Bryan Cronin's Real Estate Blog

Published: September 22, 2011 11:22 AM
By TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES

Photo credit: Tim Carter | This downspout diverter was hastily put in to get the roof water onto the sidewalk, where it will drain away from the house. It will later be replaced and piped underground. (Sept. 22, 2011)

1. A lot of water

Storms produce vast quantities of water on roofs. A ranch home with a roof area of about 2,400 square feet will generate nearly 1,500 gallons of water during a storm that dumps 1 inch of rain. That's a tremendous amount of water to concentrate around the foundation of your home. It can cause significant leakage in basements and crawl spaces.

2. The lowdown

Roof water should be piped to the lowest spot on the property, into municipal stormwater systems or, if you can afford it, into a cistern or other collection vessel so the water can be reused for gardening or other household uses.

3. The right pipe

Some homeowners have had nothing but success piping roof water underground in rigid PVC pipes. You might try using a pipe that's made for sewer line work. It comes with slip joints that don't have to be glued.

4. How deep?

These buried downspout lines don't have to be too deep in the soil. Usually they are no deeper than 16 inches, unless you have a flat lot. It's best to make sure they fall by a quarter-inch per foot of run. This provides plenty of pitch so the water readily flows.

5. Matter of degrees

You'll want to use 4-inch diameter pipe for your system. Be sure that any change of direction of the pipes while underground is done with 45-degree bends. The only place to use a 90-degree bend is at the end of the pipe where it turns up to capture the end of the metal downspout.

6. Bend separation

To make other 90-degree bends in the piping system, use two 45-degree bends and put a 1-foot piece of straight pipe between them. This spacing will really help you if you ever have to put a drain-cleaning snake down the pipe to unclog it.

7. Over the top

If you're in a bind and can't immediately bury the pipes, you can run them on top of the soil. These pipes look ugly, but they work. The trick is to get the water as far as possible from the house, always making sure it's aimed at the lowest part of your land where it would naturally drain if your house were not there. It's never a good idea to pipe water to part of your land where the water would not naturally go.

8. New-house rule

When installing downspout drain lines in the soil, never bury them immediately adjacent to your home if it was built within the past five to 10 years. The soil that's put in around the foundation is seldom compacted. It can take years for it to completely self-compact.

9. Uncompacted soil

If you install the lines in un-compacted soil, the pipes can bend, kink or develop reverse drainage where the water doesn't flow. If you use the slip joints, in worst cases, the pipes can come apart at the joints.

10. Extra slope

In new construction, always put the buried pipes in undisturbed soil. When you cross over the soil around the house, keep it to a minimum. Give this section of pipe extra slope, up to an inch per foot of run, to compensate for future soil settlement.

NYTIMES.COM, February 17, 2011

BE careful when clicking “send.” That is essentially the message to brokers and their clients from a state court, which ruled recently in a real estate dispute that e-mails can carry the same weight as traditional ink-on-paper contracts.

“Given the vast growth in the last decade and a half in the number of people and entities regularly using e-mail,” handwriting and e-mail should now basically be considered one and the same, according to the decision in Naldi v. Grunberg, which was handed down on Oct. 5 by the Appellate Division, First Department of State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The ruling, which attracted little public notice when it was announced, was appealed on Monday to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.

“As much as communication originally written or typed on paper, an e-mail retrievable from computer storage” is proof of a deal, according to the court’s opinion, which was written by Associate Justice David Friedman.

 - - Full text of the article available here.  - -

The conventional wisdom when selling a home has always been to wait until the ‘Spring Buying Season’. Over the years, that has seemed to make sense and is now accepted as a good strategy for those who want to sell their house and receive the best possible price. This real estate market has shattered many previously held beliefs. The wisdom of waiting for a spring market is another belief that is about to fall. Here are five reasons why?

1.) Interest Rates Are On the Rise

Interest rates have spiked up rather dramatically over the last ninety days and are now over 5%. Initially, an increase in rates has a positive effect on the market as it forces buyers off the fence. However, it also eats into a buyer’s purchasing power. As rates increase, the mortgage amount a buyer qualifies for decreases. This will eventually have a negative impact on prices.

2.) Your Dream Home Will Never Be Cheaper

If your family goal is to sell your current house and take advantage of the fabulous selection of properties currently available to buy the home of your dreams, DO IT NOW! Prices will continue to soften in most markets. However, if you are buying, COST should be more important than PRICE. Cost can be dramatically impacted by rising mortgage interest rates. Do the math and decide if now is the time.

3.) Buyers Are Out Early

There is mounting evidence that buyers are coming out earlier this year. A belief that now is a good time to buy coupled with the increase in interest rates has started the buying season early.

4.) Inventory Increases Every Spring

Every year there is an increase of inventory which comes to market as we approach the spring. Here is the number of listings available for sale in 2010.

• February – 3,531,000
• March – 3,626,000
• April – 4,029,000

We believe there will be an increase in these numbers in 2011 as there is a pent-up selling demand created by the weak market of the last few years. You won’t have to worry about this increasing competition if you sell now.

5.) We Are in the Eye of the Foreclosure Storm

While banks are trying to rectify their foreclosure procedures, there is a large supply of discounted properties which has been delayed coming to market. This inventory will be released sometime in the next few months. Foreclosures sell on average at a 41% discount. When released they will be competing with your house for the buyers in the marketplace. If you are looking to sell in 2011, you want to sell before this inventory becomes your competition.

These are five strong reasons to sell now!  Contact Bryan Cronin today and let's get moving!

Source:  Steve Harney, Keeping Current Matters

The Sun sets on McMansions

How economics of building larger homes have changed

The ongoing recession has done the country one good turn. It has -- at least for the time being -- killed off the McMansion Era.

The decade that brought us those monstrous homes of little architectural distinction in far-flung suburbs had surprisingly begun to unwind as early as 2006, but it took a five-year run of collapsing home prices and rampant foreclosures to kill it off. Maybe not forever, but at least for the time being.

"The median-sized home being built today is smaller," reported Paul Bishop, vice president of research for the National Association of Realtors. "And our survey of homebuyers indicates that as well. People buying new homes today tend to purchase slightly smaller homes than homebuyers of even a few years ago."

NAR's research gets empirical backing from the American Institute of Architects, which does a quarterly survey of home-design trends. One of the questions in its survey is: "Are the homes you are working on in your area getting bigger, smaller, about the same?" Every year since the AIA first added this question to its survey in 2005, a higher share of architects noted homes were getting smaller.

In the 2010 survey, almost 60 percent of the respondents said homes were getting smaller, while the rest reported home sizes were about the same. Virtually none of the responses indicated homes were getting larger.

There were a number of reasons for the McMansion phenomenon, the most apparent being so much cheap money was available.

Why wouldn't an ambitious homebuyer shoot for a bigger home, since the down payment was miniscule in comparison to price and the bank would just as well lend on the bigger home as it would on a smaller one?

Secondly, homes were appreciating so quickly that it was worth the gamble to buy bigger because the appreciation was also amplified.

A close friend of mine got suckered into this play. He and his wife moved into a house not far from where I lived. They stayed there for about five years and then sold, catching a handsome appreciation. The next house was bigger and further out in the suburbs.

They lived in that location for five years, then sold it, catching another big chunk of appreciated value. With their earnings, they bought a huge home in a new development very far out in the suburbs. That's where their luck ran out. The recession hit and the home lost 50 percent of its value.

It wasn't just the consumer pushing for bigger homes. Developers were equally to blame.

"Back in the housing boom, from 2003 through 2006, the way builders were justifying land prices was to build very big homes," explained Steve Cameron, president and founder of Foremost Communities Inc. in Irvine, Calif. "Builders could justify paying high prices for land by doing a pro forma for bigger houses."

Cameron should know what he's talking about -- his company had been in the home development biz but it's now a land development and investment company.

"Homebuyers, because the mortgage money was so easy, were saying, 'Geez, why not buy a five- or six-bedroom home even though we don't need it.' It was all kind of nice when it worked."

That's coming to an end because many homebuyers can't qualify for those big mortgages these days, and everyone is looking for what they need as opposed to purchasing their fantasy abode.

Going forward, homebuyers' aspirational desires will adhere more closely to economic realities.

"The economics of building a McMansion (have) changed," said Bishop. "Things like land values and cost of construction relative to what consumers are willing to pay at this point are out of sync. You have to finance the purchase of a home, even a McMansion, and that runs into the difficulties of getting a jumbo mortgage."

The impact of home-value appreciation has been negated by the downturn. Not only have home prices depreciated, but no one believes aggressive appreciation will return to the housing market for at least 10 years, if not longer. That makes the economics of owning a big house formidable.

The cost of furnishing a bigger house, heating and cooling the structure, and even the commutation between it and the place of employment was always imposing, but now there is no longer the appreciation factor that in the past made the situational sacrifice worth it.

"Homeowners feel the days of appreciation are not coming back so they are not going to be purchasing homes just for the sake of investing," said Kermit Baker, chief economist with the American Institute of Architects and a senior research fellow at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

"Homebuyers are purchasing because of how they intend to use the home, on the basis of what they need. They are treating their home more like typical consumer goods rather than investment goods."

Baker added that consumers don't need McMansion-type space, as "they can't afford to heat and cool the space, and given higher energy costs, why bother trying?"

It should be noted, historically, every time there has been a recession, home sizes tended to level off or even scale back. Also, today's numbers are influenced by the higher percentage of first-time buyers, who tend to purchase smaller homes.

"Some 40 percent to 50 percent of home sales are going to first-time buyers," said Bishop. "It's a different market than when the share of homes sold to first-time buyers had fallen to the 30 percent range."

That means there were a lot more trade ups, such as with my friends, than there are now.

Has the trend line to bigger homes has abated for good, or when this cycle turns, will homebuyers go on another McMansion binge?

"The shift to smaller homes could be long term," Baker suggested. "If you look back at what really caused the increase in home size, I'm guessing we're not going to see those factors again."

Source:  Steve Bergsman - Inman News

Hi Everyone,

This time of year, we find it important to remember and express gratitude to all who have helped make this a banner year!

Make no mistake - this is not an easy time in the real estate market.  But it can be easier, rather than more difficult, by all of us acting responsibly and making informed decisions.

Thanks to all who I have worked with and for during 2010.  I look forward to a great 2011, and wish the same for all of you!

Bryan