National market report

Snapshots of real estate news from around the U.S.

AutoMotorPlex in Minneapolis
AutoMotorPlex in Minneapolis

Minneapolis

Call it the mid-life crisis market. Developers across the country are marketing so-called “car condos” to Baby Boomers with cash to spend. The souped-up storage garages at Minneapolis’s AutoMotorPlex cost $300,000; units at the Thermal Club, under construction in Thermal, Calif., where membership includes access to a 4.5-mile racecourse, cost up to $800,000. Demand for the 84 units at GarageTown, in Denver’s Highlands Ranch suburb, has been so high that the developers are opening a second location. Another developer is planning a 270-unit garage at a former GM plant near Detroit. In addition to providing space for vehicle collections, Bloomberg reported, these properties serve as club houses and sites for car shows. It’s a strong enough trend that Hagerty Insurance, the world’s largest classic-car insurer, is now offering policies to cover car condos and their contents.

Phoenix

The housing market’s recovery may be starting to spread beyond American cities, as areas on the edges of metropolitan areas — frequently referred to as the “exurbs” — are seeing more building and more sales. For example, median resale prices in Arizona’s Maricopa County — which includes Phoenix and is the nation’s fourth-most populous county — have rebounded to $205,000, the Wall Street Journal reported, up 82 percent from their lowest point in 2011. Median resale prices in exurban Pinal County, Arizona, meanwhile, are still around $144,000, up only 65.5 percent from their trough, making the area more attractive for buyers looking for lower prices. In cities like Phoenix, Miami and Austin, home prices are at or near pre-recession levels. With land prices high in the urban centers, builders are moving to the outskirts to lower costs. The revival in these areas reflects a larger market recovery: Builders began construction on 437,100 single-family homes in the first eight months of 2014, up nearly 3.1 percent from the same time last year.

Virginia

Over the past decade, credit unions have increased their share of the overall mortgage market from 3 percent to 10 percent, the Wall Street Journal reported. Many credit unions have made themselves appealing to smaller borrowers by waiving down payments and mortgage-insurance requirements: Vienna, Virginia’s Navy Federal Credit Union requires no down payment and offers loans up to $1 million with 15-year or 30-year fixed rates; Arlington’s Pentagon Federal Credit Union, meanwhile, recently launched a 15-year adjustable-rate mortgage. Credit unions’ increasing market share, however, is still largely driven by smaller borrowers: less than 12 percent of Navy Federal Credit Union’s mortgage-dollar volume comes from so-called “jumbo” loans.

San Francisco

Median rent in San Francisco has surpassed median rent in New York City for the first time, according to apartment search company Zumper. The median rent for a one-bedroom in the city is now $3,100 a month, reported the San Francisco Business Journal, as opposed to $2,995 a month in NYC. Rising rents are influenced, in large part, by the ongoing tech boom — Cushman & Wakefield found that 7.6 million square feet of office space in San Francisco was leased through the third quarter of this year, compared with 7.4 million rented through all of 1999. Despite the Bay Area’s rising costs, however, New York City’s most expensive areas for renting — Tribeca and Dumbo — are still the most expensive in the country.

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Dallas

Golf Hall of Famer Lee Trevino listed his 10,000-square-foot French-style estate in Dallas’s affluent Preston Hollow neighborhood for $13 million. The house was built in the 1950s and renovated in 1998; Trevino and his wife, Claudia, bought the house in 1996 for $3.5 million. Trevino is a two-time U.S. Open Champion; the house comes with sand bunkers and two putting greens.

South Bend, Indiana

The Tudor-style, East Wayne Street historic district home where Notre Dame legend Knute Rockne lived when he died in a plane crash in Kansas was listed at $500,000. The two-floor, 4,200-square-foot residence was completed in 1929, two years before Rockne’s death; he commissioned the home himself. Many original details remain, such as leaded glass windows, a limestone fireplace and wrought-iron fixtures.

Calabasas, California

Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx sold his 4,500-square-foot house in a gated Calabasas community for $2.41 million. The one-third-acre property, which Sixx bought in 2011 for $1.89 million, also includes a swimming pool and spa.

Hawaii

Pacific Business News reported that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the likely buyer of the 357-acre, beachfront Kahuaina Plantation on the island of Kauai. PBN reported the estimated sale price is $66 million; the property was listed in August at $70 million.