Boston. After three years of looking for their “perfect” home, they learned a valuable lesson in determining home value and have a great tip for all you first-time buyers. Tune in for their full video on the FrontDoor Unlocked Vlog — coming soon!
Buying a home? Try these resources from FrontDoor.com:
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | August 13, 2009
This from our Cool Houses Daily files:
Rapper 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson III, slashed the asking price on his massive Farmington, Connecticut mansion again, hoping to unload the former money pit he rarely used.
It was originally listed at $18.5 million in 2007 and reduced late last year to $14.5 mil. Now, he’s asking $10.9 million — surely to cover the $4.1 million he shelled out for it in 2003 and the additional $6 mil he spent on repairs and upgrades.
The 17-acre estate has been the subject of an ongoing court battle between “Fitty” and an engineering firm he hired to repair and improve the home. Fitty sued BVH Integrated Services, claiming the firm owed him $3 million for maintenance repairs that were not included in its original repair estimate of about $500,000. Terms of the settlement in June were not disclosed.
The mansion has a whopping 21 bedrooms and 25 baths, a private lake with gazebo, an indoor/outdoor pool, gym and grand media room, all spread nicely over 48,000 square feet of living space.
If you love Fitty’s house like, er, a fat kid loves cake, view the listing to find out more about his crib.
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | August 7, 2009
Inman News’ Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco has been great so far, and tomorrow, August 7, we’d love to invite all our fans and followers to listen to the president of our parent company Scripps Networks Digital, Deanna Brown, talk about “How TV, the Web, Your Phone and the Social Universe are Colliding.” It’s at 9 a.m. in the Grand Ballroom.
In case you didn’t know, HGTV’s FrontDoor.com and the entire Scripps Networks family are actively engaging consumers through blogs and social networking services like Facebook and Twitter. On FrontDoor, we’ve also integrated Facebook Connect to allow readers to comment on articles on the site.
To spread the word about all the cool stuff we’re doing, we brought in our Segway-savvy social director. Check her out in this video!
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | August 6, 2009
Our FrontDoor family is growing! Now readers of some of the biggest newspapers in the country — the Boston Globe, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Denver Post and more — will get FrontDoor’s valuable expert tips, advice and videos and browse our 4 million listings.
FrontDoor.com is partnering with 250 newspapers across the country to enhance their Web sites, allowing homebuyers and sellers to browse local listings and real estate content.
In fact, the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate.com just launched this enhanced content, while the FrontDoor team attends Inman News‘ Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco this week. We hope all you Bay Area folks enjoy it!
Partners include Cox Newspapers, Freedom Newspapers, Journal Register Co. and Southern Newspaper Group.
If you recall, we announced a similar partnership with local television stations to enhance their Web content.
So look out for FrontDoor in a local newspaper near you!
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | August 6, 2009
I hear so many real estate agent horror stories from homebuyers and sellers (and have experienced my own nightmare situations) that you’d think “agent bashing” is some sort of national pastime.
While there are some bad apples out there (as there are in any profession), that shouldn’t reflect poorly on the industry as a whole. In fact, I know many people who rave about their real estate agents and consider them part of the family.
Finding an agent is easy. In any given area, hundreds of professionals are vying for your business. Finding the right agent for you is the hard part.
You’re trusting someone to help through one of the biggest purchases in your life, so it’s important to do your research.
Check out FrontDoor’s Top 10 Strategies for Choosing the Right Real Estate Agent.
Posted by Annalisa Burgos | August 5, 2009
None of my friends are real estate agents. And a lot of my friends’ friends aren’t agents either. They just never happened to roll in my social circles. Not really sure why that is. Perhaps it’s because I’m naturally skeptical of people who make a living from selling things — be it a house, insurance, a car or a story pitch.
So you’d understand why people like me who don’t normally socialize with real estate agents in our personal lives would feel weird about “friending” an agent on Facebook without having met him/her in person and establishing some sort of relationship. Even now, as a homebuyer, I’m not going to search for agents to friend.
So it was especially interesting to listen to a panel for real estate agents about using Facebook as a professional tool.
(The FrontDoor team is in San Francisco this week for a real estate and technology conference called “Real Estate Connect,” hosted by Inman News.)
FrontDoor, for one, has a Facebook fan page (thanks to those of you who’ve joined it!) and is doing some interesting things with social media, such as integrate Facebook Connect on the site so readers can comment on articles through their Facebook profile.
At the panel, Craig Donato, CEO of online classifieds site Oodle, talked about their service, which would allow agents to automatically load their listings into their news feed and their friends’ feeds. Someone in the audience quickly pointed out that that was the “fastest way to get me to de-friend you.” Indeed. I know I would.
So that begs the question — what is the proper etiquette, for any business, to build relationships on social networking services like Facebook and Twitter, without scaring away people? We’re discussing that here at Inman Connect. If you’ve got an idea, please share it!
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