From the November issue: Is a little-publicized switch in federal mortgage policy causing huge problems for condominium sellers, buyers and home-owner association boards across the country — even depressing prices and blocking refinancings?

Condo industry leaders, from the 30,000-member Community Associations Institute to individual unit owners and real estate agents, are emphatic that the answer is yes. They say a series of rule revisions by the Federal Housing Administration has caused thousands of condo projects to become ineligible for FHA mortgages. This, in turn, has abruptly shut off loan money for would-be condo buyers and refinancers, forcing them to pursue conventional bank loans requiring much higher down payments — sometimes 20 percent and higher versus the FHA’s 3.5 percent minimum — that they often cannot afford.

For its part, FHA says the rule changes it has adopted, which focus on project budgets, insurance and financial reserves, have been prudent and are designed to avert losses from delinquencies and foreclosures. [more]

National real estate listings website Redfin.com has added a free feature to its site allowing users to track the performance of individual brokers in select areas across the country such as Long Island, the New York Times reported. The tool can help sellers find agents who are active and who have had success in their specific neighborhood, said Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s CEO.

With the service using information from local multiple listing services, where agents list the home they are representing for sale, the “Scouting Report” tool provides data on roughly one million agents, he said. [more]

The settlement of a major class-action suit is shedding new light on a controversial real estate practice that homebuyers and sellers typically know little about: Fees paid to realty brokers and agents for promoting home warranty policies.

The case involves potentially thousands of homebuyers and sellers who purchased warranty coverage from American Home Shield Corp. between May 2008 and March of this year. American Home Shield is the dominant player in the home warranty field, with sales of $657 million in 2010, according to the company. Home warranty policies offer repairs and replacements for owners when specified home systems and appliances malfunction.

Attorneys representing the plaintiffs say as many as 500,000 consumers may be members of the class, though neither they nor American Home Shield would speculate on how many ultimately will file for and receive cash from the settlement. [more]

Sales of million-dollar homes and condominiums rose last month in all 20 major metro areas, according to real estate analytics firm DataQuick Information Systems. On average, these cities saw an 18.6 percent increase in high-end home sales, after four years of declines, CNN reported. In New York, where volume grew nearly 25 percent, high-priced home sales were driven by bonuses on Wall Street. Even though bonuses were slightly smaller last year, the average was still over $120,000. San Jose, Calif., had the biggest market for million-dollar homes, with a 27.4 percent jump in sales last year, while Phoenix had the smallest increase, at just .4 percent. [more]

The false listing of the White House (click image for larger version)

Despite what one real estate listing site suggested this weekend, the federal government has not resorted to a real estate fire sale to solve its budgetary woes. The site, Redfin, falsely reported in a listing page this weekend that the White House had hit the market for $10 million — a fantastic bargain for the 55,000-square-foot mansion, at $182 per square foot. While the listing page could have been a prank, it turned out that to be an honest mistake — the site’s automated system pulled the listing from a site called Owners.com, which had posted the “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” property as an example listing for users. Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, told The Real Deal that the listing was entirely inadvertent. “One of our data providers just got snookered,” Kelman said, noting that the error was due to an automated program, and not human error. Of course, it hasn’t all been bad news for Redfin — “since [the false page was up] traffic to the site has had a tremendous spike,” Kelman said. Even so, the company took the page down as soon as it realized its error, Kelman added. [NBC via Gawker]

[more]

The false listing of the White House (click image for larger version)

Despite what one real estate listing site suggested this weekend, the federal government has not resorted to a real estate fire sale to solve its budgetary woes. The site, Redfin, falsely reported in a listing page this weekend that the White House had hit the market for $10 million — a fantastic bargain for the 55,000-square-foot mansion, at $182 per square foot. While the listing page could have been a prank, it turned out that to be an honest mistake — the site’s automated system pulled the listing from a site called Owners.com, which had posted the “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” property as an example listing for users. Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, told The Real Deal that the listing was entirely inadvertent. “One of our data providers just got snookered,” Kelman said, noting that the error was due to an automated program, and not human error. Of course, it hasn’t all been bad news for Redfin — “since [the false page was up] traffic to the site has had a tremendous spike,” Kelman said. Even so, the company took the page down as soon as it realized its error, Kelman added. [NBC via Gawker]

[more]

Anthony Longo (insert) the CEO of CondoDomain, and a screengrab from the site (Click image for larger version)

New York City is getting a new VOW-based brokerage company, in what may soon become a flood of companies taking advantage of the new technology.
Boston-based CondoDomain, a Web-based discount real estate brokerage, is now a member of the Real Estate Board of New York and offers a VOW, or virtual office Web site. That means that customers who log onto CondoDomain’s New York site can browse through all of the listings in REBNY’s database.

CondoDomain founder and CEO Anthony Longo told The Real Deal that the appearance of VOWs in New York City has opened the floodgates for new companies like his to penetrate the lucrative New York City market.

“The VOW will lay the groundwork for companies like ours to come in and compete,” said Longo, who has had his eye on the New York market for years. [more]